The Gold Edition Meets… Anna Richardson

I grew up in a vicarage. My father was a priest and my mother taught religious education. Along with my two brothers, we were brought up in the church and our family was very central to our community. It was quite odd because you have this kind of status, but you don’t often have money to go with that. I think that dynamic has informed a lot of my career and the shows I’ve presented. In the church, you learn very quickly to be interested in other people and welcome faces from all walks of life. There’s never really any judgement. 

In many ways it was a happy childhood. But when I was ten, my parents split up and my older brother and I went to separate boarding schools, while my younger brother went to stay with my father. It felt like a quite a fracture in our family – and a bit of trauma really. I remember making a clear decision when I was dropped off at boarding school to swim rather than sink. It was my survivor’s mentality kicking in. Luckily, I was academic (both my parents went to university) but I was a rebel. I was disruptive and the class clown but deep down I wanted to do well. A bit of a two-hander!

Call it fate or destiny, but I always knew I’d work in television. I can’t really explain it, but it was just always in my mind. My father felt the same way about going into the church, so maybe it’s partly genetic. It gave a good focus and a determination to make it a success – which probably explains why I went to London to train as a journalist first. 

My big break came as a producer on The Big Breakfast. These days, it’s much easier to get into television but this was the early 90s – pre-internet and mobile phones. On a Monday, The Guardian published its media supplement which advertised a bunch of jobs – but most of us had little to zero experience. After doing lots of work experience placements for free, I was brought in to interview for a producing role at The Big Breakfast. The show was at its height and they were looking for people with journalism qualifications, which I had. It gave me a bit of kudos – and they wanted that. I also loved and really understood the show, so it was a good fit. 

There’s been a lot of flip-flopping in my career. By that I mean I’ve worked on every side of the camera, which means I really understand how television is made. The Big Breakfast was incredibly cut-throat and competitive so, when I left, I had to take a few weeks off just to recover from the madness of it all. Afterwards, I worked on various other shows in production roles before The Ultimate Shopping Guide. I was a researcher on the show and Lorraine Kelly was the presenter – and one day, they let me do a reporting segment in front of the camera. That led to me being noticed by ITV and being given a Saturday morning show called Love Bites, which was a sex education show aimed at teenagers and young people.

Sex and relationships is certainly a niche I’ve carved out for myself. My personality is very open, straightforward and direct, so after Love Bites I think more people noticed and liked my lack of embarrassment around these issues. They knew I could be trusted to deal with and talk about these issues in a safe and approachable way. And I’m fascinated by people and relationships – I’m a journalist at heart, after all.

It was around this time that I met Charles. We met on one of those classic 90s show called Surprise Chefs when we were both working as researchers. He basically petitioned me to go out with him for weeks, but it worked because we were together for the next 18 years. We’re very similar in terms of our personalities so, even though we’d squabble a lot, we also really understood each other. We never held grudges and we both knew we had each other’s best interests at heart. I never doubted that he loved me. 

Looking back, Charles and I should have gone to couples’ therapy. If we had, we’d probably still be together. But instead, we let our relationship drift. We also became too independent and, once we both turned 40, there was also this feeling of a mid-life crisis looming. Questions like, where is this going? Are we getting married? Should we have children? They all started popping up. He was working more and more, and I was at home feeling a bit abandoned and lonely. Ultimately, the truth was I met Sue [Perkins] through a mutual friend and we fell in love.

Ending my relationship with Charles and starting a new relationship with Sue was a conscious choice. I was fully aware of the leap I was taking but I knew I needed more in my life, and Sue fulfilled that. Having a relationship with a woman was very different but it was very stimulating. Sue has an incredible mind and is very witty – but female relationships can be quite exhausting as a result. It’s a generalisation, but my experience is that men are simpler, less emotionally driven creatures. But Sue is an extraordinary person and, at that time, she was offering me everything I needed.

Although I’m still on great terms with Charles and Sue, I want to make it clear that both break-ups were extremely painful. There’s no getting away from grief. With Charles, there was never any desire to hurt each other – never had been – and that fundamental respect led to quite a mature parting of the ways. When Sue and I split, it was during the pandemic, which was a stressful time anyway. We’d been together for about seven years, so we needed some time apart. But now we have such a deep love and respect for one another and choose to include each other in our lives, which is wonderful.