Actress, radio presenter and charity champion Gemma has spent most of the past 16 years in London
Gemma Oaten with her ‘absolute hero and Hull legend’ Sir Tom Courtenay – and the pot of Hull Chip Spice she gifted to him(Image: gemma.oaten/instagram.com)
Gemma Oaten announced a “major life update” just before Christmas. The Hull soap star and radio presenter suddenly decided that the time had come to up sticks from London, where she has been based for the past 16 years, and return to the city.
“I’m dead happy to be home,” said Gemma, a self-professed “Hull lass and proud”, who bigs up the city and its Chip Spice whenever she has the opportunity. Home for Gemma and her beloved dog Ruby is now a little bungalow that she is renting in the city’s Sutton Park area.
She said: “I have to sort the garage out now; everything I couldn’t get in the bungalow is in there. It’s only been a month or so and I can’t believe how quickly me and Ruby have got in our new routine.”
Gemma first moved to London to study drama at Ealing. She landed her Emmerdale role (as Rachel Breckle) within a year of the intense course she took.
“I left London for a bit to go and film in Leeds,” she said. “While I was in the show, I decided to move to London while I could afford it.”
The star, who has since appeared on the cobbles of Coronation Street and who does regular presenting stints on both BBC Radio Humberside and Radio York, lived through lockdown feeling like she “never saw family”. She said: “In the past year I’d been feeling even more lost and lonely and I was getting more and more insular.”
When Gemma first left Hull, where she had had years of therapy for an eating disorder and had endured multiple stays in hospital or special units, she said she thought she would never be coming back. She posted on her Instagram account last September about meeting (and gifting a pot of Chip Spice to) her “absolute hero and Hull legend” Sir Tom Courtenay, and harked back to the time when she first reached out to him, in 2009, as a new drama school student and a “Hull lass feeling out of her depth”, for any advice.
“When these thoughts surfaced about coming home, I thought, is this bad? Am I failing? Is this weird?
“I’d been at home during a visit to do radio and I turned to Mum and Dad and said, I want to come home. I want to be Auntie Gem; I want to be the daughter who does mundane things and says things like, can I cook tea for you?
“Within a week, I’d found the bungalow.” Fate played a hand in that, with Gemma happening on the place she has taken up while on a visit to Sutton Park to find her intended target property.
“There was a To Let sign outside and I went and popped my head in and there was an electrician in there and another guy getting the place ready for the market. I’ve been allowed to make it my home – the landlord is happy for me to make it nice – and it feels amazing.
“It’s been quite overwhelming – I might have my moments when I think, what I have I done, but overall I feel like I’ve never gone. It’s been amazing the amount of people who have said ‘welcome home’ and that they have seen me on Instagram; people who are recognising Ruby and stopping to say hello to her.
“While I’m walking Ruby in the morning I’ll go to the shop and buy a coffee and I’ll bump into my dad and it’s just the best. We’re all going out for my mum’s birthday and our Jack [Gemma’s nephew Jack Charles] is starting for Hull KR on Sunday, and I’m so proud to be back now for that.”
Gemma said: “It’s so bizarre the amount of things that have started happening. I’m filming a new podcast series with Hull Trains, with lots of guests lined up; it’s all around mental health and I interview people on a train about their mental health journeys.
“When I first got into drama school and I needed to get back every weekend, Hull Trains gifted me two years’ worth of sponsorship to travel. That relationship with them started all those years ago and I’ve always wanted to support them ever since.
“KCOM have also been in touch and have said that as someone who people look up to in the community, they want me to be a judge on their unsung heroes panel. Nine telephone boxes will be dedicated to the winners, and that’s exciting.
“There are more gigs coming up at BBC Radio Humberside and York and there are a few other possibilities. I feel like this is where I was always meant to be.”
Gemma said she had also reached out to Dove House Hospice, with her plans to “give back” to her local community including a fundraiser for special “cuddle beds” for the hospice. “I got the idea when I was working at Radio York and I was interviewing someone who had been raising money for cuddle beds in York, and I was crying while interviewing her.
“She said she had felt more like a carer than a wife to her poorly husband but with a cuddle bed [they are specially adapted beds that allow partners or family members to lie side by side] she felt more like a wife and he felt more like a husband. It really resonated with me and I want to be able to get some for Dove House.
“I fundraised for Dove House with the Humberside Police Lifestyle Project in 1992, when I was eight. I remember my team got tights and filled them with sand – they looked like little jacket potato heads – and we put felt eyes on them and sold them for 50p or something.
“We also did a crazy walk across the Humber Bridge. I had to hop halfway in my pyjamas.”
Gemma is CEO of the Support and Empathy for People With Eating Disorders – SEED – charity that her parents Marg and Dennis set up in Hull 25 years ago. She said there will be a special anniversary celebration at Hull KR, when her parents will be taking a step back.
“When we celebrate the 25th it will be a celebration of their retirement as well,” she said. “I’m going to be stepping down from the CEO role as well, to be patron again.
“I will still be the face of, and advocate for SEED but it’s bl***y hard work running a charity.”