The very idea of Alison Hammond conducting an orchestra is hilarious (one can imagine her falling into the violin section while enthusiastically demanding ‘more bassoon, babes’), but she’s making an interesting point...

‘I’d disagree with you that I’m not an expert in music,’ she says, breaking off from a rousing rendition of the theme tune to Dallas. ‘I may not be a conductor, but music is something that’s always there in my life, and always has been.’

She thinks of the soundtrack of her own life, and yes, there is a song for every big emotional moment. ‘When my son was born I had an emergency C-section and the surgeon was actually playing A Whole New World as he came out. I’ll never forget it. How amazing was that? And when my mum passed away, we were playing hymns as she was leaving this world and going on to her next one.’

What song gets you teary, or nostalgic, and floods your soul with memories unique to you? That question is at the heart of Alison’s new TV show called, appropriately enough, Your Song.

The Channel 4 show, made by the same team that produces Bake Off and The Piano, was conceived as a big, bold hug of a programme in which members of the public not only get on stage to sing ‘their’ song, but share the story of why it is important. Some of the stories – such as that of Sarah, who fell in love at 18 with the driver of her bus – are sweet and touching (and in this case, traffic-stopping). Others, like Findlay’s, are simply heartbreaking. Findlay, a young trainee quantity surveyor from Ayr, lost both parents to cancer – and performed the Paolo Nutini song Candy, just as he had done at his mother’s funeral, keeping his last promise to her.

In format (and feel) it is very similar to The Piano. Alison, 51, takes the Claudia Winkleman role, keeping the audience entertained and the contestants calm. Her sidekicks, professional singers Paloma Faith and Sam Ryder, stay hidden in a room nearby, watching on and offering expert commentary remotely for the viewer as each performer sings their song once, before popping out at the end to hug the singer.

The casting of Sam Ryder – who represented Britain in The Eurovision Song Contest in 2022 – probably tells you everything you need to know about the tone of the show. Sam, possibly the sweetest man in showbiz, says he regarded his role to be giving the performers ‘loving advice, not catty or venomous advice in a gameshow sort of scenario where one person wins and everyone else gets cast aside’.

The X Factor this show ain’t, we can conclude. Nor is it even The Traitors – the show where Paloma herself met a sticky end, ‘murdered’ in dastardly fashion by her old friend Alan Carr in the celebrity version. All three are keen to stress that Your Song is the antithesis of these sorts of shows.

‘I do think there is a perpetual culture of cruelty with shows like I’m A Celebrity or The Traitors where people are mean to each other,’ Paloma points out. ‘You see it even with reality shows like The Kardashians where you’ll see one person being rude to someone else. There’s an appetite for it, yes, but I think this show is maybe what we need at the moment. It’s a show that reminds us how amazing human beings are instead of being reminded how awful they are.’

Thankfully, no one ends up in a coffin at the end of this show (as Paloma did in The Celebrity Traitors). What does the winner get? Nothing, but that’s the point. ‘It’s not about chasing fame or launching a TV career,’ says Sam.

The show is a delight. Tissues will be required for the more gritty life stories (‘I was breathless at how much some people have been through,’ says Paloma). The fact that it doesn’t veer too much into the saccharine is mostly down to Alison, who adds what she always adds to a TV programme – warmth, humour and the sense that you never quite know what she will do (or trip over) next.

Paloma, 44, is heavily pregnant during our interview (she gave birth to a baby boy soon afterwards) and admits she was a swirl of hormones during the filming process. ‘Which meant that I was forever bursting into tears,’ she says. ‘When someone was telling their story, they only had to say “as a mother…” and I was off.’ Alison and Paloma might seem like an unlikely pairing, but the two – who’d met a couple of times, but weren’t friends – have become close. They match each other in throaty cackles today, and bonded over the fact that they both know what it is to be a single mum in the entertainment industry.

‘There is something about being a single mum that creates a lot of pressure because everything falls on you,’ says Paloma. ‘Alison and I bonded over that.’ As if on cue, Alison’s phone rings. It’s her window cleaner. She goes to reject the call, but Paloma insists, ‘You need your windows done, Alison.’ The conversation between them debunks the idea that celebrities don’t live in the real world.

While they are discussing the songs that remind them of their childhoods, their respective mums (both also single mums) come to the fore. ‘One of my strongest memories is of being in the back of the car, listening to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman,’ Paloma recalls. ‘My mum and stepdad would be in the front. Mum had decided we’d go on a road trip to a Little Chef. She thought she was American, but she wasn’t. It would be the biggest treat to go to a Little Chef. We weren’t even going anywhere else. That was the destination.’

Her mum couldn’t afford a ‘proper’ restaurant, she says, but would improvise at home. ‘She’d take a table out into the street and put a tablecloth on it, and she’d play the part of the waiter and say, “What would Madame like?”.' 

Alison’s mum Maria died in 2020 from lung and liver cancer, but that Dallas theme tune reminds her of her childhood. ‘As soon as it came on, we’d all be dancing and singing in the living room.’

If the trio have anything in common, it’s that they all came to showbiz relatively late, and success was never a given for them.

Sam Ryder was 31 and working as a joiner for his dad when he got his first solo record deal. ‘People had told me that if it didn’t happen for you by 25, it wasn’t going to,’ he says. ‘We worship at the font of youth in every facet of the arts, and it’s not true, but my dream was only ever to earn enough money from music to pay my rent.’ He’s very glad he had ‘a bit of life’ before fame arrived too. ‘It helps you recognise what is authentic and what isn’t.’

Paloma was 27 when she got her first deal. Alison was the same age, and heavily in debt, when she appeared on Big Brother, the show that led to so much more for her; (‘I wanted to win the £70K to clear my debt’).

‘I think what we do have in common is that we are all regular people who didn’t expect our lives to be like this,’ says Paloma. ‘We didn’t have any silver spoons. It took a while for us to get to where we did. I also think we did better than anyone thought we would.’

None, interestingly, are blasé about their careers. Paloma – riding high after starring in The Celebrity Traitors, surely? – seems a bit unsure about how successful she actually is. ‘It’s strange. I got a message from someone the other day saying, “I’m so glad about how well everything is going for you.” I was confused. I said, “Is it going well for me?”. I don’t think it is. I haven’t put out an album for a couple of years.’

She’s candid about the fact that she can’t make a living from music alone these days, and perhaps her impending maternity leave is a factor. ‘I think as a woman you’re written off and every time you have a baby you have to start from scratch and re-audition for your position.’ 

Alison’s standing in the industry can’t possibly be in question. She’s on everything at the moment, I say, as Paloma teases her with a jokey, ‘some would say over-saturated’. 

She disagrees. ‘I’m really not. I think it’s more that I’m doing shows no one would have expected me to do before. For 20 years I was a roving reporter on This Morning. I was in that box.' 

Her career trajectory has been most unusual. She tells me she ‘didn’t think she’d last six months’ in the TV industry, ‘and now I’ve been doing it for 23 years’. 

This is a career she built at the same time as being a single mum to Aidan, her co-star on BBC travel show Alison Hammond’s Florida Unpacked, who’s 21 and lives at home. 

There was a period early in her This Morning stint – about six years in – where it was all looking a little scary for Alison. She thought her TV career was over. ‘They got Peter Andre in to do the junkets [celebrity interviews] instead of me, so I thought, “That’s it. It’s TV. Up and down”.’ What did she do? Getting her hair done one day, she discovered the salon needed a receptionist, so she asked for a job. ‘They also let me do the odd blow-dry. And my mum paid my mortgage so I didn’t lose my house.'

Her TV career returned, but it wasn’t until lockdown that things inched to another level, not least when a riotous interview with Harrison Ford went viral. 

She’ll always remember those who didn’t stand by her and the naysayers. ‘I’ll never forget being told, “You can’t do Strictly. You’re too overweight. You need to lose weight.”’ She didn’t, not then. ‘I did Strictly when I was 25 stone.’ 

Wouldn’t it be delicious if Alison got the ultimate revenge by returning to Strictly – as a host. She’s been mooted as a Tess or Claudia replacement. ‘She’s got to get it,’ says Paloma, while Alison feigns nonchalance, for a whole minute. ‘I’ve not heard anything, but that job is made for me, let’s be honest.’ 

Of course, physically, Alison is now a much smaller woman than she was then. Over the past five years, after discovering that she was at risk of developing diabetes, she has lost around 11 stone.

Her home life seems settled too. Last year she went public about the fact that she had fallen in love with her massage therapist, Russian model David Putman, who happens to be 22 years younger than she is. ‘I completely understand why people are interested when there’s a 22-year gap, but what I find interesting is that it’s not as interesting when it’s the man who is older. Why is that? I just want people to be happy for us. We are absolutely in love.’

All three are at pains to say that it’s the members of the public who are the real stars of this show, but we can reveal that Alison was forever stepping into the limelight with a microphone. ‘She sang Mustang Sally about 72 times,’ says Sam. Can she sing? Paloma picks her words carefully, as Alison’s laugh threatens to bring the ceiling down. ‘Oh, she can sing in tune, but she’s not Whitney Houston.’

Your Song starts on Sunday 12 April at 9pm on Channel 4.