Fearne Cotton has written a new book where she encourages people to worry less about being liked by everyone
For years Fearne Cotton was a huge name in TV and radio, appearing happy and successful, with the broadcasting world at her feet.
But in her new book out today, the 44-year-old admits she has blocked out much of the career she had in her 20s and early 30s as she struggled in the spotlight. Only now – as who she calls Fearne Cotton Mark II – is she living a life where she feels more content, willing to make changes and be more herself.
Fearne writes: “I feel p***ed off that I’ve morphed into a version of myself other people have needed me to be, taken on too much responsibility, put myself down, shrunk and stayed quiet – all in the hope I would be liked. I can look back on whole chunks of my life and see how unsure I felt about myself.
“I either didn’t feel enough, and so supercharged my personality in a desperate attempt to be seen as funny and vibrant, or I was so fearful that every word that came out of my mouth was wrong that I stayed silent.”
The book is titled Likeable, and she says she is no longer trying to conform to make people happy – and as a result she says she is living a more honest life.
Fearne, who split from musician Jesse Wood in 2024 after 10 years of marriage, began on screen as a children’s TV presenter in the Nineties before jobs on Top of the Pops and Radio 1 followed.
She left Radio 1 in 2015 – partly due to her mental health and anxiety, being in the spotlight and the rise of social media and comments online.
She says: “I stopped trying to be funny, I limited how much of myself I gave away, I diluted my personality to a weak imitation of the person I used to be. And then I quit. I stopped talking altogether. I believed at that point that the only way to be liked was to silence myself. Although I don’t regret leaving Radio 1, as it led to incredible new paths and opportunities, I feel sad that I let those voices in.”
Part of her issues back then stem from the arrest and prosecution of singer Ian Watkins, who she briefly dated, for horrific child sex crimes.
Fearne doesn’t name Watkins in the book but references working at Radio 1 when “a horrible news story that doesn’t involve me yet has a tenuous and life-altering link to me will be broadcast on my own radio show again that day”.
Watkins was first arrested in 2012 and then convicted in 2013 when Fearne would have been on air. He died in prison in 2025.
Fearne says that “shame” she felt made it almost impossible to continue on the airwaves. “I feel simultaneously glared at, stared at, yet utterly ignored by those in the office. Are they all talking about me behind my back? Or am I a narcissist for thinking that?”
She says she felt sick whilst broadcasting and tried to stay upbeat and “shoved down the anger, the rage, the sorrow and tears” and kept talking. She also references it being a time of “depression and a heaviness” but is reluctant to go into anymore detail in the book as she thinks it would be reported in what she worries would be an overly sensational way.
Fearne no longer carries the shame as she says that through therapy she has realised “it belongs to others” – mainly men who have been in her life: “Men who have shamed me, treated me badly and left me lumbered with it.”
But Fearne’s book is far from downbeat. She seems grateful for re-emerging after Radio 1 to create her own business. The Happy Place podcast, which began in 2018, is a huge success on her own terms.
Despite burning her old diaries in the past and hating seeing her old TV interviews with big names like Amy Winehouse and Billie Piper, she watched some for this book and realised she likes the teenage Fearne, who was confident and funny.
She has also started to listen to her body more, after having a benign tumour on her salivary gland removed in December 2024. She says: “It forced me to stop. It made me rest. If going to hospital was the only way I was going to rest, then that had to be a wake-up call. Something must be off kilter.”
Fast-forward a couple of years and mum-of-two Fearne has improved her work-life balance, making sure she has relaxing baths and time away from social media and work. She has also learned to not change her personality to suit others or to try to be liked more.
She concludes: “This is your life, and you deserve to live it, not just survive it. There will continue to be ups and downs, joy and sorrow, people who like you and some who don’t. There’ll be times when you are the hero and times when you are the villain to others.
“But the least we can do is experience it all as our singular selves. Not as the person those around you want you to be or the person you think you should be. Do it all as you. Unique, delightful, brilliant you.”
* Likeable by Fearne Cotton is published by Vermilion and is out today.
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