Ten years ago the husky-voiced broadcaster Mariella Frostrup penned a moving polemic about turning 40 for The Guardian.
“I had visions of myself by 40 as a woman at peace,” she wrote, “no longer tortured by vanity, the vagaries of love, the pursuit of success or that most elusive of all states, happiness.”
We’ve been chatting for some time – about her Radio 4 show Open Book, her agony aunt work for The Observer, her forthcoming visit to Brighton to host a live filming of The Book Show, Samantha Cameron’s banal public image – all the while me transfixed by the man-slaying purr of Scandinavian and Celtic roots, when the conversation turns to this year’s anniversary.
Have those torments disappeared?
“Oh yes, completely,” she giggles. “Now I hope just to stay alive another couple of years.
“Perhaps I should write another article? To mark every decade? The nation awaits, I’m sure.”
I’m sure plenty of people are interested in another state of Mariella piece, I say.
She is a fine role model: a modern and independent women, whose career continues to blossom having arrived in England with nothing.
“I’m very flattered.
We women need as many role models as we can lay our hands on.
Often the media is the last place to find them, you only have to see how they treat political wives to see how the 1960s is still going strong.”
As regards her journey, she is much less vain nowadays.
“That is some compensation for increasing years. The way insecurity manifests itself when you are younger, it really does diminish, so there is one plus.”
She is also more resilient.
“You just don’t feel so bad about yourself all the time. Instead of taking every negative thing anyone might say about you as a deep and wounding insult, a lot more brushes off.
“You know, I feel a bit Teflon.”
And nothing toughens one up like children.
Mariella has two with her husband, Jason McCue, a human rights lawyer seven years her junior whom she met 11 years ago on a charity trek in Nepal.
“I hadn’t had my kids when I wrote that Guardian article. They have been a brilliant conduit for happiness. I’m not sure I realised, much as I thought I wanted them, how profoundly they would impact on my life.”
And what of the vagaries of love? Even now, every interview with Mariella seems to have another angle on the never-confirmed, did-they or didn’t-they, Frostrup-and-Clooney affair.
“Sadly I got married so I don’t get to experience the vagaries of love any more.
“But I’ve definitely been linked with him [Clooney] more than I have with my own husband.”
There are worse people to be linked with.
“I don’t think it did me any disservice whatsoever and he is a nice guy, so I am not ashamed to be his friend.
“Hopefully he is not yet ashamed to be mine.”
Frostrup has been in and around the media since she moved to England aged 16.
She was born in Oslo, but moved to Ireland aged six. Her Norwegian father wrote for the Irish Times, her Scottish mother was an artist.
Within two years of arriving in England she landed a job as a PR for Parlophone Records, working with Bananarama and Spandau Ballet.
“At the time it didn’t occur to me it was brave. Now I am a mum, and my daughter is only six years from that age, I can’t imagine what I was thinking or how I managed it.
“It took quite a long time to get anywhere, I know that much. I survived and incrementally it got better.”
She worked as a PR for Patsy Kensit, too, and admits that many of her parenting skills developed during that period.
“Not with Patsy, who was very precocious and capable and a billion times more intelligent than anyone ever gave her credit for.
“But an awful lot of those boybands deserved their description as boy bands.
“I’m not naming names – I can’t bear all that nastiness and mudslinging stuff – but given the choice between interviewing an author and a musician, 99% of the time I would go for an author.”
So, for The Book Show live Mariella will be interviewing Jonathan Freedland about his Sam Bourne novels, Vanessa Redgrave and Mariam Said, and the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller.
Also on the sofa will be Gary Kemp, who has written a memoir about his time in Spandau Ballet that they will be discussing.
Let’s hope Kemp has something interesting to say – Mariella is not one to mince her words.
“There is something about the music business that while on the one hand it may keep people thinking they are forever young, I think it just keeps them forever mentally paralysed.”
The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Saturday, May 12
Starts 1.40pm and 4.40pm, £5 for each show. Call 01273 709709
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here