Alex Scott is ready to celebrate

Alex Scott has just zipped to the gym and back in her BMW iX2, and she’s feeling “all relaxed, ready to talk” — a rather fitting start to our morning chat, given what’s to come. As the new face of BMW’s Living with Electric campaign, she’s perfectly positioned to talk about change, though today she’s calling from her London home (a far cry from the Poplar council estate where her story begins) and there’s an ease about her that feels earned rather than manufactured. When I tell her she seems content, she agrees with characteristic candour: “I’m in a great place, a really good spot”. “Obviously, everyone keeps reminding me about my big birthday, but I went into [my 40th] feeling comfortable in my own skin.”

That comfort, it should be said, hasn’t come easily. Scott’s journey from the concrete football cage next to her council block to becoming one of Britain’s most recognisable broadcasters is the kind of trajectory that looks deceptively smooth from the outside — the sort of career path that gets condensed into neat little bullet points about 140 England caps and history-making BBC appointments. But reality, as ever, tells a different story. In her autobiography, How (Not) to Be Strong, Scott writes about hearing her father be violent towards her mother when she was a child. It’s this part of Scott’s background that makes her current contentment feel hard-won rather than handed down.

“Sometimes people just see the end process, but not what it took,” she reflects. “The rejection, the people not thinking that I was good enough because of my accent and so forth… That constant drive to prove people wrong has been there since being a young girl in Poplar.” The cage, where an eight-year-old Scott was spotted by an Arsenal talent scout, remains a touchstone in her story. When I bring it up, her energy shifts noticeably. “You know what, you even saying that makes me smile,” she says, and I can hear that she means it. “Because I think that young Alex in the cage, she had dreams. She wanted to see the world. She could see there was a bigger picture and she didn’t want to be stuck in that football cage and think that was her life.” Those dreams would materialise into quite the CV — those 140 England caps, a UEFA Women’s Cup-winning goal for Arsenal, and a broadcast media degree that she took, as she puts it, “so no one could ever say that I didn’t work hard.”

Take the Qatar World Cup, where Scott made headlines by wearing the OneLove armband banned by FIFA — it’s a moment that’s since been dramatised at the National Theatre, though Scott describes it with characteristic humility. “I didn’t even know I was going to do that an hour before,” she says, as if discussing what to have for lunch rather than a career-defining moment. “It just came from a place of love […] I wanted people to know that they belong and that I stand with everybody.” Scott approaches confrontation with this same measured grace — when I speak to her, she’s due to present The One Show that evening with Stephen Fry. It was Fry, of course, who once defended Scott against Lord Digby Jones’ criticism of her accent. She’s characteristically warm about the reunion: “It’s actually the first time I’m going to see him […] it will be a big thank you moment.”

This evolution is perhaps most powerfully illustrated by her latest role, fronting BMW’s Living with Electric campaign. For Scott, it’s about making sustainable driving feel accessible to everyone. “What do we do at night with our phones?” she asks practically. “You know, we charge our phones, ready for the next day. It the same with electric cars — just getting into a routine of things.” The transition has been seamless: “I’m not even just saying this… I love my car. I’m a London girl, so it suits my life perfectly in terms of just getting around.”

This authenticity extends to how she approaches the partnership itself. “I don’t know if PR is going to allow me to say this,” she tells me with that characteristic candour of hers, “but in my book, in chapter 2, I actually spoke about BMW. It was a rough chapter because I spoke about everything with my dad […] I said I would never drive a BMW because of him.” But Scott’s journey has always been about evolution and positive change. When BMW approached her, she saw an opportunity to transform old associations into something new. “How am I evolving as a person if I’m still holding on to this perception of a car? It’s actually been quite a freeing moment for me.”

It’s clear that Scott approaches brand partnerships with the same authenticity that characterises our entire conversation. “When you’re doing a partnership and they try to force you to go down a certain route, you know people aren’t going to connect with it. People see straight through it.” Instead, she’s focused on what really matters: “I want any young girl or boy to [see this campaign and be like], wow, Alex is from the Ends, and look, she’s doing alright.”

Our conversation flows easily between these weightier topics and moments of unexpected levity. When I mention that a boyfriend of mine had excavated her girlfriend’s pool – the kind of small-world moment that could only happen in an interview – she’s delighted. “No way,” she exclaims, genuinely thrilled by this random connection. The professional facade drops completely as she tells me that she’s, in fact, “looking at [the pool] right now”. This blend of the personal and professional even extends to our discussion of therapy, where any trace of media-trained guardedness dissolves. When I express my own enthusiasm for therapy, Scott lights up, and we end up having the kind of candid discussion about mental health you might have with a mate down the pub. “If you say you are vulnerable, then it’s like this weakness, when actually there is a bigger strength in it,” she reflects. “It’s allowing people to see the real you. It’s being able to communicate in a way that I’ve never been able to before”.

Her evolution is evident in how she approaches everything now, from representation in football to her work with UNICEF. When we discuss the state of the women’s game, she’s both proud and pragmatic: “You see the amazing crowds at the Emirates now — it’s become the home of Arsenal, not just where the men play, which is an amazing statement. But it’s about the bottom clubs as well.” This understanding of the bigger picture resonates with her journey from that Poplar cage. “It all goes back to me being that kid in the concrete,” she says. “I was hoping someone would see me. I was hoping that someone believed in me. It’s the same for most of the kids in the refugee camp. They’re just hoping that someone sees them.”

As our chat winds down, Scott tells me that she’s looking forward to celebrating her birthday in America with her girlfriend Jess Glynne, followed by “a big celebration” back home. “There’s been too many points in my life where I’ve been that person who wants [their birthday] to go under the radar. Now, I’m like, let’s celebrate it. You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Scott’s embrace of the unknown comes at a good time. “I’m at the end of my TV contract actually,” she reveals. It feels like a pertinent moment to ask about what legacy she’s leaving behind, to which she offers up a personal mantra: “Plant seeds that you may not see grow.” Looking at how far she’s come from that concrete cage in Poplar – now navigating London’s streets in her BMW iX2, challenging preconceptions and inspiring change along the way – it’s clear those seeds have yielded quite the harvest. And they’ll likely yield plenty more.

Leading the charge, Alex Scott MBE fronts new BMW’s iX2 Living with Electric campaign.