Amol Rajan has opened up about his ‘hellish’ struggle to have children – and said he and his wife were ‘told it wouldn’t happen’.
The University Challenge and Radio Four Today Programme host said his IVF journey with partner Charlotte Faircloth was ‘exhausting’, ‘really tough’ and went on for ‘years’.
The 40 year-old now has four children under the age of eight and said the family do realise ‘how lucky’ they are.
Rajan, formerly the BBC’s media editor, told the Comfort Eating podcast, that he felt ‘extraordinarily blessed’ to have ‘ended up’ having children, adding: ‘I don’t really talk about this very much publicly…my wife and I were going through hellish medical treatment to try and have more children.
‘That was really exhausting. In fact, the whole time I was editor of The Independent, we were going through really tough stuff.
Amol Rajan has opened up about his struggle to have children with partner Charlotte Faircloth
‘And, obviously we’ve ended up extraordinarily blessed. We’ve got four kids and I realise, I really, really, do realise how lucky we all are.’
Charlotte Faircloth, Rajan’s partner, an academic
The BBC presenter joined The Independent newspaper in 2007, and was appointed the role of editor in 2013 at 29-years-old.
In 2016, he left the paper after he was poached by James Harding, then the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, to become its media editor.
He told the podcast the ‘medical treatment’ he was referring to was ‘IVF and all that’.
Rajan continued: ‘We were told it wouldn’t happen, that was the thing.
‘There were years, and years, and years, and years, in which it was really tough and a struggle.
‘There was a lot of that going on whilst I was at the BBC.’
Rajan was formerly the BBC media editor and the editor of the Independent between 2013 and 2016
In 2013, Rajan married his now-wife Charlotte Faircloth – an academic who focuses on parenting, gender and reproduction.
Rajan said when he joined the BBC, it coincided with a ‘very major life change’ being ‘that I became a parent’.
He added: ‘Suddenly it was not about me, and suddenly my priorities had changed.’
In December last year, he said he was so overwhelmed with grief following his father’s death last year that he had thoughts of suicide.
The BBC’s Amol Rajan with his father P. Varadarajan, who died last year at the age of 76
Amol Rajan joined University Challenge in 2023, replacing Jeremy Paxman
Rajan said that while he would have never taken action, he experienced an ‘unbearable agony’ to be with his father P. Varadarajan, who died in 2022 at the age of 76 after being hospitalised with pneumonia.
‘I’ve never said this in public but – and I want to be very, very careful about how I say it for the obvious reasons because there’s a lot of guidelines about how we talk about it – but I thought about, not doing it, but suicide and God in a way I had never before,’ he said on Gabby Logan’s Mid Point podcast.
‘I don’t at all by that mean that I would take action toward taking my own life.’
He said that he was presenting Radio 4’s Today programme in Southampton and was walking through a ‘very dark, very rainy’ part of the country at 3.15am. ‘And I walked over a bridge and there was a train track,’ he said.
‘I did think for the first time – and I’m not religious, I grew up in a religious family but I’m not religious at all – I did think that there was a connection between ending my life and seeing my dad again. Because all I ever wanted was to see my dad again.’
Earlier this month, Rajan was involved in a frosty bust-up with Jeremy Hunt after he labelled the chancellor a ‘fiscal drag queen’ in a live interview on BBC Radio Four.
Rajan appeared on a celebrity series of University Challenge less than two years ago
Rajan made the jibe as he quizzed the Conservative MP over his fiscal package.
They squared off as Rajan pointed to evidence that the tax burden on Brits is still rising despite his decision to take another 2p off National Insurance Contributions (NICS).
‘They call you the fiscal drag queen of British politics, don’t they? And with good reason, the net effect of your time in No11 Is that taxes are still going up,’ the presenter said in the interview.
‘It’s just not going up by as much as they were six months ago, but they’re still going up, aren’t they?’
Mr Hunt replied: ‘You talked about fiscal drag. I don’t think I have been called a drag queen before by the way Amol.’
Rajan was previously forced to apologise after making incendiary remarks about the royals in articles written for The Independent newspaper in 2012.
He described the public role of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as a ‘total fraud’ and called Prince Philip a ‘racist buffoon’.
After the remarks resurfaced, he tweeted: ‘In reference to very reasonable questions about some foolish commentary from a former life, I want to say I deeply regret it.’