10 Years Younger axed me for being ‘too old’ at 37 – my life imploded, I hid for a decade and changed my name

SHE transformed the lives of middle-aged women on Ten Years Younger, boosting both their confidence and self-esteem.

But when Nicky Hambleton-Jones’ career “imploded”; she struggled to find a way back.

Despite spending years arming women with the tools to love themselves again, Nicky, 53, couldn’t get herself out of her own “dark hole”; after she was axed as the face of the popular Channel 4 makeover show.

But now, after some time out of the spotlight, the support of her husband and their two children, now 15 and 12, Nicky is back – with a bright and colourful bang.

She’s just released an empowering new book, Bolder Not Older, which helps women transform their style and boost their self-confidence in just 12 weeks.

‘Worst nightmare come true'

“Change takes time, and it doesn’t happen in a flash,”; Nicky exclusively tells Fabulous.

“Yes, you can hire me tomorrow, and I can take you shopping and get you a whole new wardrobe, but to really change on the inside, you have to change the way you see yourself in the mirror and the way you feel about yourself.

“It's not just about throwing on some colour; you really have to be open to it and believe it, and that doesn't happen overnight.”;

Nicky would love to see a world of colour – “imagine if everyone wore a bright colour and how happy we would all be,”; she says – but her main hope for anyone reading her book is to love themselves from within.

Everyone turned their backs on me in an instant

Nicky Hambleton-Jones

She wants us to stop the cycle of negative thinking and instead be bold and brave, something she evidently has a lot of experience in.

In 2008, she was dropped as the host of Ten Years Younger and quickly replaced by Myleene Klass, who was 30 at the time and seven years younger than Nicky.

The move, she says, left her completely blindsided.

But that wasn’t all – Nicky was dealt another blow when told she was axed “because the bosses wanted someone younger”;.

“That wouldn’t happen today,”; she says. “Imagine dropping a woman in their 30s for another woman in their 30s?”;

The axing came at a time when Nicky was flying high in her career. The show was bringing in around two million viewers, and she had signed a lucrative skincare endorsement with Superdrug.

She even had her own glasses range after inspiring women to make them fashionable again. But all that went down the drain along with her place on the show.

“I got the call from my agent when I was on my way back from the perfumery where I had been choosing scents for my new skincare line,”; she explains.

“It had been a beautiful day, and I was driving to Surrey and I was so excited, I was thinking, ‘Yes, it’s all coming together for me’ and then I answered the phone and everything changed in an instant. It was very sudden. It was just like, ‘You've been dropped. ’

“It's a worst nightmare come true. And then everything implodes as a result of that, it's like no one will go near you, so it had a knock-on effect with all my other projects.

“Everyone turned their backs on me in an instant.

“The skincare collab evaporated overnight, my glasses range was cancelled, any speaking engagements or corporate endorsements I had disappeared.”;

She adds: “You know, it’s a fickle industry, but when you experience rejection on such a public and wide-reaching level, especially when you’ve not done anything wrong, it’s a very lonely place. The only person who believes in you is yourself.”

Rejection and despair

She adds: “They say time heals everything, but writing this book has really helped to come to terms with the rejection and despair I felt, conquer my demons and hold my head above the parapet again.”;

Shortly after her shock dismissal, Nicky turned to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) to help her through her darkest moments and cut the cycle of negative thinking.

“I was terrified of Google,”; she admits. “I was frightened of anyone Googling my name and seeing that I was dropped.

“My therapist really helped me reframe it. She made me see that I was having these negative thoughts without any evidence. Because obviously when your confidence goes, you just break yourself down massively, and you have all these thoughts in your head, but when she asked me to go on to Google, I found nothing.

“I write about this in the book, but when you've had a bad experience, whether it's perhaps your partner having an affair and leaving you, or another huge life shock, you make all these assumptions in your head and wondering what everyone else is thinking and saying about it, and we convince ourselves of all this horribleness, but in truth it doesn’t exist. The mind is very powerful.”;

It’s clear that Nicky, who is incredibly warm, fun and honest during our chat, has had to do a lot of work on herself over the years to be in the headspace she’s in now.

She’s back on our screens fronting Drop a Decade on ITV’s This Morning and has done several TV and radio interviews to promote her new book.

But just a few years ago, she had felt too ashamed to leave her house.

“To be honest, I just hid. I just couldn't face the world,”; she says. “I felt so humiliated to be dropped and had a complete lack of confidence. I felt absolutely broken.

“I used my married name and I hoped no one recognised me when I went out. I just totally closed that part of my life. I thought, ‘Okay, that's over. It's done’ and I just shut the door on that part of my life.

‘I couldn't face the world'

“It was only during Covid, when my children were getting a bit older, that I had all this time to think. I was on the cusp of turning 50, and I was thinking what are the next 50 years going to look like? Then it really struck me: I knew I needed to get out there again and get back to empowering others to be better versions of themselves.

“That's my passion, and that's what I absolutely love doing. I deserved to have the opportunity to do it, but I realised no one was going to do it for me. I had to get out there and do it for myself.”;

Through her 12-week challenge, Nicky wants to help other women get back on the path of rediscovery and believes overhauling your style and adding colour is key.

“We are all so self-critical, and we are constantly comparing ourselves to others,”; she says.

“We set ourselves these unreasonable targets of achieving things by a certain age, and it’s too much pressure.

“One of the worst things we do as women is look for imperfections, but the reality is none of us are perfect. We are not all Instagram models – I’m certainly not.

“I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that I might have put on weight, so rather than wearing something really plain, or something that will draw attention to my tummy or my legs, I wear a colour and then everyone will say how fabulous you look.

I know what it’s like to fail, and fail and fail over and over again. But you've just got to get up every day, put on a great outfit and your red lipstick and face the world

Nicky Hambleton-Jones

“What is so great about clothes is that if you make your outfits your focal point, then no one even looks at your body shape. No one's analysing, we think they are, but they’re not.”;

Looking ahead to the future, Nicky is feeling good and wants to turn her career low into a positive.

“You know what I look at? They say everything happens for a reason, and I really believe that,”; she says.

“I would never have my children had I carried on presenting. I needed to shift gears a bit. Unfortunately, it was a brutal way of doing it [being axed], and it could have been done in a lot of different ways, but that’s the way it was.

“I think it's taken me a long time to get to this point. I couldn’t have spoken so openly about this as I am now a few years ago.

“It has taken a long time to heal, but part of my growth in being where I am today and being able to write this book and help others is because of what I've been through. It’s a lived experience.

“I know what it’s like to fail, and fail and fail over and over again. But you've just got to get up every day, put on a great outfit and your red lipstick and face the world.”;

Bolder Not Older: Dull to Dazzling in 12 Weeks by Nicky Hambleton-Jones (Synergy Publishing, £17.99)