Angela Scanlon, who admits she can be "oddly private" about her family life, has revealed how she and her husband plan to spend time together after a hectic Christmas Day
09:00, 28 Dec 2025
Flame-haired TV presenter Angela Scanlon has certainly ramped up her career in recent years, with a stint on Strictly Come Dancing in 2023 and laughs aplenty and unfiltered girl chat with pal Vicky Pattison on their podcast Get A Grip.
This month she’s on our TV screens in The Celebrity Apprentice: Christmas Special, but the Irish star still managed to carve out time in her busy schedule for a lovely family Christmas – even if it was very much a team effort, she tells OK!.
Angela, 42, has been married to CEO Roy Horgan since 2014 and they have two daughters – Ruby, seven, and Marnie, three. She admits the festive season was “total carnage”, because they travelled back to Ireland for Christmas.
“My husband took the eldest and drove back so we had the car there, then I flew with the youngest. So we divided and conquered, right? We’re like the royals.
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“We stayed with family, and my dad’s one of 14. I’m one of four girls and at last count there were nine grandkids. So it was busy! Then we went to my husband’s down in Cork, where there’s eight grandkids in total,” she says, smiling at the recollection.
Angela, also known for presenting The One Show, celebrates her 42nd birthday on 29 December, and made sure she and Roy had some well-deserved alone time to mark the occasion. She says, "We go away, just the two of us. The grandparents look after the girls and we're away overnight. Dreamy!”
Speaking of her little ones, the brilliantly frank presenter admits she is hesitant when it comes to putting them in the public eye. She has made a conscious decision not to show their faces on social media.
“My husband’s not in the showbiz world. He’s private, and I’m oddly private in my own way. I’m not shy, but when I’m not working I kind of keep myself to myself and always feel very protective over the girls. Posting them feels quite exposing.”
She adds, “We’ve stuck to that and it’s interesting because my seven-year-old, if I’m taking a picture, now asks if I’m going to put it online. And I’m like, ‘Babes, I never put you online. I put your little ponytail online every so often.”
Asked how she feels about her children potentially following in her footsteps one day, Angela says she’s happy to wait until they can make that choice for themselves.
“They’re under my watch until they’re 18,” she declares, with faux severity. “They love it though. There’s a good dollop of showbiz in the pair of them. They love dancing and singing.
“There are concerts at six o’clock in the morning and they’re into all of it. But so are most kids, so I think to be able to nurture that and enjoy that without an end in sight is great. I’m going to protect that for as long as possible.”
Viewers have been watching Angela in The Celebrity Apprentice: Christmas Special, in support of Children In Need. The stars were tasked with designing a biscuit to go in store for the festive period.
Other celebs trying to impress Lord Alan Sugar, Karren Brady and Mike Soutar alongside Angela included pop star JB Gill, EastEnders actor Jake Wood and businessman Thomas Skinner, who rose to fame on the regular version of The Apprentice in 2019.
“Tom was great – good fun and up very early in the morning. He was making calls at 4am from Lapland to try and sell those biscuits, before they were even out of the oven,” Angela says, before joking, “I would say, though, his acting skills in our little commercial are questionable.”
As for Lord Sugar, Angela is convinced he went to extreme measures to make sure the celebrities really knew who was boss.
“When we went into that boardroom for the first time, we were all fannying about, having a great time and talking about how exciting it was that we’d go to Lapland. Then suddenly, cut to us all standing in a line, in single file. Pudsey was there, but we were ushered into the room. And genuinely… There was a temperature drop in that room.
“Lord Sugar definitely has an air about him. And Karren is also steely. I love her. In fact, I’m obsessed with her. Then there’s Mike, old blue eyes, who doesn’t say much but says a lot with his eyes,” she says.
Angela has nothing but praise for her stint on the show. She says, “We had a ball. It was like being on a school trip. It felt quite unhinged at times. It was just brilliant, and for such a gorgeous cause as well.”
When it comes to New Year ’s resolutions, Angela has a unique take on the concept.
“I don’t like a New Year’s resolution, but I do like a ‘word of the year’. Because I think you can then choose the word and infuse your whole life with it, right?” she says. “So I don’t say, ‘I’m going to join the gym, I’m going to do this, I’m going to meditate, I’m going to whatever’, because if you don’t keep it up you feel like a failure and that’s not great.
“I’m still percolating with my word, but for example, this year, the word was ‘ease’. I would say it didn’t really work for me! But the previous year’s word was ‘surprise’. So it was like, ‘Surprise me!’ And I’d do surprising things. So I need to think of my word. I’ll keep you posted.”