Angela Scanlon bravely opened up on Thursday about her long-running battle with loneliness – revealing it became so overwhelming that she suffered a ‘full breakdown’.

The Irish TV presenter, 41, admitted that despite her busy work schedule, bustling family life and large social media following, she often feels deeply isolated.

Angela, who has two young daughters with husband Roy Horgan, has now revealed that she hit breaking point during a CoppaFeel! charity trek in the Himalayas, India last November.

The former Strictly star was a team leader during the trip alongside fellow TV presenter Emma Willis, entrepreneur Sara Davies and Great British Bake Off winner Candice Brown.

Sharing her emotional story in a Substack post, Angela said she had hoped simply to motivate the female trekkers, all of whom had had breast cancer.

However, just days into the challenging trek, she found herself overwhelmed by the emotional intensity of the experience.

Angela Scanlon bravely opened up on Thursday about her long-running battle with loneliness – revealing it became so overwhelming that she suffered a ‘full breakdown’; pictured May 2024

‘A couple of days in – I cracked. Full breakdown. Ugly crying into my yak-themed duvet,’ she shared.

She added she thought to herself at the time, ‘I can’t do this. I’m not the right person. What the actual f*** was I thinking? How arrogant was I to believe I’m equipped to hold these brilliant women at such a tender time?’

Angela recalled lying awake at night crippled by self-doubt, before finally realising that she didn’t need to put on a brave face – she simply needed to show up, exactly as she was.

Reflecting on her experience, Angela – mother of Ruby, seven, and Marnie, three – admitted the loneliness she was feeling had been gnawing at her for years.

She wrote: ‘I was lonely. Not the cute, “oh I miss my mates” lonely. The hollow, I have an incredible following of 436K people on Instagram, a full family life, a busy work life and still feel like I’m shouting-into-a-void kind of lonely.

‘This isn’t new. It’s a feeling that has hit me on and off for years. Maybe forever. Because technically, I’m not alone, in fact I’m rarely, if ever alone.

‘I had WhatsApp groups pinging, toddlers pulling, 7 year old art projects and endless questioning, DMs buzzing, meetings stacked back-to-back.’

Following her breakthrough in India, Angela revealed she decided to launch a grassroots community called Hot Messers – organising ‘Hot Mess Walks’ where people could turn up without pretence.

The Irish TV presenter, 41, admitted that despite her busy work schedule, bustling family life and large social media following, she often feels deeply isolated

She explained: ‘The kind where you turn up in joggers, cry on a bench if you need to, and nobody blinks. The kind where you don’t need to filter yourself to fit.’

Despite her initial fear that nobody would show up, Angela’s first walk was a quiet triumph, as women shared their struggles with heartbreak, loneliness, and the challenges of motherhood. 

‘For the first time in a long time, I remembered that being seen – really seen – is enough.’

Angela said she held the second Hot Mess Walk earlier this week, which was ‘double the size’ of the first and just as powerful – proving that many others are craving the same kind of raw, honest connection.

Last year, Angela discussed her 15-year battle with eating disorders during an interview on Loose Women. 

She said of her anorexia and bulimia: ‘It isn’t necessarily one of the other. They go in cycles, it can sometimes feel really bleak.’

She added: ‘From my late teens or early 20s, for 15 years, I was in a bad place. For me, the turning point was a friend of mine, who was also suffering, saying we are just going to have the illnesses forever.

‘And to her it felt like a comforting, a support in numbers. But for me, I really kicked against that notion of having to stay in that very small space for a long time.’

It was Angela’s first-ever appearance on the show, and she later took to Instagram to joke that she had popped her ‘Loose Women cherry’. 

In 2023, Angela revealed to Weekend Magazine she used to feel a bit like a swan – elegant on the surface while paddling furiously underneath. 

Angela, who has two young daughters with husband Roy Horgan, has now revealed that she hit breaking point during a CoppaFeel! charity trek in the Himalayas, India last November

She appeared to have it all, with a burgeoning career as one of the UK’s most in-demand broadcasters thanks to appearances on The One Show and as host of BBC2’s interiors hit Your Home Made Perfect, as well as her own chat show in Ireland and a popular podcast.

But beneath the facade Angela was racked by insecurity. She had an eating disorder that began in her teens , and by the age of 20 she was often surviving on black coffee and tinned pineapple. 

Her anorexia and bulimia were later replaced with workaholism.

‘I think an eating disorder is about trying to control things, when everything feels out of your power,’ she said. 

‘It took me much longer to recognise I’d replaced the eating disorder with work, as I believed I’d sorted myself out.

‘I’d built a career and a life I enjoyed. But it wasn’t until later I realised that when I slowed down, the problems were still the same. I think anyone with an addiction will recognise it’s easy to swap one for another.’

The result was a feeling of emptiness that Angela explores in her deeply personal book Joyrider, in which she describes not only her troubles but also what helped save her – tapping into her natural resources of joy and gratitude for the small positives in life. 

Reflecting on her experience, Angela – mother of Ruby, seven, and Marnie, three – admitted the loneliness she was feeling had been gnawing at her for years

This is the ‘joyriding’ part of the book, referring to a conscious swerve into a ‘sweeter lane’.

Although she was nervous about revealing her vulnerabilities, it’s been an empowering experience that’s helped others too. ‘Writing Joyrider was freeing,’ she says. 

‘There was something cathartic about it. People think we can only talk about things when we’re ready, but there’s something so powerful about talking about it when you’re still in the process because healing is happening all the time.’

It you have been affected by issues raised in this story contact eating disorder charity Beat on 0808 801 0677 and mental health charity Mind on 0300 123 3393.