You can’t bring the ’90s back without Gail Porter.
And what a comeback both are having in 2024.
As low-rise jeans and butterfly clips flood high street shops, former Big Breakfast presenter Gail, 52, is back in the spotlight with her new stand-up show, Hung Drawn and Portered.
After 30 nights at the Edinburgh Festival last summer, Gail is taking her show – “a story from the day I was born, through all the weird stuff your mum and dad would tell you, up to when my dad died” – on the road.
And she’s excited for her date at Kirkcaldy’s Adam Smith Theatre, not least so she can have a wee detour down memory lane in neighbouring St Andrews.
“Just to be in Fife will be amazing,” she gushes. “When I was 17, I did some PR for the Sea Life Centre (now St Andrews Aquarium), so when I come up to Fife, I’m definitely going back to visit.”
Haunted Verdant Works had Gail ‘Spooked’
But after her stint on 2022 ghost hunting series Spooked Scotland with celebrity medium Chris Fleming, she’ll be swerving Dundee and its ‘haunted’ Verdant Works, which featured in episode 10 of the show.
“There was one point in the Verdant Works where I went to the bathroom and the door next to me just flew open,” Gail recalls.
“No one was there, no film crew, nothing. Then I came out of the cubicle and my door flew shut. I thought: I need to get out of here!”
As for her own show, Gail says she turned to stand-up after deciding she didn’t want to spend as much time working in the “toxic” TV industry.
“I don’t really like working on TV,” she admits. “Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored it back in the day, when I did all those shows like The Big Breakfast, How 2, Fully Booked and all that.
“I’d get up, go and work, and not stop laughing. It was wonderful. Now it just feels a bit toxic.
“So I thought I’d give stand-up a bash and it seems to be going OK.”
Taking back her story with solo show
Despite her breezy attitude, the show itself tackles some emotional subjects.
Gail lost her mum Sandra to breast cancer in 2009, and her dad Craig passed away during the pandemic in 2020.
“When I lost my mum and dad, I kept everything in and I was very angry, because that’s what happens when you lose your parents,” she explains.
“So the show goes from happiness to a little bit of sadness. But I love the fact that people come up to me afterwards and share their stories with me.”
Indeed, it’s no secret that Gail has had her own story taken from her “so many times” – which is why it’s so important to her that she’s the one to tell it now.
She had the rug pulled from underneath her at the height of her fame when a naked photo of her, taken for FHM magazine, was projected without her consent on to the Houses of Parliament in 1999.
“I had my phone hacked, I had stalkers outside my house, News Of The World outside my house… and when you’re a young person, you don’t understand what’s going on,” she says.
And in the age of the internet, she is made uncomfortable by people’s sense of entitlement to others’ image – even if it’s well intentioned.
“I loved the days when we used to go out partying and no one had a phone,” she says. “Now everything is online!
“I get things on my Instagram saying: ‘Hi Gail, I just saw you the other day but you didn’t see me. I filmed you’ – and I won’t be doing anything, just going for lunch. Why would you do that?
“I don’t get it.”
Back to blonde after traumatic hair loss
Things went from bad to worse when, in 2005, Gail lost her hair to alopecia totalis. She has been famously – and proudly – bald for the last 18 years.
But she says that without her long blonde locks “nobody wanted to touch me” professionally and TV jobs quickly dried up.
Now sporting a brand new wig – only the second one she’s ever worn – made by her friend and fellow alopecia sufferer Amber Jean, she’s feeling like a brand new woman.
“It’s quite exciting, but also terrifying,” she says.
“The day I got it, I walked home in it, but I couldn’t see. The wind kept blowing my hair into my eyes. So I’ve got to get used to having hair.”
‘How is this even a thing at my age?’ – Gail’s homelessness drove her to the brink
The lowest point for Gail came after her marriage to Toploader guitarist Dan Hipgrave fell apart. She lost her home, and spent six months sofa-surfing and legally homeless.
At that point, she candidly admits, she almost broke down.
“I never thought, in a million years, that I’d end up homeless,” says Porter, 52.
“It wasn’t that I hadn’t saved money or anything,” she explains. “But things just happened, and everything spiralled out of control. Divorce, losing my hair, not getting any work – it went from bad to worse.
“I was on my own, sofa-surfing, for about six months in my 40s. And I did think: ‘How is this even a thing, at my age?’ It was terrifying.
“I did get to the lowest of the low,” she continues. “I thought: ‘If I was on my own and I didn’t have anyone, there’d be no point in being here. But I’ve got my daughter, Honey [Hipgrave]’.”
Teaming up with Prince William
Now, in perhaps her most significant comeback, she is very much at home – albeit with “a broken heater and no Wi-Fi” in her London flat.
When we speak, she’s just rushed in the door and is running errands for her Willesden Green neighbours – “I always get to know my neighbours, even in London” – while fussing over her beloved cat, Ziggy Stardust.
And when I ask where she’s been all day, she casually tells me she’s been out filming for an ITV documentary about homelessness, with none other than Prince William.
“I don’t know how much I’m allowed to tell you,” Gail muses. She’s a rare breed of celebrity who has no PR, manager or orbiting ‘people’ arranging her life (or her words) for her.
“He wants to eradicate homelessness within the next five years. And he contacted me, he was aware of the fact I’d been homeless,” she explains.
“I’m no massive Royalist. I mean, I’m Scottish! But I’m an ambassador for homeless charity Centrepoint, and when Prince William said: ‘I’ve got your back, we’re going to do this’, I got on board.
“I went to his house in Windsor, and everyone was bowing,” she giggles. “So I just gave him a big hug. He’s super tall!
“And he just smiled and said: ‘I knew you’d be a bit different’.”
Gail Porter – Hung, Drawn and Portered is at the Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, on March 1 2024. Meet and greet tickets are available for an extra fee.
Conversation