The one lesson I’ve learned from life

Presenter Ranvir Singh

RanviR Singh, 45, is a presenter on good Morning Britain. She was the face of BBC north West Tonight before

leaving for iTv in 2012. She lives just outside of London with her ten-year-old son Tushaan.

AMBITION AND KIDS ARE A TOUGH MIX

You need laser focus to get what you want from your career. It’s important to back yourself, which means taking risks when others might not. It was a counterintuitive move for me to leave the BBC ten years ago when certain programmes were starting to move North. Everyone was saying ‘Wait until BBC Breakfast comes up here, it’ll be yours’.

But ITV wanted me on its breakfast show, and I’m an impatient person and wanted to get on. It meant leaving a nice cosy staff job for a freelance contract, which was daunting. But you have to believe in yourself because you haven’t got time to sit around.

When I started out, it always felt like ‘My name won’t fit, my face won’t fit, my look doesn’t fit’. It wasn’t said but it was implied. You could see it in the decisions that were being made. As I say to many of my non-white colleagues, when you’re a minority you can feel like you’re riding a unicycle, blindfolded and juggling fire, but you’ll still be overlooked. Things have changed a lot now but there is still work to be done.

I have always felt the need to prove to my parents that they made the right decision moving to the uK from India in the 1960s. I’ve wanted to give back after the back-breaking work my mum did in a factory, and my dad did, too, before he died.

I haven’t been able to take my son to school for the past ten years because I’ve been on breakfast TV and that’s a big thing for a mother to choose to do, and for a child to have to live with.

once, I was exhausted, my alarm went off at three in the morning and I was getting into the shower half-asleep and thinking ‘What is making me do this?’. I thought, ‘You’re doing it for him,’ and then I said, ‘Just shut up Ranvir. You’re doing it for you’.

The ambition was there when I was 20 and it isn’t going away. But as a mother, I’ve had to merge the two parts of my life together, and that takes courage. Ambition and parenthood are a tough mix.

RanviR Singh is an ambassador for the domestic abuse charity Refuge. visit refuge.org.uk.