Episode 166: Lara Maiklem
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lara Maiklem is an author and a mudlark. She told me there’s nothing she likes more than kneeling on the banks of the River Thames for 5-6 hours at a time, scanning the mud for tiny treasures which are twice daily being given up by the tide!
Lara shares her fascinating finds on Instagram, where I've been following her for a while. Her favourite finds include a Tudor shoe, part of a Roman sword and some tiny gold beads from a necklace which she thinks must have broken as someone was boarding a boat on the river hundreds of years ago.
Lara told me how mudlarking gave her peace and alone time when she moved to London, and how, when their twins were small, her wife used to send her off to mudlark, knowing she’d come back ‘a nicer person’!
Living near the Thames myself, I think I might try mudlarking too, as I’m still hopeful of finding Mickey’s PJ Masks watch that he threw in the river near Richmond a while back!
Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lyspexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to |
| 0:09.6 | busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 |
| 0:19.6 | years, so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:22.3 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself |
| 0:26.6 | and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:31.9 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:35.1 | Good day. It is, what day is it, by me Thursday already, what? This week, is flying. |
| 0:43.3 | I just dropped off the smallest two at school and I'm going back home to get changed because |
| 0:50.7 | I'm off to see Javanna Fletcher today to do her podcast. |
| 0:55.1 | Which would be lovely because Trana was a guest on spinning plates a while back and we've |
| 1:00.1 | kept in touch since then. |
| 1:01.8 | So it'd be really nice to see her. |
| 1:03.3 | And I cannot go to see her dressed as I am because I'm wearing, it's just too crazy. |
| 1:10.2 | I basically had a really quick shower and |
| 1:11.7 | wash my hair in that hour of seeing sort of getting the kids up and then getting them out |
| 1:15.4 | the door, which I think is a little ambitious. And then with hair still kind of like soaking |
| 1:21.4 | wet, I've thrown on. I'm looking down at myself. It's actually funny. |
| 1:30.3 | I've got like pale, pale trainers. |
| 1:34.3 | That's relevant because I would have normally put dark trainers on with the rest of the outfit. |
| 1:35.1 | So they're kind of pale colour trainers. |
| 1:37.2 | Then my new Palazzo jeans, which look, they are pretty fabulous, but they're like |
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