Hello Magazine

‘Fame academy’ vocal coaches Carrie & David Grant introduce baby Imogen as they share the secrets of their harmonious marriage.

Celebrity vocal coaches Carrie and David Grant certainly have a lot to sing about. Not only are they the harmonious husband and wife team, who taught wannabe pop stars on the BBC talent show Fame Academy, about to celebrate 20 years of making sweet music together, but the couple are celebrating the birth of their third child - Imogen Beloved.

Their new bundle of joy, who was born weighing a healthy 6lb 13oz on the morning of 9 January, was named after Jamaican-born David’s great grandmother. ‘Imogen was a name we both always loved,’ explains Carrie. ‘It means “image of her mother”. And we decided on Beloved because David’s name means “beloved of God”. So we liked the idea of having a name that reflected both mum and dad.’

Sitting in a light and airy studio in their North London home with their other 2 daughters, 11 year old Olivia and Talia, 4, by their side, the couple are clearly besotted with the latest addition to their family and not in the least bit disappointed to have another girl.

‘We knew all along’ says David, 49, cradling Imogen in his arms. ‘We aren’t very good at surprises. We’ve always asked. When Carrie said she wanted to know the sex of the baby during her first pregnancy, the lady at the hospital said, don’t you want a surprise? And Carrie said “Having something that size come out of my body is a surprise in itself, I don’t need anymore!” Okay, so I’m in a female-heavy house now and ill be bullied relentlessly - but hey, I can deal with that!’ he laughs ‘and in any case Carrie and I are good at girls, we know how they work.’

‘By this time, I think you’re just so grateful,’ adds Carrie, who turned 40 last year. ‘you realise how incredible birth and life are. When the doctors asked me if I wanted tests to see if the baby was okay, I said “no”. I just wanted to have my baby. I didn’t care how it came out.’

Imogen was very much a planned baby, but the question for Carrie and David was when to fit pregnancy into their busy schedule. Although they are best known for Fame Academy - they acted as vocal coaches on 2 series of the show, as well as 2 celebrity editions for comic relief - they are jus as busy away from the cameras as they are in front of them.

When they aren’t helping young singing hopefuls, they can be found coaching some of the biggest names in British music. Over the years the couple have worked with the Spice Girls, Take That, Atomic Kitten, S Club, Lemar and Will Young, who they met when working on the first series of Pop Idol and continue to train. On top of this, 2 years ago the couple released a book and DVD on vocal techniques called You can sing, both of which became instant best sellers.

‘We’ve said for some time that it would be lovely to have another baby, but the past 4 years since Talia was born have been so frantic’ says Carrie. ‘If it wasn’t the TV work, it was the coaching, the book and the DVD. Then it got to the point one day when we were like “Lets do it now” because we didn’t want to leave it any longer.’
‘Well I didn’t want to be in my bath chair when the new baby came along’ jokes David.

Although Carrie is by no means old, she admits she was apprehensive about being a new mum again. ‘Obviously it gets tougher as you get older, but actually I was very lucky with Imogen. I got pregnant very quickly and her birth was pretty easy. After a 12 hour labor she came out with just 2 pushes, and there she was - just perfect.’

Imogen’s birth may have been straightforward but the last stages of Carrie’s pregnancy were anything but. Since the age of 17, she has suffered from Crohn’s, a debilitating condition that affects the bowel and intestine. Although as a teenager she suffered bouts of diarrhea, blood loss and skin rashes, it wasn’t until a routine check up at the dentist that she was finally diagnosed with the disease.

‘I just thought I was run down,’ she explains. ‘but when the dentist was all these ulcers in my mouth he asked about my other symptoms. He knew what it was immediately. It was a shock because I had no idea what Crohn’s was, but it was also a huge relief to know what was wrong.’

Over the next few years Carrie had to undergo a series of operations on her bowel and intestine, often spending months at a time in hospital. Even now, when she has a bad attack of the disease she can be left crippled with pain. ‘I live on painkillers and when its bad the doctors have to operate,’ she says matter of factly. ‘I try not to let it rule my life. For the most part i control it with diet, avoiding dairy products. But, like any illness, there are good and bad days.’

During the first 6 months of pregnancy, Carrie’s condition seemed to have gone into remission, but in the last trimester her symptoms returned with a vengeance. Unable to take the painkillers that would normally see her through such an attack, and unable to undergo surgery of any kind, Carrie was forced to come off solid food altogether. At a time when most expectant mothers are enjoying eating for 2, Carrie was so ill she couldn’t eat, living instead off water and a medicated drink from her specialists.

‘I take the drink probably 3 months of the year when things get bad, so you do get used to it. But it was hard during the pregnancy because you’re so hungry and have cravings. To be honest though, by that stage I was in so much pain I knew I didn’t have nay option. In a sense, being on the drink was a relief because I knew it would make me feel better.’

Carrie is very open about her condition. She is a tireless campaigner for the National Association for Colitis and Crohn’s Disease (NACC) and recently took part in a documentary about a girl who tragically died from the disease.
‘I said to David many years ago that if I ever had any kind of profile then I would use it to raise awareness about Crohn’s because so little is known about it.’ she says ‘okay, its not that easy to talk about your bowels.

Sometimes I think if I had another disease it would be easier to talk about because its such a taboo to talk about bottoms and all of that. Its not exactly glamorous! But I know it helps people from the letters I get. If I was a 17 year old girl lying in hospital waiting for surgery thinking “how am I going to ever have a normal life?” and I saw a woman on TV who was married, had 3 kids and a career and coped with Crohn’s, that would give me hope.’
‘That’s what I really admire about Carrie’ says David. ‘People in the world we inhabit don’t like to talk about their flaws and yet Carrie has made a commitment and she has stuck to it. The mail she gets is just so moving, it really does giver people hope.’

They may have been together for a long time, but Carrie and David are clearly a couple in love. They first met in the 1980s when David was launching a solo career as a pop star after he left the British funk duo Linx. He was invited to a Saturday morning children’s show called freeze frame, where Carrie was a presenter.

‘When I first saw Carrie we had this moment, which had never happened to me before and has never happened since, when our eyes just locked. I don’t think she really wanted to know me but I conned her into spending time with me on the train journey back to London and persuaded her that I was someone worth seeing again.’

The couple soon started dating and 2 years later, in 1988, they were married. ‘I recently read an article about love that said the first 2 years of a relationship are as good as it gets and that people’s happiness gradually declines so by year 4 the passion has gone. And I was like “hang on a minute”,’ says David. ‘The night Imogen was conceived, Carrie and I were out celebrating our 19th anniversary of meeting. We were walking through Covent Garden in London when we turned to each other and said ‘lets get a hotel room like a couple of teenagers!’ so all I can say is that the passion is very much still there.’

Having just appeared on our screens in the BBC show the sound of musicals, in which they both performed, Carrie and David are now preparing to start work with Take That on their come back tour.

‘Obviously Carrie couldn’t work for the past few weeks of her pregnancy, so im looking forward to her starting to work with me again,’ says David ‘people always ask us, “how ban you work so closely together and remain happily married?” but for us its never been an issue. If I do a days coaching without her I really miss her input.’

‘I think the secret is we never sat down and said “Lets work together” says Carrie. ‘It just happened. We were session singing with Take That at the height of their career and they asked us for help. It just went on from there. The next thing we knew we were working with the Spice Girls. We never really planned it and we certainly haven’t looked back. What amuses me is that people who don’t know us always assume that David and i met on fame academy! what they don’t realise is that not only have we been working side by side for years, but we’ve been married for almost 20 years and now have 3 children. It always comes as a bit of a shock!’