the times | Monday October 26 2020 1GT 5
times
older you get, the more you realise life
is about the people you love most.”
I don’t want it to sound as if she’s
in any way near it, but how does
she feel about her mortality? “I don’t
fear death at all, I really, really don’t.
I sincerely hope I’ve got at least
another 25 years to go. But I’m happy.”
How much does her Christianity
play a role in that? “I would have once
said I was a Christian. I’m not quite
sure now. I do have a faith, but it’s very
amorphous. I think the closest you get
to it is in nature, if you’re in a beautiful
place. We have a lovely place in
Cornwall, and I love Cornwall. It
speaks to me. It’s resonant of peace.”
She has spent so long broadcasting,
but now she is content “to become
a receiver. I feel like I can receive
things in my head rather than having
to put them out.” Madeley: “We’re
very different on that level.”
And they’re off on another marital
“exchange of views”. Madeley offers a
Stephen Hawking version of atheism.
“Hawking argues very cogently and
mathematically that there is no need
for a god to create the universe.”
Finnigan: “But mathematics and
souls don’t go together.”
Do they ever look back and think
what would have happened if they had
never met? Madeley starts a long, rich
anecdote about how their whole joint
career, marriage and family depended
on “one Rubik’s Cube” that, hungover,
he played with as a gimmick on
Yorkshire TV. That report caught the
eye of a TV executive and ultimately
led to him being cast as the perfect
leading man to partner on screen with
Finnigan. “Had I not been pissed the
night before, not done the Rubik’s
Cube thing, we would never have met.”
Finnigan: “Now, you see, Richard
doesn’t believe in God, but he believes
in Rubik’s Cube. It was good to find
each other, lucky to find each other.
Our relationship has defined our
entire lives.”Finnigan: “I think they invest
in the emotions in them, and I think
men aren’t as comfortable with that.
That’s very sweeping, of course.”
She confesses to the opposite bias:
“I know Antony Beevor is a hugely
significant historian and author and
very distinguished, but I wouldn’t
read one of his books.” Madeley says
he can swing both ways.
Tier 2 restrictions affecting their
north London home make it harder
for them to see their three
grandchildren (one of Finnigan’s
sons from her first marriage has
two daughters, while Madeley and
Finnigan’s son Jack had a son two
years ago). Madeley finds this situation
enraging. “We haven’t crushed the
virus and it hasn’t gone away. It’s just
waiting outside, leaning on a lamppost
having a fag, and we come out and it
bites us again,” is the start of one of his
diatribes. “I won’t go on about this,” he
says, while going on a bit.
In the old days this would have been
the moment when Finnigan would roll
her eyes. But she does not. She starts
“dicing” him, point for point, arguing
about the impracticality of his
favoured solution to shield only the
most vulnerable, until finally he says,
“I will shut up now,” and bumps his
head on her shoulder.
I ask Finnigan for the secret to her
new serenity. It’s partly, she says, her
choice “to step away from television...
I think some people can’t do that, they
can’t let it go. Their identity is too
rooted in that.” And partly, she says, it
is down to her age. Looking back on
midlife, she says: “They are the worst,
most anxious years. Trying to raise
a family, paying a mortgage, worrying
about losing your job... They are quite
stomach-clenching for everybody.”
When I ask them what they think
their legacy will be, they both rush to
say that their work will be forgotten
very fast. “Life is love,” Finnigan says.
“It’s the only thing, and I think the
REX SHUTTERSTOCK2020
I
spent the first part of the pandemic
moaning about how nightclubs
had closed. “Where will I get my
rush after a crap week at work,”
I grumbled to my friends. “I’m
supposed to be in my mid-twenties
— where will I meet guys?” Then I
realised that there was a nightclub
open — it was my local gym.
It seems that a lot of gyms are trying
to be a club too, with strobe-lit rooms,
huge sound systems, hyped-up
personal trainers — and of course,
some state-of-the-art Pelotons. Take
the 1Rebel chain, which describes itself
as “When London’s nightclub world
meets the fitness scene.” Or Gymbox,
which markets one of its classes by
saying: “It may be a while till we’re
clubbing again. But who needs that
when you’re chasing Euphoria at the
original party gym?”
Pre-pandemic, our selfie-obsessed
generation used to do “pre-party
workouts”, exercising before hitting
the local so our abs looked defined
under our crop tops and our biceps
looked ripped. Gym-nightclubs are the
inevitable next step: we can save time
by doing a workout at the party itself.
And no, I’m not some clean-eating
millennial who has discovered that
Stair Masters allow me to “live my
best life” in a way that Smirnoff didn’t.
But I do know people who claim to be
“addicted” to the drinks that gyms
serve (although they are cocktails of
glutamine and creatine, not absinthe).
The first time I walked into my local
Barry’s Bootcamp I felt nervous. After
all, it does boast that it has a “Red
Room”. Also, because of lockdown,
I hadn’t been around lots of people
my age, posturing and flaunting flesh,
for ages. The toned bodies socially
distancing from me in uniform
Lululemon — and, in the case of one
of my classmates, fake eyelashes —
reminded me of how intimidated
I had felt on entering my first big
nightclub as a fresher. With mirrored
walls everywhere, there is nowhere to
hide when you’re doing your HIIT
workout, but our trainer soon got me
pumped up — like a DJ, they call out
your name when you get a PB and
everyone looks, just like you’re
in the centre of the dancefloor.
The endorphins kick in after
20 minutes, and the red lights have the
effect of beer goggles — they make
everyone look less acned than they
are. Even though we have to replace
our masks as we move between
equipment, I spot a few furtive glances
before the mask is slipped back on.
Unlike clubs pre-Covid, there’s no
hangover or “hurling” — although at
my friend Alice’s gym you can mix
Thank F*** It’s Friday spinning classes
with prosecco, which could get you
halfway there. There are also smoke
machines and, Alice says, “The
instructors are on plinths and ask you
to follow them on Insta, like they’re
DJs. There’s a definite clubby vibe of
people wanting to be seen and
checking each other out.”
My 26-year-old instructor Jemma
says it’s common to use the gym to
hook up, even if people don’t get
physical in the class. “I can think of
a hundred people who’ve had a date
through my classes. Say I do a shout-I missed clubbing until I found
out my gym is a nightclub
out to Dave in class. The next morning
I might get a DM on Instagram from
a couple of girls asking, ‘So Dave, is
he single?’ ” My friend Sarah met her
boyfriend after he chatted her up
while pumping iron, and another
friend’s gym instructor bombarded
her with “you up” texts after he saw
her breaststroke the 20m pool.
The guys in my class say the gym is
where they would make a move,
especially now that so many of us are
WFH. One has bumped into a lot of
his exes at the gym and says, “You
know when someone’s interested.”
As in the club scene, different gym
chains attract different crowds. Some
of my girl friends go to Gymboxtogether because it attracts fewer
straight guys, so they don’t have to
bother with make-up. “It’s replaced
our monthly night out at G-A-Y,”
one says. Barry’s Bootcamp feels more
like an exclusive Chelsea supper club
— it’s full of mainland Europeans with
coiffed hair and rugby types called
Freddie. The trainers’ reputations
are based on the music they play;
gyms such as Barry’s run classes
simultaneously at different locations
across the city, as though they are
dance floors of the same club. Jemma
does cheesy pop in Soho, but suggests
that if I find it lame I should head to
Ollie’s class in Euston for house music.
Of course, gyms have an uncertain
future. “People have realised there’s
that small chance the government
might close gyms again,” says Jemma.
Yet that has only seemed to increase
the demand for classes.
In between them, teams of cleaners
speed-sanitise the equipment. Gen Z
are not put off by PHE — they are
hitting gyms the way Iranians hit
discotheques in the last days before
the revolution. “We’re treating
everything like this could be the last
time we’re in that room,” Jemma says.Pravina Rudra
There’s a
definite
clubby
vibe of
people
checking
each
other out
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By Pravina
Rudra
RICK PUSHINSKY FOR SUNDAY TIMES STYLE