Andrea McLean on 'best job on TV' & how she uses Loose Women as a 'mouthpiece' for women

What is the life of Andrea McLean is like? Being the lead presenter on a show viewed by millions each weeks makes me convinced it’s full of glitz and glamour. But, she insists ”it’s quite normal,” as the Loose Women presenter explains her afternoons are either made up of another job, or heading home and spending time with her family. Either way, her day is not without the tradition of watching Modern Family at 8pm each evening. “At 8 O’Clock, we put on Modern Family, because that’s something we have done every single night for the past six years or so,” she explains.

“The whole house draws to a stand still, and we put Modern Family on, and then get everyone ready for bed.”

Perhaps an earlier start than most, the presenter starts her day at around half five or quarter to six, and is out of the door on the hour.

She heads to the gym, with a bag which is already packed.

“I’m very organised,” Andrea says.

“I pack my bag the night before, and I leave my gym gear out and I get changed into that, and I go straight to the gym which is next to work.”

An ambassador for skincare brand YourGoodSkin, she tells how me she’s been using the brand’s YourGoodSkin Balancing Skin Concentrate “religiously”.

“I’ve genuinely seen a difference.

“I suppose how you would describe it is mix between a serum and a moisturiser, a very very light moisturiser, which you can then put your normal day cream on top of it if you want to.”

After an hour long work out – which varies between a run or weight resistance exercises – it’s time to get ready and head to Loose Women.

A morning meeting, make up, and then it’s time to roll.

Hundreds of thousands of viewers tune in each weekday, but what goes on away from the cameras?

Keen to find out, I ask if there’s anything viewers may be surprised by.

She giggles. “I’m actually much funnier than people realise,” she says – addressing her “head girl role” in keeping the panel both on topic and on schedule.

“There’s a lot of fun goes on during the ad breaks,” she teases. “And then we have to kind of pull ourselves together and be a lot more sensible, because we’re on the telly. It’s a lot of fun to be sitting in the audience.”

I tell her that her words are reminding me of the third instalment of the Bridget Jones films: Bridget Jones’s Baby – where all sorts of unlikely words are exchanged in the moments before going to live on air.

Perhaps the film may be a slightly different to the panel show, but Andrea insists that the Loose Women have had some of its own near misses.

“The other day, Nadia [Sawalha] forgot we were actually on telly, and she walked off,” she recalls.

“She just forgot something and went off to go and get it, and we were literally screaming at her ‘Nadia sit down. We’re about to go back on the telly!’ And she had just forgotten.

“I think she went to get her phone or do something, and just forgot that actually we were in the middle of doing a live TV show and it was the ad break. And obviously we’re all good friends with the producers, so they’re all talking in our ear and having a good giggle as well.”

The conversation then turns to the viewers watching.

By name alone, it could be inferred that the show may have a predominantly female audience.

And, airing at lunch time each week day, Loose Women surely has a huge impact on those who view it.

How does it feel to be fronting this platform – a place where the panel have the opportunity to empower so many women?

“To me it’s the best job on television, and I actually think it’s one of the most important jobs on television,” the presenter shares.

With 12 years of Loose Women under her belt, Andrea is now the longest serving host of the show, and she explains she’s seen it evolve over the years.

She reflects on her time working on the programme. “For me, I’ve always taken the job really seriously in that although there’s four women sitting on the TV screen, to me, there’s always been five Loose Women.

“And the fifth Loose Women is the one at home.

“It’s the viewer at home who is watching it, and for me, I feel that we’re the mouthpiece for the woman sitting at home who doesn’t have a chance to speak.

“So we talk about things that are maybe uncomfortable. We’ll talk about every aspect that will affect women’s life.

“Whether it’s that you know your personal life, whether it’s motherhood, or marriages, or relationships, or difficulties, or abuse or money problems. Anything that a woman will experience in her lifetime I feel that Loose Women can discuss it in a way that we can represent the fifth Loose Women sitting at home.

“It’s a real honour to be part of a show where, and there’s no other show like it on TV, where a panel of women whose ages go from in their 20s right up to their 70s represent across the board all the different opinions and viewpoints and experiences of women sitting it home. So I think it’s an incredible job.”

We’re speaking in the era of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements, and in a country where, according to figures submitted by 10,428 employers, there are still no sectors in the UK economy where women are paid the same as men.

Does she ever feel that she’s missed out on any opportunities in her own broadcasting career?

Andrea says no, but adds: “I’m very very lucky because obviously I’ve had 12 years working on an all-female show where luckily the older you get, the more experience you have, and actually, the better it is.

“I’m very aware that not every job is like that.

“I think we’re all very fortunate actually in the direction that the world is going in that women, I think women are really coming into their own.

“For me, I’m a few months away from 50 and for it’s really really important that I want to help women feel encouraged, feel empowered, feel emboldened, so that if they do reach a point in their lives – for me personally obviously it’s in mid-life – but whether it’s in your 20s and 30s and 40s, 60s and beyond, if you reach a point in your life where you really want to try and do something or make a change in your life that you can operate from a place that is without fear.

“Because, I think a lot of the time right from when especially when girls are young, we’re scared of getting it wrong.

“So quite often we don’t even try because we’re too scared [of the prospect of making a mistake].

“I know I used to feel this way, but I think where I am now in my life, it’s my life mission really now to sort of turn that on its head and to help any women that I can feel that actually, ‘Do you know what, it doesn’t matter where your strengths are, you do have them’.

“You just maybe haven’t been looking for them. You can push yourself further than you think you’re capable of going, actually, the feeling of achievement you get, it’s so huge and it’ll keep that momentum going so that you push yourself further.

“I don’t necessarily mean that everyone needs to be CEOs of their own company and rule the world, but even trying to run a 5K and you’ve never done any exercise before, or joining a book club when you’ve always been too shy to join any kind of group.

“Anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone I’m a real champion of and something that I really really want to help women do.”

Our chat leads us to think back to the 2019 National Television Awards. The Loose Women team were nominees for the Most Popular Daytime Programme category.

Arriving at the London red carpet ahead of an evening recognising their achievements, the panel took this opportunity to make a statement through their style.

While each and every broadcaster opted for their own individual look and way of representing their identity, the theme was unmissable.

All of the Loose Women attendees arrived in black suits. Recalling the headlines, she tells me: “All that people seem to notice is what colour dress you wore and all the different newspapers will line you up and do a who wore it best, whether it’s red or purple or green or strapless or what have you.

“They tend to forget that we’re all walking a carpet to enter an event to celebrate everyone’s achievements, and women’s achievements tend to come down to what colour their dress was.

“So, for us, we felt that actually it was a really great opportunity for us to literally just dress in something that we felt comfortable in, and confident in, and us all wearing really really smart sharp sassy suits was a really good visual representation of how we all felt.

“And it was great. And to be honest I’d love it if we did that every time, because it’s so much easier to just put a suit on and walk down the red carpet.

“It’s warmer apart from anything else. I really enjoyed it, it was good.”

Our time chatting draws to a close, but not before we touch on the important role that every gender has in creating gender equality.

How can genders be empowered across the board?

For Andrea, the answer is education – from a young age, and for all genders.

When I ask her for her thoughts on encouraging other sexes to empower women, she refers to the parenting in her own family, and says: “I think our job is to educate boys so that they grow up in an environment where actually you treat everybody with the same level of respect and equality, that you would anybody, and again, I think we’re very lucky that that’s becoming much more the norm.

“The generation before us, where women weren’t necessarily seen in such an empowered life, I think is starting to fade.

“And I think now people are being celebrated for their abilities and their uniqueness, and whatever their unique qualities are, rather than what their gender is, so I think we’re actually entering a really exciting time.”

YourGoodSkin is available at Boots and Boots.com.

Loose Women airs weekdays on ITV from 12.30pm.