Lucy Alexander was a firm fixture on screens as the original co-presenter of BBC's much-loved property show, Homes Under the Hammer.
The TV presenter, who started out in children's television on Channel 5, became the face of the programme alongside Martin Roberts from its launch in 2003. However in 2016, Lucy quit the show and has gone on to feature on A Place In The Sun and Channel 4's Best Of Both Worlds, replacing housing guru Kirstie Allsopp. More recently, she fronted BBC show The Customer Is Always Right in 2019, however it wasn't recommissioned following the Covid pandemic.
While the 53-year-old sometimes returns to Homes Under the Hammer to help buyers, the presenter took a few years away from work to focus on her family, and her mother sadly died.
Lucy is married to former footballer Stewart Castledine (Can Nguyen/REX/Shutterstock)
Their daughter Kitty was paralysed after suffering a virus (Instagram)But as the pandemic raged, she then struggled to find any work at all. She told Express.co.uk: "Then it was Covid, then we didn't get recommissioned, and then I was out of a job. I didn't have any work. It wasn't the greatest of times for me. I still had a mortgage to pay and a family to feed."
Talking about shows she would love to work on, Lucy added: "I love Long Lost Family." The ITV series follows Davina McCall and Nicky Campell as they meet with people who are desperate to be reunited with their estranged relatives. It's a show that always has Lucy in tears, she admits. "That would be one of my utter favourites to host. That is something I would do," she continued.
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"I like being around people but anything at all to be back on telly. I'm used to kind of having that daytime slot where I'm on the TV every day. I do miss that even though I'm still on Homes Under The Hammer. I would like to get back to doing a regular show." Since then, she has joined A Place in the Sun.
Away from work, Lucy is married to ex-Premier League footballer Stewart Castledine, whom she met through a mutual friend. The couple tied the knot in 2000 and share two children - son Leo, who has followed in his father's footsteps as a footballer, and daughter Kitty, an actress in EastEnders.
Her two worlds collided in 2016 when she presented a documentary series close to home. She was the face of the first episode of the five-part BBC documentary series Matron, Medicine and Me: 70 Years of the NHS - which explored medical treatment for patients with disabilities in the UK.
She was able to touch on her own family's experience, as her daughter was diagnosed with transverse myelitis - a rare condition that sees the swelling of the spinal cord. In 2012, Kitty suffered from a virus that saw her immune system attack her spinal cord, leaving her paralysed and in a wheelchair.
While appearing on the podcast White Wine Question Time in 2019, Lucy spoke of how her daughter's condition changed her life. "It's been the making of us as a family and of her. It's really phenomenal how I've watched a kid - she's a young woman now – change her life and turn it around.
"Still every day it takes my breath away to see her in a wheelchair wheeling up to me. It's tough, it's bloody tough." She added: "It makes you so much more selfless, it gives you strength, things that couldn’t bother me before I couldn’t give a flying f*** about. I can connect with people who are sad or grieving like I couldn't before. I have deeper connections with people."
Now her children are old enough to have left home, the mum-of-two is ready to get stuck into TV projects. "I just feel like we have had a few years of having a lot of time to process and think," she said. "The kids have all gone off now and flown the nest. I definitely feel like I'm ready for a new challenge."
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