'Having my break-up played out in public was very hard': Georgie Thompson on her split with Declan Donnelly

Single again after a two-year relationship with TV presenter Declan Donnelly, Sky’s Georgie Thompson is emerging as a golden girl in the man’s world of TV sport

'There is nothing more satisfying for me than sitting in a pub with a group of boys talking about the football transfer market,' says Georgie Thompson

Georgie Thompson is struggling to hold up the black evening dress she is wearing for the YOU photos. The Sky Sports News presenter and panellist on Sky1’s A League of Their Own is so tiny – barely over five foot – that despite the stylist’s best efforts with pins and masking tape she is totally swamped by the dress. But from the other side of the camera it isn’t possible to see how constrained and uncomfortable she is as she smiles gamely for the photographer.
‘The preconception – and actually misconception – when people see these photos is that I am really glamorous, but I am really not. No one will see the pins or my Spanx shorts underneath. It’s a preconception people have about my job too. People think, “How glamorous to be broadcasting live about tennis from a studio at Wimbledon”, but what they don’t see is the rain and the wind blowing through the studio and me having to change my clothes and redo my make-up between live links,’ she says with a laugh that is as deep as her voice.
The combination of that deep voice, her good looks and her involvement in the predominantly male world of TV sport has made Georgie (who turns 34 today) into something of a sex symbol to men and – particularly – boys of a certain age. When I reveal that she is very much on the radar of my 19-year-old son and then add that she is currently at No 52 in men’s magazine FHM’s website list of ‘the most beautiful women in the world’ she lets out another guffaw.
‘I am very flattered considering I have never actually taken my clothes off for a men’s magazine. Not just because I don’t particularly want to, but also because if you are a girl in sports it’s already a contentious subject as to why you are there, and you are only going to give people more ammunition if you do something like that,’ she says.
Funny, ridiculously self-deprecating and full of energy, Georgie is brilliant – if slightly exhausting – company. Born Georgina Jane – the eldest of two daughters of property developer Clive and his wife Gilly, a full-time mother – she enjoyed a privileged childhood in Hertfordshire, attending prestigious Queenswood School where she excelled at tennis and hockey (it was, she says with another laugh, ‘absolutely jolly hockey sticks’). As academically able as she was athletic, she gained a 2:1 degree in broadcast journalism at Leeds University and joined GMTV intent on a future in news and current affairs.
Her switch to Sky Sports News, ten years ago, was a risky career move for her (she says that when accepting new challenges she always thinks, ‘Would doing this prevent me from eventually making the move back into news?’, and that her dream assignment would be to be on the panel of Question Time). But it has proved to be the right one. As well as her role as an anchor and regular news presenter she is also working on a series of Special Report – hour-long profiles of major sporting figures (so far she has profiled footballers Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo and sprinter Usain Bolt ) – and is a permanent panellist on Freddie Flintoff’s team in the Sky comedy sports show A League of Their Own, hosted by James Corden, which returns to our screens this month.

From left: Georgie and Dec at her sister Harriet's wedding in September 2009; with friends Kirsty Gallacher and Louise Redknapp

From left: Presenting Sky Sports News; with her fellow panellists and host James Corden on A League of Their Own

‘It was my first move away from sports news and I was nervous finding myself working with these amazing people – Jimmy Carr, John Bishop, Jamie Redknapp, Freddie and James – but it’s just brilliant fun. I think the show works because really it’s just cameras filming a bunch of friends having a good chinwag about sport and poking fun at each other. From it good things have happened – last series, Freddie and his wife Rachael asked me to become one of their charity patrons for the AF Foundation, which is raising funds to build, develop and improve child rehabilitation and physiotherapy units throughout the UK. That’s a privilege born out of a friendship formed on that show,’ she says.

By no means a name-dropper – she is reluctant to talk about her famous friends, who range from Piers Morgan to Sir David Frost – Georgie has nonetheless become something of a celebrity, not just in her own right, but by association.
There are two elephants in the room today, and both have made Georgie – to her evident distress – front-page news. The first – and more shaming – is her arrest a month ago for being over the drink-drive limit. Georgie was on her way home in her black Porsche from a Sunday lunch party when she was stopped by police in Chelsea and breathalysed. She was subsequently banned from driving for 19 months.
‘I’m not going to make any excuses for what happened,’ she says, her face registering her horror and regret at the incident. ‘It was a massive error of judgment on my part, for which I absolutely hold my hands up. I thought I was OK to drive, and evidently I wasn’t. I’m just very, very sorry about the whole thing.’
‘Everyone has their own idea of how they want to live their life – I want mine to be full of fun and laughter’
The second elephant is Declan Donnelly, better known as half of the TV double act Ant and Dec, and until April this year Georgie’s much-loved significant other. Georgie has handled their break-up with admirable restraint amid press reports that she was ‘dumped’ by Dec ‘out of the blue’ because ‘he wasn’t ready for marriage and babies’.
‘My focus right now isn’t on a new relationship,’ says Georgie. ‘Having just picked myself up and dusted myself off with some dignity, my focus now is to move forward in the best way. Having our
break-up played out in public was a very hard thing to deal with. I have got through it with the help of my brilliant group of friends and family and through work – how lucky am I to love my job?’
For a little over two years Dec and Georgie were a golden couple – a perfect match in everything from their height (he was a couple of inches taller than her tiny 5ft 1½in) to their sense of humour. Six months into their two-year relationship – around the time that Georgie’s younger sister Harriet, 30, married her husband Justin – she gave a magazine interview in which she talked about wanting ‘marriage and kids’, and while she won’t confirm that this was the problem that eventually led to the split it does seem that Dec has commitment issues.

‘I think people did think we were a good couple. I hope what they saw was that we were real people. There are some couples who want to live their life in public, but for Dec and me that was never an option. He has always been very private and we were rarely seen out together. In the end it wasn’t to be and the reality is that if one person wants one thing and one person wants another – and never the twain shall meet – you have to be grown-up about it, however painful that might be, and accept that. I hoped the relationship wouldn’t end but it did, and that’s the end of the story. Everyone has their own idea of how they want to live out their life and I want mine to be full of fun and laughter,’ she says with a brave smile.
When I say that I sense that maybe there is unfinished business and that perhaps there might be an eventual reconciliation, she laughs and says that it would be ‘remiss of me to say that anything in the future could happen on either side’. They do meet occasionally, mainly because they each have a quarter share – with Ant and Georgie’s mum Gilly – in a racehorse called Primeval (which she says is ‘marvellous at going backwards and we hope may soon learn to run forwards’ – and which has subsequently won its first race at Kempton).
Georgie’s and Dec’s families are friendly and her parents have a ‘great deal of time for Dec and vice versa’, and in the racing environment in which they still mix all is, again, very ‘grown up’. ‘We were at the races together last weekend and it was absolutely fine; we had a really nice day out,’ she says.

Georgie talks with great affection and discretion about her friendship with Ant McPartlin and his wife Lisa. The couple have been together since 1994 (they married five years ago) and have a very close relationship with Dec to the point of living in houses in the same West London street.
‘I have nothing but good words to say about them and the way they were happy to accept me into their group of friends. The more time I spent in Ant and Dec’s world the more I appreciated it because I realised how important that trusted close-knit group of people is to them in keeping them grounded. I am still in touch with Ant and Lisa – there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation on their part and we did used to get on well as a foursome. Lisa is such a strong character and she has to be – she has been Ant and Dec’s marker, the person who grounds them through it all. Dec is incredibly close to her, they are like brother and sister. And it’s a lovely relationship between the three of them; it works really well.’
The end of Georgie and Dec’s relationship has prompted other changes in her life and she
is determined to look ahead to what should be a very bright future. She is currently co-writing a novel with Imogen Lloyd Webber (writer daughter of Andrew Lloyd Webber) which has ‘a very original angle, a bit like One Day’, and which is ‘very exciting and cathartic’. Georgie has also
sold her Chelsea house and moved into a flat with Sky Sports News colleague Sarah-Jane Mee, who is one of a close group of girlfriends (she is friends with fellow TV presenters Natalie Pinkham and Kirsty Gallacher too).
‘I think Sarah-Jane and I are regressing – we feel like we are 25 again. We are renting this fabulous flat for what we hope will be a fun-filled and fancy-free year. It’s quite funny because, by mistake, I nicked her bank card off the table yesterday and put it in my bag and she said to me, “You are behaving like my wife, cleaning up around me”. We already sound like a married couple,’ she says with a final peal of self-deprecating laughter.

A League of Their Own will return to Sky1 HD and Sky1 on 7 October

Georgie’s guide to getting on in a man’s world

• Keep it simple and keep it straightforward. Don’t try to be too clever.
• Don’t get romantically involved in the workplace. I meet a lot of famous sportsmen in my work but I have never had a relationship with one of them because it would only bring me grief.
• Lower the tone of your voice. You can’t blend into a man’s world if you have a high-pitched, shrieky voice; men hate that.
• Sometimes use what you have in your armoury but know the boundaries. As a woman in a man’s world occasionally you can get more out of somebody by using that situation but never, ever step over the line.
• Try not to take advantage of your femininity. Don’t be overemotional or overreact to what someone might say in an unguarded moment.
• Be yourself. The minute you pretend to be something else or put on an act it will all come crashing down.
• Don’t play games and don’t take yourself too seriously.
• Hold back — don’t be too quick to show that you know more than someone else about a subject. There is nothing more satisfying for me than sitting in a pub with a group of boys talking about the football transfer market. Although I know exactly what is going on, they are all just speculating — but I can keep that knowledge to myself.

Top of Georgie’s league…
What’s on your iPod? Imelda May, Adele and Amy Winehouse.
Your favourite iPhone app?  I have so many; iBooks is amazing and Flick Football and, best of all, Sky Go — I sound like a corporate video now — because you can watch all the Sky Sports channels on your mobile.
Style icon? Sarah Jessica Parker.
Shop? Manolo Blahnik. I love shoes.
Favourite beauty product? Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream.
Favourite make-up? My black Mac eyeliner pencil goes everywhere with me.
Book? I have just finished One Day by David Nicholls — what a good read.
Watching? I love anything that involves the Mafia and guns — I am such a boy in that way. All the CSIs, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos.
And what are you saving up for? At the moment, my rent with Sarah-Jane!

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