Clare Balding credits Love Island for allowing her to 'talk to teenagers'
Clare Balding enjoys watching the ITV2 dating show Love Island because it helps her to engage with teenagers, as well as analyse people's behaviours.
Clare Balding watches Love Island so she can "talk to teenagers".
The esteemed broadcaster also enjoys tuning into the ITV2 dating show - in which a group of single men and women live in a villa and take part in a series of tasks with a partner who they keep swapping until they meet their perfect person - so she can analyse people's different behaviours.
Clare, 54, told the new issue of Woman and Home magazine: "I like watching Love Island.
"Watching that show means I can talk to teenagers.
"It is such an interesting experiment, as an observation of human psychology and seeing how people behave."
The TV legend entered a civil partnership with the former BBC Radio 4 newsreader and continuity announcer Alice Arnold, 63, in 2006, and in 2015, they got married in a private ceremony.
If Clare - who lives a quiet life with Alice in Chiswick, West London - is ever home alone, she will pop round to their neighbour Rosie's house for company.
She explained: "[Being home alone is] the thing I dread the most. I don't want to be home alone.
"If I'm ever at home on my own, I will go round to our neighbour Rosie's within about 10 seconds of Alice leaving.
"And because we've got one of those doorbells with a camera, Alice can see me do it. She'll count how long it takes me to head off to Rosie's and then tease me about it."
Clare's broadcasting career spans over 30 years, and she has presented many big events to viewers, including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Crufts and Wimbledon.
But her most embarrassing moment came in 2023 when she commentated on King Charles' Coronation for the BBC and made an unintentional innuendo about Princess Anne.
Clare shared: "I commentated on the parade at the coronation, and there's something I said that made perfect sense to me, coming from a background working with horses, which was, 'There's the Princess Royal, who you may have seen make a hasty exit from Westminster Abbey, and she has been swiftly mounted.'
"When I got home, Alice said that other people may have interpreted this differently, and I think a lot of people found it funny.
"Hopefully, including the Princess Royal!"
In October, Clare is starring in Celebrity Traitors - the BBC game show where a few members of a group are chosen as Traitors and the rest become Faithful, and it's the job of the Faithful to try to work out who the Traitors are without being "murdered" by their opponents.
The nine-part series will see the celebrities compete for a cash prize of up to £100,000 for a charity of their choice.
But Clare found the show "intense" and "very challenging" because it forced her current friendships, including former Olympic Diver Tom Daley, 31, to fly "out of the window".
Describing Celebrity Traitors as "brutal", Clare said at the Goodwoof event, where she was promoting her new novel, Pastures New, in May: "It is so intense, and you get completely obsessed with the game.
"Obviously, I knew quite a lot of them before I went in, but the friendships you had before go out the window!
"That, for me, is very challenging because I like to be friends with everybody! It’s brutal, but I think I’m glad I did it. It will make good television, and there are some really strong moments."
