“The lines were too blurred. I was a slightly overweight Northern woman in her 30s but the stylists wanted me to be classier, ‘Cut your hair, lose weight, stop talking, put your arms away’.”
Then disaster struck as she was dropped by her record label, suffered a financial crisis and felt “the whole industry had turned their backs on us”.
“Henrik had loved me once but I could see in his eyes that he didn’t any more,” she lamented. “He wanted to go back to America and live his life and I loved him enough to let him.”
After her heart was broken twice, Jane then returned to her roots for a Channel 5 series entitled Jane McDonald: Yorkshire, a “love letter” to the region where she grew up.
The past month has also offered the opportunity to catch her show, Holidaying With Jane McDonald: The Caribbean, which remains available on My5.