Clare Balding is one of the UK’s best known TV presenters, often seen hosting major sporting events including the Grand National, the Boat Race and athletics. She’s also written several novels for children and has just published a new book, called Fall Off, Get Back On, Keep Going.

In the latest My Best Teacher podcast, she chatted to Tes about her eventful school years, which included her feelings of shame after being suspended for shoplifting using sport to rebuild her confidence, a demanding but brilliant English teacher who helped her realise her ambitions - and almost being arrested in Russia on a school trip.

1. Where did you go to primary school?

I grew up in a small village on the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire, and went to Kingsclere Primary School. It was a really good primary school and I went there until I did my common entrance exam at 10. 

2. Have you ever been back?

I went there after the London Olympics and took the Olympic torch for the kids to see, which was great. I remember how normal-sized everything seemed! You think the playground is really huge or the classrooms are massive, but they’re not at all - it’s just you were little so everything seemed so much bigger.

3. Which teachers do you remember from there?

I had a really nice teacher called Mrs Elvin, who was kind; one of those teachers where you want to do things to make them proud of you but you’re not scared of them. She is one who stands out before I went to boarding school.

4. What was going to boarding school like?

It was really scary. Bear in mind Harry Potter had not been written when I went to school, so I had no magical view of going to Hogwarts or being in different houses, and I was a bit younger than everyone else there - and significantly smaller. And my main concern was that my dogs would not know where I had gone and would not know I was coming back, so I spent a long time saying goodbye to them, and crying, and writing letters, and ringing up and asking to talk to the dogs.

5. Did you settle in quickly?

The thing I really struggled with was the first weekend when everyone changed into their own clothes. I put on my one pair of trousers, which were flares - and apparently they went out in 1979, and this was 1980 and everyone else was wearing drainpipes - and I swear the look that I was given was “what are you thinking?” So I obviously realised the error of my ways: I took out a needle and thread, and cut the insides out of my trousers and sewed them up again, and created a pair of frogs legs, really.

6. Did things get better after that fashion faux pas?

Well, I felt a massive pressure after that about not fitting in and feeling inadequate. And I think, to make up for that in my second year, I tried to get in with the cool gang, and they were doing a lot of naughty things - which included shoplifting - and me being me, I got caught.

I was hauled up in front of the headmistress, who said: “Did anyone tell you to do it?” And because of the books I read where the heroine never dobs her mates in, I was all, “No, no one told me to do it, it was all my idea.” So she blamed me and I was suspended, and then I thought, “Oh, that wasn’t meant to happen!”

7. But you went on to become head girl of the school, so things obviously got better?

I think a number of things happened: one was that my headmistress was willing to give me another chance. She put me in a house where I was lucky because one of my friends - who is a still friend now - was the daughter of a teacher and her mother had said “look out for Clare” and she did, and that really helped.

I threw myself into sport, too - and that was really important because being a part of a team gave me a role in which I wasn’t defined by being the shoplifter. 

Instead, I was defined by being left attack or right attack and my role was “how quickly can you get the ball and pass it, how quickly can you see what might happen next - can you defend that situation?” 

That really helped me find a role and place where I felt that I was safe and that I could make a contribution that mattered, so sport was profoundly life changing for me.

8. And did a teacher help with this transformation, too?

In my O-level year - I was in the last year of O levels before GCSEs came in - we got a new English teacher called Ms Healey and she was phenomenal.

It was her first job, so she was probably only about six years older than us, but she was brilliant. She was hard to please, and not warm and cuddly, but she was sharp - razor sharp - clever, funny and demanding of you. 

I wanted to get to her class earlier and wanted to do well, and wanted to write essays that her impressed her. She gave me the confidence to think I could try for Oxbridge and, although I didn’t get in first time, ultimately, I did read English at Cambridge and that was entirely due to her. 

9. And this journey is part of the inspiration for your latest book?

When I started writing for children four or five years ago, I would often ask them questions like, “what do you love about your best friend?” and they’d say, “they are so kind, they’re so funny, they make me laugh, they look out for me”, and I’d say, “so it’s not about hairstyle or clothes, or the technology they own - so remember that because that is what they love about you as well”. 

And it occurred to me that, for all the negativity around the selfie-obsessed social media generation and pressure of likes and so on, when you ask children, it’s these values and qualities that still matter.

So I thought, “how can I create a book that is easy for kids to read and that they can relate to and I can tell them about all the awful things that have happened to me - that I know that feeling of exclusion or vulnerability, of being at the centre of a Twitter storm - and offer answers not just to survive but to thrive?” That’s what Fall Off, Get Back On, Keep Going is all about.

10. What else stood out in terms of your school experience?

We went on a school trip to Russia. I studied Russian for a very short time - for a term - and can literally say “my name is Clare, I love you”, and I figured that would get me through anything.

As it turned out, it did not get me out of trouble when we went to cross a street without waiting for the lights. In Russia, you are not allowed to cross the road except when the lights are red and you are told you can cross.

So they stopped a whole group of us and I remember this policeman saying, “you will go to jail”, and we were saying, “What? We just crossed the road - what you on about, maaan? We didn’t know!’ and he said, “Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law”, and I’ve always remembered that. 

But, overall, it was an amazing trip. The food was awful but the architecture was extraordinary, and I remember watching people lining up against a wall by the river to get the sun and taking their tops off to sunbathe standing up - I had never seen anything like it.

Clare Balding was talking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes. Her new book, Fall Off, Get Back On, Keep Going, is out now

This article originally appeared in the 16 April 2021 issue