I’ve lost it all twice, not again: TV star Myleene Klass on why she returned to work weeks after the birth of the daughter she thought she’d never have
You hear Myleene Klass before you see her. Her Norfolk tones and noisy laughter float into the room before she enters with her unusual entourage. Holding one hand is her three-year-old daughter Ava. Clasped firmly in the other is a car seat in which ten-week-old Hero is sleeping. Bringing up the rear is the nanny who helps care for the children while Myleene works.
‘I’m not ready to not have Hero with me,’ she says. ‘And I feel guilty if I don’t bring Ava, too. It’s probably insane, isn’t it?’ A little. Myleene, 33, may still be getting up every three hours in the night to feed her newborn daughter ruffled short dress cocktail dress ruffled short dress cocktail dress, but her maternity leave is officially over. Her red, puffy eyes are testament to her refusal to get a maternity nurse to help with night feeds, as many celebrity mothers do, and to the fact that she spent most of last week ill in bed.
She was back presenting her Classic FM radio show 10 days after Ava’s birth. Now, with Hero less than three months old, she is preparing for the new series of reality show Popstar To Operastar (which takes ITV1’s coveted Dancing On Ice Sunday-night slot) and has already hosted the Classic Brit Awards. ‘Whether it was six months or six weeks, it was never going to be easy.’
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Career driven: TV presenter Myleene Klass, 33 is determined to keep busy and returned to work just weeks after giving birth to her daughter
There are many who criticise Myleene for being overexposed. She’s a TV presenter and a musician; she has the radio show and a children’s line for Mothercare; she is a model for M&S and hosts a film show on CNN. She’s aware of the carping but has no intention of stopping.
Having won and lost fame twice before - she broke records as a member of reality TV pop group Hear’Say before they split, and then signed a five-album deal with Universal Classics and Jazz, only to be dropped after one record - she’s not prepared to take time off.
‘ champagne bridesmaid dress champagne bridesmaid dress; ivory flower girl dresses uk Even my manager tells me I need to slow down,’ she says. ‘My fiancé cocktail dresses under 100 cocktail dresses under 100; Gray is always saying, “You need to go easy on yourself.” Last week, I had terrible mastitis [a flu-like illness caused by breast-feeding] and Gray tried to get me to relax. But I’m petrified showbusiness will leave me behind, as it has before.’
She doesn’t need to look far for examples of how even the biggest
names can find themselves out of favour. Last year, she hosted the first series of Popstar To Operastar with Alan Titchmarsh. When ITV1 bosses decided to revamp the programme - in which pop stars learn to sing opera - and give it a prime-time slot, evening gowns sale evening gowns sale they also shed a presenter, so Myleene is going solo. Officially, Alan left the show because, a spokesman says, ‘it is a difficult time of year for him’.
Myleene superstitiously knocks on the wooden table between us and says, ‘That could be me next year - it could be a difficult time of year for me.’ Judges Meat Loaf and Laurence Llewelyn Bowen are also no longer on the show, although the opera singer Katherine Jenkins has retained her place and the two are friends. ‘We were actually at the same music college and people had already singled Katherine out as someone who was going to do big things,’ says Myleene. ‘She has a talent to die for, and she is also witty and surprisingly saucy.’
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Motherhood: Myleene with her three-year-old daughter Ava
One of the contestants on this year’s show is Joe McElderry, who won The X Factor in 2009 but was dropped from Simon Cowell’s record label in April. ‘I’ve been where Joe has been,’ says Myleene, whose career was revived after appearing on I’m A Celebrity in 2006. ‘I thought my career was over at 25, but I firmly believe if you work hard enough you’ll get there in the end.’
Myleene is a glass-halffull person. Her smile and big personality are not just for the camera. But it is obvious that, as a natural people-pleaser, she has been hurt by negative comments about her. It is no wonder she would like her daughters to choose a different career. ‘You learn lessons in this business that my daughters should never have to learn. I want them to be valued for what they do and what they think - not because they’re wearing the right dress or are the right weight.’
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Acquainted: Myleene is good friends with Katherine Jenkins
She has been engaged to Graham ‘Gray’ Quinn for five years. The last time we talked, short plus size wedding dress she revealed she had gone off the idea of marriage after her sister endured a bitter divorce. It led to a flurry of headlines speculating whether her relationship was over. Certainly, the couple, who met when Gray was Hear’Say’s bodyguard, are not the most obvious of pairings.
Gray, who now runs a security company, is heavily tattooed and once went on the run from the law after being charged with heroin possession in his native Dublin. (He eventually went back to face the charges and was given a fine and a suspended sentence.)
She’s the middle-class girl who attended the Royal Academy of Music and whose favourite hobby was reading. Gray has been with Myleene throughout the ups and downs of her career and personal life. ‘ tulle cocktail dress I know we’ll get married eventually. But we’ beach wedding mother of the bride dresses ve been happy together for ten years and I don’t feel the need for us to be “legitimised”. First, we’ junior bridesmaids dresses ;ll get Hero christened and then we’ll think about a wedding.’
Ava was a happy mistake, conceived when the pair were reunited after Myleene’s stint in the jungle. Hero, who is named after the character in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, took three long years to arrive. ‘It took me a while to go to the doctor because I thought he was going to reject me and say: “you’ve got everything you want - and you want more!”’ She was diagnosed with endometriosis, a medical condition that can cause infertility. Ironically, it was probably caused by her previous pregnancy. There were many tears and the pair started investigating IVF. ‘I can see how things like that can bring a couple to the brink,’ says Myleene. ‘Everything becomes so mechanical.’
They were about to start treatment when Myleene’s doctor advised her to give it three more months. ‘I broke down in tears when he told me that,’ she says. ‘It had been years already.’ But amazingly, within a few weeks she was pregnant. Typically, she worked right until the end of her pregnancy. She was live on air when she went into labour with Ava and, this time around, she was driving to do a photo shoot at Mothercare when she started to feel the twinges. She and Gray are already talking about babies three and four - ‘I was one of three and I think it’s better to have an even number,’ is her reasoning.
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Fame game: Myleene broke records as a member of reality TV pop group Hear\'Say (pictured) before they split, and then signed a five-album deal with Universal Classics and Jazz
You get a strong sense that beneath her smiley demeanour is a woman of steel. Last year, while Gray was away, she was in the kitchen of her home in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, when two men tried to break in. She waved a knife at them and said she’d called the police. They ran away.
Then, in February, a man banged on her car window and shouted expletives at her because she tried to move out of a bus lane in front of him. Myleene was heavily pregnant and had Ava in the back of the car at the time. She posted his licence-plate number on Twitter and called him ‘a coward of a man’. ‘I’m fiery and spontaneous,’ she admits. ‘But I don’t regret either of those things. When you’re a mother, lace bridal dresses you’re like a ninja poised to strike!’
So, does she ever relax? ‘I have a dual personality,’ she says. ‘At home I’m plain Leenie. As soon as someone says “Myleene”, I know I have to get into gear. When I’m Leenie, I can switch off, even if it just means picking up peas from the floor for the fourth time that day. Does that sound cuckoo?’
No, in Myleene’s crazy world, it doesn’t.
Popstar To Operastar, ITV1, tomorrow, 8pm.
