I nearly jumped in front of train after Cbeebies axed me over nude pics, says Sarah-Jane Honeywell – then my baby kicked
CHILDREN’S TV presenters are renowned for being squeaky clean, so parents across the country gasped after near-naked photographs of Sarah-Jane Honeywell hit the headlines.
The 50-year-old former Cbeebies star, who lives in Lincoln, posed topless, lying on a giant plate of food in London’s Trafalgar Square, for a now infamous Peta advert in 2011.
The seemingly-innocent charity snap destroyed her life – leaving her suicidal, in £100,000 of debt and estranged from her former pal, Mr Tumble aka Justin Fletcher.
Breaking point
Choking back tears as she recalls her darkest moment, Sarah-Jane tells Fabulous: “I felt like I’d let my husband down. I’d let my parents down. I’d let everybody down.
“I walked to the train station in Liverpool and, I hadn’t thought I was going to kill or hurt myself, but it was like a compulsion.
“It was like, ‘I need to jump’. And then I remember my little boy kicking and that shocked me out of it.”
Sarah-Jane is starring in Shamed, a new Fabulous YouTube series exploring the effects vilification and online trolling has had on six famous women.
Sarah-Jane, who has two children, Indiana, six, and eight-year-old Phoenix, with her ex-Hollyoaks actor husband Ayden Callaghan, 42, says: “I just felt like my life was over.
“Cancel culture is really dangerous and I think people forget that human beings are behind those celebrity personas. People can make mistakes.”
Promising start
Sarah-Jane landed her first presenting job on Cbeebies aged 29 in 2001, and earned around £300 per episode.
“I started out on Tikkabilla and then did a spin-off show of Higgledy House, which is where I got to work with Justin aka Mr Tumble,” she says.
“I jumped on his back during the audition and we just completely got on.”
Sarah-Jane thrived at the broadcaster but admits she was shocked by the strict rules presenters had to follow.
She once angered producers after getting a giant tattoo of fairy wings on her back.
“My producer was horrified. I thought it was really progressive and that people shouldn’t be judged for having tattoos,” she says.
“But it was really frowned upon. I was shocked. We had to be squeaky, squeaky clean.”
Sarah-Jane says she kept serious health ailments from her colleagues over fear of getting the boot.
I was probably one of the few people at Cbeebies who didn’t even drink
Sarah-Jane Honeywell
“I had been on Prozac for much of my life after developing an eating disorder aged 12 ,” she explains.
“When I went for my medical at the BBC they asked if I had ever been on illegal drugs or antidepressants and I knew it would be best to lie about that.
“From the age of about 24 to 26 I had been dabbling in cocaine and pills but I was completely sober from 2000 onwards.
“I was probably one of the few people at Cbeebies who didn’t even drink.”
Life-changing decision
Then, in October 2011, animal rights charity Peta approached Sarah-Jane – who was then a vegan – and asked if she’d star in one of their campaigns.
“They said I could wear a bra and pants, so I got some flesh-coloured ones, and I was asked to lie down on a giant plate of food,” she says.
“As I got in position, they asked me to take my bra off because it’d get loads more news coverage.
“I thought, ‘OK, I’m helping a good cause’ and I didn’t really see what was wrong with it. They’re just boobs and they were covered with my hands.”
Sarah-Jane admits she “got quite a shock” when the photo hit the newsstands.
“There was just this shift,” she says. “I remember my legs almost going from underneath me. I phoned Justin and left a message asking him to call me.
“I felt like something bad was going to happen. I never heard from him or any of my former colleagues again.
“Then I found out in the papers, they’d gone to the BBC for comment, that I know longer worked there. That was a shock.”
Barrage of abuse
As well as being sacked, Sarah-Jane recalls receiving a barrage of online hate around this time, which impacted her mental health.
“There was a Facebook group set up called ‘I Hate Sarah-Jane Honeywell’. That was a lot,” she says.
“Other comments included ‘attention seeker’, ‘desperate’, ‘waster’, ‘tacky’, ‘I reckon she’s absolute filth’, ‘loves herself this one’, ‘if she had brains she’d be dangerous’… it was annoying because I felt like they were unfair.
“I didn’t mind people thinking I was naive but what really annoyed me was the suggestion that if you get your boobs out you’re automatically some sort of sex pest.
“You weren’t allowed to own your own body as a woman.”
Sarah-Jane says a lot of the comments came from Cbeebies mums, she says: “When the mums were commenting on Facebook I used to think, I’m basically a babysitter.
“Why do you care so much? Why are you being so vile about me?”
I couldn’t get any work at all and I was just surrounded by debt
Sarah-Jane Honeywell
Sarah-Jane says work “completely dried up” and she struggled to pay off debts, some of which she accumulated during her drug-taking years.
“I couldn’t get any work at all and I was just surrounded by debt,” she says.
“It was all consuming. It felt like I was drowning in it. I lost my job and it felt like I’d lost my identity.
“I’d lost everything, including myself. I didn’t really know whether I could see a future.”
Struggling through
Sarah-Jane says her husband Ayden was her rock during this difficult time, but, in March 2015, she hit rock bottom.
“I just hit a really horrible stage in my life,” she says. “I had had a miscarriage. I had £100,000 of debt. I had no job. Then I fell pregnant at 41.
“In Hollyoaks, Ayden’s character and his partner were going through a stillbirth. They were filming it around the same time I was going to have my baby.
“I absolutely fell to pieces. I was such a psycho about it and he asked to be written out of the soap.”
Sarah-Jane was so anxious that dark thoughts once consumed her as she stood on the train platform.
“My little boy kicked and that shocked me,” she says. “I had a really stressful pregnancy but after giving birth, everything changed.
“I called him Phoenix because he rose out of the ashes of what was a really hard time.”
Sarah-Jane is now back on her feet with a stable job at BBC Radio Lincoln where she presents the Sunday afternoon show, as well as running her own drama school Curious Theatre.
She says she has “thrown everything” into giving her boys the “best life”, adding: “I always wanted people to like me and approve of me and my boys just made me go, ‘actually, the only thing that’s important in life is now with your kids’.”
Moving on
And, nearly 13 years after her career came crashing down, she says she has nothing but pride for her infamous animal rights shoot.
“Well, I do quite like the picture. I think I look alright,” she says.
“My kids and their friends at school have seen it and they don’t care. I’m proud of how it looks.
“Would I still have done that if I could see in the future and I knew what was going to happen? Yes, because I’m so happy now and it just changed everything for me.”
On the trolls, she says: “I’d tell the trolls to just think about what you’re saying. And, why are you saying it?
“That person is a human being and they have lots of other hard things in their lives, so just take a step back and realise that we’re all the same.”
The BBC declined to comment when approached by Fabulous.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE
EVERY 90 minutes in the UK a life is lost to suicide.
It doesn’t discriminate, touching the lives of people in every corner of society – from the homeless and unemployed to builders and doctors, reality stars and footballers.
It’s the biggest killer of people under the age of 35, more deadly than cancer and car crashes.
And men are three times more likely to take their own life than women.
Yet it’s rarely spoken of, a taboo that threatens to continue its deadly rampage unless we all stop and take notice, now.
That is why The Sun launched the You’re Not Alone campaign.
The aim is that by sharing practical advice, raising awareness and breaking down the barriers people face when talking about their mental health, we can all do our bit to help save lives.
Let’s all vow to ask for help when we need it, and listen out for others… You’re Not Alone.
If you, or anyone you know, needs help dealing with mental health problems, the following organisations provide support:
- CALM, www.thecalmzone.net, 0800 585 858
- Heads Together, www.headstogether.org.uk
- Mind, www.mind.org.uk, 0300 123 3393
- Papyrus, www.papyrus-uk.org, 0800 068 41 41
- Samaritans, www.samaritans.org, 116 123
- Movember, www.uk.movember.com
- Anxiety UK www.anxietyuk.org.uk, 03444 775 774 Monday-Friday 9.30am-10pm, Saturday/Sunday 10am-8pm