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PODCAST

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Hello I’m Sophie Ellis-Bextor and this is my podcast: Spinning Plates where I speak to busy working women, who also happen to be mothers, about how they make it work. I am a singer and have released 8 albums in-between having my 5 sons who are aged between 7 and 22 so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing.. but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Join me

kids & family parenting

All Episodes

1:08:29

Episode 180:Helen Dukes

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/03/16

Helen Dukes is an entrepreneur and DJ, and mum to 2 daughters, 11 year old Anya and 19 year old Lottie .She is the founder of Disko Kids, a clothes and accessories brand that I love for its roots in music, festivals, sparkles and fun.It also has at its heart a deep connection with charities such as Winston’s Wish. This child bereavement charity helped Helen navigate the death of her partner Ade when their daughter Lottie was just 3.Helen told me how she strove to create video memories of Ade for

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1:10:10

Episode 179: Anna Lunoe

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/03/09

Anna Lunoe is an Australian DJ, singer, songwriter and producer. She lived and worked in LA for 8 years, performing at festivals such as Coachella.She’s now back in her hometown of Sydney, and has an 8 year old daughter and a 6 year old son andI caught up with her after she’d spent the night in Sydney Zoo for her son’s birthday.I loved her idea of 2 night reset away, alone, every few months, which she and her husband take turns in doing.Last year Anna released the song ‘Girl’, a collab with Melanie

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1:06:53

Episode 178: Fran Cutler

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/03/02

Fran Cutler is famous for organising wild parties attended by A-listers. Things really took off in the 90s when she started organising parties for Oasis albums with Meg Matthews.She’s a self-confessed technophobe and she’s using this fallow Glastonbury year, to write a memoir which she promises will be both salacious and funny.She brought up her daughter Mercy on her own, after the father left 3 months into her pregnancy. She resolved at that moment to work twice as hard as anyone else to support

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1:18:34

Episode 177: Jamie Genevieve

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/02/23

Jamie Genevieve is a Scottish make up artist and entrepreneur. I follow her on Instagram and am so impressed by the brand she’s launched. Some of her products have now become my make up staples.We talked last month about how she started out as a makeup counter girl, loving demonstrating makeup and selling it, moving onto YouTube herself and then launching her own brand Vieve.Jamie has a little girl called Romywho will be 3 in May, and she revealed to me mid podcast that she has a second baby due in

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55:49

Episode 176: Nicole Appleton

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/02/16

Nicole Appleton is a singer and a mum to Gene aged 24, and Skipper who is nearly 6.She first came into our lives in the 90s when she and her elder sister Natalie were members of the hugely successful band All Saints. Together, the Appleton sisters have just brought out a new single ‘Falling Into You’ and it’s gorgeous. Very much their classic, warm and optimistic selves.She and I talked about the joy of having children so far apart in age. Nicole said she feels she and her eldest, Gene, grew up

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1:03:14

Episode 175: Dawn Williams

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/02/09

Dawn Williams is a mum of three and an Olympic weightlifter. She is also a campaigner for exercising throughout cancer treatment to get the best possible chance of recovery. And this is all before we even touch on her full-time job in life sciences.Dawn and I met by chance on a train when I was travelling to a gig. We got talking and I knew I wanted to share her amazing story with you.In the podcast we talk about the way Dawn faced her breast cancer diagnosis, not long after becoming a single mum,

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1:00:57

Episode 174: Kelly Rutherford

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/02/02

Kelly Rutherford is an American actress probably best known for her starring role in 7 series of Gossip Girl (2007-2012).Kelly's instagram is the most intentional and curated grid I have ever seen, with beautiful quotes interspersed with stylish selfies, many of which are taken in an elevator. It’s very beautiful and peaceful.Kelly has a son Hermes aged 19 and a daughter Helena aged 16, who were subject to a custody battle which their father won.This meant that they have grown up mostly in Monaco

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1:17:53

Episode 173: Dr Eliza Filby

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/01/26

Dr Eliza Filby is a writer, a generational historian and mum to two children aged 8 and 5.I loved her book ‘Inheritocracy. It’s time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad’ which came out in paperback last year which contains some fascinating stuff about money and the generations of today.We talked about how children often rely on a financial springboard from their parents these days, and how that dependency can make the relationship rarther complicated going forward.We acknowledged that the linear

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1:08:07

Episode 172: Monisha Rajesh

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/01/19

Monisha Rajesh is a travel writer who focuses on train travel adventures.She wrote her first book ‘Around India in 80 Trains’ after being made redundant, and she wrote ‘Around the World in 80 Trains’ just after her first daughter was born. My favourite of all though is Moonlight Express, her most recent book which is all about her experiences on night trains.Monisha is a lovely writer, and I love so many of the pictures she paints of her journeys. One particular favourite is when she is travelling

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1:23:50

Episode 171: Rachel Reeves

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2026/01/12

Welcome to a new series of Spinning Plates! My podcast where I speak to working women who happen to be mothers. We are up to episode 171 now, and fast approaching 6 years since I started the podcast with Fearne Cotton in 2020.My first guest of the new series is Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer. She has made history as the first woman in 800 years to hold that title.I spoke to her in December, just after the budget, and she explained the long process that leads up to a budget, and the

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1:15:21

Episode 170: Amanda Ross

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/11/17

Amanda Ross is a highly influential TV producer who has brought us the likes ofSaturday Kitchenwhich celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, theRichard and Judyshow which ran for 9 years, and the book show,Between the Covers, which she is now touring live and presenting herself.Amanda and her husband and business partner Simon Ross, own and run Cactus TV. Amanda told me that running their own TV company means that they can organise their lives around bringing up their two adopted sons, now aged

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1:11:53

Episode 169: Jacinda Ardern

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/11/10

Dame Jacinda Ardern is the former prime minister of New Zealand, who was elected in 2017 and in post for 6 years.In 2018 she became the second elected World leader to ever give birth. Her partner Clarke (often referred to as 'first bloke'!) frequently took on the role of stay-at-home dad.Together they took baby Neve with them to many important meetings, including the UN summit in New York in 2018, while she was still breastfeeding.Jacinda told me she felt she needed to prove she could lead the

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1:01:57

Episode 168: Fiona Bell

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/11/03

Fiona Bell is the founder of Their Nibs clothing brand which specialises in night wear.I first came across Fiona’s shop when pushing my eldest son around Ladbroke Grove in his buggy in the mid naughties. And I still think she makes the loveliest pyjamas in the land!Fiona has a 25 year old son Finn and an adoptive daughter Maggie who is 11.We talked about the close link Fiona still keeps with the adoption agency Coram, which made her and her husband Charlie’s adoption of Maggie possible. It has been

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1:02:51

Episode 167: Lavina Mehta

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/10/27

Lavina Mehta MBE is a health campaigner, a personal trainer, and an author. She came to my notice during Covid when she started doing weekly exercises on YouTube with her mother-in-law.She’s just published her book The Feel Good Fix which is designed to improve your health during menopause, and presents her idea of exercise snacking - incorporating short bursts of activity into your normal day rather than maybe going to the gym for an hour.We talked about her religion of Jainism which is about

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1:05:07

Episode 166: Lara Maiklem

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/10/20

Lara Maiklem is an author and a mudlark. She told me there’s nothing she likes more than kneeling on the banks of the River Thames for 5-6 hours at a time, scanning the mud for tiny treasures which are twice daily being given up by the tide!Lara shares her fascinating finds on Instagram, where I've been following her for a while. Her favourite finds include a Tudor shoe, part of a Roman sword and some tiny gold beads from a necklace which she thinks must have broken as someone was boarding a boat on

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1:04:23

Episode 165: Julie Samuel

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/10/13

Julia Samuel is a psychotherapist and an author, who is best known as a grief counsellor. She was one of the founders of Child Bereavement UK which has just had its 30th anniversary.She has an agony aunt column for Times Luxury, she has a podcast, and she sees about 15 clients a week, describing that as ‘the heart of me’.She has 4 grown up children and 10 grandchildren aged 18 months to 18 years.When I met with Julia, we talked about the guilt she felt as a mum to young children, when she felt her

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1:13:29

Episode 163: Janette Manrara

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/10/06

Janette Manrara is a dancer and choreographer who we first got to know as one of the professional dancers in the UK on Strictly Come Dancing, and who now presents its sister show ‘It Takes Two’.Janette is married to fellow dancer Aljaz Skorjanec and together they have a 2 year old Lyra.Janette and I talked about her start in life as daughter of a young Cuban immigrant couple in Miami, and about her first job in a bank before she took a risk to pursue her dreams as a dancer.Janette told me that the

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50:47

Episode 162: Anya Lautenbach

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/09/29

Anya Lautenbach is a gardener who I discovered on Instagram as anya_thegarden_fairy. From Poland originally, Anya moved to to the UK 17 years ago and has two boys aged 12 and 14.We talked about the grief which Anya has experienced because of her sister having two sons with a rare genetic condition which turned out to be terminal.Anya explained how every time she had bad news from home, she turned that into another garden border and has ended up creating a beautiful garden out of her ocean of

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1:00:02

Episode 162: Jo-Ann D’Costa-Manuel

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/09/22

Jo-Ann D’Costa-Manuel is a charity pioneer. She received an OBE for her years of voluntary work raising the profile of hidden disabilities. She persuadedairlines to recognise green lanyards with sunflowers, as a symbol of a family member flying with a hidden disability. She was also behind the ‘quiet hour’ in supermarkets to help children like her own son, who is autistic, and needs a quiet environment to be able to do a food shop.Jo-Ann now works for philanthropist John Caudwell to help raise money

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1:18:07

Episode 161: Francesca Amber

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor ·

2025/09/15

Francesca Amber is a successful entrepreneur, podcaster and author who turned her life around using manifesting after everything went wrong for her in 2020.She has 3 daughters. Her eldest is 8 years old, and she has 4 year old twins who are starting school this September.In lockdown she lost her beauty business and her income and then had her twins as a single mother. She says she had a savage 5 years.But now her new book 'Manifesting Like a Mother' is published the day her twins start school and

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