10 Years Younger axed me for being ‘too old’ at 37 – my life imploded, I hid for a decade and changed my name
It’s clear that Nicky, who is incredibly warm, fun and honest during our chat, has had to do a lot of work on herself over the years to be in the headspace she’s in now.
She’s back on our screens fronting Drop a Decade on ITV’s This Morning and has done several TV and radio interviews to promote her new book.
But just a few years ago, she had felt too ashamed to leave her house.
“To be honest, I just hid. I just couldn’t face the world,” she says. “I felt so humiliated to be dropped and had a complete lack of confidence. I felt absolutely broken.
“I used my married name and I hoped no one recognised me when I went out. I just totally closed that part of my life. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s over. It’s done’ and I just shut the door on that part of my life.
‘I couldn’t face the world’
“It was only during Covid, when my children were getting a bit older, that I had all this time to think. I was on the cusp of turning 50, and I was thinking what are the next 50 years going to look like? Then it really struck me: I knew I needed to get out there again and get back to empowering others to be better versions of themselves.
“That’s my passion, and that’s what I absolutely love doing. I deserved to have the opportunity to do it, but I realised no one was going to do it for me. I had to get out there and do it for myself.”
Through her 12-week challenge, Nicky wants to help other women get back on the path of rediscovery and believes overhauling your style and adding colour is key.
“We are all so self-critical, and we are constantly comparing ourselves to others,” she says.
“We set ourselves these unreasonable targets of achieving things by a certain age, and it’s too much pressure.
“One of the worst things we do as women is look for imperfections, but the reality is none of us are perfect. We are not all Instagram models – I’m certainly not.
“I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that I might have put on weight, so rather than wearing something really plain, or something that will draw attention to my tummy or my legs, I wear a colour and then everyone will say how fabulous you look.
I know what it’s like to fail, and fail and fail over and over again. But you’ve just got to get up every day, put on a great outfit and your red lipstick and face the world
Nicky Hambleton-Jones
“What is so great about clothes is that if you make your outfits your focal point, then no one even looks at your body shape. No one’s analysing, we think they are, but they’re not.”
Looking ahead to the future, Nicky is feeling good and wants to turn her career low into a positive.
“You know what I look at? They say everything happens for a reason, and I really believe that,” she says.
“I would never have my children had I carried on presenting. I needed to shift gears a bit. Unfortunately, it was a brutal way of doing it [being axed], and it could have been done in a lot of different ways, but that’s the way it was.
“I think it’s taken me a long time to get to this point. I couldn’t have spoken so openly about this as I am now a few years ago.
“It has taken a long time to heal, but part of my growth in being where I am today and being able to write this book and help others is because of what I’ve been through. It’s a lived experience.
“I know what it’s like to fail, and fail and fail over and over again. But you’ve just got to get up every day, put on a great outfit and your red lipstick and face the world.”
Bolder Not Older: Dull to Dazzling in 12 Weeks by Nicky Hambleton-Jones (Synergy Publishing, £17.99)