I was set for Tess Daly’s job on Strictly but ‘settled down’ instead… good on Maya Jama for putting her career first

IN the week it was announced that women are, on average, leaving it til they’re 35 to start a family, it’s little wonder the rumour mill is going at full pelt that the reason Maya Jama and Stormzy have split is because at 29, she’s not ready to settle down yet.

I vividly recall Lily Allen’s candid admission: “My children ruined my career.  In terms of pop stardom, totally ruined it”. 

There is no doubt she loves her children, but the point she was making on behalf of all working women was that she paid a price for having children, professionally.

And she’s not the only one. I had to fight tooth and nail to retain my job as co-host of Gladiators when I fell pregnant in 1994.  

It was our third series and the producers and makers of the show considered a pregnant woman “too high risk”. 

In the end, the compromise was that they refused to let me host the last two weeks of international shows and they employed a midwife to follow me around with a chair so I could sit down between takes.

I wasn’t ill. I was just six months pregnant.

Ten years later I was asked if I was interested in hosting a programme that was about to launch on BBC1 called ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. 

I was keen as mustard but I was pregnant and would have been a few weeks away from giving birth when filming would have taken place.

So, I had no choice but to turn it down, which was heartbreaking.  My husband at the time would not have needed to turn down any work because he wasn’t the one who was pregnant.

You don’t have to be in showbiz to be faced with the dilemma of working out when is the right time to pause work and start a family.

Because there is NO right time.

Whenever you choose, there will be compromises that have to be made. Granted, they’re all for the greater good in the long run but it doesn’t take away from the fact that any woman doing any job will – at some point – have to down tools and take a break.  

A break, incidentally, which isn’t a break at all because you’re putting on three stone; end up with piles, sore nipples; you can’t sit for a week or sleep for the next five years and on top of which, returning to work becomes a whole new game.

As women, if we take any extended time ‘off work’, we risk falling behind on promotions or being considered for other roles.  

That is, if your employer hasn’t already written you off and cleared your desk by the time you go back. It’s hardly the most relaxing, reassuring prospect or time of any woman’s life.

If you rush back to the office before the placenta has even come out (some women are quite, quite capable of this – not me), you’re judged for being a cold-hearted, unmotherly, ambitious, career-driven b***h.

So, you see, we just can’t win.

Shock and surprise

At 29, Maya Jama’s ovaries must be screaming out to house a little baby Jama – they’re in their prime and as all women know, it’s downhill after 35 when it comes to fertility.

I won’t be the only one who greeted the news of Maya’s and Stormzy’s break-up with an equal measure of shocking surprise and abject disappointment.

I had everything crossed for them and really hoped they would make it work second time around despite the anecdotal evidence to the contrary which has stared us in the face over the years.

More often than not, after that initial, palpable joy and relief of a reunion, things tend to settle down only for one or both parties to realise that fundamentally nothing has really changed. 

People always revert to type and to their old habits – the very ones that broke the other’s hearts in the first place.

It’s either that, or one person has changed enough to realise that, despite thinking they really wanted the other, they no longer actually need them.  

The virtue of the first split, of course, is that you learn to live without each other and once you realise you can do that, life takes on a completely different meaning.

Balance of power

I kinda felt it in my waters that Maya and Stormzy would get back together – they seemed so right for one another; they looked so right for each other but also because I know just how good reuniting feels.  For a while, anyway.

But scratch the surface and – as an outsider looking in – I think it’s become clear that the balance of power between this golden couple has doubtlessly shifted. Significantly.

Being the strong, independent woman that she is, Maya picked herself up and dusted herself off and, in no time, high-profile work soon came flooding in. She even found herself a fiancé in the States at one point and I wondered if she might leave these shores forever.

That relationship wasn’t to be either. So, she cracked on with life. And with work – building up her profile on and off screen. 

She’s the face of Dolce & Gabanna; ambassador for Rimmel London and is said to be wanted by Netflix. Not to mention becoming the host of Love Island….. and who knows if it was that that brought her and Stormzy back together.

It seems from their mutual statement about this final break-up that it is truly amicable and there is clearly – without a shadow of a doubt – a great deal of love between the former couple.

I’m guessing a lot of healing went on behind the scenes, and it might just be that despite there only being a one-year age gap between them, they have discovered they are at different stages of their life.

If, if, if it’s true that he was ready to settle down but she wasn’t – you can totally see why.

Because, no matter how far we’ve come on our quest for equality between the sexes; no matter how much we try to make things fairer and more just for women; and no matter how much work we put into levelling the playing field, starting a family will always penalise a woman more.

Of course, Maya Jama may not want to have kids at all. And that’s her choice and hers alone. She may not feel the need; she may not have those bonkers, maternal cravings some of us have.

Whatever her choices are and turn out to be, there will doubtless be judgement or conflict or compromise. 

Because that’s what it’s like to be a woman.