How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - BONUS EPISODE: HEERRREE'S DOLLY!

Episode Date: July 11, 2021

SHE'S BAAAAAACK!To mark the third anniversary of How To Fail, I invite back the one and only Dolly Alderton.Dolly was one of my first ever guests in the debut season of How To Fail, way back in the mists of time (by which I mean the summer of 2018). Back then, she had just published her memoir Everything I Know About Love a few months earlier. She could have had little idea of the success that was to follow: it became a bestseller, won Autobiography of the Year at the National Book Awards and was selected for Stylist magazine’s best books of the decade by remarkable woman. Dolly is now adapting the book into a BBC drama. Her first novel, Ghosts, was published last year and went straight in at Number 2 in the Sunday Times Bestseller list. It's out in paperback later this month. She was also the co-host of the hugely beloved (and sorely lamented) The High Low podcast.In public, it might have seemed as though Dolly was cresting the wave of extraordinary success. But it didn't always feel that way for her personally. She joins me to talk about the disconnect between outward success and inward sensitivity; about social media and her strategy for managing it; about love and loss and everything in between; about understanding that she is an extreme person and that's ok; and about her abject failure to bake birthday cakes. Plus she introduces me to the mind-shatteringly great concept of 'creative monogamy'.Dolly is one of my favourite people. She's kind, generous, compassionate, wise, empathetic and hilarious and her return to How To Fail demonstrates all these qualities in abundance. I'm so touched she chose to come back and speak so honestly about her experiences. And I hope you enjoy this extra-special treat of an episode.*Dolly will be turning the tables and interviewing me on 2nd September at London's Barbican to mark the publication of my new novel Magpie. If you're desperate for YET MORE OF US, I can promise an evening full of big emotion and belly-laughs. To book tickets (there's also an option to pre-order Magpie here so you'll be the first to get your hands on a copy) go to https://www.fane.co.uk/magpie See you there!*Ghosts by Dolly Alderton is available to order here. *How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]*Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Dolly Alderton @dollyalderton    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. This very special one-off bonus episode of How to Fail is sponsored by Vichy Laboratories. Vichy Laboratories have developed a Mineral 89 Hyaluronic Acidrating serum it is the hyaluronic acid approved by the british skin foundation it's effective safe hyper allergenic it's clinically proven and dermatologists tested and developed what i love about it is it's like a glass of water for the skin it is an intensely hydrating skincare solution proven to hydrate plump and boost skin's radiance for a healthy

glowing complexion whilst actively repairing the skin's barrier. And it's suitable for all skin types and tones. The product has over 2,000 five-star consumer reviews. 2,000. I mean, that's way more than I've ever got for my books on Amazon. And it's award-winning. It was Glamour's 2020 Best Hydrating Serum, which shows just how much people love it. So you now can go to lookfantastic.com and use the code HEALTHYSKIN20, that's all one word, HEALTHYSKIN20, for 20% off Mineral 89 products, which is available until the 9th of August. Thank you very much to Vichy Laboratories and to their Mineral 89 Hyaluronic Acid Hydrating Serum. If after listening to this very special one-off episode of How to Fail, what you are left thinking is, I could really do with some more

Elizabeth and Dolly content, and quite frankly, who wouldn't? I mean, you're only human, right? Then I've got great news for you, because I'm very lucky that Dolly will be interviewing me on stage at the Barbican in London on the 2nd of September at 8pm to mark the publication of my new novel, Magpie. I don't know if I've mentioned that I've got a new novel out, but I i do it's called magpie we'll be talking about that but we'll also be talking about life love writing meaning failure and everything in between and of course as ever with these events there will be plenty of opportunity for you to ask any questions you want of either of us. We cannot wait to see you there. It is such a special venue.

It is so wonderful to be doing live events again. Of course, COVID protocols will be in situ, but we're really hopeful that by then we can do book signings and I will be able to meet you all in person, which is one of my favourite things ever. I would love to see you there, 8pm, 2nd of September at London's Barbican,

me and Dolly on stage. You can book tickets now by going to www.fane.co.uk forward slash magpie. That's Fane, F-A-N-E.co.uk forward slash magpie. And you can book whatever tickets you like there there are some that include a copy of magpie in the purchase price thank you so so much enough waffling from me and now on with the episode hello and welcome to how to fail with elizabeth day the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right this is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure.

Every so often on this podcast, I decide to invite a guest back. Well, to be totally accurate, it's happened once before, but for this episode, I wanted to talk again to one of my favourite and first ever guests about how life has changed since we spoke in the first season of How to Fail in July 2018. Three years later, and from the outside, Dolly Alderton appears stratospherically successful but as a writer she is beloved for her ability to convey in words what it means to have your heart broken by love, by friends, by life. She's also extremely funny, kind and beautiful, which is really quite greedy when you think about it. Her 2018 memoir, Everything I Know About Love, attracted a slew of prizes and critical acclaim. It won Autobiography of the Year at the National Book Awards and was selected for Stylist Magazine's Best Books of the Dec by remarkable women. The Daily Telegraph called it mesmerizingly

brilliant and everyone from Sharon Horgan to Sam Smith took to social media to rave about it. Donny is now adapting the book into a BBC drama made in conjunction with Working Title. If you haven't heard of Working Title, they made a little known film called Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, and Love Actually. Dolly's follow-up book saw her turn to fiction. Ghosts entered the bestseller lists at number two and is just about to come out in paperback. Alongside this, Dolly is also the Sunday Times Style Section's resident agony aunt, and of course, one of British podcasting's biggest names, the hugely successful pop culture and news podcast, The Hilo, which she co-hosted with Pandora Sykes, ended its reign at

the top of the charts last year after four years and 150 episodes. I wanted to conclude this introduction by quoting a snippet of Dolly's writing, but it was really hard to choose a single line because I love so many of them. So in the end, I settled for this from everything I know about love. I am always half in life, she wrote, half in a fantastical version of it in my head. Dolly Alderton, welcome back to How to Fail. oh elizabeth what are you doing to me over here i'm so glad that you're not sitting in my living room like last time because you'd have seen the depth of my own narcissism that i i did well up when listening oh to praise well i don't think i'm not sure that there was enough praise in there but then i was like i

don't want to come across as being overly gushing which I know that I would do if I actually said how I felt about you because you are one of my closest friends and also someone who took a risk on how to fail way back when for my first ever season when no one had a clue what they were getting themselves into. And you were my second guest. And it meant so much to me at the time. And then you interviewed me for the final episode of that season. And people always, always ask me about you and about whether you're as great as you seem in real life. And yes, you are, is the short answer. But I'm interested in that notion that you live half in the real world and half a fantastical version of the real world in your head. Is that still true? Yes, completely. I am someone who relies very heavily on fantasy

and delusion for survival. And interestingly, in the first draft of everything i know about love there was a series of sort of vignettes vignettes is maybe a little bit too pompous for what they were they basically were just pages of fantasy and it was a series of stories called vivid fantasies i regularly have and they were described have i told you about this before no never well I'm still quite sad it didn't make it in they were described in great detail the fantasies that I had really clung on to in my lowest moments in my 20s so one of them was that there was a millionaire who lived on Cheney Walk called Percy and that he had a fortune from a stamp business. And he had no children and no partner.

And he admired me and my work from afar. And I just get a call one afternoon and he's leaving his fortune to me. And then I would go on to make a documentary about the man I never knew called, Who Were You, Percy? And then there was like one where Christian Louboutin rings me because he wants to name a shoe after me.

There's one where I go to see the Rolling Stones at the Roundhouse. Mick Jagger's on stage. He says, I hear there's a little lady in the audience with a very big voice. Can we get Dolly Alderton up to sing the female vocals of Gimme Shelter? And then maybe this was a touch too far. I had him say at the end of the fantasy as I went off stage, we only wish she'd been alive for the original recording so I thought that this was something that everyone did this is something I still continue to do on a daily basis and my editor said it made me too unlikable that's it because they're so specific in terms of a fantasy you haven't just thought a millionaire is going to leave their fortune to me you've gone the extra mile and given that person a name and a philately collection.

But yes, it is really important to me. And it made me realise when Juliet had that reaction. Juliet's your editor. My editor, yeah. The world is divided into people who do and don't do this. I'm interested. Do you do this? I do do it. I don't know if I do it to the level of specificity that you do but maybe maybe it became more specific because you were writing it down first of all I think day dreaming is a really important part of growth as is imagination in terms of feeding into empathy apart from anything else and also in terms of working out what it is you actually do want and secondly I do think most people have the life that they're living and the

dual life that they've never lived but they sort of feel a longing or a yearning for and I suppose the question I want to ask you next is that, as I referred to in the introduction, from the outside, it feels like you've had this staggering and wholly deserved success. But I wonder how it actually felt for you to be living that life? Do you know what, it's a really difficult thing to talk about, because I don't want to seem ungrateful for what has happened to me over the last few years. And in the grand scheme of what everyone is dealing with and the problems in life and I know we don't need to quantify this on how to fail that's the very point of how to fail but I'm very aware that the stuff that I'm dealing with is really just not so much of a big deal you know

I'm very aware of that and it has definitely given me much more than it has taken away but the truth is I think looking back now three years on three and a bit years on since that book was published I can now recognize that in the same way I think lots of people say that they pin their new life and their new personhood on finding love or getting married or having children and then when it happens it actually not only exposes loads of unresolved issues that were there before that come more to the forefront but actually it loads on you a hundred new more issues you couldn't have anticipated I now realize I did that exact same thing with wanting my dream career can you tell me the story because it's always stuck in my head about the woman who came up to you outside the tube.

And she said something like, I didn't think I was going to like everything I know about love. Do you remember that story? Yes, I do. Yeah. Because this was just one of like thousands of interactions you were having. But it conveys so much. So tell us what happened. So it must be said that the being recognised thing is really great. I really like

it. It's, you know, writing is such a lonely thing. And to be able to have people connecting to your work and to put faces to your readers names and to have them share their experiences with you. It's just the biggest honour and it's so joyful. I truly, there have been, I would say three times where it's been uncomfortable or strange. One of which was on my first date back into dating after I turned 30, I started a joint hinge and I started dating again. And on my first date, I was at the pub with a bloke and this woman came up to me, this bloke didn't really know what I did and he certainly didn't know what my book was about. And this woman came up to me and bloke didn't really know what I did and he certainly didn't know what my book was about and this woman came up to me and said I related to your book so much and was like oh thank you so much and she was like the promiscuity and the drinking and the massively fucked up

relationship with your self-esteem and the just your life being a mess all the time she's like just and I was just like stood there and she sort of wobbled off to the loo and I was just like, and I was just like, stood there. And she sort of wobbled off to the loo. And I was like, right, shall we get the bill? So yeah, that was an unfortunate incident. And then the one you're referring to is just a woman came up to me and said, oh, I read your book, Everything I Know About Love. And I said, thank you. She said, I've got to be honest. I thought I would hate it and that I would hate you

because you just seemed like an annoying, privileged, stupid, untalented girl. And do you know what? Fair play to you. It was actually all right. Then she asked for a selfie. Oh, my gosh. That's such a strange experience to go through. That kind of damning with faint praise, but then being asked for a selfie. I know. But do you know what? To really extend my empathy and understanding of why people do that and they do sometimes you know people interact with me now in a very strange way not everyone but sometimes they do in a way that doesn't seem appropriate to me but then I realized that my job is a very

inappropriate job I write very intimate things and therefore it makes sense that people feel the right to speak to me in a very intimate or inappropriate way it makes sense that people feel the right to speak to me in a very intimate or inappropriate way so I understand that and I think in the case of those kind of comments it's someone thinking that because of the great fortune that you've had that you are surrounded by yes people and that actually what you're craving is someone to be real with you so I think it was her way actually of trying to be more human with me or maybe she really did just think I was a dickhead no that's so interesting and I have that thing as well if I see someone hugely famous in a restaurant or on the street which hardly ever happens but were I to do so I would always think oh it's much cooler

just to like ignore who they are and pretend that you don't know and just give them the space that they need whereas I love it when people come up and say that they know my voice in the podcast or whatever so I think that's a really good and astute point but let's talk a bit about ghosts which as you know I love You were my first friend who read it. What, before Farley? Yeah, I'm afraid so. Sorry, Farley. Sorry, Farley. I'm now Dolly's number one. So there was the breaks. Well, it was an honour to read it. And I really did love it. Because you made a deliberate decision, didn't you, to move away from writing about your personal life and so you wrote a novel and you deliberately made Nina physically different from you didn't you Nina's the protagonist yeah that's what all

incredibly clever memoirists and journalists do to conceal that they're drawing on their own experience they go ah I know how no one will know that this is about my own experiences I'll give her brown hair a flat chest and a big arse yes I did I made her physically different but to be totally honest Nina is quite a different person to me a different character to me the thing that I think makes it confusing is first of all obviously I've just written in the first person and I've written about my personal life in very graphic detail for a long time so I completely understand why people would assume that Nina is me but the other thing that makes it harder to distinguish, I think, is that I wrote Nina in the first person. And I don't know if you found this with

writing fiction, if you're writing a narrator, unless you give them an incredibly extreme or caricatured voice or worldview, the likelihood is they're going to have the same sense of humour as you. Yeah, such a good point. Tell us a little bit, I mean, I know we'll get into this in more depth when we come to your failures. Why did you make that choice not to write about your own life? I just stopped wanting to do it. I just feel like I'd given so much, not just to that memoir, but to just years of first person journalism and then dating back to like years of writing very sad little blogs and you know when I was 15 I was on blogspot writing about boys I fancied or transcripts of arguments I'd had with my mum like I'd really really really dug into every aspect of my personal life and my mistakes and my choices and my desires for such a long time.

I just didn't want to do it anymore. And also I just had so many more people reading me at that point and listening to me. And the stakes just felt so much higher. And I just wanted to keep some of my stories to myself. And also I just wanted to stretch myself. You know, I've written scripts for years, and I've always wanted to write fiction. And I just wanted to be in a pretend world and build a pretend world with pretend people. And to see what that felt like as a writing exercise,

and it completely engages a totally different part of your brain. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, I loved it writing ghosts was the most pleasurable creative experience work experience of my life and it was during a time where I was really happy as well because I had found after everything I know about love after the paperback came out I had a bit of a rough time and I needed to kind of recalibrate my life a bit and just make things feel a bit more sustainable and a bit safer and make myself feel less exposed and less tired and less pressurized and I just had a year of just everyone leaving me alone basically which is such an enormous privilege as a writer you know when I

was writing that first book I was still having to do a lot of freelance work to pay my bills and I really do want to make it clear how different writing is when you have savings, because it just means that you can completely focus on the story and on the project and on the work and you don't have to take lots of calls and you don't have to do lots of pitches. So it was just this creatively monogamous time of just me and those characters every day. And I gave myself a nine to five, which I've never done before, just writing all day at my desk. It was a total luxury and an amazing escape from my own neuroses to just enter into the head of this other character every day. Creative monogamy is such a brilliant phrase. And you are very good at making the active choices that enable you to pursue that in your life. So you turn away from writing memoir

after you've written one of the most successful memoirs in recent years. And you stopped doing the Hilo when it was still one of the most beloved podcasts that we have in this country. Do you think you're good at knowing when to quit? Yes, I think it's one of my very few talents. I'm very good at knowing when a song comes on Magic FM within a nanosecond what the song is. And I'm very good at knowing when to finish things. And I think Pandora is the same. And Pandora and I both knew that if we had gone further with the Hilo, we probably could have expanded the community. We could have made more great episodes. We could have made more money.

We could have expanded the business. But we didn't want to. We just knew that it might take more from us than it would give. And that we were at a point where we were really proud of what we were doing and who our listenership was. So that's sadly the exact right moment to go even though that feels like the moment you want to dig your nails in final question before we get on to your failures since we last spoke you have turned 30 which for many women does loom in a way that it probably shouldn't over their life's horizon and you

explore the fact that you're going to be turning 30 and everything I know about love and then the paper had an extra chapter where you examined it but how are you feeling now that you are firmly in your 30s okay I'm going to be very honest I found my early 30s really difficult I'm sorry I know it's not no it's not don't be sorry I just feel bad because I feel like I was given this lie about my 30s that, oh, you turn 30 and then suddenly all your clothes drop off and you're so happy with who you are and your body and you don't give a shit what anyone thinks

and you only make brilliant self-respecting choices and you're completely in tune with all of your instincts and, like, fuck all the people that don't like you. And you suddenly like shrink your friendship group just to the people you care about. Personally, I just have not found that to be true. I found my early 30s to be quite a difficult, challenging time. And it's hard to know whether that is to do with the decade or whether that's just to do with circumstance. with the decade or whether that's just to do with circumstance I definitely feel like I've had more personal challenges thrown at me over the last three years than I have in my 20s but the good

news is I do feel like I've been more emotionally robust to deal with them and I do feel like I know myself better and I'm better with boundaries but it hasn't been as easy a ride as I was told it would be I have to say that's what I was going to mention the fact that I think that your instinct that you mentioned and trusting that instinct that's got stronger and stronger in a way that I find very impressive and I'm 10 years older than you which I hate thinking about because I always think you're so wise and in many ways my life guru but also I think you need to cut yourself some slack because the first years of your 30s have been first of all overshadowed by a global pandemic and a succession of lockdowns that's true and secondly you've also been working really bloody

hard and your work has been very very public at the same time and that's exhausting and emotionally stressful yeah I think that's right and I think it's gonna sound so miserable don't I am I happy I think I probably am happier than I was in my 20s but I think it probably is to do with the work I think you're totally right I think it is to do with this extreme sudden life change that I had that affected every element of my life. You know, it didn't just affect my schedule. It affected, as I said, how people interact with me. It affected my love life. It affected some of my personal relationships. It affects your sense of self. It really does affect you. And I feel like I'm only just kind of learning how to manage it all

now. And I do feel like I've kind of come out the other side of the toughest section. But it's just that thing, isn't it? That I think, as I said kind of come out the other side of the toughest section but it's just that thing isn't it that I think you as I said earlier like you think that when you get something you've always wanted that it will just melt away your problems but it doesn't and it just gives you new ones and actually the great lesson I think for me of the last few years has been whatever it is that I really long for I should get it and I should work really hard to go get it because the last few years of my career and having truly everything I've ever dreamed of has brought me

far more joy, as I said, than giving me grief. But it also will bring up new issues. So if what I really, really want is children, that's going to give me 100 new problems, problems that I don't even have the vocabulary for. I don't even know that I can't even imagine what they are. If I want to buy a caravan, you know, suddenly I'll have to, well, first of all, learn how to drive. That was a bad example. But you know, just everything that I've ever wanted, that I now realised that yes, you should go get it. You should also be aware that it won't solve anything. Well, in a way, it brings us back to the first question, which was about the specific nature of your fantasies. In a way, when fantasies come true or when dreams come true, there's also a specific reality that comes with that dream. So both things have specifics. That's not a question. I just put it out there. But let's come to your failures, your three new failures. Your first one is baking

and specifically making birthday cakes. So tell us more about that. Yes. So this is all about people pleasing, which I know you and I think about a lot and suffer from a lot. And I feel like this is a thing I'm going to be dealing with for the rest of my life of learning how to not be so tethered to the idea of approval from everyone else and keeping everyone else happy. The cake thing, it all started when I decided to make a 12-tier rainbow cake for my housemate AJ for her 25th birthday when we lived together and then since then I thought that it was a mantle that had been put on me it was I chose to be the birthday cake maker in our group of friends and I am spectacularly shit at baking I hate baking I'm not precise enough to bake it takes too long I don't like all the fussy decorations. I'm always too impatient.

So I ice the damn thing when it's still hot. So you get a horrible melty icing cake. Inevitably, I'll have one cake go well every few years, like the rainbow cake. And then I will turn up at someone's birthday late because I've had to make three versions of the cake, spend an extortionate amount of money. Good baking is so weirdly expensive. because I've had to make three versions of the cake, spend an extortionate amount of money. Good baking is so weirdly expensive. And then apologize the whole night.

And then the cake will come out and every picture in the background, I'll have a face of thunder. And I will just say to my friends, this is shit. This tastes like a big turd. I hate this cake. Happy fucking birthday. And I just think it's an actualization of the great issue in my life.

There is no one's problem other than mine. And it's me getting in the way of my own happiness that I have decided the only way that I can prove to people that I love them sufficiently is by making them a 12-tier rainbow birthday cake that's perfect. And no one has asked that of me. And no one uses that as a quantifier for my goodness or my love for them so now I just buy the damn cake and it's been such a great life lesson that's one step closer to liberation obviously the next step is just like not bringing cake yeah but do you think that there's is there a slight expectation now that dolly brings the cake no I don't think there is.

I don't think there's a splinter WhatsApp group where everyone's bitching about me. Do you see Alderton bring a fucking cake? I don't think that's happening. Success has gone to her head, hasn't it? Too good for baking. She's gone all Hollywood. Not Paul, though.

That would be a fine thing. Oh, very good.llywood yeah thanks no i feel like now you are in a splinter group no i promise you well if it's a splinter group it's one that doesn't involve me either so now i'm worried about that but i release you from any obligation ever to make a cake for me in fact you've never been i know i've just realized as i said all that i was like i haven't made cake i don't want you to bake a cake for me even though i'm sure it would be wonderful 12 tears though i just need to go back to that do you mean like different colored layers of sponge within a big cake or literally 12 layers what do you mean do you mean the 12 tears that

you shed the night before red faced at 1am putting in tray after tray of sponge cakes no I'd baked 12 different cakes 12 different yeah so I know because I did something similar I offered years and years ago to make my friend's wedding cake which was a terrible terrible terrible idea and I thought I'll just like bung in a sponge ice it but she came to me with a specific recipe which was like a rich chocolate cake which was multi-tiered and it was so complicated and my oven was too small and actually I now know that for a tier like construction you need sort of columns within the sponge itself to like carry the sheer weight of it right and it was incredibly stressful and I like you ended up feeling super resentful and being like well I didn't know she wanted a

specific wedding cake when I offered did I it's a people pleases nightmare the baking the cake thing let's talk a bit about people pleasing because I happen to know from the first podcast we did together that your parents raised you with an inordinate amount of love and made you feel like you could do anything and a lot of people pleases it comes from a lack of fundamental self-worth and they worry that there's not enough love in their lives and that people won't like them so therefore they go out their way to win people over where do you think your desire for pleasing comes from I have no idea I really it's such a riddle to me I don't idealize my childhood I obviously won't go into it now but through lots of therapy I do know that just like any parents my parents inevitably made some mistakes but on the whole I

really do think it's so important to acknowledge our privileges in life, particularly our domestic and familial ones, and our emotional ones. And I really did have a very loving, happy childhood. And I don't know where that sense of inadequacy came from. I think adolescence, we talked about this in the first episode, I think, I think adolescence is a very sensitive, delicate time for a young person. And I think maybe that sense of not being good enough came from there. But the thing that I always thought is that I could get to a place of self-knowledge and self-esteem that I wouldn't ever need the approval of others. And I just don't think I'm ever going to get there. And I think that's fine. And actually, the last few years

has been such a challenge for all that stuff, because arguably having a public profile is the worst thing to happen to a people pleaser. Because before I was just worrying about keeping my friends at their birthday parties happy and my mum and dad happy and my bosses happy and my colleagues happy. Now I'm on bad days trying to keep thousands of people happy who I've never met before. And, you know, not wanting to disappoint them and not wanting to be a version of myself that they feel doesn't chime with who they think I am or who they've connected to. And of course, the other issue is, which is something I'll never be able to get my fucking head around, is that once you have a public profile profile information about you can be seen as valuable so anyone with and I can't overstate it when I keep saying public profile I have a very very small very localized very contextualized public profile but it's still been enough to make me go a bit dotty at times because I still have to be comfortable with the fact that somewhere out there at some point there are going to be people who I don't know talking to other people that I don't know potentially with one of them saying did you

hear this thing about her or I know someone who once went out with her or I heard this thing about someone who worked in her office and the person who has that information is the person people will listen to and that is tough I can't pretend like that's not really, really tough and tyrannical on my mind sometimes. I totally get that. And I often think of examples in my own life where I've had a judgmental take on a celebrity that I subsequently realised is based on my own insecurity or based on something that I think of as a lack in my own life that don't have and then years later because I was a journalist and I often got to meet these celebrities that I might have had a negative opinion of and I would meet them they'd be absolutely lovely and you know I put this thing out there recently because I as you

know also really struggle with, I think, shame. I think it's shame. I think when someone writes a negative review about a book that I've written or sends me a mean tweet or questions something that I'm doing, my automatic response is to be like, I've done something really wrong and I'm stupid that I haven't realised that. I'm stupid that I wrote that book or I said it that way. And that person, I automatically give that way and that person I automatically give the power to the person criticizing me and I just realized recently that and this sounds so trite

given what we're discussing but that everyone has their own opinion about the world that comes from their own specific universe and their own set of emotional baggage. And there are some people who don't like the things that I love. And my example was cheese. I fucking love cheese. I'm half Swiss. Our national dish is a bowl of melted cheese. I love cheese. Can't get enough cheese.

I would always choose it over pudding. There are some people in the world, a siz number who do not like cheese now I can't understand that but I respect it and I think that's the way that I'm going to endeavor to approach future criticism of me but I am the cheese I think that's a really smart way of looking at it and helping you to like not personalize it do you know this really was a great lesson for me when I did the high low because Pandora is someone who I think is just so fucking smart and whose opinion I really trust and who has phenomenally good taste and as far as I'm concerned we would sometimes talk about books and I'd be like you are fucking mad love I can't and I couldn't get my head around it I'll be like why do you

think this book is good or how can you not love this book and it really really helped me with understanding look sometimes people just don't like your vibe and that's totally legitimate and fine as well but it really helped me understand and contextualize and rationalize as you said this idea of people just have different tastes and you're not going to be everyone's taste. And, you know, sometimes I do wonder when I first used to go mad with thinking about all the people who I might not be pleasing, who I don't know. And I really have. I'm really with the help of a lot of CBT. I really have got through that. And I'm really because I don't want this job to make me mad i want to be doing this job for a really long time so that level of worry about what people are thinking about me i really have managed to free myself from but sometimes i

do when i look back wonder whether i was just trying to make the whole world love me and you just can't you can't do that you can't ask that of the world that shows you have a big problem not they have any problems with you and I know I've already lectured you about this before Elizabeth but when I was in CBT my therapist told me about the 80-20 rule which has really really helped me with all this kind of getting my head around public opinion stuff which I love this rule oh I'm so glad it's helped you basically this woman said to me if you were to read a job description now of the job that you were going into,

which was never the job you or I, the job we're doing now was never the job we thought we were going to be doing when we first started writing, when we both did our degrees or when we both trained to be journalists, this is not what we imagined we would end up doing on this scale.

But she said, if you were to read this description now, it would say, on a week where you were just doing you, and you haven't written anything offensive or insensitive or poorly executed, you're just doing your work, any given week, you will have 80% of positivity and 20% of negativity. And that's just a normal week. And that 20% feels bigger as your audience grows but if that means that in a week you get 10 10 you know this is when you can tell that I just scraped my GCSE maths if you get eight positive messages make it easy there we go 18 messages yeah I know that's confused me more basically eight positive messages and two negative eight positive messages and then two saying you're a dumb slut who

deserves to die then you just have to look at that and go oh everything's right on track we are completely on the algorithm that this job promised me and that doesn't mean as you said that the people who were being mean to you it doesn't mean that they represent the masses. It means that this is just the basic stats of being a public person. I think that is such a brilliant tool. And I think it applies to so many different things. Like the point of life is not to get everything perfect and 10 out of 10 the first time. And if you, in whatever line of work you are in, or if you're at school and eight people out of 10 like you and two maybe don't,

and if you're at work and you've done eight things in your job brilliantly that week and two less well, that is completely on track. And it's such a relief to be reminded of that not only are you doing it well you're doing it really well like you're actually in like the top percentage of people doing their stuff like that's a really good average to have in your head and so yeah I just it's really helped the way that I look at the world so thank you for sharing that. You know what there are lots of things that you've said to me,

often your own wisdom, but sometimes recycled from a therapist that has really helped me. So maybe I feel like being friends with each other means we get like four therapists. Yes, totally. It's brilliant. Just an agglomeration, a critical mass.

Actually discussing all of those things brings us onto your second failure yeah which you cite as twitter yeah and i know you left twitter last may why did you leave yeah it's been a long time coming i just like you know when you have to break up with someone there's always that gap between knowing you have to do it and then actually doing it and i've got to be really careful when i talk about this stuff because I don't want to sound like an old boomer man boring on about the internet and its evils, because Elizabeth, I loved the internet. This is a sad thing to admit. I think the internet was maybe my first great love.

It was where I grew up. It was where I had the confidence to be myself. I was writing blogs from a really young age. I was the first person to have the old Bebo account. I was queen of Bebo. I found a place where I could just be a curated version of myself that I felt got lost in translation when I was hanging out in common rooms with other teenage girls and boys. It was a great place of cultivation for my own identity. I would sit and talk to men on chat rooms and pretend to be a different person when I was 13. You were catfishing them. I was catfishing them.

Normally I said I was a glamorous divorcee. It's like the millennial equivalent of prank phone calls that I used to do I'm only admitting this because I've spoken to so many women my age who were also freaky weird little roundy teenagers who told me they did the same but the internet was a place where I really cultivated my identity it was very important to me and Twitter was a big part of that and I'm under no illusion I know that Twitter was a huge part of that. And I'm under no illusion. I know that Twitter was a huge tool in helping me with my career and helping me get my stuff read and helping me get jobs. So when I had to end that relationship, it was a breakup. You know, I found

it really difficult. And the reason was, I didn't have a choice anymore. The reason was, first and foremost, it was just distracting me too much. And I just think that I'm in this magic place in life that I know so many women wish they could get back to where I don't have kids I don't have a partner I don't have a mortgage I don't have ill parents I don't have lots of pressures and distractions on me. So why would I willingly sit in a room with 2000 people every day asking them to distract me. So that was the first thing I was spending too much time on it. The other thing to be totally honest was I realized that when this obviously not everyone, this is just me, I realized having spent lots of time on Twitter, that I had become completely obsessed with certain people or groups of people who I thought were everything I wasn't. So clever, really switched on, really politically

engaged, incredibly well read, really cool. And I sort of formed a parliament of them in my head. And this is not their fault. this is me and my own insecurities the people who I thought either looked down on me or my work or they wouldn't like my work or who I am and they I just assembled them as the senate in my head and I had started to think of them every time I made a creative decision and I can't write like that the only reason that I've managed I think to have any semblance of success is that I have always written in tune with my head and my heart as truthfully as I can, as truthfully as I can find the courage to be truthful. And I just realised that being on

Twitter and having all those voices in my head all the time, that were often so absolute in their opinions of people and of work and creativity. It just was going to make me so self-conscious that I would never be able to properly write again. Wow, that is such an eloquent dissection of Twitter, both the pain and the glory, and the understanding of your own psyche. I am slightly hesitant to raise this word because I know that it comes with a phenomenal amount of baggage, but I also want to know how much it played into your decision. And the word is, can you guess? It begins with a P, privilege. Okay. So I know, we both know, you and I are immensely privileged women. We are white, we are middle

class, we earn a living from our laptops, we have a roof over our heads, and we've both to different levels been privately educated. Now, that is absolutely part of our story that has afforded us unbelievable opportunities. And it's also not our whole stories and sometimes on twitter the nuance sometimes gets really lost in a rush to have a binary opinion and i know that you through your work and through the high low have often been the focus of that kind of attack on privilege and I wonder how you felt about that and whether Twitter was the forum that it occurred the most? Yes Twitter is definitely the place where it occurred the most and a lot of the time legitimately a lot of the time it was people pointing out my blind spots or

insensitivities that I am grateful for. Often, I wish it could have been executed in a slightly less personal way, or less attacking way. But as you said, we do come from a very specific context. And we definitely don't represent everyone. And should we seek to by the way because that would also be like immensely tin-eared and dunderheaded to try and represent everyone when we're speaking from our own personal experience yes I think a lot of the anger there are so many different things at play with the discussing people's privilege on twitter because as I said a lot of it I think is really legitimate and really important for someone to highlight your blind spots or help you understand other situations or other contexts that you might not be as familiar with that's really important I think the other

reason why what I've realized is so you can tell how difficult I find talking about this stuff what I now can see, having removed myself from Twitter, and still being engaged in journalism and with conversations with fellow writers and peers, I can now see that this conversation about how women like you and I dominate the media space in terms of, obviously women don't, but in terms of the women who are given space, we are overrepresented. That is very unfair unfair and that's frustrating for people who aren't given the chance to tell their stories what I now realize is when people were angry at me about that I mean most sane people they're obviously some nutters on twitter but most

sane people when they were angry at that and directing it at me they are not angry at me that's not about me and my personality and my work and my story it's about something I represent and that is totally fine by me I'm totally fine to be hauled up on that or for that to be examined and as I said since I've removed myself from Twitter which is an incredibly emotional place I can depersonalize that more now and I think that is a really important conversation to have the problem with Twitter was if you're someone who also seeks to please or has any issues of self-esteem or insecurities or god I hate this phrase imposter syndrome such a humble brag that imposter syndrome then that means that when that intersects with Twitter which can be quite toxic environment

it's just too debilitating and it's too upsetting upsetting. So if you're not able to rationalise that chat, you're going to turn it in on yourself and indulge in it and make it self hatred, then you just need to take yourself out of that place. So that's what I did. And honestly, I don't miss it at all. I really thought I would and I don't at all. I want to come back to how you feel having left it. But just off the back of what we've been discussing, how much do you think that Twitter is an engine that runs on the fuel of female shame, of women shame? Because I feel, as an unbelievably privileged white woman, that certain things that seem to be an issue in the discourse about people like me is not necessarily the same issue that you get with men there are loads of like white

privately educated men who have hit podcasts or successful careers as comedians and they don't get hit over the head with this in the same way as you have been and I wonder if that's a gender thing what do you think? I've got to be very how I word myself with this I sound like a sort of nervous politician don't I you know there's like amazing videos of Matt Hancock stumbling over himself this is what I feel like now. But can I just say that that's really instructive for us to hear, because you're so worried about other people and what they might be thinking and what might happen as a result of what you say. And I mean that in like a generous hearted way, you're worried that it's almost like you can't speak. And that's surely not right so

here's the big caveat for what i'm about to say in terms of that gender question i do think that privilege is something that women are held accountable to more than men however in the grand scheme of women who are dealing with stuff every day i'm on the lightest end of that. I don't want to equate that kind of misogyny, or not even misogyny, that gender double standard, I don't want to equate it with women who have to deal with it every day, who because of who they are, they have to deal with it in a much more oppressive and dangerous way. So trans women, working class women, women of colour, gay women, I'm very aware that when I talk about this stuff, I'm dealing with an immense amount of fortune. And in terms of isms I'm dealing with,

I'm on a very light end of the spectrum. I totally get that. I do agree with you that it does feel like one's privilege as a woman and one's background as a woman is something that she has to be hyper aware of and take accountability for and be entirely transparent about in a way that I think is good I think it's really good but I don't see it being asked of her male counterparts in the same industry that I would definitely agree with to be totally honest that was another reason why I just felt like I've got to get out of here. It was during lockdown. So things were just pretty tangy over there. People were rightly very upset and angry and frustrated and grieving some of them. It was a terrible, terrible time to be on Twitter. It was fraught. And I do just remember in the month before I decided to just pack it in, it was just a different day, another woman's life being ruined.

And to be honest, probably on some level, in some schadenfreude level, me finding some sort of relish in that, or I don't know, some sort of relief in that, that it's not me. And I didn't see it happening to men. It was particularly that month that I decided to leave. It was just constant public shaming of a different woman who'd messed up in some way. And it made me feel really uncomfortable. And you don't miss it at all do you feel actively better for it? I do feel actively better for it it's been such a strange way to readjust my brain because I now now when I read a news story or I watch a piece of culture or read a book or I have to find the opinion in me and let it flow through me without the confluence of 2000 strangers and their opinion. And I feel that would like always really kind of change the

current of where my thoughts went. You know, now what I do is I read commentary, or I speak to the people whose opinions I really care about. And that helps me understand how I feel about things rather than this, as you said, this kind of moralised binary place where it felt like, well, if you're good, you think this, and if you're bad, you think that. And the other thing that's important to say is, you know, being a writer, you do have to be sensitive to the world around you, how it's changing people in different situations from you, you have to be inclusive, changing people in different situations from you you have to be inclusive you have to be curious but what I'm realizing now is you don't have to do that by being on Twitter you can do that by reading the news and having lots of conversations with different people so I don't feel like there's

been any great loss I tell you the people who've bore the brunt of it are probably people like you it's probably my very close friends who now every time I'm walking around the house, I'm like, oh, here's a little funny bit about coffee capsules, instead of being able to like do a like pithy little joke on Twitter that might get 100 likes that I'll be refreshing every two minutes to see whether the likes are building, I'm just going to have to download it into a six minute long voice note for all of my mates but I love those voice notes and Twitter's loss is definitely our gain I do think as well I love what you say about just sitting with some thoughts before you formulate an opinion because Twitter encourages an immediacy of opinion that I don't think is particularly helpful because the world is an ambiguous place

and you are allowed not to have an opinion on everything and you're also allowed and should take time to understand how you feel about any given thing that occurs in a vastly complicated world you haven't left Instagram but you have changed your relationship to it a bit haven't you yes now look that's a tougher breakup that one because I just love Instagram so much you're so good at it oh no I love you I don't think I am but there's nothing I love more than on a Friday night having a few pints heading home just doing a little ask me anything just opening it up to the floor getting people to ask me what my favorite anything, just opening it up to the floor, getting people to ask me what my favourite sandwich is, just sitting there glued to my phone for four hours, pissed. I just love Instagram. And I love aesthetics. And I love

the fashion. And I love the interiors. And I love the food. And I'm really nosy. And I like seeing what Huxley and Justin are getting up to. And I like seeing, you know, Robbie Williams and his wife larking about. I really do love Instagram, but I just can't share super personal stuff on Instagram anymore. I wish I could. I really wish I could. But it just, it hurts too much when I feel like people are misjudging me or correctly judging me in a way that's just too confronting. I just, I'm not built for it. I wish I was. and that's not Instagram's fault. That's my fault. I have to be more boundaried with all the personal stuff now. So I'm just finding a new way to use it. Your last failure, which is interesting in this context, because it sounds like you've got now you've cultivated a very moderate response

to social media, but actually your third failure is being moderate. So Dolly, tell us what you mean by that. So this has been the big epiphany of the last few years of my life, I think. I think when I finished therapy, that first lot of therapy that I did in my late 20s, I was very, very obsessed with this idea of moderation, which in itself is an oxymoron. And I really did think that the key for sustainable happiness and health for me was moderation in all senses, emotional moderation and moderation of sensation and experience. And sadly, it's just not going to work because that's just not who I am that I've realized in the last few years. And I think I've used to feel great shame about the fact that I'm someone who is extraordinarily obsessive about things and people and I like sensations and experiences to be

intense and for my feelings to be big and I used to feel like that was embarrassing I think or something to be contained and to be honest in my 20s it probably was something to be contained because I think basically my pursuit of a good experience of an intense experience, or a noteworthy experience probably was at the detriment to my health or my mental health, or it would really concern my friends. But I'm in such a healthier place in my life now, I really do prioritize looking after myself over anything. And that's quite a new thing that there we go, that's a big thing that I've experienced and enjoyed in my 30s. So I'm now in this place of learning how to harness that lack of desire for moderation and that need for intensity, how to harness it to make it magic,

which I think it is. And actually, what I've realized is the people who like and love me, that is something they're not coming to me because they're like oh that's a balanced sensible lady and so I don't need to pretend to be that and it goes through every part of my life you know the new Lana Del Rey album comes out I sit in a room listening to nothing else all day and then every time I go out for the following week all I'll do is talk about the Lana Del Rey album even to people who specifically have said like I don't like Lana Del Rey I have I do it with my work at the, I'm writing my first TV show. And the first draft of every episode I hand in is 60 pages. And my exec and my script exec can't really get their head around the fact that the week that I write it, I just lock myself away for three days,

literally turning out of office on, turn my phone on airplane mode, smoke 20 fags, drink a bottle of tequila. And then by the end of three days, I have 60 pages. And it's like that emotionally for me as well. You know, if I fall in love with someone, I am going to be obsessed with them and they are going to become my PhD. I'm going to do a thesis on them in my head and I'm going to write poems for them and I'm going to find out their favorite meal. And I will cook it until it's perfect. And I will find out who their childhood crush was. And I will search every memorabilia shop in the UK until I find a signed topless picture of Melinda Messenger or whoever it is. I will give that to them as a present.

I'm just an intense person and I'm just becoming so okay with that now. an intense person and I'm just becoming so okay with that now. It's such a beautiful gift to the rest of us because you are unafraid to feel and you have the talent to put those big feelings which are so often universal into equally big feeling words and it's a really wonderful thing and I'm glad that you're embracing it but I suppose my worry for you is always that the source of your obsession whether it be a thing or a person if that thing or person lets you down how do you cope with that well I don't we're talking about love now really aren't we I'm sorry it's okay it's okay well I won't I won't cope I won't cope at all another thing I've realized is that heartbreak does not get easier as you get older I think there's just something that you have to find

kind of beautiful about that I remember the last time I had my heart broken speaking to my friend Sarah who's in her 40s and she said to me and she's married and she's got two kids and she said to me I just felt completely broken and she said I promise you there will be a time in your life where you will look back on this and think I was never more alive and she was keen to impress on me that that's not romanticizing pain but that if you feel a depth of heartbreak for someone it means that that only reflects the magnitude of the depth of love that you felt for them and I would take that downside every time because I think that heartbreak is grief basically and grief is a strange sort of privilege I think

to go to the very edge of your kind of rawest emotion and to know what it is to have loved someone that much and then and then feel that huge absence when they're no longer here I do think in a strange way it is a weird kind of honor and it's not something I would go looking for like trust trust me anyone who's going and looking for it it's in the post to you it's coming to you you are going to lose people you love and I think in my 20s I was just like so up for the drama this like sort of facsimile feeling of love and loss and I now realize like she didn't need to go looking for it that is just a part of being human but it is a part that I

yeah I find it I do find it really difficult I find the heartbreak really difficult. But if that's the price that I pay for feeling big love, then I'm okay with that. I wonder if you are someone who, because you love intensity, whether you feel the lack of it, if you were to have a really calm, uneventful life, do you think you'd have to go in search of those pockets of intensity? Well, I think I have with my job. I think I've chosen a job that is quite strange and quite precarious. And I've been obsessed with my job from a really young age. And I think that that will always stimulate me and intensify my life. And I feel total faith that the mundanity of a sure thing in love is something that I can do very well, because I've done it with my best friend. And I often wonder if the sort of real marriage in my life has been her, my friend Farley, who I wrote about in my first book, I wonder if that has given me

the kind of base that has allowed me to pursue all kinds of kind of precarious things in other areas of my life, you know, recreationally or creatively. And I also think as well, I used to equate intensity of feeling with insecurity or danger or fear. And now I realise and I have experienced now in love is that you can be stimulated by someone and you can feel really intrigued and beguiled by them. And even obsessed with them and know that you're safe and that, yeah, stimulation doesn't have to mean danger. Totally. It doesn't have to mean danger totally it doesn't have to mean dysfunction exactly and I actually had a very interesting conversation recently with someone who said you know often people think that because a relationship is dysfunctional in some way it's important in their life it's a mistake to think that and then these dysfunctional relationships sort of bury their way

into your life and then it's very difficult to get yourself out of them so I think being able to distinguish between intensity and dysfunction is a key learning but I just want to go back really to the premise of this podcast which is failure and learning from failure but it's also about success and what that means to individuals and you mentioned at the beginning that the success of everything I know about love was actually quite tricky in certain ways to handle and I wonder if you how you feel about success now and what it is for you that success looks like okay so the simplest thing that I've learned is and this will sound trite and obvious but I've really had to live through it to understand it success does not mean invulnerability and actually the moment where

someone finds big transformation in their life positive transformation in their life, positive transformation in their life, particularly with work, is probably the time when they're most vulnerable. Again, that's just another little borrowed tip from the lovely woman I did CBT with for 18 months. I remember her saying to me, there's a reason why teenagers are the most vulnerable. That's the most vulnerable time in your life. And it's because it is this huge place of transformation. And when you find yourself in transition, that is when you are so, so fragile, even though it feels big and exciting and empowering sometimes, even if you're not aware of it, when things are changing very fast, that's when you're really, really very susceptible to negativity or things going wrong or cruelty. Yeah, I just realized that now. I now just have this thing that whenever I see,

particularly a young woman having a big career change or a big career success, I've had it recently with a very close friend of mine has just had like an absolutely life-changing book and film deal. And- Is it me? It isn't.

And she's called Elizabeth Day um no obviously you are going through transformations every day no you're so lovely you don't need to say that yeah sorry go ahead yeah but this friend of mine and I a lot of our other friends like wow this is amazing this is like so brilliant for her things will be really easy for her now and my first thing when she told me is oh I hope she's okay this is going to be really tough and I hope that doesn't make me sound doer or miserable but I just now when I see people having a big life-changing thing happen or an incremental thing happen to their work to their public profile to their finances my immediate response is oh they're going to need support now. I hope

they're all right. I hope they have good people around them and I hope they have support. I find it so laughable how simplistic I used to be about what I thought success was and how I thought it would make life easier. And it does in many ways, it really does. And as I said, it brings a lot of joy, but it's not without its complications. I always remember you saying to me once that fuel is fuel, that anything can be used as fuel. And in the same way as you have harnessed your intensity, I think so much of my drive and motivation and discipline comes from a questing belief that I will get somewhere. And that when I get to that that point I'll be able to take a breath and everything will feel fully in place and like you I've realized that that's not necessarily the

case and actually to spend a whole life questing is really exhausting and maybe I'll have to come to terms with the fact that not everything I work hard for will come to fruition. And that's a scary realization and often a sad one. But it's also a liberating one, I think, because it leaves you a blank canvas. Yeah. For so many people looking at you, even, you know, I feel like I know you really really well and even I would look at you and everything you've achieved both personally and professionally and think well the quest is over you know there is a world where I know that will never be you because you're so ambitious and you're so curious and you've got so much you want to do but the quest could be over

if you wanted it to be and there is a middle ground where your idea of future success doesn't have to be constantly about what's missing yes oh teachable moment your idea of future success does not have to be about what's missing that is so good dolly i've literally been writing down motivational beau mot that you've been saying as we've been talking i've got creative monogamy transformation is fragile success does not mean invulnerability and now we have a new one to add to the pinterest mood board well there we go that is a woman who's spunked too much money on therapy over the years before i let you go my darling what then does success mean we've talked about what it doesn't mean yes what's your version of success my version of success is having the space and quiet and

comfort to make work that I am proud of and aligns with who I am to have people receiving and seeing that work doesn't have to be hundreds and thousands but having an audience which means I can continue doing it feeling like I have space in my diary to have a life outside of work and to be a good friend and to be a good family member and having a chunk of money in savings which means that if there is a disaster it can be salvaged in the short term that for me is if I had all those things I'm happy. Dolly Alderton I am so thrilled that you have come back on to How To Fail. Thank you first of all for making this podcast which I know has helped so many people and I love love seeing in my podcast app every

week and thank you for the great great honor of having me back on and also I meant to shout out your mother throughout the course of this interview I just wanted to give a shout out to Barbara Alderton who I have never met but who I also love and adore because we follow each other on Instagram and quite often she'll send me a little a little note here and there a little heart emoji it's getting a bit to groupie status a little bit it's making me slightly uncomfortable at this point she's absolutely obsessed I get a text a week about Elizabeth Day oh Barbara love you Barbara um, we must stop this insane gushing. But I've loved it. Thank you, my darling, for coming back on How to Fail. Thank you so much.

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