Most people think of Denise Van Outen as one of the original ladettes: a
loud-mouthed, sweary, lager-drinking type. The reality couldn't be more
different. The actress/TV presenter/broadcaster, who made her name
presenting The Big Breakfast in the mid-1990s, turns out to be a
softly-spoken advertisement for healthy living who goes to bed early, eats
well, works out and rarely drinks.
Without it, she says, she wouldn't be able to cope with a schedule that
includes co-hosting Capital Radio's breakfast show and presenting a new
Saturday night ITV1 programme, Who Dares Sings! And, until recently, she was
also a judge on BBC One's popular I'd Do Anything talent search for a female
lead for a new production of Oliver! “I felt such a responsibility for the
girls,” says Van Outen, 34. “It was lovely to be a part of it, but I took it
very seriously. With Who Dares Sings! I can relax and have fun.”
Not many people would consider anchoring a TV programme to be relaxing, but
Van Outen takes it in her stride. She has been on stage in the West End and
Broadway, on TV on both sides of the Atlantic, and on radio. She also writes
a column for a weekly magazine. Clearly driven and ambitious, she is adept
at reinventing herself and embracing new challenges - including staying on
top form as she gets older.
“It's everything,” she states frankly. “I get up at 4am to do the breakfast
show and it kills me. I couldn't do it if I didn't look after myself. Ten
years ago it was much easier.
“I'm still doing the same amount of work I was doing in my twenties but I need
to look after myself now. You run on adrenalin when you're younger. I had a
full medical recently and everything's in good nick. The doctor said my
cholesterol's really low - Japanese low.”
A fairly constant size 10, she never weighs herself and still wears a dress
that she bought when she was 18. She was at her thinnest in 2001, when she
was not only in the West End run of Chicago but also on what she calls the
“heartbreak diet”; she had recently split from her fiancé, Jay Kay, the
Jamiroquai singer. She has since said that it was simply the wrong time,
that they were too young, and that they didn't see enough of each other. But
in the aftermath, she went down to a size 6.
‘"I hated not having my bust"
“I felt so unattractive,” she recalls. “I wasn't trying to lose weight, but I
was tiny and it didn't look nice. I hated not having my bust; I felt so
unfeminine. Normal women have got lumps and bumps and I don't know any man
who finds it attractive to see a stick-thin woman.”
As for the female habit of hating bits of your own body, Van Outen's having
none of it. She doesn't have a full-length mirror in her flat, rarely looks
at herself and doesn't check to see if she's got cellulite “because it's
guaranteed that if you do it will be pointed out somewhere in the press so I
don't want to obsess about it”.
But in an industry in which looks are important, is she not tempted by Botox?
Though not ruling it out, she says she hasn't had it yet because she's
worried about the long-term effects (and horrified by a recent episode of
Katie & Peter, Katie Price and Peter Andre's reality show - “watching it
is my guilty secret” - in which a doctor was sticking needles all over the
former glamour model's face). She doesn't rule out plastic surgery either,
though not on her face: “I think facelifts look awful you can always tell.
I've always thought that maybe once I've had kids, after breast-feeding, I
might have a cheeky boob-lift.”
Her more pressing worry isn't wrinkles or boob-lifts but that doing radio so
early in the day will make it easy to become a slob. She tries to counter
this by putting her clothes out the night before, but it bugs her never
having time to do her hair in the morning. Dressed today in a pretty green
sun dress, she doesn't look like someone who got ready in the car and hasn't
blow-dried her hair in days.
But then Van Outen is a master of disguise: behind the loud-mouth image is a
thoughtful, likeable woman who comes across, above all,as a pro at the whole
celebrity shebang - from conducting her private life to giving interviews.
She knows the game, plays it, gets on with the job and goes home.
Her current healthy regimen stems from her stint in the West End in Rent.
Doing eight shows a week kept her fit and she wanted to keep it up after the
play ended. So she hired a personal trainer and now runs for an hour every
day on Hampstead Heath near her home in North London.
“It makes me feel better. My trainer's brilliant, she drags me out on days
when I'm exhausted and afterwards I always say ‘thank you so much! It's
tempting when you get up at 4am to say that you can't be bothered. Sometimes
I'm actually asleep in my trainers and tracksuit bottoms. But I think
running outside in the fresh air every day is what you need.” So much so,
she doesn't use any alternative therapies and is resolutely low-maintenance:
she hates massages because she can't sit still, does her own manicures and
pedicures because she's ticklish, and applies her own fake tan before bed.
The finishing touch is a bizarre-sounding fake tan sleep suit which stops it
rubbing off on her sheets. “It's genius,” she laughs. “It's like an
all-in-one black Babygro.”
“Using a sunbed is my big regret”
Her beauty regimen revolves around an SPF15 facial moisturiser every day,
which she raises to factor 30 if she's in the sun. A sunbed habit in her
teens has left her with skin pigmentation on her face, which she covers with
make-up (though in the flesh you wouldn't know it).
“I didn't know the risks,” she says. “I'm paying for it now. It's my big
regret. Girls are still using them, risking skin cancer for a tan. They
should know that tans fade.”
She now gets her moles checked every year and campaigns to raise awareness of
skin cancer and breast cancer - her grandmother suffered from the latter.
She agreed to carry the Olympic torch on its controversial passage through
London recently partly because a Capital listener who suffers from breast
cancer wanted to do it with her. And although she thinks it's important for
London to have the Olympics, and she believes in the spirit and heart of it,
the politics made her uneasy.
The politics was of a very different kind in Los Angeles, where she spent time
last year filming a TV show. There, a healthy English girl with an appetite
was too much for some. One producer took her out to dinner at the Chateau
Marmont, the Hollywood hotel, soon after she arrived. At the time she was
heavier than usual as she had just spent the winter in the north of England
filming Where The Heart Is and existing on comfort food and bread. The
producer effectively told her to go on a diet. “It's really competitive out
here,” he said, “and people are so rude...” So three cheers for our Denise,
who ordered spaghetti bolognese and chips.
"I don't ever want to be size zero"
She then tells of going out for a friend's birthday dinner, with a famous
actress. While everyone else tucked in to pizza, salad and decent red wine,
the Very Famous Actress had a bowl of spinach leaves. “I just thought why?
What is the point? It's just miserable. The LA look is a size zero which I
don't ever want to be. I'm happy with my body.” But body fascism apart, Van
Outen loved the city. “I like the lifestyle and the sun's always shining.
I'd get up, go to the gym or to a class with friends, eat nice, healthy food
and go to bed early.”
Yet she never wants to live there permanently, simply because she likes
England, and London, too much - “and in LA it's all about the industry. And
as much as I do work, it's not the be-all and end-all for me. I like seeing
friends and I'm very close to my family.Having a separate life from this
industry is important to me.”
Still close to her family, she was brought up a Roman Catholic but stopped
going to church as a teenager. Her mother still attends Mass every week and,
although Van Outen often goes with her to the midnight service on Christmas
Eve, she now describes herself as spiritual rather than religious, someone
who believes that even bad things happen for a reason, and that it's good
karma to pray for your enemies as much as your friends. “I do believe in a
higher being but I don't need to go to a church every week,” she says. “I
can see why some people need it. My grandmother died very content because
she had her faith, and since she passed away I can see why Mum's turned to
it more. I think she feels that going to Mass is like her little moment with
her mum.”
“I've always imagined myself with a family”
As for her own family prospects, she has often said that she longs to get
married and have children. Now 34 and with a hugely demanding career, she is
in a fledgling relationship with Lee Mead, the 26-year-old winner of the TV
talent show Any Dream Will Do. She was one of the judges. Though both have
said that the eight-year age gap has never been an issue for either of them,
is marriage and children still the plan?
“I'd love to.” Will that be with Mead? “I don't know. We've only been going
out for seven months and we don't even live together. We'll just have to
see.” Does adoption and single motherhood in the pre-Brad Pitt Angelina
Jolie style beckon? “Because my parents are still together I've always
imagined myself with a family, and that includes a husband and 2.4 children,
so hopefully that's what I'll have. I don't really feel my biological clock
ticking but I'm not putting anything on hold for my career. I'm aware of my
age but I'm not panicking.”
Meanwhile she has a six-year-old nephew to adore and whom she visits in Hove
as often as she can (she has her own house there). But at present, life is a
tunnel of early mornings, filming Who Dares Sings! and fitting in her daily
run, and it has to run like a military campaign. “I get home from doing my
run and my friends know I won't answer the phone,” she says. “I have to
start to wind down. I have a hot bath, light my candles, close my curtains
even when it's light, and get myself ready for sleep.”
No swearing, no lager. There seems to be a vacancy in the ladette ranks.
Denise Van Outen presents Who Dares Sings! on ITV1, Saturday, 8pm
