Andrea McLean has revealed she “lost everything” after leaving Loose Women in 2020 to launch her own business venture.
The 56-year-old Glasgow-born presenter stepped away from the ITV daytime programme after 13 years to establish female empowerment brand This Girl Is On Fire.
However, the business collapsed during the pandemic, leaving Ms McLean and her husband Nick Feeney facing serious financial difficulties.
“I lost everything, literally everything in my 50s,” Ms McLean told HELLO!’s Second Act podcast.
Andrea McLean left Loose Women in 2020 to launch her own business
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ITV
“My home, health, finances, I lost my identity in terms of I’m not ‘that lady’ anymore.”
The presenter said she lost her home and hundreds of thousands of pounds in life savings when the lifestyle brand failed.
Ms McLean also revealed she applied for a job at Starbucks out of desperation but never received a response.
“I tried to get a job in Starbucks and they didn’t even get back to me, it was humiliating,” she said.
Ms McLean was a presenter on the ITV panel show for 13 years
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“My agent told me I would never work in TV again if someone saw me.”
The mother-of-two, who also has two stepdaughters, said such concerns became irrelevant given her situation.
“That’s all very well, but I needed a job and money to buy food for the kids. Shame is not an option,” she explained.
Ms McLean also resorted to selling her engagement rings on resale platform Vinted in an attempt to raise money.
The presenter was relieved that her relationship lasted throughout the traumatic ordeal
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She described the ordeal as deeply embarrassing after publicly sharing her ambitions for the business, only for it to collapse.
The television personality’s financial struggles were compounded by serious health issues which left her unable to work.
Over Christmas 2024, Ms McLean was rushed to hospital after collapsing at home, where she lay on her bathroom floor for an hour before being discovered by Mr Feeney.
Medical scans later revealed severe pneumonia, acute kidney injury and sepsis, requiring urgent treatment with intravenous antibiotics.
She spent four days recovering in the Emergency Assessment Ward and has since spoken about continuing health complications.
The presenter had also suffered multiple bouts of Covid, while doctors previously investigated ongoing exhaustion believed to be linked to either Covid or an autoimmune condition.
Ms McLean admitted she had spent years operating at “100 miles an hour forever” before she “literally crashed and burned”.
She described falling into debt as “the toughest thing I’ve ever endured – and I’m a menopausal woman”, adding that the feeling of powerlessness was “like nothing on Earth”.
Andrea McLean admitted she had spent years operating at ‘100 miles an hour forever’ before she ‘literally crashed and burned’
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The presenter continued: “But at night, when you’re laying there, everything was just overwhelming – in terms of, I don’t know how to get out of this hole.”
The couple developed a nightly ritual of naming three things they were grateful for, something Ms McLean said became much harder during difficult times.
Her financial troubles eventually forced the family to borrow money from relatives before selling their UK property and relocating to Spain, where she says the slower pace of life has helped her recovery.
The author has since documented the experience in her new book, Shameless: Finding Freedom and Resilience Through Failure, published by DK Red.
The memoir ends with the presenter telephoning her credit card company to pay off her final outstanding debt.
While she admitted this did not leave her financially secure, Ms McLean described it as a major turning point emotionally.
She said she decided to speak openly about her struggles because she became tired of living in fear of being exposed.
Loose Women attending the National Television Awards 2020
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“Shame is such an isolator – it makes us feel less than, we feel hideous, we feel like we’re the only people that are going through whatever it is we’re going through,” she said.
“So that’s why I thought, right: I’ll go first.”
Ms McLean, who married Mr Feeney in 2017, said she is “still in the trenches” but now feels in a far better place mentally and emotionally.