Rob Rinder

44, criminal barrister and television personality

ROB RINDER, 44, is a criminal barrister and television personality. Since his hit reality courtroom series Judge Rinder took off in 2014, he has appeared on shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? and Celebrity Gogglebox. In his 2020 documentary My Family, The Holocaust and Me, he helped Jewish families discover the full truth about what happened to their relatives during the Holocaust. He is single and lives in London.

BEST HABIT?

Getting up in the morning and exercising more or less every day for one clear hour. Even when I feel like I’m 100 years old and I’d rather gouge my eyes out, I get up really early because it’s the one thing in the day that I can complete. I’m a member of the gym so I go to Barry’s Boot Camp most days – I went this morning – or I’ll go cold swimming. And at the end of that hour, you get this little serotonin burst of joy.

BEST CHILDHOOD MEMORY?

Because I come from a Jewish family, whatever I say to this, somebody will be, “What? You forgot about this wonderful time?” Like when you say to your mum, “I really love the soup”, but she says, “What’s wrong with the chicken?”

This is tightrope question, so it would be all of the Jewish festivals, especially Passover, which is a magical time of year and where the tradition is that the youngest person is always raucous and loud and full of love. There wasn’t a single occasion where one of those nights was unhappy. It was the family alongside one another at their humorous, silly, cultural, but also emotional, best. I suspect lots of my happy memories are bound up in that.

BEST THING YOU’VE DONE?

I got to do this Sport Relief thing where I ran across the desert in Namibia – well, it wasn’t really running because I had [walking] poles, so it was more like a 30-mile mince – but it was in about 40-degree heat. And I was on my own in this desert. There was no reception on my phone, but it worked enough to play music, so I had a bit of

Dolly Parton, a bit of One Direction, lots of classical music.

I had this moment where I was running, and all I could feel was breath. There was nothing behind me or in front of me. I was just breathing. And I had a moment where the signal kicked in and some music came on and I cried for who knows how long.

I hadn’t been that connected to a sense of feeling, to a sense of being present, for a really long time or cried as much since my stepsister died in 2001. It was really beautiful. A gift.

BEST DAY IN YOUR TV CAREER?

I’m really proud of a moment on My Family, The Holocaust and Me when the camera went on and they asked me to respond to something I didn’t expect while I was standing by a mass grave. I had no idea what I said until I watched it back, but I felt proud that I had reflected on the fact that [this mound] was not the only mound of earth like that in the world. Most of the time when you watch yourself back it’s awful, but that was the first time I listened and heard myself and thought, “Yes, that’s the right thing to say.” And it felt good that I could share that. It mattered.

BEST THING ABOUT THE CELEBRITY LIFESTYLE?

Celebrity lifestyle? I’m in the same house I’ve been in since way before [I started appearing on] telly, my watch cost £20.99 from Amazon, I don’t have a car and there are no filtered Instagram photographs of me anywhere. That said, the best thing is that everybody is nice to me – partly because I suspect they think I can send them to prison, but mainly because most people are just nice, and that’s down to the impact and power of television, whether it’s Judge Rinder or the Holocaust programme.

You genuinely get to be in the world, no matter what you think about yourself, and people will tell you how much they like you and you get to improve the chemistry of somebody’s day by going: “Hi, what’s your name? Of course, I’d love to have a selfie.” What’s not great about that? I genuinely need to be persuaded of the downside, and it’s got nothing to do with egomania.