How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - ON FAMILY DYNAMICS… With Bella Freud and Danny Dyers

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Families are fascinating: how those first bonds shape our understanding of love, security and ourselves. In this episode, we revisit episodes with Bella Freud and Danny Dyer, who each open up about the simultaneous beauty and complexity of family life. Bella Freud, speaks about losing both of her parents to cancer within a week. As the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the eldest sibling, she reflects on a complex childhood, the responsibilities she carried and how grief reshaped her sense of identity. Secondly, we hear from Danny Dyer, who shares what it was like growing up on a council estate with a single mother. He discusses the shock of discovering his father had another family and how the absence of love in his early years shaped the devoted parent he is today. Family dynamics can feel messy and taboo, but I hope this episode offers reassurance, validation and insight into the ties that form us first and stay with us for life. Listen to Bella Freud’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/mQntNELQPRhZ9CjFQO77 Listen to Danny Dyer's full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/L192dU5DZHQnCUjFWuX8 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Family Support: www.family-action.org.uk Elizabeth’s Substack: theelizabethday.substack.com Join the How To Fail community: howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Marlux. Masterclass.com slash fail. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash fail. Masterclass.com slash fail. Welcome back to how to fail. This week we're talking about family, the first relationships that shape who we are and are understanding of love. My first guest is fashion designer Bella Freud, founder of the iconic Bella Freud label, celebrated for its witty, slogan-led knitwear. She's also the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Bella speaks with extraordinary honesty about the devastating experience of losing both of her parents to cancer within a week, her complex childhood and the responsibilities she carried as the eldest sibling.

Then we hear from the legendary Danny Dyer, who reflects on growing up on a council estate in East London with a single mother, and the trauma of discovering his father had another family and had the absence of love in his childhood, shaped the parent he is today, one who's determined to give his children what he didn't always receive. This episode aims to offer reassurance, validation, and some insight into family dynamics that are often considered a bit of a taboo. First up, here's Bella. My father was dying of cancer and we were all expecting him to die. And then a week before he died, my mother went into hospital for some tests and she'd come and stayed with me, which she didn't do very often, but she'd been to stay with me a few months earlier and said

she'd forgotten her painkillers and she wasn't someone who took painkillers. And I was, I noticed that and thought, God, that's strange. And she said, I've had some pain in my back or something. She went into hospital. They did some test and then they said, you've got a week to live. And she did die a week later. And my father died on July 20th and she died on 24th. So it was so, so strange. That must have been horrendous. Yeah, it was so abstract that it...

And in a way, because she was... She knew she was going to die and this doctor had told her exactly what, you know, what would happen. And it was very, it seemed to be very peaceful. And I remember, and also it made it possible to ask her things or say things like, ask her if she had a will, say things like, I'm going to miss you. And not, and that was completely normal.

I remember saying that to her. And she said, I feel strangely detached from what. what's happening to me. It was kind of wonderful in a way because there's nothing. I mean, I don't suppose anyone else would want a long, prolonged death, but her more than anyone. She was very immediate person and they discovered she had cancer in three places and it was completely everywhere. You know, we made our peace and I thought we were going to be at the beginning of some other phase in our lives of begrudging acceptance of each other. And we sort of were and then that was it. She was gone. It was like a racehorse and outside a horse streaking to the front

and she said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm just sorry I won't be able to come to Dad's funeral and then we just laughed. And it was it was great in some way. you know, even though it was unbelievably shocking. I'm so sorry for what you and Esther must have gone through at that time. Did you have an opportunity to say to either of them, I love you, or were you not that kind of family? I did say to my father once. I'd done some sort of self-help course and I said, oh, this is the bit where I tell you, I love you. And we just laughed.

And I think it was really nice and I'm sure he appreciated that and I tried that a bit with my mother and in a way it was more about gestures and I was so glad that she'd come to stay with me because we kind of wound each other up and we had a really nice, she stayed for two or three nights and we had a really nice time together.

And I remember we went, because she lived in Suffolk and we went to the Latitude Festival, and we went to see Nick Cave, and then we went to see Blondie. And when we were sort of rocking out, we looked at each other, and I thought, yeah, this is, you know, this is where she just was like a rebellious teenager her whole life. And when I was together with her and that, We got on really well.

And we had things out and some were successful on some much less. I suppose there was some kind of acceptance of each other before she died, which was a peaceful thing. Did your father say, I love you back? No, I don't think so. He didn't really use that language, but he showed it. in many ways. So that didn't matter at all.

I wasn't, I was, my intention was to say something that was potentially embarrassing, but I wanted him to know anyway. And so he knew. Well done you for your courage in navigating your relationship with your mother. Your second failure, seamless link. is not joining the circus. Oh, God, yes. So was this actually an opportunity? Yeah, okay.

Tell me this story. I think I was 19 and I wanted, I was going through a phase of trying to be an actress or vaguely entertaining, like being in a band or being an actress, being a performer of some kind. And I used to get the stage and look at the adverts and I saw there was an advert for something or rather,

I don't know if it said Anyway I went for this meeting and it was in the middle of Shepherdsbush roundabout where there was a circus and I was going for a job it transpired of being the girl that dances on a ball you know when they'd have an enormous ball and there would be someone who somehow stayed on it

and I went for the audition and I got the job and then wait so in the order audition did you have to stand on the wall? No, no. She just sort of checked me out. How old were you? I was 19, I think, 18 or 19. It was the first part of the job I'd have to go and live in Birmingham in a caravan on the site and I wouldn't be paid for anything at all, no living costs, no food. And then after a month, I think, or it was it, I would then get my living costs. And then

When I was in the circus, I would get a sort of minimum wage. And I just didn't do it. And I stayed home. And I always regretted it. And I actually, I mean, in some ways, I think if I had joined the circus, I might still be in it. So in some ways, I'm glad I didn't do it because my life took me in a different direction. And it was one of my fantasies as a child.

to be in the circus. I loved all the people in it. I always love people in that type of world. And outside, you know, an outsider life with a lot of pride. And it's something that I still think, oh, God, you know, I winked out. You do look like you'd be a great addition to any circus. I mean, that was a competition. Yes, no, I'd take it as that.

You mentioned there that when you were younger, so six, you were the one who felt you had to be responsible in the absence of adult responsibility. Yeah. And then in your teenage years, that switched. And I wonder how that affected your relationship with your younger sister Esther, if at all. Yeah, no, it did. Because when we were children, she was the person I trusted. And I don't know. if it's an oldest child syndrome that she was so important to me, but I also felt like, you know, I was looking out and she was behind me. So she gave me this moral support, but I was the soldier on the front line. And I mean, whether I was or not is neither here nor there, but it's, and I don't know if other eldest children have that feeling of slight loneliness of we're the ones we also get the love

because we're the first one but then we lose it and we get the first where the ones that are the experimenters as it were she just was such a great ally and she always believed in me and believed me more than anything. And, you know, as a teenager, people are, it's the time where you get dismissed, and very much so in the 70s. And she believed me. And that was such a big thing. I was always grateful and still am for that.

Yes, what's it like today? That's more important. than ever. There's some kind of thing in some, I can't remember how it exactly goes about resilience and it's something to do with trauma when it's not witness is a catastrophe, but trauma when there is some sort of witness, i.e. someone believes what happened to you, makes it much easier to recover from. And when your experience is denied, it's just this kind of, you can get stuck in this thing for your whole life of proving or just disappearing because what everyone saw you're being told didn't happen to have that information so that it's not dismissed.

and notice it in other people. Thank you. It's so rare, I think, that we talk about sibling relationships. And it's rare on this podcast too, and I really value having the chance to talk about it as one of two sisters myself. And I'm the younger sister. And I completely agree with you, by the way. I was so grateful to my older sister, Catherine, for being the experimenter, the kind of polewalk, the first defence. And it's just a very interesting.

relationship that completely shapes who we are in our character. And I really appreciate how much attention you pay to family. When you do your podcast Fashion Neurosis, you do it sitting on a chair that was your father's chair in his studio, this sort of battered, beautiful, painterly armchair. And of course, the act of what you're doing is psychoanalytical as your great-grandfather was the founding father of it. And I just wonder what your relationship is with the Freud name. My whole relationship was with my father.

He never talked about his grandfather. There was no reference hardly at all. He made a few jokes about him. And it was really about what you do yourself. And he was the model for that. so we didn't use that as a kind of blanket. I felt that would be a bit tacky to just, you know, in the end, if I don't do a good job of whatever it is I'm doing,

then who cares? if I then use that as some sort of magic carpet that's the worst thing I can imagine. So we were never brought up with a thing about Freud at all, but my father, there he was, he was everything to me. And I just worked, you know, he was just such a powerful person in my life. and I looked up at him and how he dealt with life and he seemed to deal with life by painting through any problems. Reggie, I just sold my car online.

Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered a few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture, Fran. You don't say. Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow.

Talk about fast. Wow. Way to go. So about that picture frame. Forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested. Car Selling Made Easy on Carvana. Pick up these may apply.

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Sign up for your £1 per month trial today at shopify.com. com.uk slash fail. That's shopify.com.com.uk slash fail. You know, obviously come from a family of some sort of criminal fraternity. I really started to really feel that when I went into the theatre world. Wasn't so much with the TV world, but definitely. when I started to, you know, be around theatre Nats, as you'd like to call them,

I was well out of my depth with just dialogue in general, especially when you do a playing, then afterwards you come off stage and then, you know, you've got sort of people in the bar waiting. I didn't quite know what to say to these people, really, and I felt that there was always a class thing going on, but it gives me a drive and an ambition, really. I've never been to drama school.

I don't want to lose who I am, the essence of who I am, because my theory on acting is that my toolbox is me and my traumas and my, you know, my truth. And so I have to dig into my box to find certain emotions and feelings. And so I wouldn't want to become a blank canvas, which is what you're taught at drama school, lose the accent. And then going back to the Pinter thing, that's what happened with Harold. Harold was from East London, but Harold was told,

I suppose he was an actor during the 50s and the 60s, So therefore, you know, working class people, we shouldn't really be on the television. Interestingly, I've just heard a stat that in the arts at the moment, there is 6% of working class people. Wow. It's at the lowest it's ever been. Something that needs to change, I feel. Tell me a bit about your childhood and that idea of being rooted in where you come from, but not forever defined by it. You were raised by strong women, weren't you?

Yeah, I was raised by strong women, absolutely. My dad left when I was quite young, so I had no real role model or a father figure around me. I mean, my mother brought up three children, you know, on her own, on a council estate, and always did it with a smile and always had a cuddle.

And that's what as children, actually, it didn't matter that we had fuck all. It was about our currency as children. And I noticed from having children myself, quite privileged kids, is affection and love and security. You know, so I didn't have me father for that, but I did my mother.

was always there. She was a great talker, a great listener. I had a matriarch in my nan, Nanny Polly, who said a lot. So this was a word that was around me a lot. Again, going back to the classes and things, I was only later on when I was at dinner parties and I'd use that word, you know,

I realise that maybe, if you look at the broader society, it's quite rare, that word. Yeah. In particular. But, you know, I always felt safe. friend, me nan. Do you remember that moment when your mom found out that your dad had been having this affair and had another family? Yeah, I do, because she was on the phone. She got a phone call

from the woman that my dad was having an affair with and she just sort of dropped to her knees crying and she had my sister in her arms and I think she knew, I think she knew anyway, but you know, it was like this really dramatic moment of, you know, it's a tricky one with me dad because obviously I just made a documentary and I was worried about maybe getting a bit of back, like from maybe women's groups and stuff because I felt that the timing of trying to make a documentary about how men are struggling

is probably bad timing because everybody's struggling. Anyway, I upset my dad because he Googled my name and he hadn't watched the documentary yet and the press had said that I said that he was a violent man, he was never a violent man,

he was just a bit shit. And it was my brother's truth, you know, it really affected me when he left. My brother, not so much. He was a bit more, you know, logical about the whole situation and even though he was younger than me, he realised that dad not being around meant it was going to be a calm, a happy house, whereas I just wanted me dad about, you know? I didn't understand why he wasn't there and I sort of blame my mother

for it because she was in front of me. Yeah. But all these traumas that I had as a kid, I think it just defines you as a human being, you know what I mean? I wouldn't go back and change anything. I suppose this was the way it was meant to be. And I think it shaped me as a father myself, you know, and try and do the right thing. And I did speak about my dad's upbringing in the 50s, which was really difficult for him. He was born in 55, so, and it was a very strict upbringing, you know what I mean? And so he didn't quite know how to be affectionate with his own kids.

There was one moment when he was going to cross a road, and he said, nah, I went to old his end. He went, no, we don't do that anymore, boy. And for some reason that stuck on me. You are very warm. Kindness kind of emanates when you meet you. That's my experience as a woman. So how did you learn how to do that?

I broke the mould in a sense of I thought, well, I'm not going to do, I'm not going to be the way my dad is. I'm going to change it up a little bit and I'm going to actually probably go over the top with affection and love. And I think because my mother was so cuddly, I was brought up with it. So I've made sure that I cuddle my son a lot because I know it makes you feel inside is important.

And I think it's okay to be a very masculine man, but also let people feel safe around you. I'm really glad I've got my mum's sensitive side. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Quite happy to cry and stuff, I will do it.