Fearne Cotton has said that she quit her presenting job on BBC Radio 1 because it had a severe impact on her mental health.

“I had to walk away because it was literally ruining my mind,” Cotton said in conversation with Red Magazine. She went on to say that people’s public images can be deceptive.

“A lot of people still believe in this myth that people on TV or social media are these perfect people with perfect lives, and, of course, it’s all a load of bollocks.”

“It doesn’t matter what my job is. It doesn’t matter how many followers I have,” she said.

“Let’s just connect on the most human level, because all fame does is create distance between you and real life. I don’t want to be disconnected from real life. I want to be in the thick of it.”

Cotton departed from the station in 2015. In 2018, she also left her regular co-hosting gig on Celebrity Juice. Upon leaving Radio 1, she told Grazia that she was struggling to connect with the industry she had worked in for so long.

“I didn’t feel like I fitted in; I always felt like someone was about to slag me off,” she said. “It gets really tiring and hurtful and I had to walk away because it was literally ruining my mind.”

Cotton is now an author and hosts the Happy Place podcast. On the podcast last year, Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones opened up on his teenage child’s gender transition.

“For me, I had no clue or understanding about any of that stuff and as a family, it’s been playing catch-up,” Jones said.

“I had found out Bootsy was going through her own sexuality situation and I could tell that was going on for a while and she was asking me questions about this, that and the other,” he said.

“Bootsy then worked out it wasn’t just a sexuality thing it was a gender thing and it was more and more about transitioning really. So now she has gone from Bootsy transitioning into Colby.”