the times | Monday July 20 2020 1GT 3
times
to adopt. One morning her make-up
artist looked at her and said, “Do you
think you could be..? I knew she
meant well, but it was like a dagger
to the heart.”
However, Silverton bought a couple
of pregnancy tests, “which I hated as
I had had the ‘no, not pregnant’ over
and over again. I went off to the gym
and sat in the loo, which is now this
special place, this sort of shrine.”
Not only was she, aged 41, pregnant
with her daughter, but, after two
miscarriages, two years later she got
pregnant again and carried her son
to term. “It does feel miraculous.”
She gave up work completely for
two years after her father died. When
she returned to the BBC it was in
combination with training to be a
therapist. I ask how she will handle
hearing desperate experiences from
children a similar age to her own.
“The most fundamental thing we have
to do is be able to hold that. To be
comfortable sitting with a child in
pain, emotional or otherwise. Maybe
that’s why I haven’t done it before.”
She is less reserved than the usual
BBC star; she exposes her vulnerability
judiciously. In Iraq she gained
the confidence of a special forces
operative. “He said the only reason
I’m talking to you is that Panorama
[on infertility]; me and my wife went
through exactly the same.” This is,
she says, the bridge between
journalism and psychology, “telling
human stories, in a way that connects
with others too”.
Last December Tony Hall, the
director-general of the BBC, asked her
to give a speech to the corporation on
mental health. She is writing a book
on psychology and pitching for a
weekly TV series that takes “a subject
we think of as dark and dreary, but
needs to be entertaining”.
During lockdown there have been
moderate gains for some families. For
instance, Heron, a security
consultant, is now not
travelling as much. Yet when
other parents said they were
“doing fine”, she would say:
“I’m not, I’m literally on my
knees. Mike and I are just
barely surviving.’’ I’d made a
joke, but as soon as you have
that conversation it comes
out. I have parents who are
facing redundancy and
saying, ‘You know, my
husband is so stressed out
right now trying to home-
school. I had to get him out
of the house because I
thought he might use physical
force on our child,’ and
parents saying, ‘My daughter
is so distressed. She’s banging
her head against the wall in
her room.’ We know that
services are so depleted. So
if I can do anything in that
space, that brings all of these
experts together to say, ‘You
know what? There are answers,
please don’t blame yourself.’ ”
During our whole conversation she
talks urgently fast, telling me, self-
deprecatingly, to stop her as I need.
At one point she says, “Life is short,
do what you love.” I think that is what
drives her, not to run out of time.TV star and child therapist
Top: Kate Silverton
and, above, with her
husband, Mike Heron,
and children, Clemency
and Wilbur, in 2016said to me, ‘Why the hell are you
doing that job? You’re clearly not
happy. Look at me, I don’t have long
left. You always used to carry your
Dictaphone everywhere. Please tell
me you will follow your dream.’ ”
The next week she called the
hospital to arrange a visit and was
told Jamie had just died. “That was
it. I sobbed under my desk. Then
I picked up the phone.”
She called BBC Newcastle and asked
to come and make the tea; they agreed
and she booked time off work to go.
“My mum said, ‘Are you giving up
your good job?’ And my dad said,
‘You go, girl.’ ”
Was the death of her father, in 2015,
the turning point that inspired her
second career change?
“I don’t know the answer to that
question,” she says. “His death was not
an easy one. It was cancer and it was
hideous. My son was very young at
the time and I was very overwhelmed.
From the time my dad was diagnosed
to passing very quickly was six
months, and it was all-consuming.
I suppose there was a point at which
Dad’s death did change everything
because it forced me to stop.”Silverton has always been
interested in psychology; it
was her undergraduate degree.
Has she had therapy? “I’ve
done about 200 years of
therapy. I’m a huge believer
in what therapy can bring for
people: it helps you to live in
multicolour. I think we’re
much more accepting of it in
society now. Lord knows we’re
going to need it.”
For a long time she feared
never becoming a mother;
14 years ago she presented
an edition of Panorama
entitled Right Time for a Baby?
in which she broke down on
camera. Later, after meeting
Heron, she underwent years
of “horrendous” IVF cycles.
That ended when her fertility
hormones were recorded at a tiny
fraction of the levels suitable for
pregnancy, and plummeting rapidly.
“It’s a tough process,” she says.
“And to come out the end of that with
essentially the doctor saying, ‘You’re
40, this is very unlikely to happen.’ ”
Shortly afterwards she married
Heron and they started on the journeyJEFF SPICER/GETTY IMAGES
It’s an app! But no, it’s a television
series. But also an app. And will be
on TV. Argh! Where’s that head-
exploding emoji when you need it?Sigh. I’ve explained the difference
between Tinder and Love Island to
you so many times before. Calm
down, it’s not that confusing.I’m trying to be calm, but the app
I usually use to do that is now also
a TV series, which is also supposed
to make me calm, but really it’s got
me quite frazzled.Which app?
Er, Calm, the San Francisco-based
meditation app founded by Alex
Tew and Michael Acton Smith.
It helps people fall asleep. So will
the TV show, A World of Calm,
which has been commissioned
by HBO Max.They’ve commissioned a TV
show that is supposed to put
people to sleep?Ye p.
But how?
Ask the guys who made the last
few seasons of Entourage. Boom
boom! Actually, it’s apparently
a “totally new type of television
experience that combines
mesmeric imagery with narration
by A-list stars’’. They’ve signed up
some big names — including Nicole
Kidman and Keanu Reeves.”In layman’s?
Celebs reading bedtime
stories to grown-ups while
something resembling an early
Noughties Microsoft desktop
screensaver bounces around
your television screen.They must be boring stories if
they send you to sleep.There’s science behind them —
the narratives, music and footage
are all designed to soothe the
body and mind.Right. This is so flawed.
How?
First, falling asleep with the TV
on is the worst thing ever. You end
up being woken up in the middle of
the night by the screen and, actually,
my sofa is more of a showpiece —
if I fell asleep on
it, I’d get a crick
in my neck. I’d
also have weird
dreams about
Keanu Reeves —
and I have
enough of
those as
it is.Point
made. No
need for
detail.Hannah
RogersThe lowdown
Calm
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