Steph McGovern is embracing life as a mum – and all the challenges that come along with it. "I don't know if I've nailed the parenting thing… we're in the middle of that transition from reception to year one in school and it's thrown up challenges that I didn't know were going to be a thing," she tells HELLO! in a candid interview. "It's been a new phase of our communication." The 43-year-old is gearing up for an exciting return to TV while simultaneously raising a six-year-old daughter with her partner.
Since welcoming her daughter in 2019, Steph's been open about the parenting pressures that come with raising children: "When you're getting your kid ready for school on the morning and when you've also got to go and work yourself, you can't be a perfect parent." As well as planning her return to our screens, she's currently gearing up to speak at the Cheltenham Literature Festival later this month. After a career of being a financial-focused journalist, in 2025, Steph turned her pen to authoring a true crime thriller novel: Deadline.
Following a TV reporter is informed live on air of her family's kidnapping, Steph says she had plenty of real-life experiences from her stellar presenting career to draw on for the novel. "A lot of what happened in my life that I used to write this character and plot because, you know, there's a lot of it that's true, and it's little things, everything from being bitten by a pig live on air," she tells HELLO! referring to the infamous moment a pig bit her foot during a segment on BBC Breakfast.
Steph on her 'competitive' parenting pressures
Though she's currently tied up with a swathe of projects – including penning a second novel – Steph reveals that family time with her rarely-seen daughter and partner, whom she keeps private, is still imperative. "Currently, I'm working weekends, which is a bit of a shame. But normally they would involve some type of dance class that my daughter goes to, a swimming lesson, and then in between, it's like a mix of things."
At the moment, Steph and her partner are seeing their daughter through swimming lessons. She previously told HELLO! that she is plagued with 'constant worry' for her young daughter, and this extends to water safety. "I am obsessed with my daughter being able to swim. I think it's a life skill, it's not even, just a hobby – this is a genuine life skill," she says. "I always feel like a competitive mum on the side of the pool," she jokes. "I don't want her to be the fastest or anything, but it's like: 'Concentrate! This is really important to me.'"
Steph admits that being a perfect parent isn't always possible and has lauded the other parents in her life and community that she leans on as her daughter enters new phases of schooling and communication. "I'm one of those people who's always trying to be better at parenting from asking other people. I do think it's a bit like that famous phrase, it takes a village to bring up a kid, I totally believe that."
On her BBC homecoming
Two years after her Channel 4 programme, Steph's Packed Lunch, was surreptitiously axed, Steph is returning to her roots at the BBC, where, alongside co-host Rav Wilding, she'll be presenting Crimewatch. "I'm absolutely buzzing because it's an institution," she says. "I watched it since I was a kid, it plays a real role in communities. But I'm also dead nervous about it, because it is such an institution."
"I'd been at the BBC since I was 19, and I left when I had my little girl so now it's like, here we are five years later, and I'm going back to where I had so many amazing experiences doing live shows."
Steph will appear at the Cheltenham Literary Festival on 15 October to discuss her novel, Deadline. Tickets are available to purchase here.