Radio and TV presenter Clara Amfo opens up about what she thinks about boyfriends who ’embarrass’ their girlfriends, and why being curious has lead her to be involved with a campaign for Google AI
It’s midday on a Tuesday and Clara Amfo is eating an easy peeler orange. The TV and radio broadcaster, dressed in an oversized American Football jersey, looks effortlessly cool as she pulls the skin away from the juicy segments. “I’m too impatient to peel an orange,” she tells us. “That’s why I go for easy peelers.”
“Impatient” is necessarily a term most people would associate with Clara. Her interviewing style is warm and engaging, closer to natural conversations than a Q&A, and she never seems to lose that easy way of being. But while she’ll patiently wait for a celebrity to answer a question, she won’t sit around twiddling her thumbs if her partner is “embarrassing” her.
At the end of October, a trending topic online was whether or not having a boyfriend was embarrassing. It all stemmed from an article written by Clara’s friend, Chante Joseph, which said being in a relationship “is no longer considered an achievement” and looked into why women don’t want to talk about the men they’re dating.
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“Chante tells no lies,” Clara says. The article received some backlash, as some people saw it as encouraging women to be single and calling love itself ‘uncool’. But Clara defended it. “Like, love is wonderful. But it shouldn’t define your whole personality, that’s all.”
When asked if she related to the article, Clara laughs and looks coyly at the camera before adding: “Listen, let me say, I don’t let myself be embarrassed, single or otherwise. And that’s what I would say to my partner. The most interesting thing about me, should be me, and not who my man is,” she continues.
Over the years, Clara has become one of the best celebrities at keeping her love life under wraps. Little is known about who she is dating and or if she is dating at all. And there is a good reason for that – Clara does not want to be known for who she’s in a relationship with, and doesn’t like the fact that women’s success is often defined by if they have a partner or not.
“Look, I think it’s just really reductive and just really dull how women are pressured and expected to define their success by if they’re in a relationship or if they’ve got a kid. I think it’s really boring. Like, I would be really annoyed if the most interesting thing about me was who my partner was. No, thank you.”
The most interesting thing about Clara is how curious she is about the world. That’s how she got involved with Google AI’s latest campaign to get people going to that for specific answers to specific questions. “People know I’m a curious person. I’m constantly asking questions,” she laughs.
“But we’re in a time of overwhelming information and you want to be able to identify what you need from that. It’s that specificity that we need help with.” She whips out her phone and shows how easy it is to get the answers you need from Google AI. “Where can I go in London for christmas-dinner>Christmas dinner that’s celiac, vegan and lactose-intolerant friendly?” she asks her phone. It barely takes a second before it’s suggesting a variety of restaurants, and offering PDFs of their Christmas menus, with the allergen information attached.
Some people fear artificial intelligence. Not Clara. “Because it’s not about erasing human experience,” she explains. “I think for me personally, I think it’s actually about enhancing it. I don’t believe it’s us versus the machines.”
One thing she’s particularly curious about is music. As well as hosting radio shows, Clara has presented from the BRIT Awards, and she has a series on ITV called Studio Sessions, where she talks to musicians about their craft before they perform a cover of a song. The show has featured the likes of Celebrity Traitors star Cat Burns and to Hold My Hand singer Jess Glynne.
For the next series she’d love to host Megan Thee Stallion, Jade Thirlwall and Olivia Dean. “Those would be my top three,” she says. “For Jade, I would love to hear her cover What You Waiting For by Gwen Stefani, because I know she loved that song. And it’s all about breaking out of a group and going solo for the first time, which Jade has already touched on with Angel Of My Dreams.”
Jade Thirlwall was part of the girl band Little Mix. After winning X Factor, the group went on to become one of the most successful British girl groups, alongside the likes of the Sugababes and Girls Aloud. With the popularity of her debut solo album, That’s Showbiz, Baby! Jade has become the most successful member of the group.
As a friend of Jade, Clara knows how much the singer loves that song. “Because she’s my mate, I know she loves it. I know she loves What You Waiting For, and I think she’d do a great cover of that. I would love, love, love to see her do that.”
The rise of singers like Jade, Olivia Dean and Megan Thee Stallion, as well as Cat Burns, and Irish singer CMAT, has led Clara to predict that music in 2026 will be all about songwriters who come up in the industry via non-traditional routesput the “girlies on top”. And she’s very excited by that. She’s excited by music full stop.
“It’s the conversations we have there,” she explains. “Someone’s always going to have an opinion about music, and it’s just an easy conversation starter. And just the literal music is transforming. It’s magical. It’s healing. It’s life-affirming. I think music is the only true form of magic that we have.”
Clara Amfo has partnered with Google to show how AI Mode in Google is reenergising Search to empower Brits in a new era of trend discovery.
Source: Mirror
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