Former Loose Women star Andrea McLean opened up on ‘losing everything’ after leaving the ITV show to kickstart her own business – admitting she considered taking a coffee shop job to get by.
The TV presenter left the panel show to focus on the lifestyle brand she launched in 2020, before losing hundreds of thousands of pounds of her savings during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Andrea, 56, spoke about how she ‘tried to get a job in Starbucks’ to make ends meet after a series of health issues left her unable to work, among them severe pneumonia, acute kidney injury and sepsis.
Speaking to HELLO!’s Second Act podcast, Andrea reflected on the ‘humiliating’ time that saw her ‘lose her identity’ and warned by her agent she might ‘never work in TV again’ if she took an everyday job.
Andrea said: ‘I lost everything, literally everything in my fifties, my home, health, finances, I lost my identity in terms of I’m not “that lady” anymore.
‘When you’re in your 20s and you’re finding your way in the world, people are a lot more accommodating. I lost it all.
Former Loose Women star Andrea McLean opened up on ‘losing everything’ after leaving the ITV show to kick-start her own business – admitting she considered taking a coffee shop job
The TV presenter opted to wave goodbye to her seat on the panel show to focus on the lifestyle brand she launched in 2020
‘I had this shame, that everyone is going to point and laugh at me because “oh my God, you had this job on television and you quit to form a business and it didn’t work”.
‘I tried something and it didn’t work. My friends were shocked and horrified, they had no idea how bad it had got.
‘I tried to get a job in Starbucks and they didn’t even get back to me, it was humiliating. My agent told me I would never work in TV again if someone saw me.
‘That’s all very well, but I needed a job and money to buy food for the kids.’
Andrea, who has written a book, Shameless: Finding Freedom and Resilience Through Failure, about her experience, continued: ‘I’ve literally done the most embarrassing thing that a human being can do, which is to tell the whole world that they’re going to leap out and see if they can fly.
‘I didn’t fly. I landed flat on my face and I completely embarrassed myself.’
Asked how she was doing now, Andrea explained that she was ‘still in the trenches’ but felt she was in a better place ‘mentally and emotionally’.
Referring to her husband, Nick Feeney, with whom she shares two children, she concluded: ‘Our relationship survived and that’s huge.’
Following the crash of her lifestyle business during Covid, Andrea faced a brush with death after collapsing with pneumonia, kidney failure and sepsis.
The presenter admitted that she ‘crashed and burned’ and had to put the brakes on her life which she said she had lived until that point at ‘100 miles per hour’.
She told PA of her lifestyle: ‘I work really well when there’s lots of plates [spinning] and I’ve got loads to do and loads to think about.
‘It excites me, invigorates me, all those things – until it didn’t. Until I literally crashed and burned. I have had to learn to not feel bad when I’m not being productive every minute of the day.’
Andrea paid tribute to her third husband Nick Feeney for standing by her after huge debts from a failed business forced her to sell her £1millon home
She added to The Sunday Post: ‘We were literally selling things to pay for food and bills, and there were debt collectors ringing on the hour. But that is something so many other people are experiencing.
‘It’s like when you experience severe illness – the rest of the world is carrying on outside while you feel like you’re drowning on dry land. You look the same as everyone else, but you don’t feel it.
‘After everything fell apart, what kept us going was just grit. You can’t lie on the floor and cry about it.’
Earlier this month, Andrea paid tribute to her third husband Nick for standing by her after huge debts from a failed business forced her to sell her £1 millIon home.
She left the ITV show in November 2020 with hopes of launching her own wellness platform called This Girl Is On Fire, but was left with huge debts that forced her to move into rented accommodation.
Andrea has revealed she felt ‘shame’ around her money troubles, but the challenges she and Nick have faced have only made their marriage stronger.
Praising her husband, Andrea insisted she was ‘done’ with relationships when they met, but now she views him as her ‘best friend.’
Andrea has revealed she felt ‘shame’ around her money troubles, but the challenges she and Nick have faced have only made their marriage stronger
She told The Mirror: ‘It doesn’t sound like a very romantic thing, but actually to be with someone who is the first person you want to tell great news to or the first person you want to moan at when you’ve missed your train – that is love.
‘We sit in silence at night time and send each other funny memes on our phone. That is literally our love language.’
Andrea had been lying on the floor for more than an hour before she was discovered by her husband in December when she collapsed at home during her illness battle.
She was then blue lighted to hospital where after a series of X-ray and CT scans they discovered she had severe pneumonia, an acute kidney injury and sepsis.
Reflecting on the frightening ordeal, she added: ‘It was only a few weeks after I got home that I realised the magnitude of what had happened – that if I hadn’t gone into hospital that day, I may not be here now.’
Andrea revealed that the scare made her want to seize the day, but admitted in February that she still wasn’t back to full health.
She also thanked her husband Nick, whose ‘life stopped’ during that time too as he drove her to the hospital everyday, waited for her at clinics for hours at a time and cooked everyone dinner before putting her to bed.
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