I was a high-flying editor… but I was too terrified to walk to a bus stop: Following Zoe Ball’s heartbreak, ALEXANDRA SHULMAN reveals her own battle with debilitating panic attacks… and why we must stop confusing them with anxiety

Zoe Ball, one of our most successful and highly paid radio and TV presenters, has spoken about the crippling anxiety and panic attacks that led to her leaving her prized Radio 2 slot. It’s astonishing that she managed to get through those live shows, especially as a bouncy, breezy voice ushering us into the day.

As someone who has similarly suffered from panic attacks, I know how traumatic they can be and how different they are from anxiety. Panic attacks are simply terrifying. I was 20 when I had my first one. I woke in my bed with no idea what was happening, thinking I was unable to breathe and with a sensation of my brain being stretched so taut it would snap.

Over the following months the same experience kept happening, seemingly out of the blue. What were eventually formally diagnosed as panic attacks forced me to move home for the second year of my university degree.

Panic attacks are like a monster lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce, often when you are least expecting it. They are a result of an overload of cortisol and adrenaline when the body’s fight-or-flight response goes wrong. They jump in, overwhelming rational thought, and are extremely hard to control.

They occur randomly – not always when you are frightened about something – and in the end the fear of them becomes as difficult as the attacks themselves.

I’ve experienced three periods of suffering with severe panic attacks. At one time I was editing GQ magazine. I had to be treated in hospital and remember looking out of the window by my bed at the bus stop a little way down the road. My task that day was to walk out of the hospital to the bus stop and back. I couldn’t do it. An icy terror prevented me from even getting to the lift.

Another was in my 40s around the period my marriage had broken down.

Anxiety is something different. Talking to a therapist about the two conditions, she told me anxiety was not a feeling but a reaction to a feeling – threat, sadness, apprehension. If you are feeling anxious it isn’t the anxiety that you need to examine but the feeling behind it, which along with the correct medication can help.

It can dominate your days and make you miserable but it’s not the same as panic attacks which manifest themselves in such a physical way. We all feel anxious at times and it’s increasingly recognised as a mental health problem, with one in five people a week treated for general anxiety disorder. Neither panic attacks nor anxiety are much fun, as Zoe knows, but having experienced both I’d prefer the latter any time.

Pastel pink and mud don’t mix, Rachel

I’m not one of the great Rachel Reeves bashers but what possessed her to think it was a smart idea to wear a pastel pink trouser suit to visit a muddy site in Bedford where a new Universal Studios theme park is being built?

The sight of her tiptoeing around the mud last week, holding up the hems of her trousers, somewhat supported a text sent by Darren Jones, then Ms Reeves’ deputy at the Treasury, commenting on plans for UK growth being in her hands: ‘It doesn’t fill you with much confidence.’ Surely the woman in charge of the nation’s finances should realise that Barbie pink on a soaking construction site looks not only mad but incompetent?

Harry and Meghan fail the name game

Reading that Princess Lilibet turned five on Thursday reminded me what a ridiculous name Meghan and Harry have landed that poor daughter with. Honestly, Lilibet. It’s another example of how they get things so wrong.

Lilibet may have been a charming childhood nickname for her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, but nickname is how it should have stayed. Did they consider how daft it was going to sound at school? And later in life, no self-respecting adult would delight in such a twee name.

If they wanted her to be known as Lili, the name Meghan used in her Instagram birthday post, they should have simply called her that in the first place, rather than going for the misplaced, grandiose association with the late Queen.

Are we set for a new roaring 20s?

Many years ago, the novelist Angela Carter wrote a piece for Vogue magazine about changing fashions. She identified that culture and style changes at what she called the ‘hinge’ of a decade, halfway through.

The 1960s started with the tag end of the bleak, black and white culture of the 1950s and ended with the flamboyance of Woodstock, psychedelia and the Moon landing. The 1970s began with glam-rock and ended with punk. What will be the changes this decade as we reach the hinge?

Maybe a switch from the Covid-inspired, comfort-driven athleisure and flat shoes into something more glamorous. That would make a nice change.

Dazzling Dua, the star who has it all

Speaking of glamour, who wouldn’t want to be Dua Lipa? She looked spectacular in her fitted Schiaparelli suit and Louboutin heels as she left the register office as a married woman and in white-feathered Bottega Veneta for her Sicilian party. However, apart from the clothes, she’s a fabulous performer and songwriter and she’s just married one of the most attractive and talented young actors of the moment. Things could hardly get better.

Burberry checks all the boxes again

How wonderful to see Burberry back on track. After some years of falling share prices and unsuccessful collections they are serving aces time and again.

Their latest collaboration is with British illustrator Sir Quentin Blake. The animated promotional video for the collection doesn’t show a single piece of clothing but it captures the quirky essence of Britishness – and our obsession with weather – that has served the brand so well in the past.