Episode 170: Amanda Ross
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amanda Ross is a highly influential TV producer who has brought us the likes of Saturday Kitchen which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, the Richard and Judy show which ran for 9 years, and the book show, Between the Covers, which she is now touring live and presenting herself.
Amanda and her husband and business partner Simon Ross, own and run Cactus TV. Amanda told me that running their own TV company means that they can organise their lives around bringing up their two adopted sons, now aged 16 and 19.
TRIGGER WARNING: Amanda also revealed to me that she suffered sexual abuse from her stepfather as a child. She wanted to share her story here, so that other people who might have gone through similar ordeals can, like her, learn that it wasn’t their fault, and that they should not feel guilty about what happened to them.
Amanda's other big message is: just do everything with your children because you can take your kids anywhere. It’s just about attitude.
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, |
| 0:24.9 | but can also be hard to find time for yourself |
| 0:26.8 | and your own ambitions. |
| 0:28.3 | I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:32.0 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:36.0 | Greetings from Thursday morning. It's actually a really Thursday morning. |
| 0:39.4 | It's actually a really nice morning. |
| 0:42.5 | I had this idea of, oh, bless you to that stranger that I just talked past. |
| 0:48.3 | I had this idea of filming my introduction, because basically next year I'm thinking, right right we've got to start filming the podcast |
| 0:56.4 | everybody's bloody doing it so we're going to set that all up anyway I was like right |
| 1:00.8 | maybe I'll film my intro and that way uh you know it could be an introduction |
| 1:06.9 | yesterday I started filming and oh my god it's hard enough walking past people when you're |
| 1:13.2 | doing a voice thing, voice recording, but filming yourself walking and talking. |
| 1:19.0 | It's just too high up on the cringe, cringerometer thing. |
| 1:23.9 | So, yeah, that's not happening. |
| 1:26.0 | I'm just talking to you like this. |
| 1:27.0 | Same as normal um i hope you |
| 1:29.4 | had a really good week uh how's mine been actually really nice very steady no big shakes no big drama |
... |
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