Clare Balding recently released ‘The Racehorse Who Disappeared’, the follow-up novel to her bestselling children’s debut ‘The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop’. Clare, who could ride before she could walk, grew up surrounded by racehorses and is now a television and radio presenter. Clare has worked at six Olympic Games as well as Paralympics, Commonwealth Games, the Grand National, Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and the Ryder Cup. Today she talks exclusively about how social media is a powerful glue between people and her fears about Twitter.


My favourite website… BBC Sport - I use it for all the sports headlines, plus I can watch clips of sporting action and keep across all sorts of stories.

My favourite app…Google Maps - Sometimes I look just to see what the traffic is doing, even if I'm not about to use the roads. It's also great for walking in London. Also, I love Uber. I think the technology is so clever - I wish buses could work like this as well so that not only could you alert the depot when five or more of you are waiting for a bus but also you could track its likely arrival time and where it is at any given point.

My blog of choice… Women's Sport Trust - It tells tales from women in sport each week.

My internet hero… Ellen DeGeneres - I think she uses the internet brilliantly to spread a message of kindness and love. I really like the clips from her shows and the funny videos she posts. James Corden has taken up a lot of those ideas and his Carpool Karaoke is brilliant.

My most recent buy online… Books for Christmas from Tesco - click and collect from the local store. Easy and very reasonably priced.

Book just downloaded/ read… ‘Paris For One and Other Stories’ by Jojo Moyes.

Favourite tweeter… Caitlin Moran - @caitlinmoran - She has always been funny, thought-provoking, opinion forming and a dedicated challenger of the status quo.

Favourite instagrammer… Georgie Gibbon - @georgiegibbon, who is a friend of mine who works with Alison Moyet. She posts the most beautiful photos, especially of her dogs but of also of all the places Alison goes on tour. It's really uplifting to see.

Social media allowed me to meet… loads of people - I think particularly for women, social media is a very powerful glue between people in the same or related industries. We don't get booked on shows very often with other women so to make contact via social media is really useful. Because of Twitter, I've been able to meet Caitlin Moran, Grace Dent, Hugh Bonneville, Sharon Horgan, Claudia Winkleman, Gillian Anderson, Jojo Moyes, Rebecca Front, Sarah Millican, Sam Bond and many others. Particularly in its early days, Twitter was an amazing way to get to know people. I fear it has changed a lot in the last five years and I now prefer Instagram as a way of feeling connected to people.

Most worthwhile newsletter subscribed to… I don't really do newsletters but I try to keep across lots of different news outlets and I check the next day's newspaper front pages every night so that I know what they think the major issues are. I read sports sections but tend to ignore the rest of the paper as I know from personal experience that it's often not accurate and it's nearly always out of date by the time it is out there. Stories move on so fast that they only way of keeping across them is online.

Pet hate about life online… The temptation to buy too many things that I don’t need.

December 2017