Louise Minchin on why she set her new novel in Scotland

Louise Minchin gave up BBC Breakfast in 2021 and has since thrown herself into a series of life-affirming escapades across the world.

Louise Minchin is the former BBC Breakfast presenter who swapped the famous red sofa to become an athlete, adventurer and author.

But the 56-year-old mum-of-two who swam in shark-infested waters off Alcatraz, cycled across Argentina, free dived under metre-thick ice in Finland and conquered claustrophobia to go wild caving in the deep, dark bowels of Britain, was this week back in her comfort zone on a tour of her beloved Scotland.

She beamed: “It’s my second home!”

The St Andrews University graduate has been in Fort William, Strathpeffer and Aberdeen, where, hosted by Jenny Graham – the fastest woman to cycle unsupported around the world – she talked about her adventures and the launch of her debut novel, Isolation Island.

Louise – whose 2023 award-winning non-fiction book, Fearless, was the result of a 13-month global adventure during which she joined a string of daredevil women in 17 incredible exploits – told The Sunday Post that while the plot for her gripping first thriller came as she competed in the lockdown version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here at Gwrych Castle in North Wales, only Scotland would do for the book’s setting. And, she revealed, it was a decision that led to another “extraordinary” experience.

Louise with David Ginola on I’m A Celebrity.

The Sunday Post caught up with Louise – one of last year’s judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction – at her home in Chester where she writes from a room at the top of the house overlooking the treetops.

There’s a picture of her on the wall behind with lawman-turned-TV personality Rob Rinder, taken in 2020 as the pair competed in a gruelling race across the Namibian desert for Sport Relief.

“I am a massive fan of Scotland,” she smiled. “I was at St Andrew’s University. I still have dreams about it now. I absolutely love that place. It is etched in my soul. I spent a lot of time travelling on the west coast, going to Skye and Fort William and walking in Glen Coe.

“I wanted to set the novel on an island, and for me the north-west coast of Scotland is an incredibly special place. I had a brilliant week with my husband on a research tour to Mull, Iona and Skye. There was something so special about the remoteness and the stunning beauty of the west coast. I knew that the novel was going to be set in a monastery and I had already written quite a lot of the book before I went to Iona Abbey, but I had an extraordinary experience there.

“It was a brilliantly stormy day and when I walked in and opened the door to the cloisters, I literally took a breath because it was like I had fallen into the set of the novel.”

Spookily, it mirrored her imaginary scene. Louise said: “The gargoyles, the sloping floors, the cloisters… I loved it.”

Iconic Eilean Donan Castle near Dornie – more specifically its working portcullis – also features. Louise grinned: “At the start of the book somebody nearly gets killed by that portcullis. The novel is steeped in west coast reality…”

It opens with a celebrity-filled, high-powered inflatable RIB pounding the waves to reach fictional Eilean Manach where the novel’s reality TV show, titled Isolation Island, unfolds. She reveals how 10 contestants are “marooned in the depths of a Scottish winter on the deserted island” known for its “rigours of monastic life at the edge of civilisation”. At a hub on the mainland, the show’s producers decide who “lives” or “dies” – and there can be only one winner of the dream prize.

Among the fictional celebs are the book’s heroine, Louise’s alter ego, investigative journalist Lauren Brooks, as well as former Scottish rugby giant Aidan “Mac” Macdonald, and Hollywood mega star Nate Stirling. The question is, what does Nate stand to gain by being there? And when a real dead body is found, the game becomes a terrifying matter of life and death…

Journalist Louise – who presented BBC Breakfast for 20 years – said: “Lauren is a much cooler version of myself. If I was going to do my life again, I would like to be Lauren who does in-depth, ground-breaking, law-changing investigations. She has been living with me as a character for about 12 years. I was working on places to send her.”

The epiphany came when Louise took part in the 2021 edition of I’m A Celebrity, where she was the fifth contestant to be evicted. She recalled: “I was in the castle in Wales and because it was during the pandemic we could only be with cast members, so we were very much alone. And then there was this once-in-a-100-year storm and we had to be evacuated.

“When I came out, one of the first calls I made was to my literary agent. I said, ‘I know where Lauren has to go, she has to go to a reality TV show on an island’ and has to be even more isolated than we were.”

Some real-life experiences inform the book, physical and emotional, such as exposure to extreme cold water and its effects, and the manipulative and predatory behaviour exhibited by some men.

She revealed: “Much earlier in my career, way before I was on BBC Breakfast, there was a particular encounter that I had with someone who made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. It was not someone in TV. We have all been in places where you know that someone is trying to take advantage of you and this book is exploring that.”

The scene that is “central” to the novel, involving Lauren and another character, is entirely imaginary, but she said: “Most women will have been in the situation that Lauren gets into.”

This is not her first foray into fiction. “I used to write when I was tiny and still have my first story which was about a goat. I was six. And my parents said, ‘Please shut up, your stories are so boring’. So, I’m having the ultimate revenge.”

These days they are proud and have read and loved all she writes, as do her sister and brother. He, like The Sunday Post, came close to solving what is a locked-room mystery, but not quite, with the final twist unexpected.

Of her family – husband David, who works in hospitality and daughters Mia, 23, and Scarlett, 20 – she said: “They are used to me writing non-fiction, but fiction has inhabited my brain in a way that factual writing doesn’t. I can be physically in the building but mentally on the island which is challenging for my family.

“I find the off button hard to locate. It takes me time to come back down to earth and to not be living with Nate, Mac and Lauren in a freezing cold monastery. I am consumed by it. But I do always walk the dogs before I write. Sometimes I get dressed, sometimes not. I write in my onesie,” she giggled.

Neither of her girls are following in her footsteps. Scarlett is at university studying graphic design, and Mia, who studied business management, has gone into hospitality like her dad.

But Louise – who recently hinted to reporters she’d like a return to TV – has confessed a desire to take part in the BBC’s Race Across The World with one of her daughters.

“They do both run,” she smiled.

And if they turn her down, there’s always Rob Rinder…

‘I miss the team, not the hours’

Louise with Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast.

Louise Minchin left BBC Breakfast in 2021 and says she still misses the team but doesn’t regret her decision.

Having raised both her children while juggling middle-of-the-night starts, she told P.S.: “I miss colleagues from the red sofa but not the hours. It took two years to get over the exhaustion. It felt like permanent jet lag. I feel better now.”

The broadcaster, who has also presented The One Show, Five Live Drive, Real Rescues and Missing Live and who has taken part in Channel 4 TV’s Time Crashers and BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef, said: “I used to say to the girls, ‘Do you remember when I wasn’t on BBC Breakfast?’ and they’d say no. I did my first shift when Mia was six months old. There hadn’t been a time, before I left, when I hadn’t done those strange hours.”

Earlier this month she revealed on James Martin’s Saturday Morning show how she had a blossoming sports career in her teens before turning to journalism, but how that sporting dream – in athletics and swimming – ended at age 15 because she was insecure about her muscular appearance, the result of training.

She revealed that she overcame her insecurities after taking up swimming again in her 40s.

She said: “If you told me this 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Isolation Island by Louise Minchin, published by Headline, is out now