Roslyn Car­ring­ton

When you see Leasel Rovedas, it's so easy to be blind­ed by her beau­ty that you might as­sume lit­tle lies be­neath. But sit and chat with her, and you'll re­alise at once that you're in the pres­ence of a warm, wit­ty, thought­ful woman who has lots to say. And let's just get this out of the way: con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, "The Bri­an Ef­fect" doesn't colour her every wak­ing mo­ment. This tal­ent­ed and suc­cess­ful woman is a celebri­ty in her own right, and she has no in­ten­tion of be­ing re­mem­bered by his­to­ry as just a chap­ter in the bi­og­ra­phy of one of this coun­try's great­est ath­letes. "Peo­ple see me for who I am, not who I'm con­nect­ed to, and that re­al­ly means a lot."

Play Whe fans who tune in to hear the re­sults can take their loss­es a lit­tle eas­i­er when she's on shift: her warm, pleas­ant voice is like a sug­ar cube that makes bit­ter med­i­cine eas­i­er to swal­low. Lis­ten­ers to Mu­sic Ra­dio 97.1 en­joy her cross-chat with fel­low an­nounc­er Harold Thomp­son, mel­low out to her easy line­up of tunes, and ben­e­fit from her reg­u­lar hints, tips and self-im­prove­ment ideas.

These two as­sign­ments take up most of her pro­fes­sion­al time, but click through the ra­dio or TV sta­tions and you're like­ly to come cross an ad she voiced. Flip through the pages of a lo­cal fash­ion mag­a­zine and you might pause and ad­mire a mod­el's face that bears this skilled make-up artist's per­son­al touch.Even so, she's be­mused by her celebri­ty. "I of­ten won­der why peo­ple walk up to me and say, 'Oh my God, Leasel!' I think: I'm just a reg­u­lar per­son. How come you re­mem­ber me?"Be­ing fa­mous isn't at the top of her agen­da, but she's touched when peo­ple thank her for the wis­dom she pass­es on. That's why she loves ra­dio. "It's a medi­um that lets me share pos­i­tive things with the pub­lic. I be­lieve if you can just give one per cent or two per cent of some­thing good, it will add up."

Like any work­ing moth­er, she wish­es there were six more hours in the day, as she has to find cre­ative ways to jug­gle time be­tween her daugh­ters and her jobs. Some of her so­lu­tions in­clude dart­ing out dur­ing a 20-minute break at the ra­dio sta­tion to drop her el­der daugh­ter, Syd­ney, to school, and sit­ting up late af­ter both Syd­ney and ten-month-old Ty­la are asleep to whit­tle down her to-do list. This is not as hard as it sounds, as night time is when her brain kicks in an ex­tra gear.

"That's when ideas flow. I'm def­i­nite­ly a night child." She us­es the time to get the kids' stuff or­gan­ised, fix meals and do work-re­lat­ed re­search for her dai­ly health, lifestyle, fash­ion, style and in­te­ri­or de­sign tips. Sin­gle moth­ers can tes­ti­fy to the guilt trips kids are ca­pa­ble of un­leash­ing on their par­ents. Rovedas has en­dured her share, but as Syd­ney is quite the young la­dy now, she's learned to take her moth­er's hec­tic pro­fes­sion­al life in stride. "She'll on­ly com­plain if she has a project to fin­ish, and we both have to stay up late. But once she gets eight hours' sleep...." Rovedas trails off with a laugh.

With a sched­ule packed so tight you could bare­ly squeeze a man­i­cure in side­ways, and less than a year af­ter hav­ing a ba­by, how does she con­tin­ue to look so fab­u­lous? Witch­craft, right? Nope; just good genes."I shouldn't say this, but I don't ex­er­cise at all. Peo­ple think I was in the gym 24/7, but I wasn't. Both my par­ents are slim and trim."That, and cus­tom-made un­men­tion­ables, con­spire to give her the kind of shape a Co­ca-Co­la bot­tle could sue her for.

For Rovedas, the se­cret to hav­ing it all is in main­tain­ing a sense of bal­ance."With kids and work, time man­age­ment takes years of prac­tice. It doesn't hap­pen just like that, es­pe­cial­ly when a ba­by comes in­to the pic­ture. This is a new life you brought in­to the world, and it's your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. It's not about you any­more. You have to see how best you can spend qual­i­ty time with your kids. That's crit­i­cal. Those are the mo­ments they re­mem­ber the most."

As a self-as­sured, suc­cess­ful woman rais­ing two girls, she's cer­tain to be a good role mod­el for them. "If I could give my chil­dren one gift it would be the gift of un­der­stand­ing, to know that the many chal­lenges that lay ahead all hold valu­able lessons that will mould their char­ac­ter and help them be­come stronger and wis­er in­di­vid­u­als."To oth­er moth­ers, she ad­vis­es, "Al­ways lis­ten to your kids, be­cause they have opin­ions as well, which we as par­ents can learn from. Don't dwell on their weak points, but high­light their strong points, and nev­er stop talk­ing to them. You may think every­thing you say is go­ing un­heard, but with rep­e­ti­tion your seeds of wis­dom are plant­ed and will bear fruit they will one day ben­e­fit from."