During her impressive 20-year TV career, presenter Anna Richardson has never shied away from sharing the ups and downs of her life, both on and off screen.
From discovering she had low fertility while making a documentary in her thirties, to facing a barrage of online abuse over her latest show, Naked Education, the 52-year-old leaves nothing off the table.
Chatting to OK!, she shares her thoughts on everything from sex in her fifties, to her plans to adopt and her excitement about a potential Naked Attraction spin-off.
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“I know myself inside out,” she tells us over Zoom. “I know exactly what I want in life, I’m unafraid to say what it is, and I’m very happy to be an older woman and impart what knowledge I have to try and help younger people.
“There’s something wonderful about this stage in life," she continues. When you come through menopause, it’s like you’re a wise woman of the village. It opens the door into the second half of your life – a life of freedom, self-knowledge, purpose and a life that’s no longer fearful about trying not to get pregnant and worrying about your fertility!”
Having suffered a traumatic ectopic pregnancy as a young student, for which she received “no counselling or therapy”, Anna is all too familiar with the havoc hormones play on a woman – mentally and physically. And she’s keen to share her own experiences in the hope of getting other women talking.
“It’s almost a club,” she tells us. “I’ve not had children, but when women have babies they suddenly join the mother club. It’s the same with menopause. When you hit that stage you go, ‘Did anyone tell you about this?’ and it’s too late until you’re in it. There is a degree of shame and embarrassment.”
When her own perimenopause journey began in her mid-forties, Anna embarked on a “research rampage” to work out the cause of her “severe anxiety, depression and brain fog”.
“For me it wasn’t a case of, ‘I hit menopause and my periods stopped’,” she says. “It was a slow, confusing creep over years and an awful lot of trying out different HRT methods, different dosages, different hormones. Now, I haven’t had a period for two years and I feel fairly steady, but it’s still not as it was when I was having my periods. For some women, menopause is difficult.”
While it’s not been easy for Anna, who’s also a trained cognitive hypnotherapist, it has allowed her to revisit one her favourite subjects – sex.
She’s recently partnered with Replens, a healthcare brand catering to women with vaginal dryness, hoping to break the final menopause “taboo”.
She explains, “I’ve experienced some vaginal dryness and that has made sex tricky at times,” she says. “It’s something I talk about with my girlfriends. We’re all like, ‘God, are you a bit dry?’ and ‘Have you got cystitis?’
“Let’s get this conversation going. It’s being beautifully done by Davina McCall and various other women, so it’s good that the conversation is out there. But no one is talking about this final taboo. It’s a bit of an unspoken thing, but women really want to know about sex during menopause.”
For Anna, who was in a long-term relationship with presenter Sue Perkins until 2021, sex in her fifties has been a revelation. She began dating charity boss Simon Marks last year, and says it gave her sex life “a huge injection of energy”.
“There’s something wonderful about meeting somebody new that makes you realise, ‘Oh, I’m not dead from the waist down! Actually, I can experience amazing sex like I had in my twenties. It is possible to recapture it, but it takes work,” Anna reveals.
Sharing personal experiences has never been an issue for Anna – and neither has speaking up for what she believes in.
Take her recent show, Naked Education, which co-starred Dr Alex George and DJ Yinka Bokinni. The docuseries involved frank discussions with teenagers about sex, relationships and body image and divided viewers.
Anna tells us she and her co-hosts received a barrage of online abuse after it aired, while Ofcom was deluged with almost 1,000 complaints. So does she regret making it? “I’ll always stand by the need and the right to educate,” she says. “I believe there’s an urgent need to address the mental health and the education of teenagers, given the proliferation of social media and pornography, and the deleterious effect that’s having on their mental health and their attitude towards relationships.
“When I was a student I got pregnant, so I’m living proof of that. Even though I tried my best at the time and was using contraception, I still got pregnant. So if I lived through that trauma 30 years ago, imagine what teenagers are going through now.”
While the teens in Naked Education might have been on a steep learning curve, it was Anna herself who had her eyes opened when making her 2008 series, The Sex Education Show.
During filming, her life took an unexpected – and very public – turn when she was told her fertility levels were worryingly low, or, as Anna puts it, “I discovered my fertility was f****d”.
It prompted her decision not to have biological children and while she doesn’t regret her choice, she acknowledges there’s a piece missing and is now considering adoption.
“Adoption is a personal thing,” she explains. “It’s something that I was exploring when I was with Sue [Perkins], as well. It’s very much my desire to look into becoming a mother and building a family.
“I’ve had initial conversations and it’s something that I’m curious about, that I’m taking baby steps towards. It’s still – and rightly so – a very complicated and long process in the UK.”
Always one to champion diversity, Anna says she’s considering adopting a refugee child, or a “LGBTQI kid that has maybe suffered any kind of prejudice or persecution”. She adds, “It’s about, ‘How does one create a family, however that looks in the 21st century, with someone who has love to give?’”
Work-wise, Anna’s a busy woman, not least with filming Naked Attraction, which routinely divides opinion with its upside-down dating format of matching nude couples, then sending them on fully clothed dates.
The star is famous for her ability to hold it together when confronted by an array of strangers’ private parts. “I love Naked Attraction – long may it reign,” she says proudly. “It’s my favourite show I’ve done.
“As funny as it can be, there’s a serious side to it, which is why so many people love it. You’re able to look at it and go, ‘Oh, my body’s actually quite normal’, but it’s also about inclusivity and acceptance and that’s all I care about in the shows that I do.”
There’s clearly no shortage of willing contestants, with the show now in its seventh series. But would Anna herself ever dare to bare all? “Probably not, because I’m well known,” she admits. “But I’m conscious that sounds mad, given the shows I do. But one’s own inner critic would stop me, even though I’m fully supportive of body differences.”
Anna’s keen to give the show a reboot – so we could see a celeb spin-off of Naked Attraction if she gets her wish. “I’ve bumped into a couple of celebs recently who’ve gone, ‘I’d do it!’ Duncan James was like, ‘I’m up for it!’ And I know in the past Scott Mills said – possibly as a joke – that he would do it.”
“My big dream is to do Naked Attraction live! I’d like to do it as a theatre show. I think there are a few things that we could do to move it on,” she adds.
For now, viewers will have to watch this space, but where Anna’s involved, anything is possible.
Anna is Brand Ambassador of Replens’ 2023 campaign, facing ‘The Silent Problem’ head on with Replens
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