Clodagh McKenna on living next door to the real Downton Abbey, meeting her husband at Fortnum & Mason’s and forest bathing

The Observer once called 5 Hertford Street ‘London’s most secretive club’. Maybe they were referring to its location, as I had become spectacularly lost on my way to meet Clodagh McKenna, and was more than a touch frazzled when I finally found her. ‘Have a tea. I think that would make you feel good,’ she says, maternally, her blue eyes piercing me from underneath a halo of fluffy blonde hair.

The Irish chef, author and TV presenter is best known for whipping up delicious dishes on ITV’s This Morning, but also has her own lifestyle brand. Clodagh, 50, is married to the Hon Harry Herbert, the founder of Highclere Thoroughbred Racing Ltd and the son of the 7th Earl of Carnarvon. She is ridiculously well connected. Jeanne Marine, Bob Geldof’s wife, is a close friend. So too is the designer Jasper Conran, Lady Carol Bamford and the Duke of Richmond — and I am sure more names would’ve been added to the list if I hadn’t been so late for our interview.

Clodagh and her husband have a farm and live together on the Highclere Estate (where Downton Abbey was filmed and home of the Carnarvon family). ‘We moved in there nine years ago, and we restored a part of the park, which is called Broadspear,’ she recalls.

Broadspear is a rural idyll. On her farm, Clodagh has Aberdeen Angus cows, woodland pigs, ducks, bees and six different varieties of chicken — and that’s just the animals. She has a working walled vegetable garden, a glass house, plenty of cutting flowers, pickling sheds, and she makes her own ice cream. ‘It’s an obsession, but it was an awful lot of work at the beginning,’ Clodagh recalls. ‘It’s all kind of like a juggling act at the moment, which I really love. I love that juggle.’

Clodagh grew up in the countryside, so it makes sense that she’d feel at peace among nature. ‘My memories of my childhood are of freedom and being in nature, building camps in the woods, running down with friends and jumping into a lake. We lived in a tiny little house that somebody else owned,’ she says. ‘I go back home about once a month.’

Her father was in the police force and then became a semi-professional golfer, before running a golf course and Clodagh’s mother studied for a law degree by night while working as a legal secretary by day. ‘She worked so incredibly hard, had four children [of which Clodagh is the youngest] and made sure there was food on the table,’ Clodagh says. Of her own family, particularly her children, Clodagh is tight-lipped, refusing to discuss them. ‘I’m quite protective over my family because I choose to be in front of the camera, but they don’t — that’s how I always view it.’

Clodagh began her training as a chef at the Ballymaloe Cookery School. She started doing TV work when she was 26 and had her own TV series in Ireland that then got bought up by PBS in the USA. The Today Show and The Rachael Ray Show followed, before a contract from ITV for This Morning arrived. ‘Live TV, it's always unnatural. It's not the most natural thing to do compared to, like, farming,’ she says. She’s currently working on a new cookery book, Clodagh at Home, which will encompass everything from her journey at Broadspear to recipes more generally. It will be her tenth book. ‘I love the process of it,’ she says. ‘I’m really happy in my own company.’

Your aesthetic hero

Can I have two people? Jeanne Marine, Bob Geldof's wife, who is an amazing actress and a really great friend of mine. She is definitely one of my style icons. She is a French actress, singer and songwriter, and her style is amazing, even when we're on holidays together and we're just on the beach — she’d just throw a scarf around her hair, and her earrings and everything — it makes me feel so happy. And for interiors, it would be Jasper Conran. I love his interiors, I love his passion. He's also a friend, and his eye is just incredible.

A book you’ve found inspiring

A book about the life of trees. At home, we have the most amazing woodlands, and I wasn't educated about trees, the importance of the root system and the fungi system. I just didn't know. Since I’ve read it, my whole world has changed. I look at everything so differently. I just love the energy from trees. I love doing forest bathing, which is a Japanese bathing ritual. It’s really simple and basic, you just literally go into the woods and you lie on the ground, and put your hands into the soil so that you're connected with the energy. You look up to the tree, and you do breathing exercises to breathe in all of the energy with the tree. I do it as much as I can.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I’m not a material person. My husband's the most generous person I've ever met, and he loves to spoil me because he thinks I'm always doing everything and, because I don't like buying things for myself, he goes overboard. The last thing I bought for myself was a dehydrator for my pickling shed. That was my big spend about a month ago. I've been experimenting with it, with raspberries and figs, but I'm excited for when the summer starts, and I can get that really busy.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

Diane Arbus, I saw an exhibition on her in France. She is a Jewish New Yorker photographer, and all of her photography is of, let’s say… unusual situations of families. So it could be like a picture of a massive giant with his mother who is a dwarf, or a Jewish family's home in the 1960s in New York, and all their furniture is covered in plastic, and they're just sitting there. It's amazing, quite dark, but also just brilliant.

A possession that you’d never sell

I would never sell my engagement ring. My husband designed it with one of our best friends, Theo Fennell, who’s a jewellery designer. There's kind of a special engraving on it — there's only one person left in England that does this — and the engraving is all Broadspear, our chickens, the trees, our house. It's really special.

The music you work to

At the moment, it's Bob Dylan. Obsessed with Bob Dylan.

The last podcast you listened to

I love Aspire with Emma Grede, that's one of my favourites, but I also love the Goop podcast. My favourite is Martha Stewart’s podcast. She's amazing. I love her so much. I think we're the same person.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

I think that if it was my friends, they would say Goldie Hawn. Everybody says that.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

Olive oil.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

I am a really big morning person. I have to push myself to stay in bed. This morning I woke up at five. I’m lucky, I was born — I think it's definitely in my genes, my mother was the same — getting excited when I wake up in the morning, and about the day, about doing things, about getting started. I used to always try to make up excuses for it, because I was always too shy about saying what I just said.

The items you collect

I collect crockery. No matter where I am in the world, I'll go to markets. It could be pots or vases or egg cups. My last find was a preserving bowl — they don't make them anymore. It’s a round terracotta bowl with holes in it. It's like a colander, but it's pottery, and it's massive, and you put all your fruits and everything in it, and because it's aerated they don't go off.

A hotel you could go back and back to

I love the Merrion hotel in Dublin city centre.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever had

My most memorable meal would have to have been with one of my great friends, Carol Bamford, who founded and started Daylesford Farms. She has an amazing chateau called Léoube in the south of France, and she produces some beautiful wines and olive oil. I go down about once a year and dinner in her chateau is an experience of a lifetime.

Your favourite painting

It’s brand new, the Duke of Richmond gave it to me as a present. It’s not a painting, but he is an amazing photographer, and he just did an exhibition last year of sea grasses. In the Bahamas, he photographed all these amazing sea glasses, and made it into this big collection, and he kept looking at our wall in London going: ‘One would look so beautiful on that wall’. One night there was a knock on the door, and it arrived from Goodwood, which is their estate. It now sits very proudly in our living room in London.

The best present you’ve ever been given

The best present I ever received was being invited to the lunch at Fortnum and Mason’s where I met my now husband, who's the best gift I've ever gotten in my life.

For more information on Clodagh McKenna and her lifestyle brand visit her website