Blue Peter star Katy Hill showed off her age-defying looks when she appeared at Fearne Cotton’s festival over the weekend.
The kids’ TV icon, who also presented Live & Kicking and Top Of The Pops in the nineties and noughties quit fame in 2017 and now works as a certified success and confidence coach.
More than 30 years after she made her TV debut, Katy, 55, was invited by Fearne to deliver a talk at her wellness festival, sharing a stream of photos from the weekend.
‘We laughed, we cried, we hugged, we “glowed” in the heatwave… Everything about the weekend was pure JOY – thanks to the beautiful @fearnecotton for another unforgettable reminder of the goodness of humans and the power of genuine, authentic connection,’ Katy gushed on Instagram.
The former TV star looked great in a boho look and with dyed blonde locks as she cosied up to Fearne and posed backstage before her talk.
Katy became a household name when she joined Blue Peter in 1995 as the fearless girl next door, hurling herself out of planes, flying with the Red Arrows and winning a BAFTA.
Blue Peter star Katy Hill showed off her age-defying looks when she appeared at Fearne Cotton’s festival over the weekend
The kids’ TV icon, who also presented Live & Kicking and Top Of The Pops in the nineties and noughties quit fame in 2017 and now works as a certified success and confidence coach
She left Blue Peter in 2001, after which she presented the BBC Saturday morning children’s show, Live & Kicking, for a year alongside stints on Top Of The Pops.
She also presented the BBC’s Holiday and went on to present the weekend breakfast show on 95.8 Capital FM.
The presenter now lives in Oxfordshire with her husband, television presenter-turned-producer Trey Farley, and their two children, Kaya, 19, who recently started university, and Akira, 15.
Sharing an update on Instagram in January Katy explained how in 2017 whilst hosting the Heart Radio Breakfast Show she decided to quit her broadcasting career. ‘I was living life by DEFAULT, not DESIGN. ‘Success’ but not on my terms,’ she wrote.
‘So I took action and did something about it! Many years of training and a LOT of qualifications later, I became an internationally certified COACH! Having got past fear in my own life to play bigger than I ever thought possible, I wanted to equip and empower others to as well.’
In an interview last year Katy revealed how landing her dream job as a Blue Peter presenter left her battling insecurities over her body – after a producer told her she was fat before filming her first episode.
Speaking on the Shall I Delete That? podcast, the Dorset-born star said: ‘When I landed the job, somebody – and he’s a really lovely guy, so I won’t name him – but he was high up on the show, and he said to me, “Now, you need to think about it because you’re a bigger girl and you don’t carry yourself very well on camera”‘.
‘I was a size 12-14. So imagine you’re going on telly in front of 15 million people – you’re already out-of-body terrified, and then someone’s told you you don’t move very well.’
More than 30 years after she made her TV debut, Katy, 55, was invited by Fearne to deliver a talk at her wellness festival, sharing a stream of photos from the weekend
‘We laughed, we cried, we hugged, we “glowed” in the heatwave… Everything about the weekend was pure JOY,’ Katy wrote
The former TV star looked great in a boho look and with dyed blonde locks as she cosies up to Fearne and posed backstage before her talk
The average dress size in the UK is 16.
Katy added: ‘It’s amazing that I don’t and have never had an eating disorder of any kind because I know most of the TV girls that I was with at the time definitely suffered from bulimia and anorexia. That was rife. A lot of people did drugs because that was a way for them to stay skinny.’
The comment about her weight stuck with her throughout her career. On screen she began standing at an angle to make her shoulders appear smaller – a habit that continued years later.
Katy added that she often found herself the target of cruel whispers from women behind the scenes, telling: ‘We used to have communal changing rooms. There’d be like 12 people in one room.’
‘I’d strip down to my underwear and was suddenly very aware that nobody was getting changed anymore. And you’d feel 12 eyes on you and you’d hear whispering of, ‘oh, she’s got a bit of cellulite’ or ‘my boyfriend really fancies her, but wait till I tell him this’. Like, looking for the negative. And it was so hard because I’m so supportive of women, and I always want to big women up.’
‘That was a strange time to live through because of feeling like you were under that scrutiny. But thank god there was no social media because I would never see messages where people would go, oh…
Katy became a household name when she joined Blue Peter in 1995 as the fearless girl next door, hurling herself out of planes, flying with the Red Arrows and winning a BAFTA. Pictured with L-R Konnie Huq, Richard Bacon and Stuart Miles in 1998
‘The thing I found hardest is the belief that just because somebody’s on TV, they’re fair game, and they think highly of themselves, and I never did. I wanted to do a particular show. I didn’t want to be on TV per se. That was just kind of where I got to do all the amazing stuff that I got to do, but I never thought highly of myself.
After her exit, she revealed how her agent insisted they make her ‘a bit more sexy’ and suggested Katy do a magazine shoot for a lads mag.
She explained: ‘I’d shunned the lads mags forever because everybody did those, and it’s like, that’s not who I am. I’m not about to stand there in my underwear. So I was like, absolutely not doing underwear. So she managed to agree that we would do swimsuits in Barcelona.’
Despite throwing herself into the gym and overhauling her image, Katy was left devastated when the magazine came out.
She said: ‘They’d chiseled my chin, elongated my legs, shrunk me. They even made my green eyes brown. She looks a little bit like she should be in Avatar. It doesn’t look like me at all.’
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