The Great British Sewing Bee judge Esme Young has been keeping viewers entertained for the past few weeks on the popular BBC programme, in which she stars alongside Patrick Grant. But when she's not busy filming for the show in Leeds, what does she get up to in her spare time? Find out all we know about Esme's life away from the cameras...
Where does Esme Young live?
Esme currently resides in London and has lived in social housing for 40 years. She rents her property, a one-bedroom flat in Islington, north London, from the charitable housing trust, Peabody. She told The Guardian: "It’s tiny, but I like entertaining. How many can I fit in? I can ram in eight people, but there will be some eating on the sofa. Particularly if you’ve got the Christmas tree up."
Chatting about her home, the 74-year-old told The Telegraph last year: "It is rent controlled and I have tenure for the rest of my life. I also own a beach hut on the north Kent coast which I bought for £500 many years ago."
Esme Young's life away from The Great British Sewing Bee
When she's not busy sharing her fashion expertise with the contestants on The Great British Sewing Bee, Esme works as a teacher at Central Saint Martins, which is an art school in London and where the TV star graduated from.
Judging from her Instagram page, Esme likes to use her time off work to travel around the UK and has shared snaps from various amazing locations and tourist spots up and down the country, from the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton to The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens and Dumfries House in Scotland.
The star also commits some of her free time to charity work and took part in Vitality London's 2019 'Celebrate You' campaign which saw participants walk or run 10k in the name of body positivity. In the same year, she got involved in Warehouse's 'I DEFINE ME' campaign to raise money for Rosa UK, a charity that aims to improve the lives of women and girls.
Esme has also made celebrity guest appearances on other TV shows, including House of Games, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, The Weakest Link, The Wheel and Who Do You Think You Are?. In 2022, she published an autobiography, titled Behind the Seams: My Life in Creativity, Friendship and Adventure from the star of the Great British Sewing Bee.
Esme Young's love life
Esme likes to keep her love life out of the spotlight, so very little is known about her relationship history.
MORE: The Great British Sewing Bee star Patrick Grant's surprising career before fashion
She does, however, have a large family and is one of five children. The fashion icon was born in Bedford to parents Brian Pashley Young, who was a career officer in the RAF, and Patricia Josephine Cole, a secretary who also worked as a nurse during World War Two.
Speaking about her upbringing in an interview with The Telegraph, she said: "I'm the second of five children and nearly all of us were privately educated. We lived in nice houses and I never had the feeling we didn't have enough."
Her hearing problems
Esme previously opened up about having hearing problems as a child, telling SheerLuxe that she was "partially deaf" and no one realised. She explained: "No one really understood that that was the problem. My teachers thought I was thick and my father used to describe me as 'dreamy' – but, really, I was in my own little world because I couldn't hear anyone. I also didn't learn to read until I was seven because I didn't know how to make the right sounds. It's still a bit of a problem today because I have to look at everything visually."
The Great British Sewing Bee continues on BBC One