Bev Turner is a Daily Telegraph Columnist and a BBC Radio Five Live Presenter of The Bump Club which can be heard at 11pm on Tuesday nights from 5th March (MW 909).
She’s married to Olympic rower and sportsman James Cracknell and has recently written a book “Touching Distance” with James about his recovery from a serious brain injury.
Bev and her husband live in Chiswick with their three young children.
Where are you right now?
At my desk at home in Grove Park. In my leopard print onesie listening to my one-year-old waking up teething every five minutes. It’s 10.30pm. I spent the evening at my son’s school swimming gala but as everybody is now (finally) asleep I can catch up on some admin before the pre-school craziness that will kick off at 6.30am.
What do you do for ‘me-time’?
Hide in a wardrobe and let my kids think I’ve left them home alone. That provides hours of fun. Failing that, going for a swim at The Park Club; drinking Martini espressos with my girlfriends at Sam’s Brasserie and visiting amazing Physiotherapist Alan Watson at the Bimal Clinic on Fishers Lane. My neck freezes up from picking up the one-year-old and screaming at the nine-year-old simultaneously. I go to see Alan for the chat as much as the treatment. And I love Chocolate Hair and Beauty in Grove Park. Joe and Ollie do my hair (it’s so bad it takes two of them…) and Angela does the most incredible bikini wax outside of Rio.
Where is your favourite place to eat in West London?
I have a pretty dim view of our local eateries. Chiswick Park has an inexcusably bad café with over-priced food and terrible service. Although at least they’ve slightly improved the menu – who wants Mackerel and samphire when you’re just watching the kids avoid the cat poo in a sandpit? I was strangely impressed by Chisou – the Japanese on Barley Mow. Annie’s at Strand on the Green can be hit and miss but has been consistently great recently. I never fail to enjoy every fresh morsel that I eat at Fat Boys on Edensor Rd and I must say, Ask Pizza on Kew Green is unbeatable for impromptu meals with the kids – they have the best crayons. Oh god, I’m depressed that I now rank restaurants on the quality of their crayons…
Career and children – top tip on how do you do it?
Paid help. There is no other way. No working mother should come home to hoover the lounge and scrub the bath (because let’s face it, not that many dads do). I would rather wear Primark for life, never eat out and never go on holiday again than lose the cleaner and the nanny. I would forsake anything but that. They keep me from murdering people. A good kitchen white board is also essential so that everybody knows what’s happening that week (including me!). And forget the concept of ‘career’ – women’s professional lives have to become so much more flexible and amorphous when you have kids that you have to keep an open mind. Holding onto that ladder can be torture.
Hop on and off; keep learning; do some retraining; talk through ideas with girlfriends. Trust your gut instincts about work decisions and keep your sense of humour. My one-year-old can’t talk but does a cracking impression of ”what mummy does” – namely tapping on a keyboard. I was both shocked and mildly impressed at her mimicry.
If you had to make a quick escape where would you go?
Butlins Bognor Regis. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. It’s 70 miles from Chiswick. That’s all! It takes 90 minutes in the car to stand on the beach and throw pebbles into the sea. It’s mental. It can take that time to get to Oxford Street. They’ve built two multi-million pound hotels at the resort with flat screen dvd players at the end of each kid’s bunk bed. If that buys me an extra hour in bed every morning on holiday – it’s worth the odd looks people give me when I tell them I’m going to Butlins, Bognor Regis.
Obviously if you can’t live without sushi, it’s not for you. But we went for half term and Dick ‘n’ Dom did a stage show. They divided the room into two halves to play games and said, “You lot are all the Doms…and you lots are all Dicks.” Obviously to a 9 year old boy, that is the funniest thing ever.
What is on your bedside table?
A light without a switch. You know – one of those you just touch and it comes on. No more fumbling to switch it on for the 3, 4, 5am baby wake ups. I’ll never buy a normal lamp again.
Three books: “Indigenous customs in childbirth and childcare” (I’m a bit of a birth junkie); Nora Ephron, “I feel bad about my neck” (she was so ahead of her time) and Lisa Jewell’s “After the Party” (I’m a big fan).
A tube of Hope’s Relief Intensive Dry skin cream (great for babies and my hands), a hair bobble (I spend all day putting hair up and down) and my radio alarm.
Three things you’d take with you to a desert island?
A radio, a spare radio and another spare radio. I can’t live without it. Tragically, I can be known to organize my day around my favourite radio shows. So for instance, I’ll book an appointment so that I can listen to some of James O’Brien on LBC between 10am-1pm in the car. In the morning I flick between the Today programme, Nick Ferrari and BBC Five Live. I love Woman’s Hour and Richard Bacon and Tony Livesey and all Radio 4 comedy….
A desert island with a radio is my idea of heaven (can I also have container of nice, pale Rose moored just off-shore? Thanks).
Who would you most like to meet for a drink?
I’ve recently developed an unhealthy obsession with Bradley Cooper. I never fancy movie stars but there’s something about the twinkle in his eye that just floors me….anyway…where were we? Oh yes, a drink….I’d go with my husband of course (ahem). If I’m allowed to meet a dead person, I’d share a bottle of wine with my Grandma. I didn’t know her terribly well but she completely deserted her first two kids with her husband and started a new life in which she had my dad. And he knew nothing of these siblings until she died. I’d love to ask her about that.
What is your greatest extravagance?
I’m not at all extravagant. I was probably happiest at University when everything I owned fitted into one room. I’m constantly giving things to charity shops and selling them at Chiswick Community School car boot sale. So I’d have to say that getting a Blow Dry at Chocolate when it isn’t entirely necessary is my biggest extravagance – and the best therapy.
What is your favourite thing to do as a family?
Swimming. My kids are spaced out so badly (9, 3 & 1) that it’s hard to find anything that they all want to do. But chuck them in a swimming pool and they become best friends. I swam competitively and it gave me such great experiences. Plus it’s one of the few things I can beat James at, which is always fun for me.
A swim at The Park Club or Richmond Pools on the Park followed by lunch and then all the children fall asleep in the car on the way home. That’s the perfect Sunday morning.
Bev was talking to Annabelle King.
