Miquita Oliver and Fearne Cotton seized the opportunity to bury the hatchet face-to-face when the former made a guest appearance on the latter’s podcast.
Over the summer, Miquita claimed that she had once been fired from her role on Radio 1 after making comments in the press branding her former colleague Fearne a “devil woman”
Speaking on her popular podcast Miss Me?, the former T4 host reflected on her “tumultuous” relationship with Fearne, claiming she’d made some “really awful” comments about her in the past.
Admitting she’d been “really ashamed” of her behaviour “for a long time”, Miquita went on to claim that she and Fearne “didn’t like each other” in those days, before quickly clarifying: “I don’t even think she didn’t like me – but because I’d been so awful about her she stayed away from me.”
The two presenters opened up to one another on a new episode of Fearne’s podcast My Happy Place, during which they reflected on both starting out in their TV careers as teenagers.
“We’re in a really weird job, for starters, where you become instantly exposed to lots of people that don’t know you,” Fearne said. “And I wonder what that felt like for you.”
Miquita then explained that in that era, they were dealing with “early noughties press, who were vile”, recalling a “veil of racism” that she was subjected to in the media as a young woman.
“[It was] like, ‘we won’t call her a dirty little Black girl, but we will call her dirty and grubby’,” Miquita said.
She then went on to say she felt “terrified of Fearne”, claiming: “I thought that Fearne was everything a TV presenter should be.”
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“You’re very beautiful, with blonde hair, and very slim,” she told the interviewer. “And I felt very Black and overweight, and then the press sort of compounded that fact.
“So I was like, ‘oh, I hate Fearne Cotton, it’s Fearne Cotton that I don’t like’. And then, I had this fucking revelation, and I was like, ‘oh my god, it was the press’ fault’.”
Posting on Instagram about the conversation on Tuesday morning, Fearne described her interview with Miquita as a “truly healing experience”.
“Decades of basically ignoring each other and huge piles of assumptions kept a canyon between us,” she wrote. “Yet sitting down, being brutally honest, and listening to each other gave us a true understanding of how we both felt and who we were as young people.
“By the end of the chat I felt such happiness that we had so much common ground, really got each other and saw each other’s flaws and pain, as well as the impact the press have had on us both over the years.”
Fearne continued: “I also felt sad. I felt sad that we had missed 20 years of a potential friendship. But I’m mainly just left with happiness [and] I’m glad to now count her as a friend.
“We’ve all had fall outs. Maybe you’re in one now. Sometimes it’s right to let people go, or have firm boundaries in place for your own sanity. But I think if you have a strong feeling that amends could be made and relations could be repaired it’s always worth reaching out.
“When I initially contacted Miquita, I could have easily been rejected again. That was a risk I was willing to take. Yet luckily I wasn’t and she got back to me with kindness and generosity. Who would have thought! How brilliant!”
She added: “We both hope this podcast inspires many others to reach out and mend broken friendships. Big love to you all.”
Earlier this year, Miquita spoke about how Fearne had surprised her by sending her a private message out of the blue.
“She sent me a message on Instagram when I was having a fucking awful time,” Miquita told her co-host Jordan Stephens. “She said, ‘Hey Miquita, I just watched a clip of you talking about how the press used to refer to you and it resonated deeply. I just wanted to say thank you for opening up about it. Sending love’.”
When footage of this conversation was shared on social media, Fearne replied: “Beyond grateful for how we’ve reconnected. Makes me very happy.”
