Denisella Brown: My so-called perfect life

Presenter, lifestyle guru, mother, charity worker, model... Denisella Brown is all these and more. She's the epitome of the modern ball-juggling woman ? and from tomorrow, she has a new string to her bow: as an Independent columnist

So, off to meet Denisella Brown, TV presenter, author of the best-selling books Shopping for Ribbon (Ebury Press, £9.99) and Curtains for All Occasions (Ebury, £29.99, but with 12 colour plates and a fully illustrated step-by-step guide to swagging), and now The Independent's new columnist with a remit to cover home, style, food, beauty... the cute things her children recently said. She is, she says later, very much looking forward to tomorrow and her first column, "Don't be afraid to paint it pink". Really? Never? "Well," she concedes, "in a living-room you may prefer to keep pink as a highlight colour, teamed with pretty floral accessories, but in the bedroom you can get the most dramatic boudoir effect by going full out with, for example, Farrow & Ball's Radicchio, which is both wonderfully vibrant and certified organic."

She lives in Esher, Surrey, in one of those rather fancy neo-Palladian-style jobs complete with crunchy drive, columns and a quality garden ornament in the shape of a small boy playing on pipes. I ring the bell (boing-boing, it chimes) and am greeted simultaneously by two furiously yappy Westies (Rose and Mateus) and an oriental-looking lady in nylon housecoat and Dr Scholl's. (The Filipina housekeeper?) "Missy Brown," she calls up the stairs (grand stairs, leading off from a grand hall painted a subtle green that may or may not be Farrow & Ball's Arugula), "Missy Debwa is here." Missy Brown calls down, saying she won't be a minute. "I'm just making myself decent, Deborah! Make yourself at home!"

Missy Filipina Housekeeper leads Missy Debwa and the vile dogs ("Yap, yap, yap, yap...") who need a good kicking (frankly) into the drawing room, which is truly "wow!", truly the "sumptuous symphony of silks and sublime style" as once described by Hello! magazine. Here goes: huge, swagged, caramel silk curtains; a dreamy, creamy sofa of such vastness that a whole family of asylum seekers could disappear into it and not be discovered for months, if at all; chandelier; antique mirror; a wooden-boxed orchid on the mantelpiece, along with ebony-framed photographs of husband (Keith), children (Keithleen and Roman, three and five) and Denisella herself receiving her Daytime TV Presenter of the Year award from Sir David Frost.

She was mighty chuffed about that, she says later. "I really did think it was going to go to Esther or Trisha again. I said to Keith the night before the do, as we were lying in bed: 'Keith, there is absolutely no point in me going, as it will only be Esther or Trisha again.' He said: 'Den, can't we just have a beige bedroom, like normal people?' Keith does love to tease me so." She thinks that it was the programme Hey, You Have Naked Pictures Of Me And I Want Them Back Now! that might have won it for her. "It called for sensitivity on all sides, which Sir David said I provided in spades. Well, imagine it! Getting such a compliment from Sir David, whom I admire greatly for never giving up, for doing any old rubbish and keeping at it, even though it was ages before he got Through The Keyhole." Denisella, by the way, also presents The Denisella Hour on QVC and will shortly be taking over National Midweek Lottery Live.

Ah, here comes Denisella who, today, is wearing a Gucci black blouse, Jimmy Choo raspberry boots and beautiful Julien Macdonald red, riveted leather trousers as only just seen on the catwalks. "Still," she says helpfully, "I believe Jigsaw are already doing something similar, for those who cannot afford the real thing." She is 34, and certainly pretty, with her Charles Worthington blonde bob, winsome little nose, French-polished nails, and skin as astonishingly luxurious as that amazing sofa. Your secret, Denisella? Two litres of Evian a day, she says, plus a strict skincare routine. She recommends Platymousse products and, in particular, Platymousse Super Hydrating Night Cream "which is a divine, super-enriching combination of camomile, jasmine, oak root, radish extract and ground platypus bill. Available nationwide from Harrods at £179 a jar..." Bloody hell, I interrupt. It costs more than my car! My house, even! She gives me something of a pitying look, then says: "As used by Kate Moss and Sophie Dahl." She adds: "And Anthea, who is a lovely person, whatever anyone may say, and has very few fine lines, even close up.

"Coffee?" Yes, please, I say. She dispatches Missy Filipina Housekeeper – Mae, I think her name is – who exits with a swish of synthetic nylon and clunk of Dr Scholl's. "Hideous fashion sense," says Denisella, "but an absolute treasure none the less." Come now, I protest. Style isn't everything, surely. "I do try," she says, by way of a reply, "to put something back into the community. For example, I do a lot of work for breast cancer, which is cancer of the breast and mainly affects women. I do it in my own time for no publicity. Indeed, I wouldn't have even mentioned it at all had the annual fund-raising gala not been so extensively covered by Heat."

Your main style tips then, Denisella? Well, she says, it would have to be "always buy the best you can afford. Never buy cheap things that will simply do. I've never even been to Ikea, and do not intend to go now, what with all the terrible bombing and everything." Sorry? "I know people like me are not expected to have opinions on these things, let alone strong ones, but I do think it's been a truly disgraceful business, bombing those poor, poor Ikea people who, as I understand it, are rushed off their feet as it is, especially on Saturday." I put it to her that she might... ahem... be confusing Ikea with Iraq. "Oh, that does explain so much," she exclaims, with a gasp of revelation. "I did say to Keith just the other day: "Where are the lower-middle classes going to get their furnishings, now that Ikea's such a devastated, lawless place?' He just gave me one of his loving, affectionate looks, the one you could mistake for contempt if you didn't know Keith as I do." She adds that she has always been badly dyslexic, which is why she was always in the bottom stream at school.

Mae, swishing and clunking, returns with coffee for me, a large glass of iced Evian for Denisella. "As Eve Lom once said to me: 'Dehydration is every woman's No 1 enemy.'" Is Keith in? I ask. No, she says, he's at work. Apparently, he does something in the City to do with "securities". What's that, then? "I asked exactly the same thing when we first met," she exclaims gleefully. "I said: Before I was famous, I used to know someone in security. Tell me, are you for or against patrolling with Alsatians? He says he fell in love with me, and my brilliant sense of humour, there and then. It wasn't, I admit, quite as instant for me. But once he explained that what he did had nothing to do with Alsatians, and that he had a place in town as well as one in the country, and a Porsche Boxster convertible to get between the two, I did feel myself warming towards him considerably."

So, can women have it all – a career, motherhood, great looks, a charity portfolio, a Keith? How does Denisella manage it all? She says she is, essentially, no different from any other working mother. "The reality of my daily life is that I have to juggle a lot of balls in the air. Being a mum is probably the most wonderful thing that has happened to me, but also the most complex, exhausting, emotional and difficult. However, when you really think about it, it's not so different from, say, hosting an informal weekday supper party for family and friends. The key is planning and then delegation. I'm always around for Roman and Keithleen, as they know, but we also have a day nanny, a night nanny, a weekend-day nanny, a weekend-night nanny, a holiday-relief nanny and a nanny on constant stand-by, just in case we ever have one of those hair-raising nanny-less moments. Indeed, as Keith recently joked, it might be easier just to have a relationship with the children. How I laughed about that! Talk about having a brilliant sense of humour!"

And do you ever drop balls, à la Cherie Blair? "That's inevitable," she replies. "I'm not Superwoman either." Example? Well, once, she says, she miscalculated the end of the day nanny's shift and the beginning of night nanny's shift, so that by the time night nanny had arrived, day nanny had departed, and what did night nanny find? "She found Roman and Keithleen playing eye surgeons with the bread knife and a bottle of Ajax. Oh, how I didn't laugh about that, or at least not until night nanny called me from casualty to say Keithleen had retained at least some sight in the one eye. Well, the relief! Roman can be such a little monster, and as I said to him afterwards, if that Ajax had got on to the Christopher Farr, I'd have banned him from the treehouse, newly painted in Farrow & Ball Lollo Rosso." I ask, naturally, if Keithleen is OK now. She says that, yes, Keithleen is back to her usual happy, bouncy self. "And she does say the cutest things. Just the other night, I crept into her bedroom to check what progress was being made on her hand-painted Alice in Wonderland mural when she opened her one good eye and said: 'Who are you?' Oh, how I would have laughed about that, too, if I hadn't just applied my Platymousse Super Hydrating Night Cream, which has quite a tightening effect, due, I imagine, to the combination of radish extract and platypus bill."

Denisella was born in Nantwich, Cheshire, the eldest daughter of three to a father who owned a cushion business and a mother who was a housewife "with a great eye for table settings". As already noted, because of the dyslexia she did not do well at school, and was often bullied mercilessly. "My nickname was always 'thicko', which has taken me a long time to get over. I now do a lot of work for DNA, the National Dyslexia Association, which is a national association for dyslexics, a condition that mostly affects people with dyslexia."

She says she always knew she wanted to work in the fame industry. "From a very early age, I was practising my phone-interview technique." Her first job was compiling the traffic reports for Radio Nantwich, quickly followed by her own spot presenting the weather. "I do love the weather, and always have done." This, in turn, led to a weather-presenting job on Sky, a Rear of the Year award – "how lovely, to be considered up there with Lulu and Anneka" – then her own daytime talk show and publishing contracts.

Naturally, I wonder where she thinks her career will ultimately go. Well, she says, the books are doing stormingly and will soon be joined by Denisella's Christmas – "the secret of a good Christmas pudding? Two grated apples, as I tell Mae every year." On the TV front, she says, "I don't expect to be offered Panorama or News at Ten, although, that said, I don't think Selina has ever been properly replaced. Selina gave it all up to knit socks in Scotland, whereas if she'd kept at it she might have got Through the Keyhole. I do think she must be kicking herself now." Her icons, she says, include Catherine Zeta Jones ("who bravely fought for the privacy of us all"), Davina McCall ("extremely talented, if a little butch") and Nelson Mandela ("who has aged very well, considering").

Anyway, time to go, as she has to get off to her feminist consciousness-raising group. OK, only teasing. But her personal trainer, Piers, is due to arrive at any minute, "and I must get myself Juicy Coutured!" I wish her luck with the new column, the presenting, the books, and her further decorating plans. "I am seriously toying with Baby Spinach Leaf for Mae's room." She disappears, red leather trousers whispering luxuriously. Mae lets me out, muttering something I can't quite catch, but it might have been: "Why not me have beige, like the normal people?"