Born in Birmingham to an English father and Croatian mother, Adrian Chiles, 57, has had a long career as a TV and radio presenter. In 2007, he presented ‘The One Show’ before moving on to ‘Match of the Day’. In 2019, he started writing a column on the ordinary things of life for ‘The Guardian’. He has two daughters with his ex-wife, presenter Jane Garvey, and is currently married to The Guardian editor Katherine Viner.

Here, she looks back at the moments that changed her perspective on money, love, her career and her health.

The ups and downs in my income over the years have been stressful But I’ve always been pretty careful with money. I have never spent more than I have. When I joined ITV I started making a lot of money, which was weird. Then things went wrong (in 2015 it was announced that Chiles’ contract with ITV Sport had been terminated with immediate effect) and suddenly I was earning a lot less.

It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but I’m doing pretty well by anyone’s standards. At one point, I was earning more and I bought an apartment. It was a big apartment and there was a big dining table. It had 12 chairs and everything. When I moved, I thought I’d cook myself a nice meal to celebrate the move. I sat at this huge bloody table and thought: What am I doing? How crazy is this? It was a real moment of realization for me. I didn’t regret buying the flat, but I tried to buy less stuff afterwards.

When parents get old and die, you realize they have all these things. I don’t want my belongings to be thrown into the landfill. I’m trying to think: How much do I need to be happy? All I need is pottery in the garden. I don’t have to travel everywhere, go to everything. The more things you have, the more you spend. If I won the lottery, I’d probably spend it all on an ad campaign that said: Buy Less Stuff.

Read Next

The most pointless thing I bought recently was a compass to put in my car’s dashboard. Suddenly I decided I wanted to know which direction I was going.

I wish I treated love more like a game. I wish I hadn’t worried so much and thought so much. We spend our whole lives trying to find the person we need and the person we want, and we have to hope they are the same person. I was lucky enough to eventually find this, but I wish I hadn’t been so serious about it. I would spend three years asking someone out only for them to say no.

When you get together with someone, you may only like them physically. You decide if they are right for you for one reason or another. And then, retroactively, you begin to justify that decision. You start to figure out how to live together and what you have in common. This is the wrong way. This is a lazy way of thinking. I wish I had bought it by date and decided later.

When does it click? You kind of proceed by trial and error. It’s a bit like passing your driving test: It’s much sweeter if you fail once or twice.

Discovering that I had ADHD was a lightbulb moment. A therapist referred me for testing and I subsequently received a bill for £1,500. Private medicine has gone crazy. I ignored it. About three years later, when I was 50, I was with another therapist who was a really good CBT woman. He said: Have you been diagnosed with ADHD? When I went back to the first clinic they had an eight page letter that I had never received before. He laid it all out very well. He basically said my ADHD was the root of all my problems.

They suggested a book. When I opened it I thought: This is incredible. Almost every detail is mine. My whole life was meaningful. Afterwards, my treatment continued. I told this to three people who were not afraid to tell me the truth: a colleague in her 60s, my youngest daughter who is around 16, and my friend Paul Connolly. They all said: “Fools.” Then I showed them the book.

ADHD medication helps. However, it alone constitutes 49 percent of the solution. It will make you feel a little better, but the only way to deal with it is to tackle lifelong bad habits, the way you work. Stop trying to do 20 things at once. Do one thing at a time. I’m trying really hard to do this.

ADHD probably affected how much I used to drink. I was once filming a BBC program called Drinkers Like Me and for the first time I counted the number of drinks I had had the day before. It was astronomical. I think it was 36. I was shocked. I didn’t even think of it as a big day of drinking. This was an important moment. I knew something about my health had to change. Now I advocate always counting units.

You never know how lucky you are in your first job. For 13 years I presented a lunchtime business show on the BBC, which had a loyal, albeit small, following. It was so great. We had so much fun. We had the freedom to do whatever we wanted. You think it will always be like this. But then things get tough and you realize how lucky you are. I think this happens in many professions. If a bigger job, more money, or more profile comes your way, you should take it.

I find radio and writing a much more satisfying job than television. I was doing live TV more or less every day for 20 years, and then it just stopped.

After giving up fashion, I returned to radio broadcasting. I remembered why I got into this business in the first place: asking questions of people calling. I felt the blood flowing through my veins again.

I write my columns Guardquite the opposite. It’s like trying to do your homework; I postponed it until the last minute. I’m incredibly proud of it, but sometimes I wonder, is this really fun? But when people stop me on the street to talk about it, I won’t leave them alone. They eventually move away from me.

The Strange Columns of Adrian Chiles is out now (Profile, £10.99)

Interview by Eleanor Peake