FERN BRITTON stopped taking anti-depressants two years ago – despite fearing she would be on them “until she died”.
Author and TV star Fern Britton beat depression by keeping up a healthy and active lifestyle [REX]The television presenter had envisaged a lifetime on the pills before being brave enough to learn to cope naturally – with healthy eating and exercise.
Fern, 56, believes jibes about her weight and a failed “lonely” marriage, before meeting second husband chef Phil Vickery, made her toughen up.
She said: “I always thought I would be on them [the pills] until I died – because why would I want to stop taking something that was keeping me stable?
“Then something changed in me and I said, ‘You’re going to be all right, all the s*** in your life has happened, nothing can be worse than it has been, you can do it’.”
I always thought I would be on them [the pills] until I died – because why would I want to stop taking something that was keeping me stable?
Fern, who now hosts the Big Allotment Challenge on BBC2 as well as being a successful author, believes she has got through her allocated quantity of life-troubles early.
She said: “So many people have a fantastic life. They cruise through until they’re 60 and then — bang. They haven’t got the tools to deal with it.”
About the end of her 10-year marriage to TV executive Clive Jones, she claims she wondered: “How can people see the joy in life all the time?”
Even now Fern does not describe herself as exactly joyful, saying: “I certainly don’t have manic depression. Which is a shame because it would be nice to feel some highs. But I’m just somewhere underneath the medium line all the time.”
One recent low was the scandal over her gastric band.
She lost five stone due to the operation but drew criticism for not being open about how she lost the weight. Fern claimed “body fascism” is alive and well in television today.
She said: “When I started my career in 1980, women were not held up in that body image way. All that, it didn’t exist.
“I was chosen to do a job because I could do the job. I never expected all this scrutiny to come with it.”
It was around 1994 when she hosted Ready Steady Cook and had recently given birth to twin boys she was hit with “this whole body-fascism thing”.
Fern added: “It always astonished me that it was lady columnists who wrote this stuff.”
A Seaside Affair by Fern Britton is published tomorrow by HarperCollins.
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