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Andrea McLean has revealed that she was forced to sell her engagement rings on Vinted and apply for a job in Starbucks after “losing everything” following her Loose Women exit.
The TV presenter, 56, chose to leave the ITV show to focus on her lifestyle brand in 2020 – however, she ultimately lost her home and hundreds of thousands in life savings during the pandemic. She also faced a series of health crises that left her unable to work, having been diagnosed with severe pneumonia, acute kidney injury and sepsis after collapsing at home.
Speaking in a new podcast interview, McLean spoke about the “humiliating” time.
Andrea McClean with her fellow ‘Loose Women’ stars (Denise Welch, Zoe Tyler, Coleen Nolan and Kate Thornton) in 2011 (PA)
“I lost everything, literally everything in my fifties,” she told HELLO!’s Second Act podcast.
“My home, health, finances, I lost my identity in terms of I’m not ‘that lady’ anymore. When you’re in your 20s and you’re finding your way in the world, people are a lot more accommodating. I lost it all.”
McLean added that she felt “shame” about it all and thought that people would “point and laugh” at her for quitting TV to start a business that “didn’t work”.
“I tried to get a job in Starbucks and they didn’t even get back to me, it was humiliating. My agent told me I would never work in TV again if someone saw me,” she said.
“That’s all very well, but I needed a job and money to buy food for the kids. Shame is not an option.”
McLean, who married her third husband Nick Feeney in 2017, has a 24-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter as well as two stepdaughters.
“I’ve literally done the most embarrassing thing that a human being can do, which is to tell the whole world that they’re going to leap out and see if they can fly,” she added. “And I didn’t fly. I landed flat on my face and I completely embarrassed myself.”
Andrea McLean couldn’t get a job in Starbucks after leaving ‘Loose Women’ (PA)
As for how she’s doing now, McLean said that she’s “still in the trenches” but in a better place “mentally and emotionally”.
“Our relationship survived and that’s huge,” she added, referring to her husband Feeney.
Last year, McLean revealed that she had collapsed at home and lay on her bathroom floor for an hour before her husband found her and rushed her to hospital.
“Then my X-ray and CT scans came back. I had severe pneumonia, acute kidney Injury and sepsis,” she said in February. “Things happened quickly; drips, super-strong antibiotics via IV and orally, and I was transferred to the Emergency Assessment Ward.”
McLean spent four days in hospital recovering and later told fans that she was “still having funny turns”.
Two years earlier, McLean had been looking into why she had been “poorly for so long” with blood tests after experiencing months of “absolute exhaustion”.
“The thinking is that it is Covid / autoimmune related. It’s a nuisance!” she said at the time.
McLean is opening up about her health and business struggles in a new book, Shameless: Finding Freedom and Resilience Through Failure.