Kelly Holmes has always favourite to surprise. So when a double Olympic bullion medallist motionless to have a impulse during podcasting, she gave foe a skip and focused on mental health. The outcome is a constrained 11-part array in that she interviews celebrities about a time they reached their underside and their lane to recovery. Alastair Campbell plays his bagpipes in his lavatory as he discusses his crazy breakdown, Philip Pullman reads from a 400-year-old The Anatomy of Melancholy and tells her he cried nonstop for months in his 20s and Davina McCall takes Holmes to a gym and talks about a heroin obsession that roughly broken her.

Despite a dour theme matter, Holmes brings spreading laughter, consolation and an easy demeanour to a interviews. She knows when to stay wordless as her guest tell their desperately relocating stories, spasmodic inserted to remind us that she has also had terrible lows. As Campbell describes what it is like to be suicidal, Holmes adds quietly: “I’ve been there, where we demeanour in a counterpart and we don’t wish to be here.”

Holmes says it was a payoff to listen as people talked so openly. “So mostly we have a review and contend how are you, blah blah blah, and it’s all a bit superficial. How many times do we lay down and say: ‘Just tell me about you?’”

I accommodate Holmes in London 15 years after we final met, usually after she won a 800m and 1500m bullion medals during a Athens Olympics – a attainment still unmatched by any womanlike British runner. At 48, she looks younger than in 2004. “So many people contend that!” she grins. Holmes is surprisingly slight – small waist, 5ft 3in. In her Olympic heyday, she looked Amazonian. It was illusory, nonetheless – usually those bulked biceps pumping their approach to victory.

For British entertainment fans of a certain age, Holmes supposing dual of a biggest Olympic memories. Not slightest given she was never approaching to win – she was 34 years old, clearly past her peak, and had been raid by injuries for years. Then there was her possess dishonesty – her eyes on stalks when she finally realised she had won a 800m in a photo-finish. “You’ve won it, Kelly, yes, you’ve won it. Yes, you’ve won,” screamed a commentator, Steve Cram, each bit as dismayed as Holmes was. Five nights later, on 28 Aug 2004, she won a 1500m. Again, a explanation was fitting. “That is a biggest opening in a story of British stretch running,” pronounced Brendan Foster, as an tired Holmes lay face down on a track. “Surely we’re going to call her Dame Kelly Holmes after that performance.”

A year after winning double gold, Dame Kelly wrote an journal in that she told us accurately what she had been through. Back then, frequency anybody talked about their mental health, let alone certified to self-harming. Holmes did. And given then, she has finished as many as anybody in open life to make mental health partial of bland conversation. “We’re all usually people perplexing to get by life, and life gets tough sometimes,” she says. “Everybody’s wakeful of people who have struggled. But either we open a eyes to it is a opposite matter.”

Holmes grew adult on a legislature estate in Kent. She had a happy childhood, notwithstanding a formidable start in life. Her mother, Pam, was usually 17 when she gave birth to her. Her father, a Jamaican automobile mechanic, left before Kelly was one. Pam’s relatives disturbed that she had taken on too many – so young, bringing adult a mixed-race baby by herself in a 1970s. They speedy her to adopt, and Holmes went into children’s homes a integrate of times. But Pam was dynamic not to give divided her daughter. She married painter-decorator Mick Holmes when Kelly was 4 and had dual sons with him. Holmes regards Mick as her genuine father.

She mucked around during school, though done friends simply and is still tighten to many of them. “I was crap during school. we usually went for my friends anyway. When a French clergyman is articulate French and we don’t know French, there’s no indicate in seeking me a question, is there?” She talks faster and faster, hardly holding a breath. You can suppose what fun a immature Holmes contingency have been – and how tough to tighten up.

She was a phenomenally gifted immature athlete, fasten Tonbridge Athletics bar during a age of 12 and winning a English Schools 1500m a subsequent year in 1983. She left propagandize during 16, worked in a honeyed emporium and as a nursing partner for patients with disabilities before fasten a army as a lorry driver. She afterwards became a earthy training instructor, and rose to sergeant. Holmes continued to surpass in foe – apropos a British Army judo champion, trouncing her rivals in races and using a men’s 1500m during a army championships to give herself a bit of competition. She won a bullion award in a Commonwealth Games in 1994 and china medals during a European and universe championships in 1994 and 1995 while still in a army, though did not dedicate herself entirely to entertainment until 1997, when increasing appropriation authorised her to go full-time.

And that was when her problems started. She was already 27, and usually as she should have been peaking, she got harmed or fell ill, time and again – glandular fever, ruptured calf, ripped achilles, on it went. “Half of a things we go by as an athlete, we don’t tell people. You know, we had 5 stomach operations during my entertainment career. we had disfigured ovaries, unequivocally bad gynae problems. Men have no frickin’ thought of what women go through!” There was a seven-year duration when she never seemed to be entirely fit.

In 2003, usually before a universe championships, she got harmed again. Her physique was betraying her, and she’d had enough. She pennyless down. “I thought: ‘Why me? I’m so committed, so dedicated, given a fuck me?’ we usually looked in a counterpart and hated myself. we wanted a building to open up, we wanted to burst in that space, we wanted it to tighten and we didn’t wish to go behind out. we was in such a bad way. Then we started slicing myself.” Afterwards, she lonesome adult her cuts with makeup so nobody would know.

How prolonged did she self-harm for? “I don’t know. we was in such a state. we was usually so angry with my body, so angry with all going wrong. In your head, you’re screaming so loud. That’s what people don’t understand, a bark inside. we was spiteful my physique given it was unequivocally vouchsafing me down.”

She never told anybody she was self-harming. She couldn’t – not if she wanted to continue competing. “It was all about certain attitudes, reaching a top levels, staying focused, not looking like we were a diseased athlete, not bringing other people around we down.”

Somehow, she continued competing. Even when she was suicidal, she says, she never mislaid steer of her dream to win a bullion award during a Olympics. Amazingly, she won dual a subsequent year. When we met her in 2004, she couldn’t stop smiling. She told me she slept with her medals by her bedside on a night of her victory. When she woke up, she overwhelmed them, kissed them and cried. Most days, she said, she woke adult smiling given she had been vindicated.

Unlike many athletes, Holmes late from a foe on a high a year later. But even she struggled with retirement. “When we retire, we go, ‘Who indeed am I?’ given all we know is a contestant who wakes adult in a morning, knows what’s approaching of them. Then we leave.” She says she was lost.

She started a Dame Kelly Holmes Trust to support other athletes who weren’t coping with retirement, enlivening them to coach disadvantaged immature people. “An huge volume of sportspeople were unequivocally struggling with unconcern from sport, losing their identity.” Holmes was one of a propitious few, flooded with offers – to write books (five and counting), give motivational talks, make TV documentaries, lay on play and work with charities (notably Mind).

She is still ferociously competitive. She proudly tells me she has won 25 trophies given retiring. When we met in 2004, she was on a highway campaigning to win Sports Personality of a Year, that she duly did. She served as a country’s initial inhabitant propagandize foe champion for 3 years when Gordon Brown was primary minister. She reels off a trophies she has won given timid – for philanthropy, mentoring, gift work.

Today, she says she is frightened during a approach a tennis fable Martina Navratilova has been labelled transphobic after observant it is astray for transgender women to contest in women’s sport. “Martina’s not transphobic. You could never get anybody some-more magnanimous and understanding of a group, for God’s sake. We’re usually station adult for girls and women who physically have reduction bone density, robust structure and lung capacity, and we haven’t got a testosterone.”

She insists she is understanding of “anybody wanting to live their life how they live their life” though being questioned. “You’ve got to start meditative scientifically. What we contend is logic. It’s not opposite anyone, it’s not hatred. we usually don’t wish to see girls going: ‘What’s a indicate competing given I’ll get beaten?’”

“Dame Kelly, would we like a drink?” asks her publicist.

“That’s another thing,” Holmes says, a grin returning. “I’m not usually a lady now. I’m indeed Colonel Dame Kelly now.” A few months ago, she was done an titular colonel of a Royal Armoured Corps training ordain – a initial for a unchanging unit. She is tickled pinkish by it. Blimey, we say, we contingency be a usually Colonel Dame in a country? “In a world! we get to wear my pips and crown!” Does she travel around a residence with them on? “No! No.” She giggles.

Do people assume that given she’s a dame, she is loaded? “There’s an arrogance that anybody in a open eye is well-off. And that’s not a case. But if we consider that foe is usually about financial gain, you’re not doing it for a right reason.” She says she competence have a good residence and automobile (a Porsche), though she can’t means to stop working.

After she late from athletics, her aspiration was to buy a derelict honeyed emporium in Hildenborough, Kent, where she had once worked, and spin it into a cafe. In 2014, Cafe 1809, improved famous as Kelly’s Caff, non-stop for business. “I wanted it to be a encampment heart given I’d lived in a encampment all my life.” She put her all into it, though it done a loss. Last November, it served a final crater of coffee, and she has now incited a building into an events venue.

In some ways, Holmes has been busier than when she was an chosen athlete. Certainly, her work has been some-more varied. And things were going so good until 2017, when her mom died during a age of 64 from myeloma, a form of blood cancer. Pam was Holmes’s hero, and she talks of her with adore and awe. She knows she could so simply have mislaid her mom some-more than 40 years earlier. “I was in children’s homes. People came to adopt me one day, though she wouldn’t let them. Now that is a clever person.”

After her mother’s death, she suffered another hitch of depression. Holmes was divided from home when she died, and had a premonition. “That was a misfortune impulse in my life. we woke adult that morning and we usually knew something was wrong. we texted my hermit and we said: ‘Is all all right?’” It wasn’t. For a initial time in some-more than a decade, Holmes cut herself. “It was usually a once.” But this time, she says, it was different. “I knew that wasn’t going to assistance me get by this thing. This wasn’t an ‘I hatred life’ thing. It’s like somebody carrying a tiny relapse with a drink. we was on a building in a mess, totally blank. we hated it. But we know slicing yourself is not going to move her back, it’s not going to assistance a situation.”

Despite her unusual candour, Holmes has always kept one thing private – her adore life. There were rumours years ago that she was carrying a attribute with a womanlike runner, though again, she gave zero away. we ask if she has a partner who helped her by her mother’s death. For a initial time, she shuts down. “I’m not responding that.” She laughs. “Assume, guess, contend what we want, we don’t care!’” she says, some-more silly than defensive. “I don’t have to go around with signs on my head. I’ve had partners like everybody else. Shit partners, good partners.” And still she’s laughing. Has she got a partner during a moment’ “Yes! There we go! She says it’s a good relationship, and that’s all we need to know.

I ask given it is critical for her to speak so plainly about her possess mental health. Well, she says, if people realize she has come by such troughs, maybe they will trust they can. “I’ve been to a lowest indicate and to a top indicate and all in between.” Similarly, with a open total featured in her podcast: “It shows we can go by life and have struggles and still indeed achieve. If that is lenient for other people that would be unequivocally nice.”

As for her future, she is assured she is nonetheless to find her loyal purpose. What has she been best during given she stopped running? “Well, we consider moving and motivating people.” But, she says, that’s not enough. “I need something discernible to go after. we like to see a bit of success.”

She tells me a story about Athens and a quarrel of 10 unstable toilets in a stadium. She always had to use a initial one before a race. Just before a 1500m final, it was occupied. “They were job a women’s 1500m. And we was like: ‘Noooooo!’ we knocked on a doorway and this lady came out. And we went in and there was this small counterpart and we saw myself and went: “Come-onnnnnnnnnnn!” Her bark is terrifying. “Then we went out all ease and won my 1500m.”

The reason she is revelation me this, she says, is she hasn’t mislaid that hunger. “I have small moments in life when we have ideas, and we get so vehement in myself and and we demeanour into a counterpart in my automobile and we go: ‘Come-onnnnnnnnnnn!’ And it creates me feel great.”

Kelly Holmes’s new podcast, What Do we Do? Mental Health and Me, is out on audible.co.uk on 22 Mar 2019