I was never pushy - just proud, says Judy Murray

Judy Murray says she was never the pushy mum the media liked to portray her as when she was cheering on sons Andy and Jamie at Grand Slams - just very proud of both her sons.

"I think that the British media, they kind of painted me as that pretty much from the first Wimbledon, where I was pumping my fist in the player box - which is possibly quite unusual for a mother of sons to do," she said to Sue Anstiss MBE on The Game Changers, a podcast showcasing trailblazing women in sport.

"And I think what many people failed to realise was I had been there supporting them when nobody was watching them ever, all the way through, just because I do.

"And so I always would get excited and positive and whatever, because you’re the only person that’s watching. So if they need a bit of encouragement or a bit of energy to feed off or a bit of extra support if things aren’t going well, they are always going to look your way. So I was doing nothing different to what I would normally do."

Murray added that had she been the boys' father, there would have been less comment passed on her cheering and fist-pumping.

"I don’t think anybody would have made anything of it because it’s okay to be a competitive man or a driven ambitious man. But it was clearly for many people there was something wrong with being a competitive woman! And I do think the dynamic of a mother of sons in sport is less usual. But if my kids had been rugby players or football players or cricketers, or even golfers, nobody would have known that I existed. It’s just the nature of tennis is such that you are in the player box, the cameras go to you because of the gaps in play. So I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t like it."

Murray wondered whether people were under the impression that as a coach, she had forced her sons into tennis - but she explained that she had only gone into coaching for her sons' benefit, despite being a touring tennis player in her youth.

"For me, everything was about fun and opportunity and learning and trying to improve and being supportive and of course in an individual sport the onus is very much on the parents to make things happen for the kids," she said.

Despite her competitive nature, however, Murray says she knew she was never in with a chance of winning Strictly Come Dancing. As a fan of the show, she decided to do it anyway, but only after checking with her sons.

"I had to run it past the boys...it was quite funny because the boys are quite different from each other. So I went to Jamie first, because he’s always the easier option.

"He goes, 'Oh, Mum, you love Strictly! You should do it, you’ll have great fun.'

"And then I said [about it] to Andy, who kind of like stared at me for about a full five seconds or so. And then he went, 'Oh my God! You’ll be rubbish!'

"And it was funny because they were both right and I loved it and I was rubbish and I didn’t care that I was rubbish, because for all that I am competitive, I wasn’t competitive in that because I knew it wasn’t my thing and I just wanted to enjoy the experience of it."