‘IF I'M WORKING I WILL RACE AROUND – IF NOT I'M LYING DOWN'

TV HOST CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN TALKS ABOUT THE JOYS OF POWER-NAPPING EMBARRASSING HER KIDS AND HOW WHEN IT COMES TO TURNING 50,SHE’S GOING FULL SPEED AHEAD

- LYNNE HYLAND

Claudia Winkleman has scarcely popped up on our Zoom screen before launching into a full-scale apology. “I’m so sorry about what I look like but there’s nothing I can do about it,” she says, grimacing into the camera. “I woke up this morning with a pig stuck in my head.”

Sorry, you what, Claudia? “My son turned 10 yesterday and as a birthday treat he slept in our bed, and I slept on his piggy teddy,” she explains, proffering a close-up of her cheek to inspect for indentation marks.

Being a self-professed “queen of napping”, sleep has always been a topic close to Claudia’s heart but particularly today. In an unusually vulnerable moment, the Strictly Come Dancing presenter admits she went through a real wobble as a result of sleep deprivation.

“In lockdown, suddenly everyone was home. I wasn’t napping, I was jangly and not my usual self,” she says.

After a few months struggling with this new “frenzied” persona, Claudia found solace in a surprising source – cannabis. The legal, non-intoxicating CBD version, that is. She’s now an ambassador for Cannaray, the supplement brand that’s sorted out her shut-eye issues. “Until lockdown, I hadn’t even really heard of CBD,” she says. “Don’t ask me anything sciencey because I have no idea, but it works for me.”

When she’s not gulping down her CBD capsules with 7 Up (“never water – I don’t believe in drinking water”), Claudia spends her time presenting her weekend Radio 2 show and enjoying family time in London with her husband Kris Thykier and their children, Jake, 18, Matilda, 15, and Arthur, 10.