'I KNOW WHAT DEEP LOVE IS'

Clare Balding tells HELLO! how her 20-year marriage inspired her debut novel - and reveals what's next

- GABY HUDDART

She has achieved incredible things since starting her broadcasting career more than 30 years ago, and has covered everything from the Olympics to Wimbledon to the coronation of King Charles.

But one of Clare Balding’s greatest achievements is her happy marriage. Next year she and her partner Alice Arnold, also a broadcaster, will celebrate 20 years of marriage (their civil partnership was in 2006 and they cemented this as soon as same-sex marriage was made legal in 2015).

As Clare speaks exclusively to HELLO! before the publication of her debut novel, Pastures New, it’s this partnership she cites as an inspiration.

“One of the things I wanted to write about in my novel was about falling in love because I thought ‘I know that’,” says Clare. “I know what real, deep love is and meeting someone I want to grow old with. Lucky, lucky me.”

The couple savour their time together. There’s golf, though Clare admits: “I’m not as good as Alice, who’s a seven-handicap golfer, but I'm working on getting better.”

Cruises are another shared passion. “Alice and I are about to go from New York up to Quebec and back again and we’re going to Japan on a cruise next year. We love being on the water and then ending up in a new place.”

And of course, there’s television. Appearing together on Celebrity Gogglebox has brought them a lot of pleasure, Clare says, and she loves it when she's approached in public and told by passersby how “funny” Alice is. “I always tell them, yes, she’s so much funnier than me.”

Clare, 54, is clearly in a great place. Moreover, she’s enjoying her new svelte figure, the result of a concerted effort to take her diet in hand.