How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - How to Fail: End of Season Two

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

So here we are at the end of SEASON TWO of How To Fail With Elizabeth Day, 16 wonderful interviews (and untold numbers of pots of babaganoush) later. In order to mark this momentous occasion, I speak to the legend behind the microphone, the one and only Chris Sharp, producer extraordinaire. We chat about our favourite moments of the podcast so far and discuss the most memorable building work we've had to contend with along the way (it's a nightmare for the sound quality, apparently). Ironically, this takes place just as building work is being done in the flat above mine, so you get to hear an unexplained thumping sound about three-quarters of the way through. You're welcome. Thank you so, so much for listening, rating, reviewing and subscribing. We'll be back in the New Year with eight new brilliant guests. Until then, remember what Truman Capote said: 'Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.'  How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks 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. hello it's elizabeth day here i just wanted to say thank you so so much for listening to how to fail with elizabeth day season two it's been an amazing journey i've loved every minute i've loved hearing from you about what you've thought of each episode thank you so much for your tweets for your instagram messages for your Instagram messages, for your emails, for your ratings, for your reviews. I read every single one. I'm sorry if it takes me a while to reply to you, but I appreciate it more than I can possibly say. It is so incredibly meaningful to me

to have this level of connection from listeners far and wide. It has been really, really wonderful. I also wanted to thank our sponsors, Fourth Estate. I'm sorry that you no longer get to hear me say, Baba Ganoush, but I'm thrilled that you've had the chance to listen to lots of fantastic trails for brilliant new books. And I hope you've been scarring out your local bookshops to buy them. I thought as a special treat for this end of season finale, we would have an unscripted conversation with the legend behind the microphone,

the man in the shadows, Chris Sharp, fantastic producer of podcasts. I was so lucky when I met this man. He is the one who makes it sound this good so that when I say Baba Ganoush, it really registers on many, many tones. Chris is sitting here opposite me. He's looking slightly nervous. He doesn't know what I'm going to ask him. But first of all, I just want to say thank you, Chris. And how have you enjoyed recording and producing How to Fail with Elizabeth Day? Well, it's been a nightmare, to be honest. No, it's been lovely. It's been really good. I've been a massive diva. You've been awful. So I've told everyone about you. It's been really good i've been a massive diva you've been you've been awful so i've told everyone about you it's been really enjoyable yeah it's been lovely i feel so lucky

to have found you i basically just googled for a producer when i decided to come up with this podcast idea and struck very very lucky when i found you so thank you it seems like a long time ago so the first podcast we recorded was sebastian folks and i remember it was pouring with rain and we met in Notting Hill it was actually like a Richard Curtis movie it was a bit yeah we're in an underground station I think in the ticket office yes and uh we're like oh are you Elizabeth exactly are you Chris oh yes all right and since then we've just gone from strength to strength and Chris is just a delightfully calming always punctual presence and he sets up these microphones quite often in my flat which is where we are today and sometimes in people's homes and then sits again

quite often cross-legged like a master yogi for the entirety of the recording and I do think you've mastered that clever thing of being present but not too present yeah sometimes my legs have gone to sleep because I sit on the floor sometimes I get up and my legs aren't really working after about an hour of recording but it's all right yeah you're dedicated to the dedicated yeah and also every time I come out of an interview I always always want to know what Chris has thought because he's so perceptive and I wanted to ask you Chris who has been your highlight of season two? Season two was quite a lot to choose from. Correct answer. Well done.

Yes. But if I had to narrow it down to one, I really enjoyed the one with Tara Westover. I really liked her story. I thought that was really fascinating and quite inspiring. And looking at sort of where she's come from to where she is today and how she's got herself educated, which is obviously the title of her book. But no, I thought the Tara Westover story was fascinating. So I think that was, yeah, probably if I had to pick a favourite of season two, it would be her. I loved the Tara Westover interview as well because it was one of those interviews where I felt my mind expanding

actually as she was talking. It was like being in the best combination of a brilliant university lecturer, but also a great friend. I guess she's got a very amazing way of kind of conveying her thoughts and her ideas. So I obviously can't pick a favourite because that's like picking from my children. But I did love Jessie Burton,

who has become a cherished friend, actually. And it's really interesting, that one, because I'd met Jessie over the years. I'd been sent to interview her as a best-selling novelist. Her, not me, by the way. I was interviewing her for the Radio Times. But we'd never got a chance to kind of hang out and just chew the fat together. And she listened to season one of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day and was moved to text me. And then I was like, would you ever be on it? And that was the genesis of that conversation.

And I think what I loved about it was that it was so wide ranging and she's so insightful and wise about the human condition. And it was just really nice for me to sit there and feel that I was connecting with a dear friend as well as someone who had really interesting things to say so I liked her I liked her house I liked the decor in her house with uh who was it the uh Mexican lady Frida Kahlo yeah yeah and her cat Margot and her cat as well I don't know how to break this to you Chris but she's just moved so that flat is she really oh my god oh no i don't really like

her house but it's fine because she's got amazing taste and she will carry that with her in fact the mug you were drinking from jesse gave to me for my birthday that's a good mug it says i'm optimistic on it oh good uh anyway yes jesse had a beautiful house um and who else did we do it now we did alistair campbell who i also really love the fact that he was so open about his mental health issues. It's quite rare to get men to talk that openly. So that was a good one. Yeah, and he was nice as well. He was nicer than I expected.

I know, and he turned up half an hour early for the interview. He was very early. I think I was still setting up the microphones when he knocked on the door. I was just relieved I wasn't in the shower or something. And he was wearing a suit and sort of like a red tie yeah he was sort of he looked like Alistair Campbell yeah and then it's quite surreal to have Alistair Campbell sitting on my sofa yeah in fact in this exact spot yeah that was a good one what if you had to pick not the opposite of a highlight but what if you had to pick someone who struck you for different reasons than the

people that you loved? Hmm, let me think. Who do you think had a surprising attitude to failure? Surprising attitude to failure? I think probably James Fry, actually. I thought his attitude to failure was an interesting one because his attitude was kind of like, fuck you. That was his attitude to failure. And it's like, I mean mean it's not a failure if you

think it's a failure then fuck you I can swear on this podcast can't I yeah you can he says after editing two seasons of it yeah so I thought James Fry he was an interesting chap and his attitude to pretty much everything I thought I'm just laughing because it's been so fascinating seeing people's reactions to the James Fry interview. Because afterwards, I was really worried that I hadn't asked enough questions. And then listening back to it, I was like, but I don't think there was space for me to do that.

And actually, I was really glad I got to interview him because I do love his writing. And I still think A Million Little Pieces is a brilliant book. And I do think that his attitude to failure is actually something I personally can learn from like it's very different from my attitude in that his whole thing was yes I became a literary pariah when it turned out that my memoir was part fabricated but as you say Chris like fuck you I wasn't following the rules I was being an anarchic writer and I didn't care about genre and I was like well you know what if the unconfident among

us had one percent of that self-belief imagine the amazing things we could do yeah and he was we had him on the line don't we had him on like a telephone line yeah or FaceTime I think it was FaceTime from the US yeah from Connecticut and he was chewing a lot of Nicoretteetime i think it was facetime from the us yeah from connecticut and he was chewing a lot of nicorette gum i think it was yes and i could tell that chris wasn't wasn't a fan of the sound quality and we just had to plow on i'm never a fan of the sound quality unless it's my own microphones i'm never a fan especially now because there's building work going on upstairs which is troubling you what's been your favorite building work of season two my favorite building work of season two other than the one that's currently going on in my own flat,

was David Baddiel's building work. Really? So David Baddiel, if you've listened to the podcast, you will already know that it started with a failure and that he tried to come to my flat, couldn't find a parking space. We then had to get into his car to drive to his house, which luckily is quite nearby, and got to his house, set up there. and got to his house set up there and as soon as we set up there was some enormous tapping sound from next door and we had to stop that so I think that's

a memorable one my favorite again is Tara Westover because she had that noise halfway in it was the flat next door and they had a leak and so there was some noise it sounded like they were doing yeah it was a very strange kind of whining sound. Yeah. We had to go out and try and get them to stop. But there's always something. Building work we have loved and lost along the way. We could do a special of just building noises.

Yes. We could do a whole podcast with that. We could just do a whole album, like a concept album. I also loved Atega Uwagba because I thought she spoke so beautifully and so openly about living with depression. And I know that that's another one that's really, really resonated with people. I also liked that one

because she said at the beginning, she's never going to forgive me for this because she says I never let her forget it. But she said at the beginning that one of her rules was never to wear florals. And then she texted me about a week after that saying I've just got to confess to you I've just bought something floral but a Tega could wear anything and make it look incredible but I thought that was a really moving one yeah she was very honest

and open about her failure and yeah and I thought again that's a really um I just love the fact that there are all these strong brilliant women who are completely willing to go there and say you know I wasn't ready for that job and that's okay now because I learned from it and I didn't get into the university of my choice and that's okay too because it led me in this direction it has been so inspiring to listen to these women say that and of course the other one who didn't get into quite I mean she did get into Cambridge but she didn't get into the college of her choice was michelle hussein and again because she's such a composed brilliant broadcaster and someone who i've admired for ages i think to hear her admit to those kind of what she perceived of as failings was really moving actually and i hope inspiring as

well for those of you who've listened yeah who sticks with you from season one season one oh that's like a lifetime ago you loved David Nichols oh yes David Nichols I thought he was really nice he was so open about his failure as an actor and failure to become an actor and I think he was quite brave how I think he said it was he gave himself a cut off point at age 29 or something and if he didn't have a decent part by that age he would give up and do something else but I mean yeah to go from acting to writing I mean yeah it's all storytelling isn't it what podcasts do you listen to Chris other other than this one I don't really listen to podcasts oh my god okay this is really bad

cut that bit out no I'm joking um but you record a lot of audiobooks don't you listen to podcasts. Oh my God, okay. This is really bad. I'm going to have to cut that bit out. No, I'm joking. But you record a lot of audiobooks, don't you? Yeah, not so many recently, but I have done. I've done quite a few audiobooks over the years and lots of kind of radio programmes, Radio 4 programmes and TV stuff and kind of, yeah, bits and bobs really.

Chris is also rather brilliantly a musician because his name is C Sharp, literally, Chris Sharp. And you released an album recently what's it called? Oh there's an album that came out in April called For Concrete and Country. Great title. Yeah For Concrete and Country so that's doing okay that was out on vinyl I'm not sure if there are any left now they had a repress in September but if you like strange electronic music based on Cold War Britain, then it might be right up your alley.

What is not to love about that? What's not to love? What's not to love? Yeah. Chris Sharp, what is not to love about you? Nothing. Thank you so much for making this journey so much fun, for being such a brilliant producer.

I couldn't do it without you, quite literally. And thank you all for listening. And we will see you back for season three in the new year.