NEVER look back. NEVER go back

TV presenter and author Fern Britton, 67, opens up about sensible eating, returning to This Morning and loneliness

- GEMMA CALVERT. PHOTOS: DAVID VENNI

Fern Britton is summarising her latest novel, which centres on Wilderhoo, a fictional 1,000-year-old Cornish house that has gone to rack and ruin.

'It's been left in a will to a woman who was very successful in London and whose life has absolutely fallen apart. She comes down to Cornwall to take on this house. So the house is falling apart, she's falling apart and the story is about how they each repair each other.'

Five years ago, after her 20-year marriage to TV chef Phil Vickery ended, Fern, 67, moved permanently into her Cornish holiday home before renovating it 'bit by bit'. Perhaps her seaside bolthole healed her too?

'Actually, yes, it must have been there in my subconscious,' says Fern, pointing out that her abode boasts no Wilderhoo-esque splendour.

'I don't need grand and I don't need chic, everything matching or considered decor [that's] very smart and clever. I've got loads of colours, loads of crap and three cats who rip everything up. It's lovely!'

A Cornish Legacy, which is Fern’s 11th novel, took Fern two years to write — twice longer than normal.

‘I'm used to producing one a year at least, so I'm sorry for the delay but I was abit busy,’ she laughs, explaining she has been doing ‘quite a lot of telly’, including her new ITV series, Fern Britton: Inside the Vet's, as well as releasing a non-fiction book, The Older I Get, which explores how she regained confidence after a bout of losses in her early 60s.

‘I don't think I've even started grieving [for my parents],’ confesses Fern, whose mum Ruth passed away in 2018, one year before her actor father, Tony. ‘My mother and my father still seem so present in me. I have a little chat to them sometimes. I think about them every day.’