Christine Lampard has revealed she felt ‘absolute fear’ growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
The Troubles was an ethno-nationalist conflict which began in the 1960s and was fought between nationalist and loyalist groups over the status of Northern Ireland.
It ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which set up a shared government and worked to stop the violence.
Christine, 46, who grew up in the town of Newtownards, Co. Down, said she often worried for the safety of her musician father who travelled for gigs.
Speaking on the Loose Women podcast, she said: ‘I remember just an absolute sense of fear growing up, particularly when I was younger than even my teen years, because my Dad was a musician…
‘So he was out on the road all of the time and it was at a point where people were going into various bars and clubs and just shooting around them. And many musicians had lost their lives in various atrocities over the years back home.
Christine Lampard has revealed she felt ‘absolute fear’ growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles
Christine, 46, who grew up in the town of Newtownards, Co. Down, said she often worried for the safety of her musician father who travelled for gigs (pictured at age 17)
‘I remember having a terrible feeling, what I didn’t realise was anxiety. There was no term for it then. It was just, it’s just what you felt in your gut. But I remember as a very young child, having complete and utter panic that Dad hadn’t arrived home.
‘And of course, by the nature of what he was doing, he wasn’t coming home until maybe one in the morning, maybe two in the morning. I would have had school the next day, I couldn’t sleep until I heard him drive up outside the house.’
Christine remembered how her mother told her a story of having to scoop Christine out of the bath when she was a toddler because bombs were going of nearby.
She said: ‘I remember, even at a very young age, being very panicked about it. For example, when I was about two or three, I don’t really remember this myself, but my sister and I were in the bath.
‘My Mum vividly remembers the door being knocked and it was the army saying, ‘Get out of the house,’ because there was a bomb scare in the area.
‘Mum had to scoop two wet children out of the bath, wrap us up as best she could, and get us out of the house. I remember those kinds of things. Looking back now, it’s almost crazy to explain it to anyone.’
‘In my hometown, at night, large bollards would be placed to close off the road through the heart of the town because that’s often where bombs would be detonated. They would shut the roads. These kinds of things became our absolute norm.’
After graduating from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in politics, Christine got into TV, working for BBC Northern Ireland until she moved to London in 2007.
Christine remembered how her mother told her a story of having to scoop Christine out of the bath when she was a toddler because bombs were going of nearby (pictured with her father)
After graduating from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in politics, Christine got into TV, working for BBC Northern Ireland until she moved to London in 2007
During her podcast interview with Loose Women co-star Nadia Sawalha, Christine also opened up on her marriage to Frank Lampard.
The presenter revealed the secret to her happy marriage with Frank, who she tied the knot with in 2015, is that they are still best mates.
She said: We’re still absolute best mates. He’ll be the first person I’ll pick the phone up to sort anything out with. And the biggest thing for me going back to my love of comedy, is he makes me laugh.
‘And that is such a powerful thing to me – I have to be able to have a giggle… We just have proper laughs. We have the same points of view on things.
‘We don’t argue over parenting or how things run in the house. We sort of sing off the same page and that sort of makes everything flow…The basis is, there’s love, we’ve got each other’s backs and we’re supportive.
‘And if he suggests that some job is happening and he wants to do it, we’ll make it work.’
Discussing how she needed to support Frank whilst he was playing football for Chelsea and England, Christine said: ‘I remember often when he was playing, and the pressures of, you know, doing a job where there’s millions of people watching you…
‘I think it was even pre he and I getting together, and there were a couple of moments obviously where it didn’t go according to plan, when you’re playing for your country and you’ve got the entire country pointing at you afterwards.
The presenter revealed the secret to her happy marriage with Frank, who she tied the knot with in 2015, is that they are still best mates (pictured in 2021)
‘It’s interesting recently with Gareth Southgate talking about groups of men coming together and being supportive of one another and everything else.
‘It really resonated with me because Frank had been through the football thing and the need for feeling like you’ve got a team, a tribe, a group of people around you that will support you when you’re you’re kind of having moments of feeling, ‘Oh, I should be strong, but I’m just not feeling it today.
‘But how do I really tell everybody because they’ll never understand?’ So yeah, that was something I would always have been very aware of with him.’
Christine recalled how Fank would sometimes cancel on dates if he had played a match that didn’t go well.
She continued: ‘He used to cancel nights out when Chelsea didn’t win, when he was playing with them. We would maybe have plans to go for dinner or drinks or something and he’d go ‘I’m not going.
‘I just don’t want to go. I don’t want to go,’ and there’d be anger and he just doesn’t want to talk to anybody about it.
‘It was like he needed to kind-of decompress, and then he was ready to go again Monday morning. But there were loads of those moments where he thought, ‘No, no, no,’ and he’d be so angry with himself if something didn’t go according to plan.’
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