If your daughter isn’t in a serious relationship at 30 you should give her egg-freezing as a birthday present"- Says MTV and Channel 4 June Sarpong

June Sarpong sprang to fame as a youth TV presenter on MTV and Channel 4. But now, at 40 and wondering whether she’ll ever have children, June Sarpong says the notion women can have both family and career is a ‘lie’.

In an exclusive interview with today’s You magazine, the star of ITV’s Loose Women says: ‘I’m part of a generation that totally put work over relationships.


‘I don’t think I regret that – I’ve enjoyed it – but the lie that was sold to us was that you can have it all.’

‘And I’ve realised there’s always compromise.'

On her prospects of becoming a mum, June says: ‘I’m 40, so who knows? But I won’t feel a sense of dread if I don’t have children. I want to be a mother but it doesn’t have to be biological.’

'My sister has two teenage daughters I am close to. I have a friend who enjoys being a stepmum. I’m from an African tradition that says it takes a village to raise a child. I’m quite philosophical. I’m open to whatever my life is supposed to be.’

If her destiny is to be a mother by helping disadvantaged children when she’s older, she’s cool, she says.

She has kept her options open by having her eggs frozen by fertility doctor Geeta Nargund, who gives the advice: ‘If your daughter isn’t in a serious relationship at 30 you should give her egg-freezing as a birthday present.’

'What [egg-freezing] does is help to equalise things between men and women: if there were no biological clock there would be no difference between men and women ageing.'

June adds: ‘We should make sure young women know that although science is changing things, there is still a biological clock. If you want children, make it a priority.’

She doesn’t drink – ‘not because I disapprove, I just never started. I love cooking. It’s an African thing; everything happens around food. We have a family house in Ghana again, so I visit every year. I wonder sometimes: when you die, do you still get to eat?’ She’s laughing again. ‘In heaven do you get to have sex? Food? I’m choosing food…’

Relationships are not off the menu, though. She says she’s just met someone new but it’s ‘early days’.

Many moons ago she had a two-year relationship with the MP David Lammy, but though she has had many boyfriends since then – ‘black, white, Indian, Jewish, atheist’ – she hasn’t found The One.

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