“Shoes can only make you so happy
When people talk about needing to mend some fences, they’re usually speaking metaphorically. But not Kate Humble. The TV-presenter-turned-farmer-turned-cookery book writer is halfway through our interview when she (briefly) turns her focus to the walls of her 118-acre rented farm. It’s not your usual celebrity interview chat, but then Humble’s not your usual celebrity. More than a decade before the rest of us starting longing for a post-pandemic escape to the country, Humble was ahead of the curve, fleeing London for a better life.
‘People say “Oh, isn’t it really difficult moving to the countryside when you’ve lived in the city? Don’t your Jimmy Choos get dirty?”’ she laughs. ‘But I was like a fish out of water in the city. I had a creeping realisation that I was just in the wrong habitat. I was like a squirrel in a meadow without a tree. So I went back to my roots. They just weren’t my geographical roots – they were my psychological roots.’
It’s not surprising her conversation is peppered with nature analogies. Since Humble burst onto our screens presenting everything from Lifeline to Holiday in the late 90s, she has hardly been off them.
But it is her work in her beloved countryside that really won her a place in our hearts. She was a fixture on seriesand , before turning her hand more recently to the likes of , , and . There’s clearly a theme emerging here.
