I’d always felt like a natural communicator, even before I knew how I might channel that into anything professionally. As a child, I never found it particularly difficult to talk to other kids or to adults, getting them to explicitly understand what I wanted or what I believed or what I wanted to have a conversation about. That childhood Fearne would recognise herself, then, in the broadcasting I’ve been doing since my teens. What she’d be surprised about is the fact that I’m now a good listener, a skill I’ve only developed more recently. On radio and TV, you’ve been given a time slot and subject matter, and you’ve perhaps even got the questions written for you. All you’re really doing is making sure you stick to time, whereas now, as a podcast host, my job is to really understand people and listen to their answers. I was fast-talking, excitable, and highly optimistic, always looking out of the window, up at the stars, and dreaming of the life I was going to lead. These days I crave normality, but back then, during my perfectly lovely, trauma-free, working-class upbringing in suburban north London, I was desperate to be an actress. I would go from sitting in an English class I wasn’t enjoying to daydreaming about walking on a red carpet. It wasn’t the odd thought here and there – I was obsessed, and I probably wouldn’t have considered my current career very glamorous in comparison. I thought the screen was the holy grail, but times change and media works in a very different way now. I’d really have to work hard to explain to my younger self why I’ve made the choices that I know are absolutely right for me now. I’d have to explain things that are attractive to you as a young person – getting dressed up, having your make-up and hair done, going to parties – are things I now find tedious. What really puts fire in my belly now is writing and podcasting about mental health and well-being. It hasn’t been a linear path from the presenting career I began when I won a competition at the age of 15, and my younger self probably wouldn’t quite understand it, but it brings me so much joy. As for the rest of my life, I’ve been lucky enough to end up in a situation that I desperately wanted. Even as a small kid, I couldn’t wait to have children of my own, so I’d have been buzzing to learn that I now have two step-kids (Arthur, 18, and Lola, 14) and two children (Rex, seven, and Honey, four). Parenting isn’t how I imagined it. You think you’re going to be this very laid-back mum, wafting through the house, doing fun stuff all the time. Yet, in reality, you juggle work, the kids, and keeping the house in order, and the kids are screaming at you and they’re not eating the healthy meals you planned and it’s challenging in every way. I thought it was just going to be this very beautiful hazy experience of having these miniature versions of yourself. But they’re individuals with their own personalities and agendas, and your job as a parent, as I’ve worked out, is to let them flourish on their own journeys. It’s much better than I thought it was going to be, but it’s much tougher too, even down to cooking. I’m a vegan – which wouldn’t have surprised my younger self, who became a vegetarian at the age of 11 – and my husband, Jesse [Wood], is vegan at the moment too, but the kids all want different things, so I spend half my life making all sorts for them, vegan and non-vegan. I grew up in the Eighties eating pizza, chips, or whatever my mum – working bloody hard at multiple jobs – plonked in front of us, so I think my younger self would be surprised that I was confident enough to step into something new like cooking. Childhood Fearne would initially be disappointed by Jesse, because she was convinced she was going to marry Taylor Hanson from the band Hanson. She might also have been intimidated by the idea of meeting her future father-in-law, especially as he ended up being Ronnie Wood, and they met while hanging out with Rod Stewart at a Bobby Womack gig. But the really surreal thing for my younger self would be how normal it all became. You see someone like that in his pyjamas, making breakfast, or having an ice cream in the summer, and you realise that they’re just a human like everyone else. Interview by Tom Ough