Vogue Williams blasts wellness-obsessed Steven Bartlett for ‘not actually living his life’

Vogue Williams reckons Steven Bartlett is ‘not actually living his life’ as criticism of his latest podcast comments continues.

The Dragons’ Den star, 33, and his three glasses of wine became the talk of the internet recently, igniting a debate about whether wellness culture has gone ‘too far’.

Speaking in a 2025 episode of his Diary Of A CEO pod, Steven recalled having his first alcoholic drink at 31 after a year of sobriety, explaining how it impacted his daily functioning in the days after, from his ability to exercise to even his podcast hosting.

The clip resurfaced in May and went viral, as he told listeners: ‘I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn’t get drunk.

‘It ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect that it caused.’

Steven, who stopped drinking at age 30, added: ‘It meant that I got worse sleep that night. I ate more poorly the next day because my dopamine system or the cortisol system or whatever was all messed up. Then I podcasted worse, and I didn’t go to the gym the day after, and I could track all of this on my Whoop (a wearable device that monitors your body’s key metrics).’

Social media went to town on Steven, who mused that ‘it’s one of those areas where you don’t understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while’. Some called his comments ‘nonsense’, others said they were ’embarrassing’, and many reckon the entrepreneur isn’t actually as ‘healthy’ as he believes.

Now, Vogue, 40, and her podcast co-host Joanne McNally, 43, have weighed in on the dangers of overanalysing your health data and fixating on numbers.

‘He said he had three glasses of wine, and it ruined his life because it made him not optimal for three days,’ Vogue began on the new episode of My Therapist Ghosted Me.

‘First of all, he said that he wasn’t able to podcast well, which I actually don’t agree with because I think when you’re hungover, you are on full fuego.’

She quipped jokingly: ‘I think you’re at your funniest when you’re hungover. I also think you’re at your best two drinks in. That’s when a human is at its best. 

‘If everyone went around two drinks in and they were all kept at that level, we’d all be getting on, and there would be no war.’

They went on to discuss Steven’s fitness tracker, which keeps tabs on things like heart rate and sleep patterns and is a variation of an Apple Watch or a Fitbit. In fact, Whoop trackers are hugely popular among sports stars and will be worn by the England players during the World Cup to ‘maximise’ their recovery.

‘So there’s a thing called being an optimisation person because Steven Bartlett’s Whoop said he was at something like, I don’t know, 28% recovery or something,’ Vogue said.

‘The amount of times I’ve seen a 1% recovery on my Whoop and I look at it, and I’m like, “I know I’m dead today because I know what I did yesterday and I know I’ve had two hours sleep.”

‘That’s kind of why I stopped wearing the Whoop because I was like, “This is too judgemental for me”.’

Joanne agreed, stating that ‘you don’t need that much intel’.

‘You can get kind of obsessed by it. And Steven Bartlett is an absolute wh**e to his Whoop from what I can tell,’ she fired.

Vogue added that Steven is big on ‘human connection and stuff like that’, but ‘it just feels like he’s only connecting to himself and not actually living his life’.

The media personality is far from the first famous face to slate Steven’s health tracking obsession, with BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg James urging fans to join his ‘anti-Bartlett cult’, ranting to his followers that the ‘endless optimisation and measuring of everything’ can ‘make you feel a bit miserable if you don’t quite hit your own targets.’ 

Meanwhile, broadcaster Fearne Cotton bantered that she ‘genuinely sometimes podcasts better on a hangover’, and journalist Julia Bradbury, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2021 and underwent a single mastectomy, said that while tracking can be useful, life is about ‘progress not perfection’.

Steven is no stranger to controversy, having been called out for the types of guests he interviews on his podcast, which launched in 2017 and has become wildly successful in the charts.

For example, he has been criticised for inviting alternative medicine-related guests to speak, whose theories and advice can contradict scientific studies and are often not backed by evidence, all while Steven fails to challenge them on the promotion of misinformation.

In fact, in 2024, a BBC investigation found that The Diary Of A CEO had platformed harmful health misinformation, including anti-vaccine rhetoric and claims that cancer can be treated by following a keto diet.

At the time, a spokesperson for the podcast told Metro: ‘The Diary Of A CEO is a long-form, conversational podcast designed to explore the perspectives and experiences of its guests in their own words.

‘Inviting a guest is an act of inquiry, not endorsement. Steven Bartlett does not adopt the opinions of his guests, nor is the format intended to pass judgment on personal viewpoints.

‘To suggest that a host is responsible for every view expressed by a guest is a fundamental misunderstanding of the long-form interview format.’

However, the backlash doesn’t cease there, as Steven has also been accused of subtly shifting the tone of his once therapeutic, self-improvement-focused podcast to one amplifying misogynistic ideas and ‘manosphere’ narratives.

Again, a spokesperson refuted this, insisting that the podcast features ‘guests from across the entire political and cultural spectrum’, naming the likes of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris as positive examples.

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