FASHION:Myleene Klass has strong views on motherhood - it's great, but it's hard, says the musician, TV presenter, writer . . . and fashion designer, writes Catherine Cleary
Under various headingsShe is something of the mother of all reality TV kids who want to be popstars. Now Myleene Klass is working hard to persuade us that she is also a "working mum" who sometimes purées carrots at midnight because she feels she must.
The former popstar made her name through Popstars, the first reality find-a-star TV show, in 2001. She was a classically-trained pianist and the daughter of immigrant parents who moved to Britain to carve out better lives. Popstars launched her into the manufactured band Hear'Say, who made a best-selling album. Then she went solo to make light classical albums, and went into the jungle for I'm A Celebrity, where she famously had a lot of showers in bikinis.
There has been a familiar dolly mixture of jobs, from television presenter to model for Marks & Spencer, before she was bowled over by motherhood. All this before she turned 30. Yet, sparkling as it all sounds, it is a life that she would not wish for her baby daughter. "I want her to work in a kibbutz and be a hippy," she says, only half joking.
The 14-month-old possible future hippy, Ava, is "fast asleep upstairs" in the Dublin hotel where Klass is staying to promote her latest venture - BabyK.
She has followed the likes of Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue in a case of I'm a Celebrity Get Me a Clothing Linewith a Major Retailer, and has designed baby clothes for Mothercare. Suggesting this is a cynical marketing ploy would be like peering into the pram and saying something unkind about the gurgling baby inside.
"The best compliment was when a mum came up to me and said, 'my god, the Ugg-style boots, you can tell a mum designed them because they stay on.' And that meant more to me than all the people who tell me 'oh that looks pretty'." Klass talks in rapid bursts, legs tucked up under her on a winged hotel armchair. She's wearing a soft wool shift dress in a biscuit beige with white Converse runners on her bare feet. Beside her, a plate of chips the size of babies' wrists and a towering burger are cooling as she talks.
"I'm immensely proud of the clothes," she says. "I'm not a designer but I'm not a model either and somebody gave me that opportunity. Alright I didn't go to Central St Martin's. I didn't study design. But half the people who design clothes for babies clearly don't have them because who put 500 buttons down a babygro? It looks great, but I can't use it."
Before we get to the clothes, she is more than happy to talk modern motherhood and sisterhood, the toxic truths behind magazine perfection and how many other women like her are working with baby-on-hip to try and have it all.
Recently, she pulled up outside a friend's house and watched the former high-flying executive pegging clothes on her washing line. The friend had just stepped down from her job with Virgin, which involved weekly meetings with Richard Branson, to be at home with her baby. Klass does not see women like that staying at home for good, but she regularly meets others who are juggling the two roles.
"One constant in Ava's life is me. I bought a cot that she's doesn't sleep in. She sleeps in bed with me. Don't tell Supernanny, but there you go. At some point I know she'll grow out of it."
Ava's father is Graham Quinn, a Dubliner who was part of Hear'Say's security detail when the couple met nine years ago. There are regular visits to her Dublin-based grandparents, and Klass feels she now "knows Dublin better than he does".
Was she bowled over by motherhood? "Yeah," she laughs. "I don't know what I expected. It's not what I expected. I think the whole thing has just been pretty overwhelming. At the same time it's the hardest job, the most rewarding job, every cliché you can pull out, but they're obviously clichés for a reason because that's exactly what's happened to me."
Returning to work after Ava's birth in August last year, Klass decided she didn't want to throw herself into "something that doesn't engulf me and isn't a part of my life, because it will show. And all I'd been surrounded by were things to do with babies." A diary of her pregnancy and an album of music for mothers were two of the first projects.
Was celebrity something she always wanted? "I wanted to be a session musician. I wanted to be a working musician. I was more surprised that I was getting work. Popstars was the pioneer for those shows, almost the pioneer for Big Brother as well. It was cameras following your every move. But we weren't camera-savvy. I remember finding a microphone in a teapot and thinking, I can't believe they've done this to us." Is the constant attention difficult? "No, because I'm not Madonna. There's a part of me that still believes I'm playing at this."
She is close to her own mother, who came to Britain from the Philippines and worked as a nurse before marrying Klass's father, an Austrian immigrant. She has even more respect for her mother's choices since she had her daughter. "The fact that she had three kids under the age of four while my dad was working away . . . My dad is a very hands-on dad, but the idea of Gray going away and leaving me at home with three kids, that's a tall order."
Her parents gave her the drive to work and learn, she says. "I can't deviate from the path. I just can't because I couldn't rely on somebody else. I'm used to supporting myself. I'm not an easy person to live with because of that. I'm sure Graham must get annoyed."
Her television career continues. She is a co-presenter on Channel 4's Miss Naked Beauty with fashion presenter Gok Wan. "We were trying to find a 21st century natural beauty who empowers other women when she speaks, regardless of age, size, belief. We just wanted somebody who actually has a brain."
Does she think the pressure on women to look great is ever going to ease up? "Only if other women ease up on other women. Put it this way, Gray will say I look nice in anything, just to get me out the door, whereas women dress for other women because women notice other women's shoes. Guys rarely remember what colour they were. Black, brown? Huh? When women are strong together they're incredible, but when they don't have the sisterhood intact, it's a painful process."
Gok Wan is "fantastic, a big old girl," she says. The series has been filmed and the winner of the series has already been picked and groomed as a future fashion writer and presenter. "She's just normal. That's who we wanted. That's who I wanted. A clever girl, comfortable in her own skin".
Is the fashion industry as toxic as it sometimes appears? "There's a responsibility for women in the public eye to speak up. People you think are going to speak up don't, because they don't want to look anything less than perfect. Even when I spoke out about . . . [ here she holds up her hands to couch her next remark in a large disclaimer] . . . Listen, I love my baby dearly, I love my family life. What I'm about to say doesn't mean I don't love any of them less, but I'm just about to say that being a mum's hard.
"And what happened as a result? Pages and pages were written and I sat there going, 'Jesus, did I say the right thing?' And then I said, 'hang on a minute, I only said what every other mum that comes into my kitchen says.' I just actually said it. Alright my life might look perfect, but it isn't."
Klass strikes me as someone who likes to be liked in interviews. Her imperfections include a lazy eye and stretch marks, she says. Neither of them are the first thing that strike me when I see her across a room. Her eyes look perfect. She recently asked someone to "put my arm back in" after a picture was airbrushed to move a lamp closer. "I said, 'I can't believe I'm going to ask you this, but 'could you make my arm look fatter please?'"
At the height of a financial crisis, is this not the worst time to be bringing out a celebrity range of clothing?, I ask. Her answer is typically chipper. "Actually, in a way it's a good test of the clothes because if I'd released it in more affluent times I wouldn't get a true idea of what the mums think. The fact that we're going through a credit crunch and sales at Mothercare have gone up speaks volumes."
And the carrots? Sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to be a constant presence in her daughter's life, present several TV shows and go on publicity tours around the globe. "I end up puréeing carrots at midnight sometimes and that's not ideal. But as a mother, it's something I need to do."