Danielle Bux: 'Being a stepmother is hard'

Danielle Bux has revealed that she found it difficult adjusting to life as a stepmother to Gary Lineker's children.

Bux, who married Lineker last September, admitted that she tries to act like a friend to the children and that they often play practical jokes on her.

According to the Sunday Mirror, she said: "I don’t swim. If I’m on a lilo they push Angus, the youngest, to knock me off so he gets ticked off. But I know what they’re doing. You don’t love them straight away - they’re strangers. You work towards that.

"But I really, really don’t want to be a wicked stepmother. I want to be their friend. I find it hard to discipline them. I get Gary to do it. My problem is taking a step back. I’m worried I don’t make enough effort. And I do tell [my daughter] Ella off more - because she’s mine. I really don’t want these kids to hate me.

She added: "I’ve got to build their trust. I’m pretty cool. I introduced them to Simon Cowell - that was pretty cool. I try not to be a parent because I don’t think it’s my place to tell them what to do.

"I feel if I say, ‘Don’t kick the ball about the kitchen’, they’ll just think, ‘Silly old cow’. Maybe with their mum it’s more relaxed, so I don’t want them to come to my house and for it to be all lots of rules. I’d like to be their friend but I can’t really be their friend.

"It does take time and it can be frustrating. You envisage the relationship you want but unfortunately it doesn’t just happen overnight - it can’t."