How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S1, Ep3 How to Fail: Dolly Alderton

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

This week’s guest on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day is memoirist, podcaster and journalist Dolly Alderton. Dolly, the co-host of the utterly fantastic The High Low podcast and author of the brilliant Sunday Times bestseller Everything I Know About Love, talks about being rejected from Bristol University (and still feeling resentful of anyone she meets who went there), being ‘compassionately’ fired from a job she didn’t really want and what happens when you don’t meet the love of your life, even when you think you’re going to. Along the way, we talk about the horror of being a teenager, internalised misogyny, the pressure for women to look good (‘I try very hard to remember that I’m not disappointing anyone if I don’t look perfect,’ says Dolly), sensitivity, people-pleasing, narcissism, discomfort zones, the brilliance of female friends and why it’s sometimes good to have a thin skin.We also discuss Made in Chelsea (Dolly used to be a story producer) and her efforts to invent a new game show, where you would win your dream home but it wouldn’t have any doors. Sounds amazing. Not sure why it never got commissioned.Note: this episode contains the phrase ‘absolute rotters’ used in a non-ironic way.  How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp  How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish   Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabday Dolly Alderton @dollyalderton The High Low @thehighlowshow Moorish @moorishhumous 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 car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. Hosted by author and journalist Elizabeth Day, that's me. 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. My guest this week is the entirely fabulous, magical being that is Dolly Alderton. Dolly is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling memoir, Everything I Know About Love, a funny, poignant book that has seen her dubbed the millennial Nora Ephron. Full disclosure, I said that, but I really did mean it. Dolly also co-presents the iTunes topping podcast The Hilo, writes and directs for TV and film, and is an award-winning journalist. If, as she writes on her website, coming in third place counts as award-winning. Here at How to Fail, we definitely think it does.

At the age of 29, Dolly has achieved a level of success most of us would be happy with in our 80s. But part of what makes her such a great writer and communicator is her ability to be open about her own vulnerabilities. There's not just one type of woman you can be, she once wrote in a letter to her teenage self. One day you'll realise you haven't disappointed anyone if you don't look perfect. That kind, strong and smart works even better. So kind, strong and smart, Dolly Alderton. So lovely. Oh, you're so lovely. I feel very moved.

Can I hire you for like maybe my 30th to give the speech? Always. I can always be a kind of ego fluffer. I'd love that. You can be, yeah, my resident ego fluffer. Thank you so much. It's very easy to write that. Honestly, it was because it's been a real joy for me to get to know you over the past year.

And you are all of those things that you say. You are kind, strong and smart. And you are all of those things that you say, you are kind, strong and smart. And you're a big supporter of other women. And I know that we're here to talk about failure. Yeah. But how long do you think it took you to recognise what you wrote to your teenage self, that one day, you will realise you don't have to be one type of woman, you don't have to look perfect? I still think that I still am learning to grasp it properly every single day there's this amazing Diana Vreeland quote that I'm sure that you've heard that does the rounds on the basic bitches social media which I am happy to call myself where she says being pretty isn't a

rent that you have to pay to occupy a space called woman such a good quote it's so good I think I started grasping it when I was about 25 in terms of looks wise perfection I think I remember being in the gym slogging my guts out before a holiday with my friends and I was so tired and I wasn't really seeing my friends that much because I was obsessed with going to the gym every night and it was this kind of real slog and I remember having a moment where I was in the changing room I was like why why am I acting like I'm gonna be like papped do you know what I mean on this like budget holiday with my best friends in Mallorca and I just realized oh I'm not disappointing anyone if I don't look like a celebrity. But it's so weird that the default aspiration for a woman in terms of how she should look is someone who is paid to look like that professionally. There's a moment in my book, in the chapter I talk about my sort of battles with body image and eating disorder,

where I realised that to be like an absolute stud of a man, you have to have maybe a bit of hair. You can be like a stone over your kind of average BMI. Wear a nice jumper, have a nice smile and basically be just a nice and charming person. And then to be a woman and be seen as a catch, it's just this never ending list of pressures on you. It's pretty hardwired, I think, into my unconscious mind, but I try very hard to remember that I'm not disappointing anyone if I don't look perfect. How much do you think that is because we are set up to compete with other women or to feel that we have to compete with other women, whether they are celebrities and magazines or just average

women that we see on the street and we like her shoes. How much is that hardwired into us? I realised the kind of extent of my internalised misogyny when I realised last year, actually, that every time I go to the gym and I see another woman working out, I will always look at how long she's run for. Me too. And I'm a terrible runner. I know, so am I. I'm never going to. Yeah. If I see that someone's burnt twice the amount of calories as me in 10% of the time, I will immediately sort of

hate myself and think that I'm this embarrassment and I shouldn't really be in the gym and what's the point of working out? And I sort of hate the woman and she's just by dint of just being there she's sort of boasting and lording it over me and then if I see that I've done even fractionally better than another person I feel incredibly smug and this is not a conscious thing I had to really catch myself I was like oh you do this with every single woman in the gym and if you feel like you've succeeded more than another woman, even though in your conscious, compassionate, rational mind, you know that none of that matters, something in me gets this real kick of, oh, I'm doing better than her. And it's horrible when

you realise that. And I think a lot of the journey is just catching those thoughts. Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the things that's so beautiful about your book that you start out as a reader thinking it's going to be about a series of kind of humorous but failed dates and relationships in your 20s and it turns out to be something so much more profound and a love letter to your female friends so it strikes me that you are someone who does make that decision on a daily basis to I think we are really pitted against each other you know I did a literary festival this weekend and a woman asked me in the Q&A because I had this bit of a love in as I always do when I'm talking about the message of my book about how important and nourishing and supportive and romantic and vital I find

my close female friendships and And this woman in the front row, I think she was in her 50s, said, oh, but you know, I've got teenage girls who are at an all-girls school, and they can be terribly bitchy to each other, can't they? Very catty women to each other. Can you explain that? Like, women can be really nasty. And I was really happy to talk about that, because I was like, well, I think because I was like well I think that can happen but I think a lot of that is first of all the kind of signals that we're sent from a very very very young age about how perfect we have to be and how failure isn't really an option if you're a woman and how you should be incredibly ashamed if you do kind of get things wrong and there's such a

template of what a woman should be. This is the correct template of femininity and anything else is like a bit of a shameful, embarrassing fuck up. And I think if you have those signals coming at you from the age of dot, basically on every TV program and overheard conversations between your mum and her friends talking about dieting when you're four or whatever in every advert and every magazine hell yeah you're going to start assessing yourself and assessing other women and feel moments of schadenfreude and relief when you feel like you're doing better than the other one or um moments of kind of despair and anguish when you feel like you're not the one succeeding and that can manifest in nastiness but i think we have to be compassionate with

ourselves about that. I know that it does exist. It's something that people say to me a lot. They're like, girls can be really difficult with each other. But I think we have to look at how much of that is something we've swallowed from the outside world. Yeah. I mean, talking of all girls' schools, you did go to one. I did, yes.

And which leads us seamlessly. Did you see what I did there? Well, it's almost like you interviewed professionally, Elizabeth. Just make it seem like a natural conversation. But that leads us seamlessly onto what you've described as the first failure that you want to talk about, which is, well, why don't you tell us what it is? Well, I'm very aware this might be a bit like hashtag boohoo. This will sound like my tears are very precious.

And they are. This is part of the whole learning curve with this incident. I went to an all-girls school, private school in the North London suburbs. And then for sixth form, I went to a co-ed boarding school that was a ridiculous place, really, to be educated, where my parents paid an extraordinary amount of money. I remember going to a lecture with Professor Ricks, who's the number one Bob Dylan expert, just on my lunch hour. And there were ancient manuscripts in the library. And we had a bar on campus. And it's an extraordinary place. So the reason I say all that is I think

I wasn't aware at the time of the kind of, well, I think I was semi-aware, but not really aware of the vast privilege that I had being privately educated. Private education is something I feel sort of sad about, really, because I think in one way, I'm incredibly grateful to my parents, neither of whom went to private school, who worked very hard and thought they were doing the best for me. In a way, they did do the best for me because I'm not an academic person I was pretty lazy and came out with tremendous results that 100% I wouldn't have got had I not been at a private school I truly believe that and know that in my heart because it's actually really hard to be a failure at private school because you're paying this extraordinary amount of money in these tiny

classes normally to have a huge amount of time and focus and resources on you that I'm sure well I know because lots of my teachers are at state school they would love to be able to shower the students with and they just can't it's hard because in one way I'm very grateful to private school because I don't think I would have got into university I definitely wouldn't have been able to do a master's it really helped me climb those rungs that I wanted when I was a teenager. On the other hand, I just think that's the most wildly unfair thing in the world. I think it's so unfair that a girl like me,

who would have just completely fallen through the cracks, I think, in any other schooling environment, manages to have these great opportunities and excel in a way that isn't artificial, but was very much supported at every baby step of the way that makes me really sad and feel guilty that that's something that I benefited from I didn't realize how much you're cradled at private school until the first big rejection of my life and the first big rejection of my life was not getting into Bristol and it was a horrible horrible rejection because they pooled me which means that they put me in

the distinctly average maybe pile for as long as they can so every time I would go on to the UCAS thing it would say like pending or pooled or whatever and I would just refresh and refresh and refresh for months and months and months and months and then finally the last leg of the summer it said that my application had failed and I really really wanted to go to Bristol to do the drama course all my favourite playwrights had gone there I really wanted to be a playwright that was my big thing when I was a teenager Sarah Kane had gone there lots of my favourite comedians had gone there. I was passionate about the core support over every module. Because I was so arrogant, because everything else had come so easy for me with this mollycoddling of private education,

I think I just assumed I'd get in, because everything else I'd tried, somehow I managed to get through it. I managed to pass my GCSEs. I managed to get a C in maths, even though it seemed like that was the most impossible thing I had no reason to believe that this wouldn't be easy and it engendered this it's kind of entitlement but it wasn't really entitled it's more just this rock solid assurance that everything's going to be really easy in life which I suppose maybe

is entitlement I mean I'm still really upset I didn't go to Bristol. I'm really upset about it. When you were refreshing your computer screen, and it did finally flash up, it was rejected. I just couldn't believe it. I just didn't believe it. That's the extent of how little I had faced failure in my life. Everything that I tried, my parents ploughed money in and time in to make sure that I just dragged my feet through it whether it was a ballet exam or getting into this boarding school for sixth form or my maths GCSE I just hadn't experienced failure and it was a really good lesson to me as I said I'm still upset about it yeah I still sort of hate anyone I meet when they tell me they went to Bristol also in my head I then went to Exeter University which was the sort of dumping dumping ground for everyone who

didn't get into Bristol I think I've really romanticized what Bristol is in my head because when I talked to people that went to Bristol they were like you know it was a lot like Exeter it wasn't like Exeter with dreaming spires and people cycling around with leather satchels bulging with books. It was very much a phone party vibe. But yeah, it was a good lesson to me because it made me acknowledge the extent of my privilege and the curious and unfair and unusual education that I had. And to acknowledge that and realise that that's not what the real world was going to be like. It's so interesting that you say that and that that happened to you at a particular age because I remember being disproportionately devastated at the age of 17 when I failed my driving test.

Oh really? And similarly, I'd been to a state secondary school and then got a scholarship to a boarding school in England. So I was also incredibly privileged and had this education that did save me in many ways from myself and from my own lack of confidence. And failing my driving test was the first big hurdle of something that I wanted to do

and was unable to do. And it seems so unfair. Totally, because what the template has taught you so far is, I study, I pay money, all my parents pay money for a person to help me study maybe an extra mile. And then I go in and I do it and it's all fine. Yeah.

That's just not how life works. Yeah. And so I think that kind of indignance, that incredulous. I'm not surprised that you had that feeling. And maybe it's not just exclusive to people who are privately schooled. Maybe it's the sort of adolescent arrogance as well. what a good lesson to learn I think how did your parents react I'm amazed that I've come out even semi-sane from my childhood because I also have parents who just are convinced that I'm the best human alive which is obviously a very lovely problem to have

I'm almost quite embarrassed at how deluded my parents are about how brilliant I am. I don't think they even can accept that it's a delusion. I think they really believe it. I think my parents are the kind of parents who would say she could do anything. She wanted to be prime minister. She could be prime minister next year. And like not in a boasty way. Like I actually think that they're mad enough to believe that. I don't know what it is. Maybe one day I'll have kids and I'll be, like, so clouded with love that I'll realise what that kind of madness is.

So I think they were even more outraged than I was. That's so sweet. Do you have siblings? Yes, yeah. I've got one brother. Do your parents feel the same about him? Maybe if they don't, don't say so. Yeah, no, they think the same about Ben.

They think that we could sort of rule the world if we wanted to. And that's another thing as well. It's very sweet to have that love and confidence poured over you growing up. I'm very aware that's something a lot of people yearn for. And I'm very lucky that I had it. And I think it did give me a confidence. Both my brother and I are exceptionally anxious adults and I think what happens when you have that amount of irrational and unreasoned and

mad support and love growing up is what can happen is when that intersects with reality and Bristol rejects you and boys reject you and people don't like you and boys are mean to you and friends are horrible to you and you mess up and you're taken to task for it is you just absolutely crumble because the world that's been built at home is that you can do anything you want you are the loveliest kindest funniest most talented most clever person in a room anyone's lucky to be in your company we were still told off we weren't overindulged but the main message that I got from my parents was you can do anything you want and also that you're worthy of love yeah that's such an important message

yeah do you believe that of yourself though I don't know my my friend peach recently said she met my dad and she said to one of our friends, she said, I don't understand why Dolly's got such a fucked up relationship with men. Her dad's so nice. And I think that it is actually much more complicated than that. I was talking to Cosmo Landesman about this on Love Stories. And he said to me, we were talking about this thing that you learn in therapy, which is, it's all your parents. It's all your childhood. childhood it's all your family it's the way that your mum hugged you

it's the way that your dad praised your brother's swimming gala but forgot to praise you cycling without stabilizers for the first time and my therapy the thing that I was told was you're built from these fragments of your childhood and the really sensitive time is sort of nought to I don't know 13 or whatever I just don't know if I buy that I really don't know if I buy that because I was told by my parents that I was worthy of love and I have a great relationship with my parents but I've had really struggled to accept the fact that I'm worthy of love in relationships in fact I would say I have had incredibly dysfunctional relationships with men. And actually, I think that the time where you're most fragile is early adolescence. And I think that in a lot of cases,

when your sexuality and your kind of womanhood and your femininity is blossoming at a really really young age at that maybe 12 13 if that's tampered with or it's taken advantage of or it's mocked or someone is careless with it or someone tells you it's wrong I think that casts a very long shadow in terms of your self-worth and I would say that it maybe undoes a lot of all the good intentions of your parents which is kind of freeing if you're a parent listening to this I suppose because there's only so much you can really do I think and I think maybe that's what my parents learned as well there's only so much you can do to protect your child from the outside world. Do you think that's what happened to you at 12 or 13? Yeah definitely yeah definitely I think

there are a number of incidents that began when I was about 13 and probably right up until I was about 20 of feeling like I was giving this thing over to someone of the opposite sex with trust and feeling like someone was just kicking it in or you know as I said not being careful with it and I think those are the moments where you're building yourself work especially like with with sexual identity as well and with romantic stuff but also platonic as well I think that you're working out what you're worthy of and how love should be expressed and how you should be treated. You know, I'm fine. It's not some awful sob story that's exclusive to me. I think most teenagers have experienced that. And actually, if they don't,

then I think that can be sometimes detrimental as well. If you're an adolescent who just swans through teenage life, I think adulthood can be challenging in another way. But yeah, no, I think that's where the damage was done I think rather than anything that my parents did or didn't do and the more I talk to people about it the more I think that's quite a universal experience would you say that you had a kind of similar definitely yeah as you were talking I was just thinking of being that age and how viscerally emotional I feel about it because it is an age when you're constructing your identity, but you're also becoming aware of how other people see you,

which is often the worst part. Oh, yeah. I remember my second year at secondary school just having the sudden clattering realisation that I was a complete nerd. I'd never realised. I'd never realised. And then I was like, oh, these people are laughing at me,

not with me. It's horrible. It's awful. And then I was like, oh, these people are laughing at me, not with me. It's horrible. It's awful. And especially if you've had the love of parents saying, God, isn't Elizabeth so clever and hardworking, to then have a moment of being like, oh, God, maybe it's a lie. The number of times when I was a teenager where some boy would call me fat and ugly

or some teacher would say I was a moron, and I'd have this like horrible realization like maybe my mum and dad are biased maybe maybe they've been like exaggerating stuff a bit and that's a horrible realization because as you said you're something like oh I've got to completely go back to the drawing board of how I see how you see the world yeah and how the world sees me yeah it's like cool joy trials actually aren't cool Peyton it's happening we're finally being recognized for being very online it's about damn time I mean it's hard work being this opinionated and correct you're such a leo

all the time so if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions, if you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second, then join me, Hunter Harris, and me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mass, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't

have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides, don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her

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that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. There's something I think, there's an enormous privilege to being a writer, I think. I wonder if you feel it too, that you feel things more deeply, which is a wonderful thing and also potentially a bit of a curse. Yes. Would you trade it if you could? The thin skin.

Do you know what? I don't mind that I take stuff in of other people's experience. I don't mind that I'm so sensitive that I cannot watch violence or horror. I show compassion to myself for that. I think that shows empathy. And I don't mind that I am very moved by things I don't mind that I find it hard to be present in situations because I'm always looking at people and reading them and thinking oh what's their relationship who's he you know that level of observance about

the world around me taking people's stories in reading a story in the newspaper and bursting into tears I don't mind that because I think that's, sorry, it makes it sound like I'm really patting myself on the back for being just so incredibly empathetic. Good God. I'm so into you. I'm just so compassionate. But I don't mind that because that has helped me feel very connected to people, I think. I don't like the narcissistic element that I have with it. That sensitivity is fine. That sensitivity can make life feel a bit heavy sometimes. When I was a kid, I used to have these unbearable feelings of guilt when I would see homeless people or if I saw someone very ill. And my mum said that it was quite hard to manage

sometimes. I would just go and cry all day about it. I watched The Snowman when I was a kid and cried so much I actually like vomited because I was crying so much and that I don't mind that about myself because I think as I said it's how I understand the world and it helps me feel connected to people even if it can just be a bit like oh come on just pull yourself together girl but I don't like that I obsess over what people think of me I don't like that I don't think that benefits. I don't think that benefits me. I don't think it benefits my work. I don't think it benefits my soul. And I think it's not really a sensitivity.

I think it's narcissism. That's like my least favorite thing about myself, I think. And it's like a daily habit to try and combat that. Obsessing over what do people think about me? Do people like me? Trying to earn their approval. I'm so much more preoccupied with what me being alive has an effect on other people, how they see me. And if I'm making them happy and if I'm so much more preoccupied with what me being alive has an effect on other

people how they see me and if I'm making them happy and if I'm making them feel good and if they will think of me in a good way and speak about me in a good way that sometimes is so much more of a preoccupation than like how I am alive how am I feeling who am I what's my sense of integrity what do I give out to the world and I think that's not something I like about myself. It makes total sense. It's like you're in my head and just... You've got the people pleaser thing. Yeah.

It's awful. And it got to the stage in my early 30s where it just became something I didn't like about myself. I was pleasing everyone else all the time in actually a slightly nauseating way because I... You're not trying to make them happy. No, you're trying to make them think that you're great exactly perfect exactly and then you lose everything about yourself so there's nothing left of you to stick your identity on totally but for the avoidance of doubt everyone I've ever met who's had any interaction with you thinks you're terrific so so you can allay that fear tick done all that people pleasing has paid off

but tell me about how you became a writer because that leads us onto your second failure so I've always written since I was a kid I was putting together kind of magazines for my school when I was 13 running up huge cartridge bills on my mum's computer. There was like a weekly kind of tabloidy paper. I mean, this is how ridiculous fucking rugby was. There was a weekly tabloid paper of which I was the editor. What was it called? It was called The Full Bladder. And it was like a kind of private eye.

And it was really near the knuckle, actually. It was gossip, basically, about the teachers and about the kids with kind of clever pseudonyms and then when I was at Exeter not Bristol I edited some magazines there and I had a blog oh I started a blog when I was 16 which amounted to 150,000 words by the time I finished it goodness yeah and thank, I knew when I was about 20 that it would be the most embarrassing thing of my life if I kept it up. So I deleted it, thank God.

So the need to document has always just been how I've existed, really. It's like even, some people find this bizarre, but I remember going on dates in my early mid-twenties before I had a dating column and on the bus home on my iPhone notes I would like write stuff down stuff he said or things that happened or embarrassing moments or whatever and I don't know if it's even like maybe I was thinking this will be good material for something one day but I think it's more just this is how I

process what's just happened this is how I kind of join the dots together. So that I've always kind of had that inclination. I kept diaries all throughout my teenage life. And then after I did a journalism master's, after I did my degree at Exeter. At Bristol. No, not at Bristol. Thanks for bringing it up again. Don't cry. So sensitive.

So connected to the world. Oh, my God. Oh, dear. so sensitive so connected to the world oh my god oh dear um uh yeah so I did it no it wasn't at Bristol it was at City University and then after City I had kind of nine months of being unemployed and living at home and kind of going from unpaid internship to unpaid internship for different papers and magazines and then I had a blog as well I was always had a blog kind of on the go I was just like one of those girls and I applied for a job to be editor of a website called kingsroad.co.uk and I thought that the website was so random I think I got it on Gorkana, the journalist job site.

I thought, maybe they might go for me. Maybe might as well apply. I applied, and the editor, to my surprise, said, would you like to have a coffee? And it became very clear that I was completely unqualified to edit his online magazine. I think he'd read my blog, and he'd found small bits and pieces of it funny. And he said, there's this new TV series that's starting on e4 called Made in Chelsea and obviously because it's in the area of the King's Road we are looking for someone to do like a weekly write-up of it and it was I felt like kind of like I had one for in and one for out and I found them kind of fascinating and I liked kind of observing the

habits of these people that I'd never spent time you know I didn't really know anyone that lived in the country or had flats in Chelsea or who called their parents mummy and daddy so yeah I was like yes I'll write about that I'll write about that and then I just wrote this like weekly blog for them for free which is such testament to sometimes it is really worth at the beginning of your career writing for free. I was given this space where I had relative creative freedom. So I wrote one every week. And then on the last episode, I wrote this advice for the producers, like a jokey open letter to the producers. Here's what I would do to make the next series. Better, here's what I would keep. Here's what I would keep here's what I would lose and then I got a call from the story producer saying that the exec of the company had read the articles and had found

them funny and would I come in for a meeting I went in and talked to them about the show and and what I thought of it and I was a massive fan of the show as well I thought it was a really really well produced well put together show I had great affection for it and then they gave me an episode to story produce so that means kind of yes what does that mean i've always wondered it means shaping being fed all the reality from the producers who have these kind of constant relationships with the cast that gets fed to us and then we as much as we can shape and predict what a four-part episode would be and put in a narrative structure based on all the facts that we've been told by the producer so I did one episode for them which was series two episode two that was my first episode and then they was they said would you like to um stay on

and story produce the whole series and then I ended up doing four series I did it for two years and that is not a failure that was a well done because I love Made in Chelsea still watch it I'm one of the few people who still does yeah I loved it it was great it was uh sort of the luckiest moment of my life really and I've had so much fun doing it. But then after, this is where I did fail. So after that, the woman who gave me my first job was a woman called Sarah Dilliston, who is a sort of TV exec wizard.

She created TOWIE. She created Chelsea. And doesn't she work on The Real Housewives of Cheshire? Yeah, she does. Yeah. Yeah, she's a genius. She's a man from heaven. I really credit her for being so open-minded with giving someone so unqualified that job she does that a lot when she's crewing up for stuff

she often will really think laterally for finding creative jobs for people they never saw my CV I don't think to this day she even knows what my degree was in so she became like a good friend. And everyone at the company I just loved. And I just loved that company.

And they were making such good TV. And I loved being there. And it was such a creative place. So I got to the end of, I couldn't really do any more Chelsea after four series. I was at the end of my tether with it, which is quite normal. So they very kindly said well why don't you try tv development and tv development is so as a tv development producer and it's you come up with new formats and new shows and then you pitch them to channels and i was the world's shittest

tv development producer it was extraordinary how bad i was Were you shit at the ideas or at the pitching? Shit at the ideas shit at the pitching I once pitched a game show called Jeopardy which is FYI the biggest and long-running show in America game show in America and the show's premise was I was told that I had to come up with a Saturday night format that could pull in as many numbers as Bake Off, a 12 million viewer show. I pitched this show to a table of people where I said, imagine a game show like no other, where there are, you know, life-changing prizes to be won, but there's also Jeopardy, which is the premise of every game show. My idea was... It's so bad. My idea was that you would win your dream house,

but the house would have, like, no doors. So are these. Or you'd win, like, your dream holiday with no flights. Or you'd win your dream car, but it has no tyres. Or, like, it doesn't have an engine. Or you'd win a dog, but with no legs or you'd win your dream car but it has no tires so like it doesn't have an engine you'd win a dog but with no legs yeah exactly so you've got it yeah you've got it okay you've clicked with it you get the format you're loving it yeah so I was just not good at it at all just lost patience with it I hated that it was so theoretical because so little gets out the door so much money is spent in TV development

of coming up with stuff and so little of it goes on the screen 5% if you're lucky and I just lost patience I probably wasn't as enthusiastic as I could have been because I just felt like it's just all ending up in the bin

yeah and I was just rubbish I did it for a year and a half and I was just completely rubbish and Jeopardy was really the tip of the iceberg and then was it Sarah who took you out for yeah she took me out for a lunch to talk about my contract and she said how are you finding everything in development and I was like yeah it's great and it kind of was great because I had a good salary I loved the people I worked with I thought you could yeah, it's great. And it kind of was great because I had a good salary. I loved the people I worked with. I sort of could not do it in my sleep

because I was doing it badly, but I knew the movements of it. I didn't find it like wildly challenging. Oh, and I was moonlighting throughout all that time in the evening and the weekends as a freelance journalist, which is what I really wanted to do. So it kind of gave me enough money to be able to take those lesser paid jobs it allowed me to have half a freelance journalism career on the side and we

went out for lunch and she said great and what are you excited about and I think I just talked bollocks I was like well I'm you know I'm really excited about that show that we're developing called leap of faith where religious officials compete in athletics oh you know i'm i'm really excited about share and share alike which is about pop star doppelgangers competing in a singing competition i'm sounding really snooty like this was all really exciting creative stuff i just i don't have the brain and the patience and the intelligence to really see a development project like that through. And I think she could sort of tell that, but she was, okay, great. Well, we'll renew the contract for X amount of hours.

And then the next morning I got a text from her really early and she was like, can we have a breakfast meeting? And we went out for breakfast and she said, I can't let you stay here. I can't let you. She said, I won't forgive myself if I renew your contract she said you're too comfortable you're here for the wrong reasons you could happily plod along and be a totally average tv development producer and we'd be happy to have you but you're not using your skill set and this isn't what you want to do and she said I think you need to go be a writer and I think to do that you have to go be a bit uncomfortable and you have to go get out of your

comfort zone and it was the best thing she ever did and it was hell afterwards for about a year truly truly hell financially it was a nightmare I went from bad job to bad job having been so comfortable in this place with people that I loved and knew and they knew and loved me it was such a shock to the system and it was a year of failure after failure, really, but it was the best thing I ever did. How old were you? 25, 26. And do you think looking back that sometimes the bravest decisions do seem the scariest? Definitely. And also, I just think that the magic is in that uncomfortable space sometimes not forever obviously but paradigm shifts you know if you want big things to change there's like a big gap in between those two places and that gap

normally feels very unsteady it's not very comfortable you feel like you're starting again you feel like you have to prove yourself you feel like you have to learn loads of stuff but that's where I think you really do great work in between those two places do you find that you have to create that space for yourself on a smaller scale like when you're writing a piece for instance that you're intimidated by do you have to create that discomfort and leave it very close to deadline and then suddenly manically do it overnight yeah that is an interesting because I do that do you do that no no because you're a nerd exactly I like to exercise control over everything I possibly can are you one of those amazing journalists that hands in copy like the day before deadline not the day before because I

just think that's a bit goody two-shoes but definitely definitely like on the day of the deadline I don't think I've ever missed one in my life which is nauseating it's nauseating but it's also because so admirable it's because I'm scared of the random chaos of the universe so therefore I try and exercise control where I can yeah that's interesting yeah I wonder if that is because I do do that a bit. I do do that. But also I think I feel the cycle of the comfort discomfort thing because I know that I was so comfortable at that job. I could have stayed there forever. I was so comfortable for three years and then I left. And then leaving was awful for a year and then brilliant.

And I learned so much. And I think it really made me work much harder and prove myself much more and hone think it really made me work much harder and prove myself much more and sort of hone my skills and develop a resilience. I often take moments to reassess are you too comfortable? Do you need to shake something up here? Try writing about something you've never written about before? Do you need to go try working with new people because you're too comfortable with these people? So again that's why it was so good that I failed there in a way. I was kind of fired basically, compassionately. I'm so glad that that happened because I'm now super aware of the joy and the freshness that can come from

moments of feeling really unsure and scared. So I kind of seek them out a bit now sometimes, unsure and scared so I kind of seek them out a bit now sometimes which I think is good I think what's really lovely about this conversation is that you are very known rightly so for being a beautiful chronicler of relationships and failures at relationships and yet we haven't talked about that yet and I love that because I just think you've had such insight into other aspects of your life and what that has taught you but we are going to come on to the big the grand finale the grand finale no pressure but some pressure no but we we were talking earlier about that notion that because we're both writers we like to tell each other narratives yes in other parts of our life which I think is such a perceptive thing to say.

And you were saying that you felt it in your romantic attachments. Yes. The recent failure that I'm going to discuss for my third one is incredibly recent, as Elizabeth knows, because the day of the last failure that I'm going to refer to, she very kindly took me out for rosé and I cried into it I mean it was only three bottles of rosé followed by some vodka shots and Dolly got accosted by fans at this pub that we were at so she was in the midst of this really emotionally rending conversation

about tears in your eyes and then these three lovely women came up and were like are you Dolly Alderton immediately Dolly has to sort of press the tears back in. Go, yes, I am. Yes, I am. And the worst bit was I was crying to you about this big failure in romance. And these girls said this. It couldn't have been more ironic, really. They were like, you've just taught us that it's really great to be on your own. I was like, that's really good for you.

I'm really pleased. Well done for finding self-respect and autonomy autonomy I hope I can find it one day yeah so I have had a bit of a rocky time with dating in my 20s a lot of which I take full responsibility for I went into therapy when I was 27 and a lot of the work that we did was about how I can break out of bad habits and how I can find kind of true intimacy with someone, how I can be a better partner, how I can choose a better partner, how I can be more honest with men, how I can be more vulnerable and open and soft and ready to be loved and love. I think we made great progress in that room. And I think that cognitively, I made great progress. I had a long period of deliberate celibacy to reassess the role

that sex and romance had had in my life. I read a lot of great books, and I did a lot of soul searching. I did a lot of thinking, and I talked to a lot of exes, and everything was great. This is a very recent work. This has been work I've done over the last two years. In my world of narratives, the script that I had written is, I have come to this conclusion about what kind of partner I would like to meet and what kind of partner I'd like to be. I'm in a really healthy place now with how I feel about men and sex and love. The next person that I meet in the story of my life is going to be wonderful. And he may not be Mr. Forever, but he'll probably be a lovely relationship. But there's a high chance that this could be my person because I'm

here. I'm ready. Here I am world, throw me the man. And the only two men that I've had brief liaisons with since I've done all that work have been absolute rotters. And I have given over my heart to them in some small way with trust because that's where I am. The fact is actually they're not, I don't think they were rotters. I think that life is difficult and complicated and everyone has their own baggage and stuff that they're dealing with. But in both those instances I ended up feeling like massive collateral damage and feeling in the disaster that was there stuff going on with them and I felt so sad because I just felt like well I've done all this work and I've been on this journey

and I'm ready to be this person and meet a person that can meet me at that same place and be grown up and be kind to each other and be honest and be trusting and the way both men behaved was almost identical actually just knocked me for six and I think the reason it's really important that that happened to me I actually would go as far as to say the hippy dippy in me would go as far as to say those two men were sent to me as a present from the universe because I think it was the universe saying to me you cannot script life you cannot control. And that you may decide that this is the narrative that most suits you now, but you can't control that. And actually, Ariel Levy, who's a writer that I love, who had an enormous amount of tragedy in a very short space of time and wrote a book about it

called The Rules Do Not Apply. She said that the lesson that she learned from that experience and the lesson she hopes is embedded in the book is that you can control and analyze and argue stuff on a page that's what you and I do for a living and have that awareness and have that understanding of people have that understanding of yourself but you cannot do it in real life all you can do is you can understand yourself as best as possible and you can behave as best as possible, generally, but particularly I'm talking about love, but you can't control what the other person's going to do. You can make as good of decisions as you can

and you can either choose to trust people or not and then the rest of it you just have to relinquish control. That's been a good lesson for me in the last few months in particular. Because I think the key for me, and I don't know if it's the same for you, is that when I'm rejected romantically is not to think, oh, what can I do differently to change that person's mind? Because it's a failing in me and it's a failing in my people pleasing tendencies. Yes. I cannot have someone make this decision about not wanting to see me anymore yes

that's that makes me feel like a failure as a person and it actually makes me feel panicked that's what I identified it's like panic and fear how do you step away from that really how can a human being handle that I think you know something that I found really difficult in the most recent heartbreak that I fell foul of something I found difficult is because I've decided in my head because like you I'm a sort of secret control freak because I've decided in my head this is how I would like to be treated as a human and this is the code of conduct for me in romance now with all the kind of thinking I've done about this I got really angry that there isn't this advisory board like there isn't an adjudicator I was so upset and angry it felt so unfair that I was just like how can you treat me like this I wish there was like a guild of people that could

be like by the way Dolly is right in this and you have been bad and this is your punishment yeah and that like lack of order and control basically basically it's control, I found really, really upsetting. Like, no, you have got this wrong and I'm the one getting this right and I've done all this work and thinking and you should be punished for this. It wasn't even like punishment. I just felt like... Redress. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Because I felt like I was going mad. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Because I felt like I was going mad. And actually, this is only very recent for me thinking about how one should behave when thinking of other people's hearts. For a long time, I was not respectful in romance and love. And I didn't think about other people. And I was very selfish or I lied. I wasn't a bad person. I was just carrying a lot of unaddressed things. And a lot of the time I was in a lot of pain. So the only way that I can make my peace with it and not obsess over what have I done to fail, or indeed, how can I have an advisory body tick that person off, is to just accept that we're all coming from our own stories and context and the nicest thing

that that last man did is the last time we saw each other and I said how can you do this to me is he said I want you to know that the way I've behaved is literally nothing to do with you this is nothing to do with you there's nothing that to do with you. There's nothing that you've said. There's nothing that you've done. There was not a moment that changed anything. I am in a world of pain and mess and I'm just not really thinking about you. This isn't really anything to do with you. This is to do with me.

I'm thinking about myself all the time. I'm not thinking about you at all. You're almost irrelevant in this equation. This is about me, which is hard to hear, but it was such an illuminating moment of like oh yeah this is all about them this is not a failure of mine and it's such a torturous game to look back on things and work out was it this or was it that was it when I said this was it when I did that and I think if you behave with kindness and you're generally honest that's the best you can do and look what other option do

I have now I have two options either I pick myself up and I carry on believing in love and making careful decisions but being honest and kind and trusting people when I feel I should trust them or I just don't have a romantic life so you know those are your two choices I think relinquishing control and saying it doesn't matter how much google stalking I do of them it doesn't matter how pretty I look on the date it doesn't matter how perfect a girlfriend I try and be I can only do so much to control the situation and actually I have to surrender to the unknown of what could happen and the variables of another human they're not a part in my film that I've scripted they're in their own film as well they come with a whole long history that means they're unreliable

that means that they no matter how much I analyze and think and no matter how I present myself I can't control how they behave I think that's such a beautiful thing to say because actually love ultimately is about opening yourself up to the possibility of failure and the possibility of hurt and because you can't love unless you're fully vulnerable totally and that's so scary yeah but also what do you do what do you do have a life of no life you know see the appeal of it. I've got to say the easiest time of my life was the year where I wasn't dating. But, you know, I believe in love. And what do I do? Pick myself up and carry on.

Yeah. Well, the alternative, as you say, is like shutting yourself down, not just to love, but to life. Exactly. And you're never going to do that because you are Dolly Alderton. There she is, my life coach again read me the intro again i'll joke for you afterwards i'll read it to you before you go to bed each night um dolly it's been a real pleasure it's been a really emotional and wonderful conversation at least for me i don't know what it's been like for you and i have to say that i think br Bristol's loss is very much the world's gain I love you and thank you so much for

talking to me thank you so much