Celebrity Traitors star Clare Balding has shared a glimpse of what her life with wife Alice Arnold is like, why Alice gets to veto TV opportunities and the real reason for ‘levergate’
Clare Balding is a certified national treasure, especially after ‘levergate’ on Celebrity Traitors. But, while we’d all love to see her more on our screens, Clare has shared that there are some TV shows she’d never do and why her wife Alice Arnold gets to veto some opportunities.
Clare and Alice have been together since 1999 and entered a civil partnership in 2006 before marrying in a private ceremony in 2015 after same-sex marriage was legalised. There is no one Clare trusts more than her wife. “I can trust her completely,” Clare tells the Mirror. “She’s the one person that has only got my best interests at heart.”
She adds: “Alice doesn’t sugarcoat things, she’s not going to tell me I’m wonderful if she thinks I haven’t been wonderful.” So when Alice says no to a TV opportunity, Clare takes it seriously.
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“I got a very good offer to do a show the other day and she said ‘Absolutely not, you’re not doing it.’ She said ‘Is it going to teach you anything? No. Are you going to enjoy it? Maybe not.’ So I went back to my agent and said ‘Alice says no.’ She is a very smart and amazing woman.”
Thankfully, Alice didn’t say no to the Celebrity Traitors, which featured Clare in it’s first series and has started filming its second. Clare made a splash on the show after pulling a lever too quickly in a challenge, causing the team to miss out on some gold and making everyone wonder if she was a Traitor.
But Clare says levergate, as it has become known, wasn’t just a TV faux pas – it was a classic Clare move. “I sometimes do things a little too quickly – there are very high profile examples of that, like pulling a lever before I’ve actually listened to the instructions. I am probably a but too quick to make a decision and take action because I’ve worked for a long time in a world where deadlines matter, whether it’s broadcasting or writing.”
Groaning, she continues: “I guess if you’re gonna do something, make it memorable, but that was just so typical of me. People who know me were like ‘Yeah, you would do that, you weren’t listening’.”
Despite the muck up, Clare wouldn’t change her time on the show, because she loves how people responded to it. She recalls how young children come up to her to talk about and ask what the castle is really like. She also shared that she is still “constantly in touch” with Ruth Codd and loved hanging out with all of the cast, particularly the younger ones like Cat Burns, and those she wouldn’t normally get to meet like Celia Imrie.
“It was properly intense and I do sometimes think ‘Oh you idiot, you should have kept your cards close to your chest’,” she laughs. “But I’m not devious enough for that show. But I think all of us on that show, we did it because we love the show and we were all genuinely disappointed if we were out early. It’s a fascinating show, truly a phenomenon.”
Celebrity Traitors is set to return to screens shortly, and filming is already underway for its second series, starring the likes of Richard E. Grant, Michael Sheen and Miranda Hart. Clare didn’t share any advice for the next lot, even if she is often admonished by Alice for handing it out unsolicited.
“I’m not walking around with some kind of saviour complex or anything,” she says when asked about why she has long been an advocate for charities. “But if people ask me for advice I will always give it!
“Alice thinks I’m always telling people the career choices they could make without them necessarily asking me for my advice so I imagine it can get quite annoying. But there are ways of getting messages across and what is the point of having a platform unless you’re going to use it for a positive purpose?”
She adds: “For one reason or another, after the London 2012 Olympics, I had a way of reaching more people and I used it quite effectively for a decade to promote women’s sports.”
Clare is also using her platform to encourage those with landlines to make the switch over to digital before the whole nation has to make the transition in January 2027. She’s working with BT to make sure those who haven’t made the change to a smart hub yet do so before all analogue lines are retired and switch off, so that they can avoid disruptions to their network.
She says: “It’s just really to say do it now, don’t delay. The research shows that a lot of us in Great Britain, we delay things. Something like two-thirds of people put things off and it would be so good if people did say ‘Right let’s do this now’.” She assures us that BT is on hand to help people through the change and answer any difficult questions, such as what happens if there is a power cut. In that specific instance, Clare already has an answer: “BT will give you a digital lithium battery as a backup. You will be even safer than you were before.”
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