Moments: Living Under the Spotlight | Jason Donovan & Amanda de Cadenet

0:00Davina McCall:I think for anybody kind of of later generations watching this or listening to this might be interested to hear what press intrusion was like back when you were famous. Yeah. Because you actually ended up leaving the UK because it was just too much with John. I did. What was it like before you left? How bad was it? Can you give us some kind of examples? I mean, for a young person at the time, I was I was I had Atlanta, my daughter at 19. And I think the combination of a member of Duran Duran being married to, you know, television presenter Amanda Decadene was just like a match made in tabloid heaven.

0:44The combination of us was very intense. And Atlanta was less than a year old. And the media was so brutal about my body post-pregnancy. And there was the worst photos of me. I mean, you can't imagine that. And headlines, you know, Amanda DeFlabonet and just like horrible, horrible body shaming. And I remember I was breastfeeding in the park by where I lived and not like with my boobs out, like discreetly breastfeeding. And I guess paparazzi got photos of those pictures and put them on blast.

1:18Davina McCall:And just to say, so people know, you couldn't, you never saw the paparazzi. No. You would know that they were taking pictures. No, I had no clue. People would go like, oh, well, they knew. you don't know. You don't know. They are brilliant at hiding. Really good at it. And they can take them from miles away. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was bad enough that I was telling Ella, my daughter, because I walked past my old house that I used to live in. And I said, that's where I used to live with John in Atlanta. And I said, you know, I left this lovely house in Notting Hill with food in the fridge and laundry in the hamper.

1:53And I said to him, I've got to get out of here. I can't take this. And we went on a holiday to L.A. and I never went back. And so my house had to get packed up and shipped to Los Angeles. And I didn't come back here for 10 years. Wow. Yeah, it's such a shame. It's such a shame because, you know, there's so many wonderful things about being here and so many old friends. And my career, I left my career. Like I really just like got up and left. and it's only kind of through all the work that I've done, all the different therapies that I've done, you know, that I've been able to kind of heal a lot of that pain from that period of time when I used to live here, you know.

2:37Davina McCall:How much did having Atlanta help you? Like it feels like you withstood horrific amounts of press intrusion. Yeah, I did. But then you had Atlanta and it was like, okay, not okay anymore. Yeah, it was just done for me. What was it about having Atlanta that changed everything? I think having a daughter at 19 allowed me to get my focus off of myself and onto someone else, which is always helpful. It's so unhealthy to be a person who has that much attention on them because then you're focusing on yourself to such a degree that like that's all you think about. and so to have Atlanta and to be able to think about someone else and to want to protect her and take care of her in a way that I didn't feel like I had had and I just didn't want anyone photographing her.

3:33That's so nice. It was a difficult one for me though, Davina, at the time because that was also coming off the back of when I'd seen the face and I think there was a lot of hostility. Can we talk about that?

3:48Davina McCall:I think it's important to talk about it because it was a big thing at the time for you. They did something terrible, I think. What happened was, you know, to contextualise the whole thing was that outing was a campaign that really began in America, New York specifically, by militant activists sort of wanting to out prominent politicians specifically who were legislating against gay rights at the time. Fair enough. Fair enough. and, you know, set the board sort of equal. I think it sort of shifted focus to include celebrities like Tom Cruise, Whitney Houston. It went across the pond. And, of course, Jason Donovan, Joseph, London Palladium, quite an easy target, coat.

4:43Speculation had always surfaced about the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid, you know. You know, which is probably sort of my fault sort of in a way by trying to keep my private life private, but it was my sort of decision. What became sort of the thing about that which sort of really got my nerve was a doctored photo I'd taken in the 80s in Australia in a white T-shirt in good faith for some, I think it was actually for a photographer's exhibition actually, was then put into a newsagent and used by these campaigners and it was doctored. And the words on the front were Jason Oniman, queer as fuck. And out, put on it.

5:34And that poster was strategically put throughout London, and specifically near news outlets so that those journalists would walk past it and go, wow, what the hell is that? And again, this was to try and raise the profile. Fast forward to the face, the face sort of fell victim to that and then decided to report on it. Now, a lot of tabloid newspapers, you know, avoided it like the plague because they knew it was litigious. The face had the option to contact me. They decided not to contact me. And the issue really came down to the article itself suggesting that I was lying about my sexuality and I wasn't.

6:21And they printed the picture without me giving me the option to at least have my say. The judge rightly said, they said, well, we couldn't get in contact. He went, give me a fucking break. He's in and out of the stage door. You send a letter. But it was a tough one for me because I felt empowered in the sense that whether you're gay, straight, black, white, whatever you are, no one has the right to publicise their ideology, or not ideology, the ideas, using you as bait when they don't really have your permission or support. And with a doctored photograph, which seems incredibly unfair. You know, do I feel about, you know, I think it was Nick Logan who was the publisher.

7:25Cheryl Garrett was the journalist. Just, you know, do I feel good about what probably I put them through? Not really. But I guess at the end of the day you have to really stand up for your right and what you believe is right.

7:42Davina McCall:As somebody in your business or our business of being well known, I sued a couple of times but it was a line that I needed to draw to say, Look you can say kind of whatever you like about me That's not true and I get that all the time But when it's something Bad That I'm really upset about I will say something Or I will take action And then I think it sets a precedent That people go Actually we better not say that We can go We can say something that he won't really mind That's not quite true But I think I think the difficult thing for you was that often it would be a tabloid paper and everybody's used to them being, but this was the face.

8:34On the edge, yeah, it was. And it snookered really my next sort of career. Whether I was ready to sort of grow up and move into the face, you really need the product probably to be able to go from smash hits to the faces. You know, I struggled a bit with that. But it didn't help my mental health and I took this action and it sort of bit me a little bit. But my intention was for those people to stand up, for those people, you know, who didn't want to be misrepresented and didn't have the public profile and the money and to go, no, no, that's not right. That's not fucking right. And I was right.

9:21I went through pain and suffering because now that wouldn't happen. No. It just would not happen.

9:29Davina McCall:No. But in those days it was still like a cat trying to get its, you know, it was still trying to. It was the Wild West. It was the Wild West. Wasn't it? And gay rights and legislation and, you know, the pink paper and I hope now the world in some parts is very different. It's better for the gay community for sure. Definitely, definitely. But in some parts of the world it's not. It's not, yeah. But in the UK we've made great advances. And maybe, hopefully, maybe, maybe, maybe I might have made a tiny little bit of a contribution in a sort of weird way to that. Maybe.