My career flourished when I had children: BBC Breakfast presenter and mother of three Susanna Reid says she’s proof women can have it all
By Rebecca Hardy
Last updated at 12:03 PM on 19th November 2011
Susanna Reid, 40, whose reputation for inadvertently showing rather too much thigh on the Breakfast sofa has earned her a sizeable male following
Susanna Reid’s seven-year-old son, Finn, is poorly. She’s worried he’s going down with a bug that’s been doing the rounds so has kept him off school. ‘I couldn’t send him in feeling like this,’ she says. The poor chap is the colour of chalk.
Watching Susanna fuss over him, it’s clear she’s besotted with Finn, who has two brothers, Sam, ten, and Jack, six. So how on earth will she cope next year when BBC Breakfast ups sticks to Salford, 200 miles north of BBC Television Centre in west London?
Susanna, 40, whose reputation for inadvertently showing rather too much thigh on the Breakfast sofa has earned her a sizeable male following, was gifted the post of main presenter on the flagship programme after Sian Williams refused to head north, a promotion that surely makes the upheaval more bearable. The boys will stay with their father, Dominic Cotton, in their south-east London home.
‘It’s a challenge for everybody,’ says Susanna, picking her words carefully. The Beeb’s £877 million move is a hot potato, with many staff refusing to go. Sian Williams cited her elderly father in the South and a son in the middle of his A-levels as her reasons to stay. Sports presenter Chris Hollins has refused too, saying, ‘There are lots of women with young children who work on Breakfast… what are they going to do about their children, and their partners’ careers?’ Susanna?
‘We’re not moving as a family. Dom’s work [he’s communications director for charity UK Youth] is in London. The children are at school there,’ she says. ‘It’s going to mean a long commute for me but I can do it. The best trains take just over two hours. I’ll zip up there, sleep overnight, do the programme, come back to pick the children up from school and zip back. I’ll just stay over for a couple of nights a week.’
Crikey, that’s a lot of zipping. What about signal failures? ‘I’m a take-each-day- as-it-comes person. I understand that for lots of people it’s a very big deal. But I have a fantastic job and I’m not going to be precious about it. Perhaps I’ve slightly got my head in the sand.’ Susanna, who also flies to Belfast each weekend to present the religious discussion show BBC Sunday Morning Live, doesn’t employ a nanny.
Instead, she and Dominic share the kids between them with the support of their parents. They’re not married (her decision, not his) and Susanna is the main breadwinner – though she insists this is not the reason for the move. ‘We could survive. I could do other work. But I love working for Breakfast. I love the BBC. If you cut me open I’d have BBC written through me like a stick of rock. Also, the key to our whole family is that we share the parenting. Dominic cooks for the boys, reads bedtime stories and does the ironing and half the washing.’
They’ve been together for 12 years after meeting on BBC Breakfast when Dominic was a sports producer and Susanna a reporter. ‘The first time we went out socially I knew we’d be together. We were having a drink in the pub with some other people and they just kind of disappeared. I said to him, “I know we’re going to have children together.” He said, “We’d better go out on a date then.”’
Gosh, most blokes would have run a mile! ‘Oh, he was up for it,’ she smirks. Within two years, Susanna was pregnant with Sam. Was he planned? ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We bought a house and had a child. We might not be married but we did other things conventionally. I think Dom would like to be married. His parents have been together for years and are very, very happy. But being married doesn’t guarantee you stay together.’
Career high: Susanna with co-presenter Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast
Susanna was nine years old when her own parents divorced. Born in Croydon, the youngest of three children, she says she remembers being told her parents were separating. ‘It was the saddest thing I’d ever heard.’ Susanna remained close to both her management consultant father and her mother, a nurse. However, the aftermath of her parents’ divorce derailed her adolescent plans to go into acting – she was frightened of letting out her bottled-up feelings.
‘I had this nightmare that I’d have to keep plumbing all the emotions that I’d got under control. I didn’t want to sit in auditions weeping.’ Instead, she went to university, where she became involved with the student newspaper and was ‘gripped’ by a passion to become a journalist.
We bought a house and had a child. We might not be married but we did other things conventionally
‘Then I became a BBC person, and have never stopped.’ After a few disastrous love affairs (‘You can make bad choices,’ she says), Susanna had met Dominic and was three months pregnant with Sam when she got her first presenting slot. ‘I was a reporter for BBC News 24 and it was one of those classic moments where one night I was just leaving work at 10.55pm when they realised the presenter for the shift hadn’t turned up,’ she says.
‘I had on my coat and went on air as a presenter for an hour. At one point the editor asked the technician, “Is it going all right?” He said, “Yes, but it would be going even better if she took her coat off.” Shortly after that they needed somebody to launch an interactive service – ‘I said I was pregnant, but I’d still like to do it. My boss, who was a woman, said there wasn’t a problem. My career has flourished since I had children. I went to Breakfast and then had another baby and I’ve been at
Breakfast ever since. My career has got better and better since becoming a mother. I’d thoroughly recommend it.’
When Susanna speaks about her boys she lights up like a Christmas tree. ‘We’re very happy and content being together as a family,’ she says. ‘Friday night is always film night at our house. We curl up together on the sofa. On a Saturday morning we lie in bed doing a Sudoku together. I’m such a fan of just padding around the house. The children make up ninja games and we’re all in the same place, but they also know Mum and Dad go out to work.’
Hmmm, but for most working mums the office is a few miles down the road, not an Intercity Express ride away. ‘I’ve said I’m going and I’m committed to it,’ she says. ‘It’s definitely going to work out. We’ll make sure it does.’ And I’m sure Susanna will try her damnedest. Poor Finn’s been a patient little soul for the past hour or so and wants his mum. ‘My head hurts,’ he says. So she comforts him, as only a mother can.
Susanna Reid is a regular presenter on BBC Breakfast, BBC1, daily from 6am.
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