Body + Soul 11
MARK CANT/CAMERA PRESS; JEFF SPICER/GETTY IMAGESgevity (her first No 1, Groovejet, famously
kept Victoria Beckham off the top of the
charts in 2000) with hands-on mother-
hood (though she’s honest she couldn’t
have achieved anything without nannies).
We’re on a Zoom call where I’m initially
bemused because one of my children has
altered my background. “I get it, one of
mine has changed my email handle to
‘Poopypants’ and I can’t change it back,”
she says.
A psychologist wouldn’t have to search
far for her desire for a big family. She is the
only child of the former Blue Peter pre-
senter Janet Ellis and TV producer Robin
Bextor. They split when she was four and
had a total of five more children with their
second spouses. “That was the start of the
happiest bit of my childhood,” she’s said of
the arrival of her first brother. “I’ve always
equated new babies with new chapters
and happiness.”
Ellis-Bextor’s mesmeric, angular face
crumples with melancholy when she dis-
cusses the death of her stepfather, John,‘On a bad day I feel
like a shouty,
frazzled failure’
The singer Sophie
Ellis-Bextor talks to
Julia Llewellyn
Smith about home
life with five kids
S
inger Sophie Ellis-Bextor pulls
a face of agonised anticipation
when I ask what possessed her
to sign up for BBC Children in
Need’s 24-hour Danceathon,
which starts at 9.25am on Tues-
day and ends at 9.25am on
Wednesday, with just a five-minute break
permitted every hour.
“My brain keeps swinging between if it’s
actually going to be loads of fun or if I’m
going to find it really gruelling,” says Ellis-
Bextor, 42, in her gravelly tones. “It’s a
Children in Need tradition and I remem-
ber being completely impressed but also
horrified when Jo Whiley did 26 hours on
a treadmill and then last year Joe Wicks
did 24 hours’ PE. Rylan [Clark-Neal] did
24-hour karaoke a few years back and
completely lost his voice. It’s pretty in-
tense. But when you’re asked to do some-
thing like that you can’t really say no.”
Advice came from Claudia Winkleman
who — with her Strictly Come Dancing co-
host Tess Daly — did an “agonising” 24-
hour danceathon for Comic Relief two
years ago. “She said the first four hours she
was jumping around with loads of energy
and [DJ] Trevor Nelson came to visit and
said, ‘I think you’ve peaked’ and she was
like, ‘Nope, I could do this for another 17
months.’ Moments later, her knee went
backwards. So I’m going to pace myself,
which is hard because you come out all
adrenalised, but you can’t speed up time by
dancing bigger.”
She’s temporarily quitting coffee, “so
when I have one on the night it will have a
sucker punch”, but other than that has no
training regimen, though she’s currently
on tour as a “special guest” with Steps and
“those gigs are fairly aerobic”. She’s the
mother of five children, “so sleep depriva-
tion training has been going on for years”.
The night will be a de facto extension of
Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Discos, which —
broadcast every Friday live on Instagram
during lockdowns — became one of the
few bright spots in the bleakness. Dressed
to the nines, Ellis-Bextor sang a mixture of
her own hits (Murder on the Dancefloor)
and crowd-pleasers from her fairy light-
decorated kitchen in west London. Her
husband, Richard Jones, bassist with the
band the Feeling, played, while her sons,
aged between 2 and 17, wandered in and
out of frame — the younger siblings yank-
ing at vital wires while the older ones kept
order. It provided feelgood escapism, while
at the same time being wholly relatable.
“When we finished, I looked at all these
sequinned outfits and thought, ‘How did I
ever have the energy?’ But it was so impor-
tant for Richard and me to have that dis-
traction and focus because everything else
was just so Groundhog Day and domestic,
sometimes pretty easy-going, sometimes
really intense. I felt like our family emo-
tions were probably mirrored in house-
holds up and down the country and the
world. Having discos just gave me some-
where for my head to go. When I was doing
another round of laundry and stripping
out the beds but also really trying to learn
the words to Get Off by Prince because I
had to perform it live on Friday night, it
was just really good for my head.”
Ellis-Bextor has achieved a virtually
unique feat in maintaining pop-star lon-from lung cancer last summer, in 2020. “I
always think you need a more expansive
word than ‘sad’ to explain grief but it is just
sad,” she sighs. Still, despite lockdown, the
family were allowed to visit him in hospi-
tal. “I can’t imagine what it would have
been like if I hadn’t been able to see
him. And we could all be together for
the funeral. Normally my brother,
who’s also a musician, and I would
probably have been touring, so we all
took comfort from the fact we were in
the same country.”
Mothers of five can come across
as dauntingly capable figures, so it’s
reassuring to learn in Ellis-Bextor’s
new autobiography Spinning Plates
(also the name of her podcast series
interviewing eminent mothers)
that “on a bad day I feel like a
shouty, nagging, frazzled failure”.
Before lockdown, she says, “I was
spread quite thin. But talking to
these working mothers for the
podcast made me realise I had anuncomfortable dynamic in playing down
my work with the kids; it was something
I did outside the home and when I came
back, it was all about family life. But in
lockdown I had to give myself permission
to be selfish because I don’t have a space
of my own at home and I had to work. And
I think it’s been better for me to say, ‘Actu-
ally, this is really important to me and I
love what I do’ without being apologetic.”
The memoir was one of her lockdown
projects. “Writing was empowering. There
are certain things that have happened to
me when at the time I’ve had to keep my
feelings to myself but I always knew at
some point I’d put out my side of the story.”
Those “things” included losing her vir-
ginity aged 17, to a man who ignored her
“no”s, something she now knows was rape.
After that, she was in a long relationship
with an abusive older man. Then there was
her experience competing in 2013’s Strictly.
Absolutely nothing untoward occurred
between her and her married professional
dancing partner Brendan Cole, but Jones
was so tormented by the idea, he needed
counselling. “It really helped him and he
was very happy for me to talk about it.”
She was taken aback by Strictly’s o v e r -
whelming nature, which she likens to “a
cult”. “There might be more support now,
but I was surprised there was no one ever
saying, ‘How are you finding everything?’
They seemed to be actively encouraging
you to have this really intense bond with
the show. On the day of the final [she
came fourth] one of the crew guys said,
‘This is going to be better than your
wedding!’ The other finalists and I were
all a bit like, ‘Er, no.’ ”
Since revealing this, she has had
some private messages from other
former contestants. “It felt like I’d ar-
ticulated their experiences as well.”
Still, Ellis-Bextor loved learning to
dance and now is determined her boys
will learn some moves. “My goal is for
them all to be good cooks and good danc-
ers. There’s such a joy from expressing
yourself by jumping around. It makes you
one of the winners in life.”
Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 24-hour dancea-
thon for Children in Need starts on Tues-
day, 9.25am, on the Zoe Ball Breakfast
Show on BBC Radio 2Sophie
Ellis-Bextor’s
perfect weekend
Night in or night on the tiles?
Night in because I’m quite busy at
the moment
Dog or cat?
We had three cats until ten days ago
when we had to have Kenickie, who was
17, put down. It was traumatic, we’ve had
him since Sonny was a baby, but I knew
it was the right thing
What’s your screensaver?
Kenickie the cat
Phone on or off?
I have a lot of fun with my phone
Scandi box set or Squid Game?
We’ve watched Squid Game so now
we’re back to Scandi box sets
Sequin dress or slouchy pyjamas?
Sequin dress
Water or wine?
Wine
I couldn’t get through the weekend
without...
Food. We spend a lot of our weekends
planning around meals — maybe
takeaway on Friday night and a nice
Sunday roast
My signature dish is...
Something like tuna steak with different
salads and chipsSophie Ellis-Bextor020. “I
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ShoSophie Ellis-Bextor with her
husband, Richard Jones