Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S5 Ep14: Bookshelfie: Mother Pukka aka Anna Whitehouse

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Activist, broadcaster, author and founder of Mother Pukka, Anna Whitehouse delves into the underbelly of the internet and the fight for flexible working. Anna’s campaign, Flex Appeal has been quoted in parliament, featured on national TV and seen her lead lycra-clad flash mobs around UK town centres. Anna is also a columnist for Grazia, is co-presenter of the Dirty Mother Pukka Podcast, hosts her own Sunday night radio show on Heart FM and - with her husband - has co-authored two Sunday times bestselling books: Parenting the Shit Out of Life and Where's My Happy Ending? Anna’s debut novel, Underbelly, is out now. Anna’s book choices are:  ** The Adventurous Four: Shipwrecked by Enid Blyton ** Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason ** My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen ** Three Women by Lisa Taddeo ** My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season five of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of Season Five? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

I didn't ever think, God, I want to be an activist. I didn't think that my voice was more important than anyone else's. I was done on a really primal, visceral, sorry, maternal level. I'm so tired by thinking, why is this all on me and why is this on you? And why is this going to be on my daughters? With thanks to Bayleys, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction podcast, celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives,

all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world. I'm Vic Hope and I'm your host for season five of the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. The podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. We have a phenomenal line-up of guests for 2022

and I guarantee you'll be taken away plenty of reading recommendations. Today I'm joined by journalist, broadcaster, podcaster, author, campaigner and founder of Motherpucker Anna Whitehouse. Anna is, of course, a strong advocate for flexible working and Flex Appeal. Her campaign for more flexible working for all workers has been quoted in Parliament, featured on national TV and seen her lead, like her clad flashmobes around UK town centres.

She's a columnist for Grazie, a co-presenter of the Dirty Motherpucker podcast, hosts her own Sunday Night Radio Show on Heart, and with her husband has co-authored two. Sunday Times bestselling books, parenting the shit out of life, and where's my happy ending? Anna's debut novel, Underbelly, is out now. Welcome to the podcast, Anna. Hi, Vic. Hi. Well, you're sitting there with Underbelly in front of you. And just before we started, you did the all-important little pan up for the Instagram story. You've arrived. I mean, I look like that girl, you know, on the first day of school, he's got a pencil case away.

Yeah. I'm not one of your cooler guests, you know. You're the coolest guest. Dana, come on that. I've got my pencil case ready, my ring binder. You know the A4 ring binders? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my W.H Smith sort of rubber ruler. I'm ready to go, babe. Remember when we went to school and we would have the biggest backpacks?

We walked around like these turtles the whole time, and it was so normal to have your entire life on your back. Yeah, and kickers shoes. Do you remember kickers? I had ones that weren't actual kickers. They were some kind of knockoff from, I don't know, shoe palace in the Castletan Centre. Shoe Palace. When you were doing, we had a quick chat about just a voice-eyed recording about the fact that we feel the need constantly to be showing everyone that we're always working, that we're always hustling.

And you are, you know, proper slashy podcaster slash broadcaster slash. You do so much. You're so busy. Do you feel that pressure to be showing how busy you are all the time? Yeah, I think I feel consumed by it. Actually, very recently I recognize as a worker holiday. and it's a very underused term and it's kind of patronised quite a lot. But I think this new sort of pixelated world has fed this need to be present and pushing forward, especially I think I realise a lot of, and I will call it trauma,

stemmed from being sort of pushed out of the workforce for having a baby. So I've now been making up ground desperately peddling like sort of trying to keep the swan up top and the legs paddling underneath to bridge that gap that, you know, if we're talking about gaps, that gender pay gap, that pensions gap, orgasm gap. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's really gapy out there. Cabins everywhere. There's just gaping holes of inequality wherever you look. And I think it stems for me from trauma. It stems from being pushed out of the workforce for pushing out a baby, ultimately. And so I wouldn't say it's healthy. And that's why I wrote Underbelly was to question the relationship. The relationship we all have, whether you have one follower or a million followers,

with the underbelly of the internet, the way we interact comparison culture, just simply seeing what Vic Hope is up to and feeling like a lesser person and going, oh God, I've got to do more, keep going, keep going. But it's really what, you know, you're feeding this beast, this algorithm. And I really want to step back and go, I don't think it's healthy. We keep making it worse for ourselves. I was actually talking to someone the other day, the fact that throughout my whole life, I've constantly felt the need to prove myself,

because I always felt like I wasn't as good as other people around me. It probably stems from some trauma, like you're saying, that I probably could investigate further. And actually, that has served me really well up until now because that's why I've been motivated to keep working hard and keep pushing and achieving, but actually at some point you need to look after yourself. Well, I think we're in a world of burnout, right? So, you know, we have all this flexible working, working from home,

which isn't just flexible working, it's just one element of it. But actually, I'm hearing mostly from people going, I can't switch off. I'm in this hamster wheel of needing to continue to be present. And I'm urging people, anyone listening right now, is that if you are in that situation where you're working flexibly,

put, let's say, boundaries in, you're out of office on. Like I now put up, I'm bathing the kids, and they're probably screaming blue murder on my out of office at 6pm. So people know I'm human, I've got kids like the CEOs we saw in lockdown

when their kids started wandering in and you saw humanised a really inhumane working world I think so I think we are yeah we are now sort of in this hamster wheel of I think burnout and you and I looked at each other this morning before coming in him and just went are you okay how do you answer that? I meant but I think you look amazing

I was saying you look glowing and then you said it might be because of a big night last night. I'm papering over the cracks. You look amazing. Literally. It's like join the dots. You know, when you get your foundation

and you're like, right, okay, let's go. But I think that's what we do, right, as women, is we put a face on it.

Really good at it. To answer your initial question, I don't feel comfortable with the way that I have been working because I think it puts out a false narrative. It's stemmed from me, wanting to raise my girls and show them, you can do anything,

be anyone. And I say it to them every morning before they go to school. My daughter, she the other day turned around. She's like, before I said it, she goes, oh, are you going to say you can do anything, be anyone again? No.

I was like, because I'm raising these feminists. And she's like, I just want you, mum. She wants you. I went on the slip and slide in our garden the other day. I just went down it. Like, you know, my youngest went, that sounded a bit floppy, mummy. And but my eldest said, I kept a bit emotional saying this, she said, oh, fun mummy's back.

And I thought, God, where's Fun Mummy being? And what's she been thinking this all time? And maybe Fun Mummy has been working to prove a point that women is still relevant, regardless of what is going on in their ovaries, but actually improving that point, have I actually missed the point? So I am in a moment at a period of real reflection on what work is, what it means to me, but also if we're talking, and there's no elusive work-life balance,

but if we're talking about raising our girls, I can't raise them as a figment of myself, as a caricature, somebody like this morning who came in and papered over the cracks for what end? I want to be fun mummy again. In all of that time that you've spent working so hard, working so frenetically at times, have you made time to read?

What role does reading play in your life? Yeah, reading, I think, became my savior because it wasn't a screen. And it forced me to immerse myself in someone else's world, right? And I think when we, my husband and I went through that, I was going to say Netflix and chilling, but there was no sexual subtext to it. We were just literally very tired on the settee watching Netflix as two exhausted parents. But we really had to snap each other out of that, again, pixelated black hole that,

we were in, whether it was Netflix, whether it was Instagram, this ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, being chased by algorithms left, right, centre and books became my saviour. I realized how manic my energy was with how quickly I could read books. So I could get through two, three books in a day. Oh, that's interesting. It was like this changing energy. And my husband was, he was like, how are you getting through them? And I said, because that's my manic energy online. Like I work quickly and fast and productively. But getting through books suddenly became, yeah, this savior. It saved my mind, honestly, I would say.

And I hadn't read books. I had my second child, 2017, and I don't think I read anything other than probably Jilly Cooper's Polo. Which is fair enough. My little brother won't mind me saying this. His favorite book. It's amazing. Okay, well, Anna, let's talk about the books that you love. Your first bookshelfy book is The Adventures for Shipwrecked by Enid Blighted.

When the Adventures 4 take a trip to Little Island for the weekend, they become shipwrecked. It's all fun and games at first until they realise the harbour is full of enemy submarines. Their investigation of the enemy leads to their capture. They must now work out how to outsmart and escape. Tell us about this book. When did you first read it? Well, my dad and I have a really strong relationship, and he introduced me to The Adventures 4 because everyone's heard of the Famous 5, right? but no one really talks about the Adventurers' Four

and they're these sort of doorstop like wedges of books they are huge and he got me into them because I think he wanted to pioneer at the time very mind this was the 80s that little girls can get messy and dirty and muddy and play with frogs I used to play with frogs a lot in our garden there was a frog influx at one point

and I had names for them all and he was really he really encouraged me to get my hands dirty and play with the soil and, you know, immerse myself not just in Mother Nature, but in being a girl, you know, in the way that felt right on my terms. And I will never forget what he instilled in me. He has instilled in me that confidence. He would always say, and I think this is really anchored within this book, he would always say, never look up to people and never look down on people.

He said, you know, treat the queen as you would. a refuse collector, look straight ahead, don't look left or right. And I think the adventurous four, they're such a team. And do you see them? And that's my dream scenario. You know, if we're talking about women sporting women and the sisterhood, is that genuine anchoring, that genuine looking like we did before we got on this podcast, looking in someone's eye and go, are you all right? How are you? Not seeing everyone as a sort of competitive benchmark. And so that really anchored it for me. And I mean, he, He's my complete muse.

My mum is absolutely too. But when I was, I think, eight, he quit his big city job. He was in one of those law firms where you basically go to sleep in a Japanese sleeping pod. You know the ones where they wheel you out like little bodies. And he was with his client and they'd wheeled out, you know, his client. And my dad said he remembers waking up in the night. He was working on his case. And his big toe just went in the eye of his client because he hadn't put himself in the pod.

enough. And he just thought, what, you know when we say you question what you're doing in the working world? Why are we here? What am I doing? What am I doing? The money might be good. It might, you know, if I say I work for this law firm externally, it might give me some kind of validation as a man and he quit. And this was in the 80s and all of his friends, everyone in this big high-flying city world, thought he was mad. And he did it because he wanted to be at the school gates at 315 to pick me and my sister up. I grew up. thinking it was normal to have your father at the school gates. And that's where Flexapil launched because I grew up thinking that was the norm when actually it's an anomaly.

But he fought for that time with his two little girls. And this book, for me, is really the anchor to that, I think, love. That fatherly love of a little girl and raising you to get, I was going to say down and dirty, but that's not my. That's very wrong. No, get in the mud. It really encouraged I found from reading Eindip Leiton when I was growing up, me to get excited about this camaraderie, this friendship,

creativity and exploring my imagination as well. The idea of adventure was instilled at that point, and it's something that I've constantly pursued. Is this something that you want to instill in your children? Do you encourage them to read this book that you loved as you were growing up? I try and really, really, read books to them that I love, but they're so forthrighting what they want. No, I want peck, peck, peck. Okay, fine, fine. But they're big readers themselves? They are big readers, yeah.

And we read together as a family. And that's again, coming back to where did Fun Mummy go. I'm trying to really protect those moments. Those are the moments we remember, right? I interviewed a death doler a couple of months ago. And she said the main things that people say on their deathbed are, I wish I hadn't worked as much. I wish I'd had more sex and I wish I had had more time with my family. Like, and that was, I think we, we see let's say, bedtime stories with kids. There's a little bit of a laborious task at the end of a long day. And actually, I've tried to repackaging. This is the punctuation of my love for these children. Okay. It's not in the big gestures, the big holidays. The, right, here's a beach ball because it's sunny. It is in those tiny moments where they're

I've covered up in your nook and you're reading like I did with my dad in Ablyton. That's what it's about. Yeah, we didn't actually have a TV growing up. So we would read as a family always. And it's never occurred to me until you've just said it then, that that might have been a really tiring thing for my parents. But they just did it. And actually, now I think about it, my mum used to read to us in English.

She'd be reading us books in English. And as she would be dropping off, she'd start slipping into Ibo, which is her mother tongue. So she'd be like, and then Harry and her mother tongue. and we knew that she was tired, but it never occurred to us that maybe that was difficult, but she cared. Yeah.

It's so true. And you remember those moments. And I remember it. We were so excited. We were so excited every night to cuddle up with my, it was usually my dad. I remember he did all the voices for all the Harry Potter stories. And he used to call Hermione,

because the films hadn't come out yet, so we didn't realize she was called Hermione. But those things will always stick with you. What was your favorite book, is it? The kid, your equivalent of like my in and bloating. So probably the first one was the giraffe and the Pelly and Me. Oh, that's a dressing. Yeah.

Do you know what it was? It was so melodic. It was like my dad was singing. I will never forget the way he used to go, and the giraffe and the belly and me. Like the rhythm of it has stayed with me as well. So special. As a mother, how did Mother Pucker come about?

God. I mean, it started in a much bluer place. I'm not going to lie. You know, it started. I think I could trace it back when I was 21 and I was training to be a barrister and I did my mini-pupilage

a place called Devereux Chambers on Chance Re Lane and I remember just looking around as a 21-year-old woman going, I want this career, where are the women? The optics on it were just so off and I couldn't see women really beyond childbearing age

and I remember looking at the QC it was his son who was the pucee, So there was a real sort of, let's say, male handshake thing going on. I thought, I don't stand a chance in this industry. And what happens when I have a child? I have a feeling I'm going to have to choose between these two things. And so I quit the bar at the time to become a journalist. Why everyone thought I was mad.

I started on Practical Caravan magazine. Of course. It was a real step. I say a step down, looking back, it was a step up. I think one must always question, is there ever an impractical caravan? No. You know? Why else would he put a house?

on wheels, if not for practical means. So when I went home to mum, I have got a new job in journalism, and they're like, what on? It's just a new job. But yes, a mother pucker really came, I think, from that 21-year-old girl, looking at a career she wanted to do. Like, I'm sure you have, and I'm sure other people, I'm sure you've had moments going,

what happens if I have a kid in the industry? I think about it all the time. You know what? I've thought about it all the time, and I'm sure they won't mind me saying this until very recently when Charlie Hedges at Radio One and Molly King has announced she's pregnant as well and it's made me realise actually the Radio One bosses think they're cool, think we're going to be good

but the rest of my career there's never been a time where I felt like I could have done. No. It's on your mind and so whether you're, I was that 21-year-old girl who completely curtailed a career she wanted to have because of procreation and a way that your partner, my partner, doesn't have to question.

I don't think about it at all. I remember thinking because I'm Dutch and I lived in Holland for a lot of my life. And I'm not saying they've got it perfect over there, but they have like a mama dach and a papa dach, which is to ensure that parents don't go back full time because raising a child is a full-time job. But you notice there that there's the man and the woman involved in the conversation here, that burden of childcare and the complete demolition of your career

is on female shoulders, right, in the UK. And so I launched Motherpucker when I wanted some flexibility in my job and I couldn't be given it. I was working for the L'Oreal group. I didn't leave because I wasn't worth it. We got on very well and I still have great relationship with them. But my boss loved me. I love my job and I asked to come in 15 minutes earlier

and leave 15 minutes earlier to do nursery pickup. And they couldn't do it because it would open the floodgates to others seeking flexible working. And I thought, I'm done. You know, like I didn't ever think I was the right voice for this. I didn't ever think, God, I want to be an activist. I didn't think that my voice was more important than anyone else's. I was done on a really primal, visceral, sorry, maternal level. I was so tired by thinking, why is this all on me and why is this on you and why is this going to be on my daughters?

And I thought, do you know what? I can't do this anymore? I can't raise those little girls. to work hard in their ABCs, to work hard in their A-Levels, to maybe get their degree, maybe do what you did and go, right, I'm going to graft and graft and graft. Do you know the graft you have put into your career to know that there is somebody, some TV exec, radio exec, maybe somebody at the top of the legal profession where I wanted to go, who gets to turn that flame off, who gets to switch it off and tell you to pipe down.

And that was where, instead of posting on Instagram, like pictures of my food and other Cicado toast, which is what everyone was doing at the time. I just put a post up. I had 62 followers and I went, I can't do this anymore. Like I am really talented. I have everything to give, but I need a bit of flexibility. I need understanding. I need my partner to step up.

I need this system to work for women because women are falling out. 54,000 women every year get made redundant on maternity leave. It's not a figment. This isn't just a hunch. It's happening every single day. And you know it. anyone listening right now, women just disappear quietly on maternity leave. And they're often, they have gagging orders, so they can't speak up, so you're silenced.

And that's where it started. It was actually motherfucker. And then obviously my mum doesn't like swearing, so she was like, I think we should wash it down. But it started there. And it's really, I couldn't raise those two little girls for the same fall. And it was a fall that I had. I've definitely seen a change. I've followed your work for a long time

and I want to say thank you because it means the world to me and to so many of my peers and so many women that I know. Thanks. I mean, it's obviously not all on me. There's so many brilliant people doing brilliant things here

but I think it's for any, I know it's the Women's Prize for Fiction, but for any man listening, that's what I am hoping that men step up that it's not seen as emasculating to parents, to support your partner, to push the narrative because only one in ten flexible working requests

go through for men, four in ten goes through for women. So still there's this assumption that Vic, you're the one that's going to be picking up at the burden here. Picking it up. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands.

of more people. Look in for a treat to pair with your favourite book, Bailey's is the perfect accompaniment to enjoy either over ice or over coffee. There are no better friendships than those formed around brilliant books. And since you're listening, we're guessing you love books as much as we do. The Women's Prize has created an exclusive community that gives you a bookish backstage pass offering surprises and freebies plus unmissable reading recommendations and book chat for my founder of friends, including me, Vic Hope. Search for Women's Prize friend to become a friend today. We cannot wait to meet you.

Well, let's pick up with your second bookshelf book now, which is The Brilliant Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. This book was on the Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist this year. It's no surprise, considering the witty and searingly honest way it tackles long-term mental illness. The book follows Martha, who's just turned 40, and has struggled to find contentment throughout her adult life after a little bomb, in her words, went off in her head when she was 17. When Martha's loving husband leaves her because he's sick of her behaviour, she's forced to confront

her illness and search for a diagnosis. How did this book make you feel? Seen, finally, seen. I think that complexity in the nuance of mental health where it wasn't, it was a fictional mental health condition. Oh, yeah, you never find out what it is. You never know what it is. You don't need to know in the book, but it's very much present in every move that she makes.

And I think we talked about, obviously, the burden of childcare. But what hit me in this book was I had two babies in very separate world. So my first one was in Amsterdam. And 10 days after you have a baby in Amsterdam, you have a Kramzorg, which is a maternal nurse who lives. with you and helps you breastfeed

Oh my gosh she's like Miss Tiggie Winkle from Beatrix Potter everyone gets this on the NHS the equivalent of the NHS because the Dutch

believe that if you invest in women's let's say maternal mental health specifically here in those first 10 days it costs their equivalent of the NHS less later on

well that makes sense you know so it's not like it's not like this crazy investment and a luxury their maternal mental health rates over there are on the floor compared to in the UK.

Because they're just looking at the bigger picture. They go, let's invest in that woman at that biological juncture where your boobs are leaking. You've got us, you know, I was opened up like a tin can. You know, there's not these, you know, ethereal images of women in white caftans, you know, gently breastfeeding. It's a, you know, biological car crash. And I think this book, Sore and Bliss, it's that paradox right. And I really felt it in my soul that those paradoxical moments,

where in one minute, my husband and I drew a graph of life pre-kids, okay? Life pre-kids was very much like you had a Kit Kat Chunky, that was nice. You got maybe a seat on the bus, happy days, maybe it was happy hour. It's quite consistent. In parenthood, you are off the floor crying. When I got back from a hospital, I was trying to get out of the stairs post-Csection, and I just got to the third stair, and I slumped, snot bubbling on the second stair going, I can't.

There ends. And it was a real, like, broken woman wail, you know. And then a day later, I was holding my baby breastfeeding, crying with joy. And it was that, so pre-kids, that consistent line up and down a little bit in parenthood. You're on the floor, but then the highs are so high. You get that spontaneous shing cuddle in the Tin Goods Isle of Tesco. And your kid looks up and you and says, I love you. You know what you've just said about your dad's voice, how it undulated in reading your favorite book?

The high he would have felt, and I feel every day now I'm leaning into it and being fun mummy again, is that. It's that love. And so sorrow and bliss for me tapped into that mental health isn't just being consistently sad. You know, it is so misunderstood. I had postnatal depression and I was so highly fond. functioning on such a dysfunctional level. No one could see it. People didn't believe me.

They were like, but wait a second, you're doing a podcast with Vic Hope, you're fine. I'd go home and I'd be crying on the floor. And sorrow and bliss encapsulates, I think, that complexity, not just in women, not just on maternal mental health, but just on the human spirit where we are sad and we are happy and they can live side by side, but please reach out to people if you feel like you and I have done today, they may be putting a face on the sorrow. I read that book when I was away with my partner and I kept getting so upset because I found it to be, just like you've said, the most on the nose depiction of what has gone in in my head

sometimes. Yeah. The ways that I felt when I've been at my lowest and he kept saying, if it's making you sad, don't read it. And I was like, no, because it also makes me so happy. And that's us right. completely celebrating on one day and feeling like the lowest of the low,

you know, like real, like I'm not doing anything. What's, I'm not relevant, I'm not this. And then suddenly you get that like little arms around your neck or you snuggle up with your partner in the morning and you feel that bliss. The way she does it is phenomenal. Brilliant. Well, talking about love, your book, Where's My Happy Ending?

Yeah. Is all about the muddy waters of modern romance. Do you think that having this idea of a happy ending or finding the one is helpful? No, not at all. So my husband and I wrote, where's my happy ending? When we were at that juncture

that you and your partner aren't at yet where you've had the wedding and it's this big day, right? It's all the regalia and you're faffing around wondering about favours and seating plans and stuff. And you say I do. And then there's this sort of gaping chasm of like 40 to 50 years before till death do us part.

So it felt like relationships and love were so centred on that celebratory moment. When I married Matt, I would say we had five miscarriages. And I married him, I think, after redundancy, after miscarriage. I married him in our darkest, deepest moments. That day was lovely. But Matt and I wanted to explore the grey. There is so much beauty in the brokenness of love. and to celebrate it, instead of seeing all these saccharine images in Clinton's cards

and, you know, cuddly teddy bears holding up a heart. I'm like, no, that doesn't come close to the point where you are hissing at your partner over the fact he hasn't picked up dishwasher salts. And really, the subtext is you're deeply sad, postnatally depressed, don't know how to articulate it. It's that messy, stressy love that we wanted to write about. And so, no, I don't believe in, somebody can be your one and only.

There's so much pressure. The only thing I will, the final bit I'll say about this was I interviewed the UK's longest serving fisherman, Derek West. He's been married for 72 years. And he said the most wonderful words about relationships, whether it's you and your partner who are just going into that like new world of maybe getting married or whether you are, have been married for a very long time. He said, when I fall overboard, he's a Welk fisherman.

It's not my wife that picks me out of the water. It's the young fisherman nearby. He said, stop thinking that that person is your one and only and that you're going to be together forever because it puts too much pressure on them and it will break. Reach out to your community. He said, I reach out to Norman from next door when I've locked myself out. There's Cheryl down the road at the co-op and she helps if I haven't got enough change.

And he said, just, and I'm saying this directly to you because you're about to get married. Well, you're engaged. He said, be together today, but don't take the rest of. for granted. And that's what we did. We took each other for granted in that sort of greyness that really opens up post-wedding day. And I think it's the best advice we've ever had. And Matt and I have gone through so much, but I love him so deeply. But we've broken in many pieces and pieced it all back together, sell-taped it all back together really badly. But it's there broken and really beautiful. And that's something we see in sorrow and bliss. Yes. It is love on so many levels.

Sisterly love, motherly love, both of which have their ups and their downs, fatherly love. Their family and their community, their friends, their extended family are all a part of that. It doesn't centre on that one love. Anna, your third bookshelfy book is My Thoughts Exactly by Lily Allen. In this memoir, Lily Allen opens up about her struggles with fame, success and self-imbing. She starts at her childhood and moves into the height of her musical career, her failed marriage and financial troubles. Her writing is raw, it's honest, and she doesn't hold back. She recounts her experience of postnatal depression after the stillbirth of her son, how it feels to be viewed as a sex object and her drug use.

It's been a bit of a controversial book, but it is her truth nonetheless. How come you've picked this one? I picked it because there was a chapter in the book where there was, a paragraph that hit really hard and I couldn't stop sobbing. Like it was this from the depths of your soul sobbing for another woman

because she depicted exactly what myself and I know just millions of other women have gone through on that biological juncture of motherhood but she was on a stage with sort of strip lighting

being made up she depicted it so beautiful It was quite clownish, you know, like makeup on, dress on, face forward, tits up, sing. And she was ripped away from her baby because she was contracted to do a tour, right? So she couldn't get out of it. There was no flexibility for a woman who'd lost a baby and also had just had a baby. You can't even imagine the pregnancy anxiety, the trauma, the fear and then was ripped away from her baby for six months. Like she's not even human.

And she was crying and screaming and the way she depicted it. You know, like a cat being forced into a bath, claws out. That's how she described it. Like, please, please, I need to be with my baby. And you saw this caricature of, and I've got one, motherpuckers out there, Vic Hope is there on TV, but no one sees who you are behind the scenes, really. That's for your friends, your family, your partner.

What she did here was opened up the curtains on that. caricature. She went, that's what you saw. It's kind of like done up, you know, saying, fuck you, blah, blah, blah, blah, really chirpy when actually the subtext was fuck you. Yeah. And I thought she wrote beautifully, openly, bravely, and she put down in writing what I'm trying to do across the board, which is stop pushing women out, but also stop pushing women forward in that really vulnerable period of a woman's life, like coming back to the Cramzorg, like wrap them in cotton wool, don't put that woman, don't wheel her kicking and screaming onto a stage.

So I thought, and the second bit was the way she spoke about how they decided, the press decided it was her versus Amy Winehouse. It wasn't anything, they got on fine, but the press, like we've spoken about, decided we want a feud. We want a feud. And let's like some sort of Roman Empire game chuck these two women into a pit. It's almost like a sort of daily male wet t-shirt competition

and essentially pit them against each other. It's like they have a spinny wheel that each day they spin and they decide on the narrative. And that's that they're just going to go with that. It doesn't have to be based on anything. Who's the most fucked out of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen? And she said it didn't represent the fact when you look at Britney Spears as well, you see those photos, we were all laughing along to them,

but this was a postnatally depressed woman who was fearing for the lives of her children. Same with Amy Winehouse, she was broken and we were hounding her. Lily Allen, the same. And yet there was fun to be had. It was there anyone's territory to rip up, tear up and eat alive ultimately. And I thought the way she depicted that, yes, that sort of medieval battle that those tabloids put them in, I thought was grim and was really painfully revealing. It's only very, very recently, I was talking to my friend AJ, AJ O'Doo,

who's a broadcaster as well, about the fact that we thought we were supposed to be in competition for the first half of our careers because we were just told that that's what happens between two black women who are also presenters. We didn't realise there was space for both of us and it turns out there is. We're allowed to be ourselves, we're allowed to both occupy space. There is enough space. There wasn't. If we're being really honest.

There wasn't. We've made the space now. Thank God. You've done that. You know, that's you raising your voice in this and pushing forward and going, no, I don't need to be against AJ. She's my friend and she's brilliant. She's brilliant. And you know what? So am I. And we can both do that in our own right and in our own lanes. You said that Lily opened up and showed every bit of herself in this book that you've picked. Your novel Underbelly is all about cutting through the often filtered surface of modern women's lives to expose the truth beneath, whether that's painful, whether that's dark.

But you've also said that you like to keep a bit of yourself back. How important is it for you to show reality, how much reality? It's a hard line really to cross, and we really wanted to explore it in Underbelly. So really links in really nicely to what we were just saying. So in the book you've got Lois and Dylan. And we make chapter by chapter people flip between who they like. Because what we want people, we want to force upon people in this book is you don't have to pick a lane.

Lives aren't as binary as she's good, she's bad. Counsel her, support her. You know, like black, white. It was never, it's never, life's never like that. It's nuanced. It's complicated. what I'm seeing a view online is different to what I see offline. And that's really healthy, I think.

So I'm not in any way lying or holding back, but there's only so much, right, on a sort of 2D picture with a caption that you can express of a human soul. And I am here for the 3D. So that's why I moved a bit more into sort of broadcasting and writing to give, put a bit fat on the bones and actually fat on the bones, meat on the bones. No, but fat as well. That's just the best part.

Put it all on. Is to really make sure that these two, yeah, I suppose these two women are misunderstood, understood within the same paragraph almost. And to have you question like online, just because Anna White House or Vic Hope isn't expressing herself exactly as I want her to, why actually are. we going to in a really medieval way, in almost a witch hunt way, try and break someone for not fitting the narrative I wanted them to fit in? And I wrote this book after, it's hard to say this, but after Caroline Flack died, I couldn't process it. Nothing in me could process it.

And I have been trying to say to people for a very long time that this online world terrifies me. I'm long in the tooth. I'm 41. I've had a whole media career. before social media landed. So I'm one of the older people in this world, right? And it's not me sideways. And I kept saying to people, I think someone's going to die. I really do.

And when she did, I can't stop questioning what role we had in that, that frenzy. Because what she went through, if you remove the social media bit, do we know, actually, if we remove that, if actually she might have been okay? You know, you can keep questioning,

I know, and it's water boutary. but I wanted to explore our role in specifically bringing women down because 84% of those who operate as influencers are women. There's a reason for that because so many of us get pushed out of work, right? So you then have this misogynistic, look, not every influencer is going off to Dubai in a bikini in a pandemic, but we like to compartmentalize these things and go, wow, all influences are evil. terrible people. No, they're not.

You're an influencer. You might not think you are. Matt Haig's an influencer. We're all influencing if you've got some kind of profile. But it's this demeaning of women wherever we can. And I'm not saying that every influencer does things right. But I think that there's this hunger to raise a woman as far as you can go, right, okay, she's great, she's great, she's great. Okay, she's had enough now.

We need to take her down. Yeah. And that doesn't happen in Holland where I grew up. It doesn't happen in the States. There's a consistent raising of people there. But here, you see how far a woman goes before the tabloids or somebody else will go, she's had enough. Let's bring her down now.

And I felt that deeply with Caroline Flack. And I wanted this book, Underbelly, it's about the underbelly of the internet and people, forums and the buildup of rage and vitriol towards a person you don't know, how much we played a part in what happened to her. And that was really the subtext of this. Anna, your fourth book, shelphy book, is Three Women by Lisa Todayo. This is a real story about the sex lives of three American women based on almost a decade of reporting. It follows Lena, a young mother whose marriage has lost its spark.

She reconnects with someone from her past and has an affair that quickly consumes her. Maggie is 17-year-old who allegedly has a relationship with her married, English teacher and Sloan, happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other people. It was described by people as a revolutionary look at women's desire. Tell us about this book. When did you first read it? I read it three years ago and I had just watched the affair, you know, the TV series. It was centering on a man and a woman having an affair, but he was still very much the sort of protagonist in it. He was a central character and I thought, I started looking.

looking up books that talked about female affairs. You know, I thought that they happen all the time. Sex is messy, relationships are messy. There's this sort of, if we're talking about the underbelly of the internet, there's this other world of people's lives, right? And I wanted to read a book that centred female pleasure. We talked about the orgasm gap earlier. Female pleasure in context that I think make people uncomfortable,

like questioning the morality of an affair, but actually I'm questioning like those marriages that go on for 70 years where there's coercive control, where somebody's spirit has been completely broken. I find that more disturbing than a woman fighting for her right to have an orgasm with someone else. I'm not saying that, you know, everyone should go out and have an affair. But I do think we should question love and sex. And I interviewed an octogenarian sex blocker. And she had read the book as well at the same time. And she said it made her so happy to see and read the true grittiness of sex,

whether it's, you know, extramarital affairs or whether it's voyeurism, the things we never talk about. And she said sex when you're older has become better because you're more open to this world where it is messy. Sex is all over the place. Like my husband, I wrote a whole chapter on sex. It was the most cringedeworthy thing I think we've ever both done. It was wonderful.

Because I had to write about how I found his you porn history once on a computer. And honestly, that's how the chapter starts. And I will never forget coming. He came home from work and I went, darling, I found your you porn history. And I don't look like the girls that you're watching. I was like, I am not Asian and I'm not into gangbangs. But this is, this is. The truth, right? So if I'm being honest, in the world I'm in, sort of perimenopause of two children, cobbling together a career that's been bulldozed by a society that hasn't supported women in any way, cellotaping over the flipping cracks.

Porn is in our relationship. It's in all of my friends' relationships, and yet it's not spoken about. And getting it to the table, like Lisa Todayo does, with these really messy relationships that are happening, their real relationships as well. That's why I love. They're not. It's not. It's not. fiction, it's reality. Once I started speaking about my husband's U-Porn use, just so many other people were like, yeah, it sat with me and I thought, doesn't he love me? And it's like, no, Matt was like, no, it's just a thing, you know, that I do, that's a release. And for me, it's reading a book, you know, but we talked about it. And I think it's when you build things up in your relationship, and I'm not, you know, condoning the use of porn is addictive, you know, like anything else. But to talk about that. the messiness of relationships

is when I talked about the beauty and the brokenness of our relationship, it's in those moments, those uncomfortable moments where I go, babe, let's talk about your user history.

You know what? Talking about the carnality of love and sex as you get older. I met, this is a name drop. I met Katie Perry. I was introducing

her on stage once and she took me aside and completely unprompted. And when I say, apropos of nothing, I mean it. She went, Let me tell you something.

Sex in your 30s, it's so carnal. You're going to love it. I haven't asked for that. And it's something I've taken away. And I can confirm. Affirmative. Affirmative. Well, no one tells you, right,

when you have a baby and you get turned on and you're breastfeeding, your boobs leak, right? So you're like a fembot, okay? So the first time can you imagine having sex postpartum and you get turned on and your tits, are spraying like a hose. Like Austin Ballad. So when I started reading this book, I thought, finally,

someone's talking about the reality, you know? And I'm afraid that anyone who is listening who's pregnant, you have got all of that to look forward to. Female desire is something that is so dampened and it has been for us by society, a condition to not talk about it because it is taboo. And it's really interesting that you're from Holland because I was once, I think I was talking to a TV production company or something about making a show.

It never got made and it should about the fact that sex education starts so much younger in Holland. And something they learn about which we do not in school is the fact that women can have an orgasm. So when we're doing sex ed in the UK and it's very, very clinical, it's very, very sterile. We find out that it's dangerous to have sex because you're either going to get an SEI or you're going to get pregnant, both bad things. Scaremongering. But you know that both of those things happen. because a man ejaculates, right? There is a product.

I didn't even know that women could have an orgasm. It wasn't talked about. So female pleasure is completely diminished. It's completely reduced to nothing. So how are boys supposed to know that they can make a woman feel good? How are girls supposed to know that sex is supposed to feel good? That's how we end up with problems around consent. I don't know you're supposed to enjoy it.

Well, I was four when I had sex ed in Holland. Yeah, they have it so young. Lentacreebles. And do you know how I learned about babies? A pregnant woman came in and we were four years old. We're out to ask her any question we wanted to. So you mentioned four-year-olds in reception. You know, you've just done a Billy Blue Hat, Roger Red Hat,

and suddenly in comes pregnant women. And I remember we were all like, how did the baby get in there? One kid, always one kid, went, why is your nose so big? You know, like, and this poor pregnant woman's like, God. But they also, when I was seven, talked about consent. So I have a really healthy association and relationship with sex. The fact that I can even talk to you about these things openly, and that stems from what you've said,

the Dutch approach, which is not a head in the sand approach, which is centering female pleasure, consent, and actually giving kids a chance to explore, like, well, yeah, how the baby actually got in there. Yeah. I would not want that job, though, of coming in to a group of four-year-roll. Knowing that you're supposed to enjoy it means that consent is very, Very, very clear.

Yes. Let's move on to your fifth and final book this week, which is My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyenkhan Braithwaite. This Davy novel is about Ayula, a beautiful woman who serially kills her boyfriends, told through the eyes of her protective sister Karede, who feels obligated to cover his sister's tracks. The novel explores family bonds to their fullest,

as Karede goes to extreme lengths to help Ayula get, away with murder, literally. This book was also shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. Why did you pick it? Well, I didn't actually, my sister bought it for me. Oh, funny that? Oh, is it now? Little subtext to it. Oh, I see, Anna. I was like, thanks, babe. Yeah, she said, I think you're going to really enjoy this because my relationship with my sister is, I think, the most important female relationship I have. God, we never, God. We never, on when we were younger, hence the serial killer bit. I think it's about that sisterly love of like wanting to kill each other, but loving

each other deeply. Like we said earlier about that sort of paradoxical feeling through mental health of like sorrow and bliss. It's sort of deep sisterly love and I want to flick you so hard in the forehead. You're annoying me so much. And yeah, I think it just showed that dark depths of sisterly love that I really. really enjoyed. And I've realised, I've noticed, from my Inid Blyton days, I've gone quite a full circle to some of the darkest reads that you could come across. It's about, you know, a serial killer.

And she keeps her sister's secret, you know, a secret. And actually, how far would you go for, I'm going to say it, the love of your life. And that's my sister. She's... How far would you go? How far would I go? I think I'd cover up a murder for it. Yeah. Yeah. I think. But as well. Not for your sister. I don't even have a sister. I don't even have a sister. For my brothers.

I remember some of my best memories. We were living in Amsterdam together. And that was a real peak of us having connections. We lived a street away from each other in Holland. And we had a little bit of weed one night. And we decided to write a book together. And we said, you know these moments, these ridiculous dark sisterly moments

where you think we've got what it takes and write a book together. And we were going to do the antithesis to eat, pray, love. So we were like, okay, I've got it. We're going to call it Nosh Boo's Bonk. And it's going to be, you know when you genuinely believe it's something brilliant? I'd read it.

Sounds great. We were like, we've got something here. We'll start pitching it to publishers the next day. And I woke up the next morning and my laptop was open and it just had the title, Nosh Boo's Bonk. And then it had plan of action. And it just said in capital letters, go live. Nothing in between.

I mean, just go. And I think that epitomises my love of her. Actually, we don't overthink it. No. Go live. You told me a little story about love before we started recording that I would love you to share with everyone listening right now about your mum and dad.

Oh, yeah. So my mum and dad tomorrow, they celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. And I've watched them throughout the years, you know, squabbling over, for Sat Nav, You know, driving down to the south of France. Chris, it says drat. What's drat? It says gauche.

I'm like, oh God, it's left and right, mum. But what has we talking about punctuation within love? My dad will and has done, ever since I was a little kid, put random vegetables, legumes and fruits in weird places in the house. So my mum will often go to make a cup of tea and there's a heritage carrot in the kettle spout.

She once took the oven hood down and a whole watermelon came crashing down. Of course she did. Nearly knocked her out. And this is their love language. And I think, like I said, I'm really questioning where I've been the last five years and what I've been doing. But what I keep coming back to is that before the pandemic, mom had stockpiled at Chili Gurkins because they're my dad's favorite. And they'd continued through pandemic, through redundancy, through losing their own two children before they had me. and my sister, they still had that love language, that heritage carrot in the kettle spout.

And that is what I want to see on a Clinton's card. Me too. My final question to you, Anna, is this, if you had to choose one book from your list as a favourite, which would it be and why? Oh, that's hard. That's like choosing among your children. Yes, yes, it is. I think coming back to that nuance and that desperation for us to.

to get away from that black and white, good and bad, cancel her, raise her. It would have to be sorrow and bliss. The nuance and the love of your community instead of that one true love, I think it nails it for me. That paradoxical line that we're all walking of extreme sorrow and extreme bliss and that they can happen, especially when you're a parent, I'd say, within a five-minute period. is such a magnificent book and you have been such a magnificent guest. Thanks, V.

Thank you so much, Anna. Oh, we've loved being here. We? I don't know who else. Me and my caricature. We've loved it. We've loved it. Honestly, I've absolutely adored talking to you. You're amazing.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm Vic Howe. You've been listening to the Women's Prices Fiction Podcast. We have some incredible women, just like Anna lined up this season. So please hit subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. The Women's Price of Fiction Podcast. is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Bird's Lion Media.

Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you next time.