Edith Bowman interview: Out of the ordinary

INTERVIEWING Edith Bowman feels a bit like trying to interview your next door neighbour.

The Radio 1 DJ and T in the Park presenter may have the £175,000-a-year BBC salary, the rock star partner (Tom Smith, lead singer of Editors) and the celebrity friends (Kylie), but she has the resolutely scrubbed look of the girl next door. No make-up, casual hair, a slightly ditzy, slightly shapeless, flouncy white sundress (de-ditzified with denim jacket and black patent loafers). Probably something she like … just kind of picked up in this amazing shop round the corner. Like.

A very knowledgeable music journalist observed to me that Bowman talks about music with no more authority or articulacy than the average person down the pub but Bowman would probably want to kiss him for that. Her favourite compliment ever was from a depressed student who switched on her radio show after disastrous exams and felt as though her mate was in the room cheering her up.

The obligatory phrase in an Edith Bowman interview is, "down to earth". Which makes it all the more bizarre that her publicist says – unlike 99 per cent of interviewees – she can't possibly do photographs because she'd need full hair and make-up done. You might expect it of Madonna – but Bowman? Maybe the 35-year-old Fife girl's image is more carefully controlled than it seems. That's always been one of the fascinating things about fame anyway, that line between the ordinary and the extraordinary, the extent to which successful people are the same or different from the rest of us. Where Hollywood stars once assuaged public desire for charismatic icons to admire from a distance, modern celebrity concentrates as much on approachable DJs and presenters the public feel could be their New Best Friend if ever they actually met them.

Bowman is exactly that: approachable, friendly, chatty. Not without that little Scottish nip when she needs it, though. She looks particularly hawk-like when I ask about the difficulties of being in your thirties and working in the youth-dominated culture of Radio 1. Shooting a look that professes not to know what I'm talking about, she says you would only stop working for Radio 1 if you stopped being a music fan. "I hate the idea of music being ageist. I don't come into work every day and think, 'Right, I must talk young, that's just absolute bollocks. Music can appeal to all ages. That's the common ground."

What is absolute bollocks is the idea that Radio 1 will nurture you past middle age, any more than Blue Peter presenters will abseil en route to the Post Office for their pension. The only person who managed any Radio 1 longevity was John Peel, who was in the curiosity slot. Which mainstream Radio 1 DJ could she name who has lasted? "You have people who move on and that's because they feel they need to move to something else, or the audience gives them a sign that they need to move on," says Bowman.

I raise the issue not because Bowman's time is up imminently – she has 4.73 million listeners each week and has been picked again for this year's major festival coverage – but because one assumes working in that environment would make you consider the future. But I guess if you are a turkey on a farm being fattened up in the summer month of June, you might not really want to acknowledge that flakes of December snow might actually one day fall.

EVERYONE HAS a soundtrack to their life, the songs that have played in the background at key moments, sometimes so softly you barely register them until later. Bowman's begins with Elvis and Sinatra, the tracks her music fan father played when she was a child. He had a great vinyl collection, loved nothing better than hearing the crackle of the needle in the groove. Then, for Bowman, came Toni Basil's Mickey on seven-inch. Aged just five, she played it to death.

She was brought up in the seaside town of Anstruther, where her parents ran the Craw's Nest hotel. Though she loves going back now, she always felt a bit smothered by Anstruther. "I felt I needed to escape," she says. "Nothing ever happened. I remember passing my driving test when I was 17, six weeks after my birthday, and it was just a release, that idea of freedom. I couldn't wait to be out, to be honest. I was in a band which was an outlet but I outgrew that pretty quick. I think there was just something in me that needed to spread my wings."

The Craw's Nest started out as a six-bedroom B&B, run by her mother Eleanor's father. One of seven sisters, Eleanor ran it with family before she and her husband took over. It became a busy, 50-bedroom hotel, catering almost every weekend for wedding parties of up to 500 people. As a child, Bowman worked in every department. "I washed dishes, helped in the kitchen, worked as a chambermaid, as a waitress … I think that's where I get my work ethic from. I don't expect anything. I feel like if I work hard enough I'll reap the benefits, rather than sitting back and expecting stuff."

When she was seven, her younger brother Alex was born. "It was brilliant. I became his little mum in a way, looking after him." Alex was someone to relate to in those years when the hotel dominated so much. There was also music, of course, the hotel DJs exciting her interest. And all those tracks that crackled through her childhood from her father's stereo. Cream and Love. Fleetwood Mac and Dr Hook.

She was around her parents a lot but weekends and holidays were the hotel's busiest times so they didn't have a conventional family life. They took several holidays a year together in term time to make up. But from the time she was a baby, Bowman had a third parent. Each Friday night, she was dropped off with her grandfather in nearby Pittenweem and picked up again on Sunday night. Her grandfather wore out two sets of wheels on her pram and over the years they forged a very special relationship. Dairylea sandwiches and hot milk and conversations that nobody else shared. When she was seven, her grandfather had a stroke just before he retired from his painting and decorating business. Doctors said he wouldn't last a year. But her granddad walked from Pittenweem to Anstruther every day, waving on cars that stopped with his one good arm. He lived until he was almost 90, eventually moving in with the family which Bowman loved.

Bowman was severely epileptic as a child but it didn't restrain her. She was a show off, she says. Her father has a video of her at the beach, aged five, singing the News at Ten theme and "interviewing" her mother. She actually applied to PE college when she left school but the letter of acceptance frightened the life out of her. "It was the realisation it wasn't what I wanted to do." A college course followed before she joined a degree course in communications but her first radio job was work experience at Radio Forth. A conversation with the programme controller there was hugely influential. What did she want out of work experience? Well, she hoped that after due time and effort she would get a job in broadcasting. With that accent? What made her think someone who spoke like her could possibly work in radio?

"I had to hold back the tears but I thought, 'F*** you, I'm going to prove you wrong.' I always say to people who ask my advice, 'Don't take no for an answer.'"

It was at Radio Forth that she got her first taste of T in the Park. "I just remember watching a friend of mine who did the TV coverage and thinking, 'I want to do that' … and now I am."

Her first break came when MTV decided it wanted to represent more regional accents on its programmes and Bowman was hired along with presenter Cat Deeley. Bowman moved on to Channel 4's breakfast programme Rise to work with Colin Murray and the two of them were given a joint show on Radio 1 before earning their solo slots. It was never fame that attracted her, she insists. There were easier ways she could have got more famous more quickly. "Like when I first started doing MTV and got offered lad mag shoots." Was she tempted? "Not at all." She did one with the other MTV girls that was pretty covered up, but vowed she wouldn't again. She didn't like the results? "No, I thought the results were lovely, to be honest, but it just kind of … I felt like I was cheating in a way. I thought, 'I've got to work for this. I can't just accept this quick fix.' I hoped it would give me longevity."

One of her colleagues at Rise said everyone was a bit in love with her. She laughs. Who was that? Bet it was Colin Murray. It wasn't, but does she deliberately try to charm people? "I'm not a flirtatious person, I don't think. I think it would be just that whole thing of treating people the way you want to be treated yourself. Sometimes in production you see the way people treat staff and Rise was a pretty good example of that. These kids were working for shit-all money and getting up and doing ridiculous amounts of hours … I've been in that situation. That was me when I started. I think everyone is an equal whatever it says on the door."

The one equality you can be sure of in life is that emotional difficulties ring your bell whichever house you live in. Bowman has had her fair share of calls, not least her mother's diagnosis with breast cancer in 2007. Eleanor had Bowman when she was just 19 and they have always been close. "She's amazing, the glue that keeps everyone together. She's always been the one people have relied on. She has the biggest heart ever and is also the life and soul of the party. She does this brilliant Tina Turner impression. Weddings, birthdays … go on Eleanor, do Tina Turner. No, no, no. Go on! Oh, all right then. It's brilliant. But unfortunately she won't do it any more."

Eleanor's diagnosis stopped Bowman short. "It made me not take her for granted. One of my best friends from home lost her mother when she was 18 and we were at school. She became almost a parent for her dad and her brother. She had to grow up really quick and I had an insight into what that might be like. She has been my best mate as well as my mum growing up and the idea of losing her … I would not consciously let myself think about it."

She called her mum "Eleanor-I'm-Fine-Bowman" for a while because her mother was such a coper. "I said, 'Mum, you can tell me exactly how you're feeling'. But it wasn't until after she'd had the operation and done six weeks of radiotherapy, probably a year afterwards, that she let herself absorb what had really happened. She went through a really hard time of finally facing what she'd gone through. She's an amazing example to people, just a fighter, you know?"

She loves her parents visiting London and mixing with her friends. They always turn up when she needs them most. A few years ago, she found herself with a massive work schedule juggling both her radio show and Glastonbury festival commitments. She was coming home and going straight to bed, exhausted. It wasn't like her. Her doctor discovered an irregular heart beat and referred her to specialists. "I was sitting in the corridor of the Royal Free Hospital, waiting to go in, and Mum and Dad walked down the corridor. They had got the sleeper train and come down." She laughs. "Drama queens that they are."

It was discovered that, instead of being tricuspid, her aortic valve was bicuspid, which imposes greater strain on the heart. Her specialist recommended a Caesarean birth for her son Rudy last year but the whole thing was blown out of proportion in the press. "Edith combats death to have baby! Really? I have a slight condition. Maybe in years to come I'll need a valve transplant but as yet, touch wood, it doesn't affect me." Did the experience frighten her? "Yeah, it did a wee bit," she admits. "It was a real eye-opener in terms of slowing down and listening to my body. I'm better at saying no to things now."

It has not only been her own and her mother's health problems she has faced in the last few years but the deaths of several close relatives, including her beloved grandfather. A few years ago, she had set up a video camera in her room at Christmas and filmed him talking about his memories but she has never yet been able to watch that film. His wife had died when Bowman's father was just three but he had never talked about it. Bowman's aunt learned more about her family from those filmed reminiscences than she had in the rest of her life.

He died on Christmas Day, a bittersweet time in the Bowman household now. They had been at a family wedding in Aberdeen when they heard he had taken a turn for the worse and they headed straight back down. "I said to my dad, 'Will you do me a favour? Bring some candles and the Al Jolson CD.'" Jolson had been one of those backing tracks to their lives. Her grandfather used to sing it to her father when he was a little boy and Bowman wanted to play it now for him. "He loved it," she says. "I always had a really special bond with him. It was hard but I was glad I was there."

IT WOULD be easy for Bowman and Smith to become a celebrity couple, constantly adorning the pages of Heat magazine. "We are so not like that," she insists. "We are just not like that." She's had her fair share of tabloid nonsense written about her. Her and Cat Deeley being secret lesbians. Her being responsible for Kylie's split with then boyfriend James Gooding (they shared a taxi with a third person, explains Bowman). She doesn't know about Kylie's new man, she says. And the tabloid story about Kylie converting to Catholicism for her wedding? Bowman looks blank. She hasn't heard that. "I haven't seen her for ages," she says.

Yet despite her attitude to celebrity, Bowman's relationship history is not littered with guys from next door or the local pizza delivery man. Her exes include film maker Dimitri Doganis and Elbow frontman Guy Harvey. She could hardly claim not to be attracted to boys in bands. But she wants the package wrapped in chip paper not glitzy foil. Smith, she says, is a private kind of man and since Rudy was born last June, they have stayed in a lot. She kind of likes that, she says, and enjoys "making popcorn and watching shit movies".

The couple met when Bowman came back from a gruelling trip to Africa with Save the Children and was invited to a friend's party. She had met Smith a couple of times before but this time the chemistry was different. "I don't know why it was that night. It was just like… yeah. Then we pretty much moved in straight away and have been together four and a bit years." When she was expecting Rudy they took a picture of her bump every Sunday night, and have an album of the entire pregnancy. She doesn't want Rudy to be an only child but she doesn't want a large family like her mother's.

Rudy is a year old now and a proper little bruiser. It's impossible to be an ordinary couple with their jobs, but they have a great nanny who is unfortunately about to return to the United States. "We both cried when she said she was going but we've found an equally brilliant one to replace her." With her mum's help, she will take Rudy to T in the Park, carrying him round in a little rucksack. It's not that he's changed her life exactly, more expanded it. "It's almost as if you have this reserve of knowledge and stuff that you are just kind of waiting to tap into. That natural instinct is something people underestimate. I have always been around kids but Tom hasn't and he's just brilliant with Rudy."

Luckily, Smith has not been touring for most of the first year. He was recording in London for a couple of months and used to give Rudy his breakfast each morning. Bowman sometimes walks to work to get an extra hour with her son, meeting her nanny at the BBC. She's looking forward to Rudy being old enough to be around the studio. "He's coming into our world," she says.

Perhaps the real proof of Bowman's attitude to fame was in her response to winning Comic Relief's Celebrity Fame Academy. Was it true she turned down recording contracts? "Yes." But why? "Because it wasn't what I did it for." She loved the process because it was like playing at being the kids from Fame for a week. But despite her strong voice, she hated performing each night. "The singing part I loved but coming into that crowd every night … oh my God! I'm not a performer in that sense. I don't know how Tom does it." So how does she feel when she watches Tom perform? "So proud. It's amazing."

She feels real unease about attitudes to fame and the whole X Factor phenomenon. "I remember growing up and there being superstars, really great role models, and I think the obsession with celebrity culture has diminished that. People are not known for having a talent. What does fame mean? What are you famous for? What does fame bring you? Lots of questions that people would answer differently."

And you can lose it all in a heartbeat. "The whole Susan Boyle thing – the show chews people up and spits them out and there's no aftercare. And that's the ones we know about. The ones we see have already auditioned six times for production staff before they get to the judges. So they deliberately pick the shit ones and encourage them to be shittier. It's so manipulative. It leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Those shows have provided us with some incredible talents – like Will Young – but let's get back to what it's about: a talent competition."

So what's her talent? What's she famous for? She thinks for a minute. "I'd like to think I'm a good broadcaster, whether that's radio or television." She'd like to do more TV, perhaps a BBC 3 version of Jonathan Ross's film programme for a younger audience. But she never takes anything for granted. "I get terrified about my job regularly." She's insecure? "Yes, I'm quite an insecure person. There are so many brilliant people out there who are great at what they do and that's why I say I'll strive to be a good broadcaster." She is not one to question her existence, why she's here. But she does wonder how she got here. "But that's good – it stops you taking things for granted. I thought it today between two tracks. How the hell did I manage to get to do a show on Radio 1 five days a week?"

Edith Bowman will be presenting from T in the Park on BBC 1 and BBC 2, 10-12 July, at various times