“No one can ever say they’ve never made a mistake,” says Chloe.
“Humans now, because of social media and everybody wanting to have a voice, we’ve started to judge each other to such a degree that it’s hugely detrimental to society, our psychology and our health.
“I think we need to stop.”
While Chloe was banned from driving for 20 months after drinking two cocktails in 2009, GMB presenter Richard was famously nicked in 1994 for walking out of Tesco, clutching bottles of booze that he’d forgotten to pay for.
At the time he was hosting This Morning alongside wife Judy.
Today, the pair reckon he’d have been the victim of a social media witch hunt and promptly taken off air.
“Thank God Twitter wasn’t around then,” he muses.
“But the whole thing was so self-evidently b****cks, that my not paying was an oversight.
“It was leaked by someone at Tesco.
“At the time though I thought, ‘Well, of course it’s going to be OK because otherwise the world’s gone mad’.
‘I feel sorry for Phillip’
“I never felt I was going to get cancelled; Granada Television were fantastic.
“And the Monday after they found out, and knew the facts of the case and knew it was rubbish, they told me not to worry.
“We carried on as normal.
“I went to crown court, my lawyer told me to get in front of a jury so people could see it was an obvious oversight. So that’s what I did.
“And I was absolutely acquitted.
“But I told viewers about it.
“I mean, Judy had to open This Morning on her own while I was in court for two minutes, then I’d get in my car and drive from Manchester to Liverpool, rock up, walk on the set while she was mid-interview, and sit down and join in. It was surreal.
“After the trial, it was as if it had never happened.
“I’ve never really spoken about it because as I said at the start of this interview, when you’re on camera you’re only one sentence away, and you can so easily get it wrong.”
Duly acquitted of all charges, it was business as usual and the couple went on to successfully host the show for another decade.
In so doing, Richard and Judy became the undisputed king and queen of daytime television, and household names.
The support of his bosses back in the day is, of course, in stark contrast to that of Richard’s successor, Phillip Schofield.
The presenter was unceremoniously axed by ITV after his one-time affair with a younger backstage colleague was revealed.
Richard believes Phillip has been treated unduly harshly and remains in touch with the star.
He says: “I feel very sorry for Phillip.
“It seemed a pretty savage outcome after 21 years (in the job).
“It seemed quite brutal to be honest.
“I took a paternal interest in it.
“I kept in touch, told him to take it easy and that it’ll be all right.
“He agreed. All things pass in the end.
“We’ve all been through terrible experiences and the worst ones are the ones that come out of a clear blue sky and you don’t see coming.
“Politicians say they’re only one debate away from a catastrophe and it’s the same in our industry.”
Richard is currently co-hosting This Morning’s early-rising sister, Good Morning Britain, but has no plans to fill the sofa void left by Phil: “I enjoyed it but wouldn’t go back.”
Today, over lunch, we are here to talk about personal trainer Chloe’s latest project, a fly-on-the-wall ITVBe show, Chloe Madeley: A Family Affair.
The show documents the ups and downs of her first year of motherhood, family life and her marriage to ex-England rugby player, James Haskell, 38.
Both Richard, 67, and Judy, 75, have “walk-on parts”, while, surprisingly enough, Chloe and her husband of five years — now a successful DJ with residencies in Ibiza, France and Dubai — don’t hold back. (“There’s no self-editing, it’s all very real”.)
Many a boozy lunch is shown and many-a-lively “discussion”.
“One of the biggest rows we’ve ever had was on camera,” she laughs.
“It happened when he was in Ibiza and posted photos on Instagram of other girls’ asses.
“My argument was, ‘I don’t mind that that’s your job but I don’t want you putting it on social media when everyone knows I’m your wife.”
In the week it emerged in David Beckham’s new documentary that wife Victoria was “p***ed off” when Becks missed the C-section birth of their youngest son Cruz, to do a photoshoot with J-Lo and Beyonce,
Chloe has a similar story.
She explains: “The biggest fight we’ve ever had was when he booked in a DJ-ing gig with Carl Cox on my due date.
“I told him it was my f***ing due date and what he did, which really p***ed me off, was use my own statistic back against me — that less than five per cent of babies are born on their due day.
“I lay in bed absolutely seething, thinking, ‘Well, I’m just going to have to kill him’, while he was out DJing with Carl Cox.
“Of course, the little thing was a week late.
“He was like, ‘I told you so’.”
‘Post-Covid complication’
The “little thing” is now their beautiful year-old daughter, Bodhi. (“She was extremely long when she was born, a real James Haskell physique”).
The entire family is absolutely smitten.
While the super-fit 36-year-old is extremely proud of James, she admits to struggling with being a part-time single mum, by dint of him being abroad working four nights a week.
“It’s f***ing hard,” she admits, over a bite of chicken schnitzel. (A surprising order).
“You’re on your own a lot and, as anyone whose partner travels a lot will tell you, you do feel abandoned sometimes.
“So I try to reframe it.
“Some couples love having time apart but I’m the opposite.
“I like to be domestic, at home, with my partner so for someone like me — a stage five clinger — it is really hard.”
Sitting in London’s buzzy Wolseley restaurant, the optics are not ideal for conducting a two-person interview.
Even more unhelpful is Richard’s current semi-deafness.
The star recently battled the particularly nasty new variant of Covid, he reveals, leaving him with a perforated eardrum.
“Yeah, I got a post-Covid complication,” he bellows.
“It’ll heal in time but for now it’s a total pain, it feels like I’ve got a cork in my right lughole.
“Funnily enough, doing GMB, which I was a bit worried about, gives me better hearing because I wear my studio earpiece in that ear and I can wind up the volume to the max: it’s a bit like having a hearing aid, I suppose.
“Susanna sits on my left and I can hear fine on that side.
“But having conversations in a busy pub or office is tricky; lots of different voices and loud background noise makes it really hard to work out what someone is saying to me.
“I’ll just have to be patient, my ENT guy says perforated eardrums take a few weeks to self-heal.
“So there’ll be a lot of ‘pardon?’ and ‘what?’ from me between now and Christmas.”
Unsurprisingly, lunch with the Madelelys is a lot of fun: indiscreet, lively and with a liberal peppering of expletives.
Chloe’s only stipulation — “don’t make me look like a dick” — is easy to adhere to while, Richard, you sense, really doesn’t give a toss.
‘Salacious detail’
They reckon they’re both utterly “unembarrassable” which, well, is handy.
While the fitness trainer, who has coached more than 9,000 women (disclaimer: I was one of them and she was GREAT), is now a success story in her own right, she grew up in the shadow of two hugely famous parents.
For thinner-skinned individuals, it wouldn’t be easy.
At the NTAs in 2000, Judy’s top memorably popped open, exposing her bra onstage as she collected their award.
That same year Richard, who once informed Great Britain he didn’t wear pants, dressed up as Ali G, and did that unforgettable impersonation.
For her part, when Chloe and James gave an interview to The Sun’s Fabulous magazine, she claimed she and her husband had sex “every day”.
(As a result, James was dropped from his lucrative contract with Land Rover).
So, er, how does it feel reading about your daughter’s rampant sex life, I gingerly enquire over a mouthful of Dover sole.
“People have sex and that’s going to include your kids,” replies Richard, looking utterly nonplussed.
“Why would I be embarrassed about reading a slightly salacious detail about her sex life?
“Granted, I wouldn’t linger over it. And once I realise where she’s going with it, I sort of skim over it a bit.”
Chloe chips in: “And for Mum and Dad’s stuff, the NTAs and Ali G, I totally got it. It was fine! I wasn’t embarrassed.
“I mean, I went to school with Annie Lennox’s kid and loads of famous offspring.
“No one gave a s**t about me. Dad and I are both unembarrassable.”
After the interview, we attempt a selfie and, as you can see, it looks faintly ridiculous in the context of a “professional” work interview.
Three days after our lunch, a carefully wrapped mug arrives on my doorstep, with said photo printed on it, a little memento from Richard.
Brilliant.
- Chloe Madeley: A Family Affair starts on Monday at 9pm on ITVBe.
