Myleene Klass: ‘That bikini got my children through school'

Telegraph

a day ago

Recently someone asked Myleene Klass what she considered her greatest achievement, aside from her three children. 'And I said being able to use my business skills to still make money as a musician,' she says. 'Because, if music is what you want to do with your life, you're told when you're younger you'll never make any money.'
Klass, who is the first to admit she has made an awful lot of money, is on a mission to change all that. The former Hear'say star turned classical music artist turned multimillionaire entrepreneur has just been appointed a visiting lecturer in musical theatre at her alma mater, the Royal Academy of Music, where she will mentor students in all things industry-related, including business and marketing.
As the 47-year-old reminds me often during our interview, she unquestionably has the experience. 'I've lived all these lives: classical musician, musical theatre performer, pop star, I've had to understand branding, from being in a pop band to creating my own clothing line. Problem-solving is essential for musicians. It's great the Academy have asked me to do this because I'm living that real world daily.'
We meet at the home of her publicist who has been with Klass for 20 years, by which point she had already appeared in the reality show Popstars, had four top ten singles with the band it created, Hear'Say, and a number two classical music album, Moving On. Packaged pop acts invariably have about a two-year shelf life, after which its members tend to appear on I'm a Celebrity, attempt a solo album and then drop out of view.
Klass, however, did both these things and then kept on going. She became a regular on TV and radio, has recorded three albums in total and, after appearing in a white bikini on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2006, monetised the notoriety it garnered by launching a swimwear line. As she never tires of reminding people, she sells a bikini once every 60 seconds. 'I know that I'll always be reduced to the woman who wore a white bikini in the jungle,' she says. 'But that bikini has got my children through school. So who's laughing now? Feminists need pants [i.e. bikinis], what can I say? It's just that this one can also play Mozart and Rachmaninov.'
It's easy to forget that Klass is a gifted pianist and violinist amid the enduring tabloid fascination with her life – which reached a peak when Graham Quinn, the father of her two daughters and a former Hear'say security guard, left her in 2013, six months after they had married – and her many appearances on Loose Women. Yet behind the scenes she is dedicated to promoting classical music to young people, particularly in less well-off areas: she is currently mentoring at her old secondary school in Great Yarmouth, one of the most deprived towns in the country.
'I'm going back into music education because there is an absolute crisis,' says Klass. who won a scholarship at London's Guildhall before studying at the Royal Academy. 'Choirs and orchestras have been removed from so many schools. The ones at my old school are long gone. But I'm involved in all aspects of their lives. One of my pupils has just won a place at business school. Which is a huge surprise to us all, and no, he won't mind me telling you that. She also admits that: 'It's hard to talk about violin lessons when most of these kids come from families that struggle to put food on the table.'
Klass doesn't believe in quick fixes. She applauds Labour's spoken commitment to improvement but is sceptical of how they will implement it. 'More maths, more music was a big Labour tag line. But 'more' isn't only the answer. It's not just a case of handing over free recorders. It requires a culture shift in how we think and talk about music.'
How does she think we should be talking about it? 'Music is considered a soft subject at school, which I find almost criminal. Think about what goes into being a musician. Your maths has to be en pointe, for one thing. But young musicians also need to know how to market themselves. It's a booming industry, but most musicians are badly unprepared for the real world.'
There's something bulletproof about Klass. The mixed-race child of a Filipino mother and an Austrian father, she has not only survived, but emerged triumphant from under the pitiless spotlight of reality TV and pop star fame, a period in her life she describes as like 'the wild west'. On Popstars (2001), Klass discovered a microphone in a teapot in the house she was sharing with her Hear'Say bandmates. They were being secretly recorded.
With Hear'say, the work schedule was so relentless the group often survived on two hours sleep (she has apparently explosive diaries from her time with Hear'Say which she hints she might yet publish). Then there was the tabloid scrutiny, and the endless comments about her body and appearance.
She's now a happily settled mother of three (she shares a son with her current partner Simon Motson) and is constantly working – on July 10 she also hosts All Things Orchestral as part of BST Open House in Hyde Park.
Others, though, haven't been so lucky. 'If I look at my peers, pop music has many fallen soldiers. Caroline Flack, Paul Cattermole [the former S Club Seven singer who admitted to having financial troubles before his death from heart failure in 2023], Liam Payne.' The duty of care is improving, she says, but there's still a long way to go. 'You've also got all these stories [of sexual abuse] coming out now, but we all know who the predators are because we were there. All these old men looking after young minds.'
She won't be drawn further on this except to bring up Harvey Weinstein, who allegedly offered her a 'sex contract' in 2010; Klass apparently told him to f--- off. 'Predatory treatment was actively encouraged in pop music back then. But it's changing. At least today people have the language to speak out.'
In 2013 she herself spoke out against the media's poisonous treatment of women in the public eye. A decade on, does she think things have improved, or worsened? 'It's all to do with language, isn't it. Run like a girl. Mum dance. Incompetent cervix [Klass has suffered four miscarriages and in December was made an MBE for her campaign to improve miscarriage care]. Everything to do with women is so negative and it drags us down. But our children are living through this. I sat down with my two daughters [now aged 14, and 17] to watch [acclaimed Netflix drama] Adolescence but none of it was a surprise to them. They've grown up with boys who watch so much porn they know the names of all the porn stars. And no, I don't trust the government to get a handle on this because you'd be asking dinosaurs to regulate the money men.'
Klass, as you may have gathered by now, doesn't hold back. What, then, does she think of young female pop stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, who has been criticised for striking a sexually explicit pose on the cover of her album, or the actress Sydney Sweeney, who recently sold soap comprising her bathwater? Does she worry whether her children are growing up with good female role models? 'I feel for people like Sabrina. For Christ's sake, we grew up with Madonna masturbating on a bed. Why aren't people calling out Hollywood A-listers who go out with girls half their age?
'These girls are singing on stage in their twinkly boots living their best lives, so no, I don't want to hang this conversation on Sabrina. I want to hang it on the record company bosses, on the Harvey Weinsteins and the people who have infinite power who can direct or misdirect our views of how these girls are presented. But celebrities don't make good role models anyway – they are too far away. It's hard-working mothers who do.'
You can see why Klass is such a good mentor: she's bullish, successful, unafraid to speak her mind. She'll take anyone on, too – wading into the mansion tax row with Labour in the past, clashing with Ed Miliband on ITV's The Agenda in 2014.
'I'm a Filipino girl who didn't grow up knowing the ways of Westminster or the meaning invested in the signet rings or suits, and I go into Parliament and get more done in a day than they do in a year,' she says. No wonder both Labour and the Tories have so far unsuccessfully, asked her to stand as an MP.
She's also without snobbery. This is not surprising for someone who came up through reality TV and musical theatre (her first job on graduating was a part in Miss Saigon), who very much dwells in the cross over fringes of classical music, and who hosts a show on Classic FM. 'There's such a class system in this country and so music can be so defining of where people think they fit.
'But the purists who think music should be canonised and wrapped in cotton wool – that's not preserving it, it's removing it from all the people who would love to have access. Instead we should be promoting the way it lives on in film music, musical theatre, computer game soundtracks. Vivaldi for instance is all over TikTok.'
The indefatigable Klass was all over TikTok during lockdown, too, giving free music lessons to children stuck at home. 'My daughter once compared me to a shark. Because if I stopped moving, I'd be dead.'