I've embraced my 50s

Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire on living life to its fullest, juggling a career and family, and why she never wants to retire

We’re used to seeing her grill politicians about their policies or deliver poignant human interest stories, but away from our screens, Victoria Derbyshire loves nothing more than dancing around her kitchen with her friends, or nosing round an antiques market. Still, the veteran broadcaster admits that while her house is full of laughter, she’s just as direct at home in Surrey with her husband, Mark, and their teenage boys, Oliver, 18, and Joe, 15, as she is on air.

‘I’m kind of the same person at home as I am at work,’ Victoria tells woman&home. ‘You can always tell what I’m thinking as I wear my heart on my sleeve. There’s less intensity at home, for obvious reasons, but I think I’m just as direct.’

Her frankness has held Victoria in good stead over her 30-plus-year career on radio and television. And the 54-year-old is just as honest when we ask about everything from the ups and downs of her job to her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, and the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her father as a child in Lancashire.

Shortly before the world was plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic, the broadcaster found out her eponymous BAFTA-winning show was to be cancelled after ve years. But Victoria tells us that she ‘didn’t have much time to process it’ thanks to her other job presenting the 9am news on the BBC as the world faced uncertainty.