The age of Alexandra

A lot has changed for the 28-year-old mum-of-one over the past year. Here, Binky Felstead shares how she reached her physical peak, an unfiltered take on single motherhood and her hopes for a life beyond ‘Binky’

Run the gamut of young women characterised in scripted reality shows and it would be fair to say Binky Felstead got off pretty lightly. Emotionally open, a little bit naughty and a bloody good laugh, she managed to remain on the edge of the drama for the lion’s share of her seven years on Made In Chelsea, instead owning the role of supportive friend – perceptive enough to know when to offer a pep talk or take the piss. If I was set to interview a more high-maintenance TV personality, I’d be feeling apprehensive about the fact that we’ve chosen the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton as the set on which she’ll spend her day posing for our cover – all Portakabins, musty pong and the kind of generic pearlescent pink

dispenser soap that would make Mark-francis Vandelli faint – but having interviewed Binky before for this magazine, I have no concerns about diva behaviour. If there’s any element of surprise about the shoot, it’s my first glimpse of Binky’s rippling body. The muscles of her well-developed midsection, contracting and bulging like well-oiled machinery under bronzed skin, hold the attention of all 13 of the WH team. The physical difference from the Binky of yore reflects changes afoot deeper under the surface. Eight years on from that E4

‘I FEEL LIKE BINKY WAS THE KIND OF GIRL WHO WAS A PARTY ANIMAL’

debut – and 18 months after the two-part spin-off Born In Chelsea, in which Binky and now ex-boyfriend Josh ‘JP’ Patterson documented their journey to parenthood – the mum-of-one is ready to draw a line under it all, and the rudimentary step in this direction is mulling over a name change. ‘I think Alexandra, my real name, is going to be more me at the moment,’ she muses. ‘I feel like “Binky” [a childhood nickname] was the kind of girl who was a bit of a party animal and had a lot of fun,’ she adds. ‘Now, there’s a lot of transition... I think I’m taking a step away from the reality days.’ To that end, there’s a jewellery line in the offing with designer Philippa Herbert called, simply, Alexandra Felstead. ‘It’s quite grown-up,’ she says, smiling and pointing at her delicate golden necklace from the collection. ‘It’s the next step.’ GOAL GETTING While I’m all ears for project rebrand, I’m even more keen to hear about how she got a body that strong. ‘I go to F45 most mornings,’ she explains, referencing the Fulham, Kingston and Oxford Circus branches of the group circuit franchise that has set the UK workout scene alight since coming over from Australia in 2017. There are burpees, weighted lunges, star jumps – ‘I don’t even know what half of the moves are called!’ – along with stints on rowing machines and bikes going as fast as you can. An intense challenge for the body that doesn’t require tons of head space. ‘It’s idiot-proof. You turn up, they show you what you have to do and you smash it out in 45 minutes,’ Binky explains. ‘It sets me up for the rest of the day, I’m in the best mood ever – happy endorphins flowing.’ If she can tot up five circuit classes in a week, she’ll add a sixth workout of yoga or Pilates – ‘for stretch and mobility work’ – streamed at home using the Fiit app, for which she’s an ambassador. While Binky began working out regularly in 2015, giving birth to daughter India in June 2017 ushered in a new sense of body awareness, no doubt enhanced by her sessions with close friend and postnatal specialist trainer, Lulu Adams. Throughout the pregnancy, Adams taught Binky to activate her pelvic floor and deep core while working out. Post-birth, they had weekly Facetime sessions – ‘lots of clenching’ and breathwork – plus fortnightly postnatal training appointments (see page 33 for the moves). ‘You have to build yourself strong from within so that [after the birth] you’ll be able to do burpees and high-intensity cardio, otherwise you’re going to have all sorts of issues down there.’ Sustaining an injury from training too hard, too soon after the birth, would have been seriously disruptive – especially when you consider that Binky trains daily as a way to manage her anxiety. In fact, she found Adams’ expertise in prenatal and postnatal fitness so useful that she became determined to pass it on to the majority of new mums who, she believes, don’t know about this stuff. ‘At Mummy Tribe, we’re trying to educate them,’ she explains – referring to her fitness and wellness retreats business, where

childcare is included. ‘We’re picking up prams and babies constantly, it’s a lot of strain on your back,’ she explains, visibly in her element. ‘You have to make sure you’re holding everything in.’ SQUAD ROLES Her other mission with Mummy Tribe is to create a place for mothers to meet, learn skills and share stories, ‘like a modern-day Women’s Institute’. The shift in social circles that comes with becoming a mother showed her first-hand the importance of mums having meaningful connections. ‘I was home with India and I would see on Instagram that everyone was out and about and I just felt really isolated,’ she recalls. Too much time on the app still risks sending her into compare-and-despair mode. ‘I can get quite low scrolling through Instagram and seeing all these happy,’ – she catches herself – ‘or what look like happy families... mums and dads and babies.’ If your empathy cup runneth low when it comes to a home counties private schoolgirl-turned-reality telly star, you’re probably not alone. It’s not exactly the sort of narrative the fickle British public goes all gooey over. And while it would be disingenuous to cast Alexandra Felstead as an embattled single mother, with enough grit and steely resolve to stand her in good stead for a Pride of Britain Award, it’s important to note that she’s not living some domestic evolution of the glossy Chelsea fantasy we’ve lapped up for almost a decade. There’s no full-time nanny, for one. ‘I have to work out childcare in the mornings on the days when India’s not in nursery,’ she explains. ‘I’ve got this app called Bubble, it’s brilliant. I get all my favourite nannies from this app, they can come last minute.’ It sounds pretty frenetic, which begs the question, where is JP in all this? Right now, as it happens, he’s at her place looking after India. ‘He’ll come to the house and we’ll do bath time; he took her to Westfield this weekend,’ she explains, tone breezy. If there is a sense of frustration at his childcare duties sounding seemingly less tightly scheduled than her trips to F45, she’s not showing it. Perhaps that’s because, as I soon learn, she’s got ample back-up; her own mum (Jane, 65, who regularly starred in the show) has taken to grandparent duties enthusiastically (despite being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018) and, between new ‘mummy friends’, childhood besties and her old MIC muckers, she’s not short of mates. ‘They were my family for eight years,’ she says, smiling. ‘You know Louise [Thompson]? I’m her

‘I THINK PEOPLE ARE COMMENTING BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT USED TO ME LOOKING LIKE THIS’

maid of honour,’ she explains. I do my best to dig for juice from the dress fittings. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly do that with her, she’d be a nightmare,’ she says, giggling again. ‘She’s very...’ – a pause, no doubt for social diplomacy – ‘She’s got it all under control.’ The Sunday before our shoot, she was lunching with Vogue Williams – Irish TV presenter, wife of Made In Chelsea’s Spencer Matthews and mum to their baby son Theo. BODY POLITIC The disparity between the way she appeared in MIC and her life now as a fitness-loving 28-year-old is what Binky believes motivates people to pass judgement on her evolving physique via social media. ‘I think that’s why people are commenting so much, because they’re not used to me [looking like this]. They remember me being bigger back in Made In Chelsea,’ she says. ‘Not bigger, but I was curvier and I didn’t ever go to the gym,

so my body has changed from eight years ago.’ She continues, noticeably irked: ‘I think all the other girls who are on Instagram posting in bikinis don’t get criticised because they’ve always looked like that. But because I’ve lost a bit of weight they feel like they can say something.’ Binky was in the public eye as an exercise-phobic party girl, then she caught the ‘gym bug’, got into training and was signed by Reebok – only to fall pregnant and spend the next two years with her body being in a state of pre- or post-baby. Not wholly hers. Now, core strength rebuilt and notoriously tempestuous relationship over, it’s almost as if she’s got the physical and mental capabilities to work out – on her own terms – what a sustainable, feel-good body really means to her. While Binky is frank in her admission of adapting her daily fare for a month in preparation for her first WH cover (protein shake post-morning workout; large chicken salad for lunch; fish and veg or a spicy seafood noodle soup for dinner; two and a half litres of water daily and no booze), she’s keen to make clear that this is not normal service. When it’s resumed, lunch invariably involves a decent hunk of sourdough, dinner might be sushi or a ‘cuzza’ (a Binkyism for curry – the spicier the better) via Deliveroo, and chocolate and G&TS will be back in rotation. ‘If you want to maintain [your physical gains long-term], have a little of what you fancy,’ she says. ‘You can’t always be good.’

NO FILTER

A sensible enough statement. Though, if you’re plugged into the politics of wellness speak in 2019, you’ll know that by ascribing a moral value to her food, that’s something of a gaffe. Another occurred in January, when Binky uploaded a post paid for by formula brand Aptamil to promote its follow-on milk to her Instagram followers. When you consider the fact that the NHS states there is ‘no evidence to suggest that these products provide extra nutrition benefits for young children’ compared with cow’s milk, it’s not a revelation that the post (in which she extols its benefits in helping India meet her iron requirements) ignited such a furore in the comments that they were eventually switched off. What seems even less surprising to me is that, in Binky’s attempt to transition in the public’s consciousness from funny posh girl to trusted advocate for mothers’ wellbeing, she’s messed up a few times. Those are choppy waters and, from spending half a day in her company, I get the impression that she’s not one of life’s natural-born ‘checkers’. This is a woman who shoots from the hip. An approach that breeds PR fails simultaneously makes for some of her most likeable moments. Take when I ask her what it’s like to be raising a baby without a partner. ‘Of course, there are times where I think, “Fuck, I’m on my own and I’ve got a baby,”’ she says, bluntly. ‘But I’ve always been a believer in what’s meant to be is meant to be and that things happen for a reason, and that’s how I’ve just kind of led my life. Some people hate

me saying that because it sounds so stupid, but I’m just a believer that things will be okay and it will work itself out,’ she says. A pause. ‘No one wants to think about being alone… I just don’t think about it like that. Something will come along and it will be fine.’ Though, of course, co-parenting with your ex means romantic next steps come with their own complications. ‘It’s going to throw a spanner in the works when one of us meets someone... and I know that we’re both adult enough to kind of be fine. I just think it’s going to be quite weird at the beginning,’ she says. ‘It’s little things like, I can still go to his parents’ house for the weekend with him and India. We want to keep that, we want India to see us together.’ I acknowledge that lots of exes wouldn’t be able to handle such things. ‘Yeah, so that’s why we’re really lucky and that’s what I don’t want to stop. But I understand she – as in the new girlfriend – might not like that. But she’s going to have to get over it.’ The impish grin that accompanies her last sentence would be enough to make you think that ‘Binks’, the cheeky bringer-oflols, never left. Maybe it’s more that this side has been joined in the middle with a more grown-up self-assurance, and the two need a little time to bed in before they exist harmoniously together. Moments before she jumps in a cab home to join her daughter, she pauses to take the long view of her journey over the past decade. ‘Before India, I always wanted to have a boyfriend... I hated to be on my own,’ she says. Now I’ve got India and that’s sort of taken that [feeling] away. India and work are my main priorities now and anything extra on top of that would be a bonus. But I don’t crave it any more,’ she says. And then, with conviction: ‘I’ve got what I need.’

‘OF COURSE, THERE ARE TIMES WHEN I THINK, “FUCK, I’M ON MY OWN AND I HAVE A BABY”’