How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S13, Ep 4 How To Fail: Andi Oliver

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

TW // eating disorders and discussion of racist experiencesOh be still my beating heart, because today's episode is with one of my favourite people on this planet! She is Andi Oliver, TV presenter extraordinaire, beloved cook and restauranteur, and my sister from another mister. On screen, you will see her presenting Great British Menu, the Sky Arts Book Club (with yours truly) and an array of acclaimed documentaries, including her most recent: The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita.Andi came to How To Fail with a total willingness to be vulnerable. We talk about her failure to crack the music industry and the death of her beloved brother, Sean, at the age of 27. We talk about her failure, as she puts it, 'to stop berating myself for not being in a much slimmer body' which leads us into one of the most moving conversations I've ever had about the terrible cost of living with an eating disorder. We talk about her experiences of racism growing up in rural England and how she grew to love herself. And we talk about her failure to find a sustainable work-life balance.Although we go deep, I promise there are plenty of laughs along the way. I love Andi and I just know, after listening to this, you will too.---How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Andi Oliver @andioliver 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 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. Andy Oliver is a straightforward force for good in a complicated world. A gifted television presenter, she's also a warm and enthusiastic human who loves to share her passions with other people. Although she's always been drawn to cooking, she put on her first dinner party at the age of 12, Andy actually started out as a singer in a band with her best friend Nenna Cherry before making the move into broadcasting. She is now the beloved host of Great British Menu on the BBC and presents the Sky Arts Book Club alongside little old me. But as well as this packed filming and reading schedule, she also somehow finds the time to run her much loved restaurant, Andy's with Dadly Kitchen in Hackney, East London. Her chocolate curried goat apparently took 25 years to perfect.

She is one of the hardest workers in the business, a woman's woman to her very core, and someone whose kindness and humour I've come to value more than I can put into words. Cooking, music, acting, for me, they all come from the same place, she says. You have to do it with your soul. Andy Oliver, my darling soul sister. How are you? I'm all right, apart from this ridiculous cough. But I'm good, you know, Elizabeth. I've had quite the year.

I've had a really interesting year where I am expanding into new... I've started writing. I know, I'm excited about it. Can we talk about that openly now yeah we can talk about it openly we can yeah I haven't announced it yet but we can talk about it I don't care a couple of months yeah it's not it's not out till 2023 probably beginning of 2023 but I started writing it's like plugging myself back into a sort of old part of myself that's kind of been a little dormant I think it's a bit

like why I love doing the book show with you actually and that is that words sustained me when I was a quite an unhappy teenager you know language literature all of those things saved my life really so it feels like a really natural thing for me to start writing and it's given me an interesting perspective on this year because it's a cookbook but I'm also writing kind of little thought essay pieces so I'm trying to work out what I think about stuff in a way that I can communicate it clearly with other people you know it's almost like doing therapy on yourself writing I sometimes think yes yes and I've had so much therapy I love therapy I'm the biggest like therapy evangelist in the world I also think you know there's so much stigma around it for so many people but actually it's one of the oldest things in the world you know tribally there's the keeper of the secrets there's the elders the wise

ones all of those people they're just shrinks really do you know what I mean there is where a place that people can go where there's no other agenda where you can work out what you mean how you need to say it and how you need to pass through things that are difficult in your life and if I hadn't had therapy I don't know where I'd be right now or if I'd be to be honest with you I just want to acknowledge something you said there about how words saved your life as a teenager in what way what were you going through then I was in Suffolk for a start which was and it was the 70s so it was like 70 you know 5 76 or something when I was in my early teens. And it was a really tough place to be for a young black girl because I was it. There was only me in the whole town, you know.

So at our school, there was me, there was my brother, and then there were two other boys, two mixed race boys. And that was it in the whole of this massive school in the middle of Suffolk in Bury St Edmunds. And it was a really tricky place to grow up it was a really tricky arena to navigate because it was really racist overtly you know not sort of even coded codified anything it was like this and that every single day was like running a gauntlet going to school was really really tough and I'd have to take a deep breath and get out the door and manage to wend my way through it, really. And I never, weirdly, I never told my mother

or never told my father, I never told anybody about what was happening at school. And I've only really realised that quite recently. And I think, in a way, I kind of wanted to protect them from the fact that I was so desperately unhappy. Because I think a part of you, if you're from an immigrant family, I think your parents leave something to come to a place to give you a better life. They want their children, they want their family to have opportunities that they don't perceive there to be in the place that they come from. there to be in the place that they come from and I think I felt a responsibility to try to be happy and I felt guilty for being so desperately unhappy and not knowing how to deal with this

thing this this beast and it was this beast that I felt like I had to it's like dealing with Cerberus on a daily basis do you know what I mean that's kind of what it felt like for me so books for me were my refuge. I would disappear into a book. My mother took me to the library every week when I was a kid. And I'd take out four or five books and just smash through them throughout the week. Books reminded me or helped me to understand that there were other ways that people lived life. That there were other things happening in other parts of the world.

And this was not the only opportunity that I had for a life experience, that my life could change, that my life could be other things, that there were different places with people thinking bigger thoughts and having bigger hearts and bigger souls and bigger minds, you know, and that's what I really needed to know and needed to be reminded of on a daily basis, you know. That's so beautifully put and so profound. And you and I talk about books a lot. Yes.

And I wonder if you think books are where you go to see yourself, to find yourself, but also, as you say, to imagine difference and those things are connected. Yes, no, absolutely. Because I think I always felt difference and like I was the difference. So often a protagonist, particularly in books I was reading when I was younger, I guess, oh no, just still now too, the protagonist is the difference person

and they become the hero or the heroine of that situation. So seeing the difference as a good thing, and not necessarily a burden or a difficult position to be in, gave me hope and gave me light and still does, I think, it gives you agency. And the thing that something that's so awful, and insidious about bigotry of any kind, racism, or whatever it's about, is that it makes you feel you have no agency. You don't feel you have any power in your life. And for me, what happened really mainly is I turned it in on myself. I absorbed all of that stuff, all of that stuff about being the wrong colour, the wrong shape, the wrong everything. And they became a sort of dark,

the wrong everything and they became a sort of dark internal truth that I carried around with me like extra luggage for years and probably still do to a certain extent oh my darling there's so much to unpack there and I'm so glad we've got deep so quickly I want to talk about something that's going to sound trivial but actually is is also deep, which is hair. Because I read somewhere during the course preparing for this that one of the most unconscionable episodes of racism in your youth was a teacher making you stand at the front of a class. Do you mind? No, I'll tell you the story because it's an important story to tell. And when I tell it now, it still makes me want to cry, Elizabeth. It was so awful. It was my German teacher. And I've my mother had put my hair in cane rows and I think it must

have been around the time of Odyssey you know that band Odyssey because I it was like a lot of beads were happening and I was like oh my god I want beads in my hair I was so excited so she did my hair up into these cane rows open to the top had a little bun and then I had a little fringe of tiny little silver beads and I felt amazing like amazing and I'd never felt amazing like that and I was like oh my god I've finally done it I look pretty I feel really fantastic and I got to my German class first class of the day and my teacher looked at me and he went oh my god and made me stand at the front of the class and for the first, I mean, it felt like forever. I don't know how long it went on for because, you know,

like a minute in a child's mind is forever anyway. And the first part of the lesson was getting the other children to humiliate me in German, finding ways to say that I looked stupid or ridiculous or, you know, daft. And I just stood there with tears running down my face. And then eventually they ran out of things to say and he told me to go to my seat. And that was how the German class started. And that was an adult man. And I must have been about 12. I was a kid. I was a little kid. You know, I talk to you about that now and my stomach gets knotted up because those things don't ever really leave you properly. They stay with you in a way that is really hard to describe to people. I had a moment the other day where, you know, there was all that stuff about

the Enid Blyton plaque. Yes. And she did that book of the three little gollywogs or whatever it was called. And in it, they were called gollywolly and and I remembered being at school in Cyprus we'll get to that I'm sure but I had a teacher there that used to call me you people Miss Scottford she was called she's called you people and she read this book out and I just remember sitting there rigid with fear just rigid with fear absolutely terrified scared to go into the playgrounds I thought I was going to get bullied, scared to move because I thought she might say something, you know, and it did scar me for life. And I mentioned something about it on the beloved playground that is Twitter. It's a great place for nuance. Great place for nuance, Twitter. Great place for nuance. I don't know what possessed me, but I just thought I should

say something about it. So I said something about it and I just said, well, I also love The Famous Five. I love The Famous Five. I wanted to be in The Famous Five quite badly. So I do understand that nascent love for Enid Blyton and all of those books. And I said, but it's not the only thing she left me with. Also, there was this horrible experience and it scarred me for life and it was really racist and horrible. left me with also there was this horrible experience and it scarred me for life and it was really racist and horrible so no one's trying to upset your apples cart but you have to understand that not all the apples tasted the same for all the people and that's all I said somebody took that and put it in one of those red top newspapers and put the words scarred for life in inverted

commas and racist in inverted commas and literally just lifted the piece and put the thing and there were all these people going stupid woman what's the matter with the world and I got so upset by it and I was really shocked at how upset I got by it and then I realized the thing that upset me the most wasn't people saying that it was the fact that they put the scarred for life in inverted commas yeah because I just like oh my god and you still don't believe me it's such a denial of truth and actually anyone who's listening to this podcast who doesn't understand the pain caused by insidious racism that is often wrongly labeled casual because for me there's no such thing there's no such thing yeah I want those people to remember you standing at the front of your German class age 12

being horrendously bullied for your difference I'm so sorry for the pain that you carry I really am I'm so sorry and people get very defensive about their heritage. And, you know, a good friend of mine, Satnam Sangira, wrote a book called Empire Land. Love him. I mean, we love him. And it's amazing. And it's about honouring our past by fully examining it for good and for bad.

Yes. And if you do that, if you look at the dark, only then can we move into the light. Nobody wants to hold on to the dark. then can we move into the light nobody wants to hold on to the dark I certainly don't want to walk around thinking about being 12 years old being bullied by my German teacher the whole time but until we can talk about this freely yes then we can't really fully let them go and move into the future together which is what we want really what I want it's what you want it's what all the people in my family want all the

people around me you know the fact that they tried to turn multiculturalism into a dirty word and tell us it's a failed experiment really pisses me off, Elizabeth. I'm like, whatever. Come round my house. I'll show you. I'll show you, bitches. Do you know what I mean? And also the idea, the wrong idea that multiculturalism is some kind of modern political concept. We've been multicultural since time immemorial. Bab anyway we're getting off track i just want to bring it back to hair because you are and i know that you don't realize this about yourself but you are a phenomenally beautiful woman and one of the only people i know who can carry off not having hair and i and it's just so it like adds to your beauty to do,

like, how do you feel about hair now, given that it was part of one of the most painful memories of your youth? Do you think that that then carried through to how you think about it today? It's quite interesting me in hair because my hair is very weak and to get it nice or how I want it to be to plait it and do things it actually takes loads of work and I'm not a very high maintenance human in that way like I do my makeup and all that stuff for work but the rest of the time I barely wear makeup I'm not very so it takes hours to get it done and I just got really fed up with being in this trap for this cycle with the hair so I just shaved it off basically I got really fed up of it shaved it off I just had enough but I am thinking about growing it back oh really okay wait what age

were you when you shaved it off I've shaved off a couple of times in my life the first time I shaved it off I was probably about 19 or 20 and I was with Nana and we were about to do a gig and I was moaning about my hair and she went off for god's sake either shave it off or shut up so I went shave it off and she went really I was like yeah let's just hair. And she went, oh, for God's sake, either shave it off or shut up. So I went, shave it off. And she went, really? I was like, yeah, let's just shave it off. She went to the corner and bought a bit grazer from Boots. Literally, we soaked up my head and just shaved it off.

And then put a head tie on. Didn't even tell the band. And then went on stage. And my head tie fell off. I was completely bald. And all the guys were like, oh, my God. Where's your hair? And then I was bald for quite a long time.

Then I grew it back and then I had locks. And, you know, I've gone through loads of different phases with it. But interestingly, again, it's linked to all this other much deeper stuff. My hair, I could never straighten it, which I wanted to do because it just would melt it. I could only ever have it in like afro styles like a plaited and things like that and when I was younger I didn't want my hair to look like that I wanted it to look like white girls hair and I could never get it to look like white girls hair so that used to upset me and then all the black girls I knew who had all this like really thick

loads of amazing hair could straighten it and do all these mad things with it and put all these crazy styles and I could never do that either so I always felt like I was straddling this weird hair world of not having the right kind of anything so I you know I've just gone with none but you're thinking of growing it back out and that must be quite symbolic is it symbolic of self-knowledge possibly I think I'm also a bit bored I do like having a bald head but I'm sort of I want to be able to change it and do lots of different things it is symbolic of self-knowledge and I think of reclamation of self a bit as well you know and there's something very powerful about taking it's this agency thing again taking the power in your life as and where and when you need it. And hair is very symbolic of lots of female sexuality and, well, all sexuality, I suppose,

and power and energy. And I feel like I want some again. Can you see why Andy is just one of my dearest friends? Like, I get to have conversations with you like this, backstage all the time, and you are just, oh, it's so wise, but also so accessible at the same time. It's like quite a rare combination.

I don't feel very wise. I don't feel very wise. No, you're so wise. Let's get onto your failures because otherwise we'll just natter for an hour. Quite hard to pick three, by the way. It's so interesting how many women say that and how few men say that yes oh really how interesting i was like oh god where do you want me to start will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?

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Where do I start? You start with your failure to crack the music industry on your own yes so you were in a band called rip rig and panic yes with nena cherry and your brother sean yes and i'm very interested as to why you perceive this time in your life as a failure. Oh, no, not that. So after that. Oh, OK. After that. That bit was a roaring success. Yeah, that was great. That was all really good. And then Wicked Panic broke up and we all sort of went our separate ways.

We didn't, you know, obviously we were still hanging out together and stuff. And I had my band on my own and I played with lots of different people and had loads of things. But I never get signed as a solo artist and that was really soul-destroying I'd do these amazing gigs at like Ronnie Scott's or down at heaven or whatever to be packed to be amazing yeah and then we go and do demos they'd be really great and everybody in the studio would be really excited and then EMI or Sony or whoever we're going that's not really what we're looking for at the moment I think there's something very soul-destro't there, as a creative person, as an artist, because if you do it right, you put your heart into it and it's a little piece of yourself or a large piece of yourself, depending on what it is. And so if you're sending that out to people

and you're just hitting walls again and again and again, it's just a bit, well, it's more than a little soul destroying. I think I got quite depressed after a couple of years of that. And I was kind of floating around not really knowing what I was doing with myself. It was a tricky time because that's when my brother died as well, was sort of a couple of years into that. And then Sean died very suddenly. He had sickle cell anemia. He was my big brother. he was 18 months older than me I mean we used to fight all the time because we were 18 months apart but we were proper sibling close you know he was producing a lot of the music that I was writing and all of that stuff and then he out of the blue died he was like 27 going to be 28 when he died and we always knew that he would

die his life expectancy was 30. Why? Because of sickle cell anemia. So he was born with that? Yes. Oh, okay. And I'm a carrier and he was a sufferer. And it basically means that the blood cells in your body at certain points, they sickle. So instead of being amoebic shaped, they form like a sickle shape and they get locked in different parts of your body so your joints is incredibly painful your joints hurt your head and

he had a big attack in his head and it killed him basically andy i'm so sorry yeah it was there was really tough time obviously i was like 25 years old and i just was lost i was lost the music hadn't worked out for me on my own i suddenly lost my brother and I just was kind of wandering around in a state of flux and I didn't really know what to do with myself. And then I discovered this was at the height of the AIDS crisis as well. And then I discovered the London Lighthouse, which was a HIV AIDS hospice that was off of Labrador Grove and I started volunteering there every Friday and I really was and nobody around me really knew that I was still depressed it was one of those weird things where when somebody dies people they do their best they're sort of supportive for a month or two and then they go back and get on with their lives, which is normal.

It's what they're meant to do. They're not meant to come, you know. There's no amount of support and help that can get you through. There's some things you have to walk alone, and that is one of those things. Your road through grief is a lonely road, and I think anybody who's lost anyone knows this, you know. And so I didn't really know what to do. I just was really lost. And then I found the London night house and I started working there every Friday. And it gave me back my life. It was the most extraordinary thing. Because I met all these people who were faced with their

own mortality every day, young people, young people who were suffering with AIDS, HIV positive, people young people who were suffering with AIDS HIV positive and also who had full-blown AIDS too who were getting up every day there were mothers who had little babies it was women's day that I used to go and the mothers with little babies who didn't know what was going to happen to their children when they passed away they knew they had like a year left to live or and finding this courage and these incredible people who were faced with their own mortality gave me back the reins to my own life it was like helping support other people brought me back into my own body it was quite a profound accidental path that I took I didn't expect it to happen and then through doing that we used to sing a little

bit on a Friday as well and I mean it was just an extraordinary time for me I think and I again re-found a lot of myself and that's also how I started broadcasting weirdly because somebody at London Lighthouse said to me that worked at GLR and they said do you want to do a radio show and I went all right literally like that they said I was looking for someone to do a show on a Sunday or something and I just went along met the head of the station and she said do you want to start on Sunday and I went okay and I had no idea what I was doing and I went in and they sort of showed me how to drive a radio desk and I did a radio show that's how I became a broadcaster really so it's a weird story wasn't it I mean no it was a really really stunning story about what it is to

be human at the extremes and you've already made me cry twice this episode so no don't apologize because when you cry and connect with something like that yeah that's what it is to be human yes and talking to you I always feel is like talking to truth like there's just no side to you you talk as you see the world and that's such a beautiful quality in anyone and particularly a broadcaster and I imagine you had to grow up really quickly when you were 25. Yes, I did. Because confronting that level of grief is something you don't normally experience until later in life. It was a real shocker. You know, it's like it doesn't matter if somebody tells you about life expected because you don't really understand that kind of stuff when you're that young. You know, you don't really understand loss and what it might mean and what it's going to feel like, you know.

And I do feel that every painful, terrible thing one manages to pass through is if you survive it gives you another building block to making you into a stronger person yeah or a clearer person I'm not sure I'm a massive advocate of being a strong person particularly you know that kind of language I think is a bit dangerous because that means that then if somebody isn't managing to cope that means they're weak does it no do you know what I mean it's like I feel like setting someone up as a strong person sets up a whole group of other people for being weak people or it sets up a whole group of other people for not doing it right you know when people talk about winning or losing the fight against cancer it's not like that you know you either manage to survive or you don't it's not because you fought the fight well yes is it so you know it's like so

I shy away from that kind of language but I do feel that survival gives you insight and I feel that that insight helps you with clarity and clarity means that you can pass through the world with more ease and with more grace. And more instinct. Because before we started this podcast, you were saying that you're not feeling that well. You've got a bit of a cough. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you shouldn't be doing this. You're like, no, I'm going to do it because no one's died, have they? That's my metric. And I know you meant it and we were laughing about it. But actually, that carries such weight, given know you meant it and we were laughing about it but actually that carries such weight given what you've just said to me and I do think that the other thing I would say to

people is that we're not down the gulag do you know what I mean people are always like oh this is so hard I'm so tough on my babe you're not down the gulag we're making a tv show get a grip do you know what I mean seriously it was a long day's filming but you know they brought us lunch and we had tea and we've got a door and there's a roof and there's windows and people are quite nice to us, really. Do you know what I mean? So we need to get a perspective on things. I think that you can lose perspective very easily in life. And I do try to maintain some kind of perspective, even when I'm completely exhausted and knackered.

I just remind myself how lucky I am. And gratitude plays a really big part in my ability to be happy and to enjoy my life. You know, enjoy the day, enjoy the day, even when it's... Yesterday was literally my most hated kind of weather. And I hate being cold, right right I'm really shit at being cold when people are talking to me when I'm cold I actually can't hear the words they're saying because all I'm thinking is I'm cold I'm cold I'm cold is it really I mean it's to the point of some sort of I might need some kind of hypnotherapy to deal with how much I hate being cold it's ridiculous but yesterday it was like raining sideways and then it was hail and then it was like and I just was like and I thought oh shut up the drivers just appeared for you they're taking you

straight home to your house you've got your lovely partner at home your daughter's coming around with the dog shut up get a grip so you know gratitude shout out to your daughter makita oliver who i loved even before i met her and i've now i've now only actually met her in the flesh once but we are essentially i mean we're all part of the same family aren't we let's be honest we're basically sisters yeah what did i i texted you yesterday and said we are kindred we are and we are kindred somebody said to me oh you're really lucky you've got such good friends. I was like, it's not luck. When I meet people that I love, I hold on to them.

Yeah. Not in a basement or anything. It's not. I don't tie them up. I just try to keep them close. I'd be honoured to be trapped in your basement as long as you fed me chocolate curried goats. Oh darling. Let's go back to the failure to crack the music industry

though because at the time that all of that was going on for you I'm imagining that Nenna Cherry, your best friend, was at the start of her Yeah. How hard was that? Well I mean it was double lay of that because I could not be prouder of Nana and more in awe of her talent.

And she also taught me so much. Just being Nana's friend taught me freedom. She taught me to unfurl my spirit. She really, really did. Nana comes from this extraordinary background, like hippie, beautiful. Her dad was a jazz trumpet player her mother was this exceptional artist Moki oh my god her mother was an amazing woman her mum and dad themselves taught me so much and I met them when I was like 18 or something and I just was like wow these people are incredible you know I've come from Suffolk and I was suddenly in Sweden in the countryside with this incredible jazz player and this amazing artist and Nana and I met and she

just introduced me to a world of liberation of the spirit you know and we met each other and we just fell in love with each other you know we were like because she grew up in the middle of the countryside in Sweden I grew up in the middle of the countryside in Suffolk oddly quite a lot of similarities and she was the only black girl there and I was the only black girl there so we met each other and we just went jabba jabba jabba jabba jabba and within half an hour we decided we were going to sing together and be on the road together and everybody thought we were mad a month later we were on the road together singing together so no to them so I love her with such respect and again gratitude and with all my heart and soul so I've never resented her success but I always wanted some too in the same area if you see what I mean but I never look at Nana and go

oh that's not fair because she's so brilliant you know you can't deny Nana's incredible beauty and incredible talent and her ability as a performer it's like a master class she has the audience in the palm of her hand and she literally it's a love affair that they have with her and she has with them and so much I know about being a performer I learned from her it was a sort of weird duality because I was very frustrated but also really proud and we would move in and out of each other's worlds because I was very frustrated but also really proud and we would move in and out of each other's worlds because it was our world was always the same world have you ever fallen out no we started having an argument once and we were djing and she said

something to me and I said something back and then we looked around and we realized that everybody around us was like they're having a fight and we went shh don't do it and we just didn't do it everybody got really excited because they just you know I think they were like jealous of our love affair it's like she's one of my biggest love affairs that's you know completely non-sexual but absolutely passionate I feel exactly the same about my best friend Emma yeah and it's the greatest love of my life you know yeah and the most consistent for so many of us I think she's always been there we have always been there we've been there through each

other's losses each other's joys each other's successes each other's fear each other's real dark spaces and each other's absolute shafts of beaming light as well and we're always there for each other and always will be well I'm actually secretly quite grateful that you didn't make it as a solo artist in the music industry because it means that you are the broadcaster that is essentially you're like our national treasure now and I get I get to work with you and I would never have got to work with you because my singing voice is absolutely appalling so so your failure is my success so that's a good thing that we can take from that one we'll take that from that

and I think you know the music industry at the time was a very I mean it's still quite a tricky place anyway but you know being a dark-skinned black woman you know with quite a bit of batty on her and all of the rest of it that was not a place that I was going to navigate easily in this country at that time it just was never going to navigate easily in this country at that time. It just was never going to happen, I don't think. And that's just a fact. Do you think colourism is an issue that is under-acknowledged, particularly in the media industry right now?

Yeah, massively, massively. I think people have started dealing with it, started talking about it. I mean, when I see dark-skinned black girls in advertising campaigns, and I see dark-skinned black girls walking the, I need to say walking the plank, what is it called? Catwalk. Catwalk. They may as well be walking the plank, but that's it, that's a whole other radio show. Walking the catwalk. But I just think, God, god when I was a kid if I could have just

seen one of those girls just one it would have made me feel like there was a place for me in the world I just felt there was no place for me in the world and to be perfectly honest when I look back at that time in the music industry and not like really cranking through I wasn't really ready I didn't really have the requisite confidence in myself or the requisite resilience really to deal with it and I think that people can smell that on you that was not weak as I get shy away from that word but the vulnerability yeah and I think I was a mess of vulnerability and insecurity then. So there were all these other accompanying factors like colorism and like body fascism and all of that stuff. But also within that and right alongside that, I wasn't really ready, Elizabeth.

And that's something I only acknowledged in the last couple of years. I'm like, when I look back on it and I know what success feels like now doing the things I'm doing. If this stuff had happened to me when I was much younger, there's no way I would have been able to deal with it. Not in a million years. Well, talking about how you feel as though you didn't quite fit in, and I put that in quotation marks, brings us on to your second failure. Yes. Which is your failure to stop berating yourself for not being in a much slimmer body. Yes. That's my saddest failure really I think and it still makes me really sad and I still do it to myself on a daily basis

yesterday I was in the edit for Great British Menu and I was watching and every single shot I'm like how do I look how do I look how do I look and it's just exhausting it's a very tiring thing I mean you know this about me Elizabeth I had a very serious eating disorder. After my brother died, it got really bad. I ate compulsively in the dark, like a junkie, like a drug addict. That's how it affected my life. It ravaged my body. I got huge. I was like twice the size I am now, if not bigger. my friend calls it the existential hunger because it's not about actual physical body hunger it's like you're trying to fill a hole in your soul and that's never going to get filled and it's eating on sadness it's terrible because you just

feel sick all the time but you can't stop And I didn't really understand that it was a disorder. I just thought I was disgusting. I was like, oh, and on top of that, my brother's dead and I'm also disgusting. So that went on for a good couple of years. And I was desperately, I mean, desperately unhappy. Nobody around knew what was going on because I used to do it secretly, you know. And then I met a girl who had just come out of treatment because she was a heroin addict and she'd come out of treatment and I'm she was a friend of my sister-in-law and she was talking to me about it and I said god because everything she said sounded so familiar but I wasn't a drug addict you know

and I was just like sister is so weird everything she's talking about I just I know it I recognize it I just said to her I wish there was somewhere I could go to that to help me with food like really quietly and she said there is and I said what she said no it's an eating disorder I'd never really heard of an eating disorder properly it wasn't as openly spoken about as it is now I'd heard of anorexia and that was all I'd heard of bulimia vaguely and I certainly didn't know that compulsive eating was also a part of the eating disorder spectrum she said go and see this doctor so I went here's a man called Dr Robert Lefevre and I went to see him and he said oh you're definitely really ill and he ran this amazing place called Promise in the countryside. He sort

of took one look at me, I was there for about 10 minutes. And he said, Okay, okay, okay, you really need my help. Because I sort of walked in and burst into tears. And I could barely talk. And I was trying to tell him what was going on. I mean, the fact that I'd found an arena where I could even talk about it at all was extraordinary to me. I didn't know I didn't know it was a thing. I was like, Oh, my God, there are people who will listen to this stuff that's going on in my head. So I explained to him what was going on and he sent me back to the NHS and they said, well, you're not anorexic, so we can't afford to pay for it. So I went back to him and I said, I'm sorry, I won't be able to go. And he said, you can come for free. And this place was about eight grand a week. And he let me go for eight weeks, I it was and he saved my life wow he definitely definitely saved my life

because it was dark I was in a really dark place and I didn't know how to stop and I would have either died because I would have given myself some sort of heart attack or I would have done harm to myself I think because it was just getting darker and darker and darker and I didn't know what to do and I just was trapped and I didn't know how to find the words to talk about it. So between Sarah and Dr. Lefevre, they literally saved my life. And that was the first place I had any therapy. And I started to talk about everything and find a vocabulary and a language whereby I could express what was happening for me to to me, and in the past, the stuff that I'd internalized. And it changed everything, changed everything,

the trajectory of my life completely. Andy, I love you so much for sharing that. Thank you. It's so powerful to hear. It's power that you have come through that and I know it's something that never entirely leaves you no how do you live with it now I have therapy every week for a start that's my happy place I have very amazing therapists and I'm very careful you know I was talking to someone they said it's interesting that you've chosen a field in which you have to eat for a living. But you see, the thing is, food has been this dark, painful thing, but it's also been my creativity and my joy,

like cooking for people and making recipes and writing things. You know, the fragrance of spices is like the greatest perfume to me. Cooking a meal, making a soup, doing, you know, I've got soups on the back pan right now. It's how I soothe my soul, but it's also been the way that I cause myself pain and hurt.

So what I've managed to do is compartmentalize it, I think, and take the joy and the creativity and the truth in it, the truth in bringing together these ingredients to make something beautiful and make sure it's something that nurtures me and not something that hurts me. And I think that that in itself, being able to take it and take it back to that place has been such a healing thing for me, oddly. You'd think it would be the other way around, that it would be a place of danger for me, but actually it feels like a place of safety and a place of real beauty. And that's how you can do the Great British Menu then, because it comes from that place.

Yeah. I think that sharing food with other human beings, Food and music are the two greatest loves of my life. And they're the oldest human way of communicating with each other. I call it, I actually have a name for it. I call it breaking bread and the drum, right? Because that's what we did at the very beginning. You know, people learned to make bread and shared it with each other. And at the same time, they were drumming to communicate with each other it's the basic foundation of human communication that's what I think cooking is and that's what I think music is and for me the being good when I was on stage came from the same place as being good when I'm in the kitchen it comes from a place of absolute deep emotional need to communicate with my fellow human beings I was about to say that it's an act of communion and maybe that's

the key difference that when you were doing it to harm yourself it was a solitary it was about isolation it was the shameful secret that you kept yourself whereas anytime you share food and you share your love of it that's a way of reclaiming it yes it's reclamation it also has the opposite effect so it opens you up yes and it speaks of your deepest dearest love and when it's dysfunctional it closes you down and hides you but when you share it it becomes this thing of beauty that uplifts everybody around you as well as yourself i think a lot of women particularly and a lot of marginalized people more generally struggle with the idea of claiming space on a deep subconscious level we've been fed this idea that in order to be acceptable we need to shrink ourselves we need to shrink ourselves as much as physically possible yes do you think that

part of that failure as you perceive it to stop berating yourself for not being in a much slimmer body comes from that like a fear of taking up the space? You know, it's such an interesting thing to talk about this, because I just think people don't really talk about internalised racism. And one of the things that goes hand in hand with internalised racism is a type of dysmorphia, a kind of physical dysmorphia, so that you actually, well, this is what happened for me, and I'm sure as with anything, it's completely different for each person. I mean, I look at pictures of myself when I was a teenager, when I was in Ripwig and Panic, when we were young, I watched a video of myself the other day

and I'm wearing a sort of skirt that's about two inches big and a tiny little bra and I'm leaping around and I'm just like a normal sized young woman. At the time, I thought I was the size of about three buses. I really, really did. And I was a normal slim size 10, 12 young woman. I really, really was. And when I look back at that, and I think about myself now, I am still involved in that dysmorphia to a greater or lesser degree, depending on what day it is. you know what I mean and it's not just about weight and it's not just about that it's actually about body shape and body type and you know when I was young I was like athletics champion and I was the head of the swimming team mainly because most of the other girls were of European descent and were much smaller than me physically like you know like just weak just not basically. So I would run really fast and swim really fast and do all that stuff.

But I was bigger than the other girls in my year, like taller, like six million dollar man. You know what I mean? It's like taller, faster, stronger. And that's what I was like when I was younger but that translated to me as bigger uglier ungainly and wrong there's an innate message that you get that everything about you is wrong so that became part of my internal dialogue and it was something I didn't even recognize until I started therapy was that I used to walk around like literally calling myself names saying stuff to myself but I didn't realize I was doing it Elizabeth that's what's so insidious about the whole thing I didn't realize I was doing it I didn't realize I'd internalized all that stuff because you either fight which I did used to do as well but that doesn't stop it going in that

doesn't stop it sinking in that doesn't stop it going in. That doesn't stop it sinking in. That doesn't stop the horrible names calling and the assumptions and the other things that go hand in hand from soaking into your very soul. So the dysmorphia is a kind of heart dysmorphia. It became an inability to love myself. And it became an inability to actually see myself completely and fully. That's so profound. It's a very deep thing. And I think that it's so important that it's spoken about because, you know, so many black women still won't even have their natural hair. There's a big movement about it.

And obviously loads of young girls have these beautiful hairdos and black women all over the world, people, women of colour all over the world are embracing their natural hair. Even that in itself is a massive deal, you know, because it's like when you're told repeatedly that everything about you is wrong, or, you know, you're very pretty for a black girl, or you're this for a black girl, or this for a black girl comes after everything, you're kind of constantly reaching to have that like little suffix dropped and you talk now about therapy having made you aware of that do you think you are beyond that feeling now have you evolved out of that feeling or does it

still come back to taunt you it definitely still comes back I'm a million times better than I was because I've had so much help and so much support. And, you know, I was given tools to change the internal tape in my head. So the way I spoke about myself to myself and to other people, the way I felt in a room, the way, you know, and part of this, this is also just being 58. You know, there's something brilliant about being 58 because, you know, I finally, I'm like, yes, that's my seat at the table. Thank you very much. And I'll have the other one next to it as well. Do you know what I mean? I know that I belong in the room and at the table and on the telly and, you know, wherever else I choose to be. But it's been a really long, hard tussle to get to this place and I still have therapy and that

you know these things do still come up because I don't think you're ever really well from very serious addiction which an eating disorder is you know you you have to take it one day at a time like any other addiction and you have to make sure that you're doing the things that keep you healthy you know exercise exercising is key to me because it connects my heart, mind and body and spirit. That's what you want. You need all those things to be talking to each other because if they're not talking to each other, then you get fractured. When I say you, I mean me. I get fractured and that's when problems occur. Do you know what what I mean during those three years when I was anorexic it's interesting that we talk about it and it's interesting what I just said about it because

what happens is I get really flippant about it because actually it was quite a painful time in a way because I was starving myself and I could finally wear clothes I wanted to wear so yippee for that whatever but the rest of the world was telling me that I was finally acceptable the rest of the world I was literally didn't eat and the rest of the world was going my god you look amazing you've never looked so good you look so incredible but I didn't eat at all I was just completely buzzing out in this weird state that you get into when you don't eat anything at all and but the rest of the world finally went oh you look fantastic and that flippancy I imagine is a coping mechanism in and of itself yes definitely definitely definitely like as I was saying it to her I was thinking why am I being like this and then I realized that it's how I defend myself about it because it was actually awful and I was quite

desperate because I didn't eat I mean I can't express what it's like to not eat really for three years I would eat the odd bit of fish you know it just wasn't okay and I wasn't mentally okay and I wasn't physically okay or spiritually okay and I just kept moving as fast as I possibly could because you know a fasting target's harder to catch isn't it so it felt like if I kept moving it would all be all right and I'd still be able to wear this dress that I wanted to wear and nobody would really notice and in the end I just had to stop and fall over because it's not sustainable and I went back into therapy and got the help I needed and I sort of landed back in my body again because I just left my body for about three years. And how old were you?

That was a midlife crisis I was like 43 something like that. I think that shows just how vigilant people who live with eating disorders have to continue to be throughout their lives that something you had experienced in your 20s could come back with such viciousness in your 40s yeah I think is a really important thing for everyone to hear I do too and I think the thing about that end of eating disorders as well is that the world sees it as acceptable it It is important that I talk about it and it is important that other people hear it. And I think what's also important

is that the world sees it as, oh, that you look lovely. It's like I'm not, I was starving. Yeah. And also even now, there's this really strong part of me that wants to say to you, you look amazing as you are

and I love you exactly as you are and I know that that can be helpful on a really superficial level but ultimately an eating disorder goes so much deeper than that and is a mental health condition and so my saying that actually feeds into this narrative that appearance is more important than it should be. But I do love you exactly as you are. And also the appearance and beauty is one thing, is an immutable mass. And in fact, everybody has beauty of their own to transmit and to share and to revel in and to enjoy. And that's what we should be teaching our young people and that's what I hope young people are learning is that we all have our own way to be

beautiful and our own way to find our beauty and it doesn't have to fit into any shape that anybody else tells you about and I don't just mean physical shape I mean emotional spiritual shapes and those are just as important as your physical shape are you very aware now because I know that you're going to laugh when I say this about you you are something of a role model but are you aware of putting positivity out there because I'm very aware of not talking about weight or how I feel about my body to other particularly impressionable women I think it's a sort of feminist service not to do that yeah are you very conscious of that I am conscious of it but I also am conscious of telling the truth as well so I feel like I could not ever talk about how i feel about my body

or that i you know struggled with my weight and you know we've both got a peloton bike i exercise every day well five days a week and it makes me feel i love a person like but also it's just a thing for my mental health as well just to be fitter and stronger and i am quite fit actually do you know what i mean i do like like high intensity no you you are really fit I love to exercise and I just think it's about connecting with my body so I think it's really fine to talk about the times where you don't feel confident or you think you're meant to be slimmer or bigger or whatever it is some people are underweight and they think they need to put weight on. So, you know, whatever it is, I think we're allowed to talk about feeling wobbly. You

know, there's also, I think, a danger with taking the starts that we need to just stay positive all the time where people then don't feel able to say, I don't feel good and I don't feel right. And I feel like shit and totally agree positive psychology has been really beneficial in so many ways but one of the ways where I think it can be harmful is that sense that we are only allowed to experience good vibes like it's good vibes only from the moment you wake up to the moment you write your gratitude journal at the end of the night and that's so admirable but the reality is we don't always feel like that every single day and you're so right that there should be a safe space to talk about it and you also said something really profound then about connecting with your

body through exercise and that's been incredibly meaningful for me as well because as a writer primarily I spend a lot of time in my head and just on a constant anxious narrative loop about life and so to do some physical exercise and it's something I only really found in my 30s but it really helps reconnect with my physical self in a way that's tremendously important to my mental health. Yeah and it reminds me to be grateful for my body and to stop giving my body such a hard time my body does me very well thank you do you know what I mean and I and it's strong and it's put up with a lot and it's certainly put up with a lot of emotional attacks from me and it's still going strong do you know what I mean I've got bad knee my hips a bit dicky I am 58 there's stuff going on you know that I'm gonna I've got a bad knee. My hip's a bit dicky. I am 58. So there's stuff going on, you know, that I'm going to get sorted.

You're 58, but you look 22. And also, I know this has a limited amount of impact because we've been talking about something much deeper than this, but I love your body. And I hope that doesn't sound weird. No, it doesn't. But I really do. I always look at you and think, oh, my gosh, she looks fantastic

and also unique. And you're kind of bold enough to wear all these fantastic prints on screen and I'm like I just wish I could be more Andy like honestly that's how you come across to other people and that is also my truth there are many truths you know I mean there just isn't one truth that's the thing you see and I think also you know people feel that you get locked into being allowed to have one vision of yourself. And I have many, you know, I have many visions of myself, some of them are healthy. There's a couple that aren't so healthy. And when they're not,

I talk about them, I could talk to my therapist, and I deal with it. And then I pass through it, and I move on. But I have to acknowledge that they're there. Because if I don't acknowledge that they're there, that's when it becomes the sort of monkey on my back and that's what I can't have I can't have the monkey on my back Elizabeth yeah you can't not acknowledge it and also the other thing to be careful of is feeling shame for it yes actually as you say we're all multifaceted we're capable of being a bitch one day and then an angel the next and that's okay and for me sometimes that's all in the space of an hour it's like about 20 minutes ago you think god i was really vile just now i better go and apologize i have never known you to be vile ever um let's get on to your final failure which made me laugh so much because i think this is a lesson for both of us the final failure is to achieve this work-life balance I hear so

much about I just don't know how you do it I don't understand I was talking to Makita because Makita said to me this morning so what are your failures and I went through them she's like oh mummy and then I said the work-life balance she just started laughing and I said it's true though I have either in my life just worked so much like when I was a single parent I had about four jobs you know I worked as a receptionist at one of the Virgin Record things and I worked at weekends at the sweetie shop on the corner and I was doing volunteer work and I had another job at the community centre so I just did all these different jobs all the time I was always just when were you a single mum Andy until until Makita was 10 i had it when i was 20 oh my god i had it when

i was 20 years old so your entire 20s a decade that a lot of listeners find really really difficult because they're working out who they are your entire 20s were spent sort of working four jobs and raising makita on your own essentially essentially doing loads of different jobs all the time and just trying to you know make sure we you know we had some food on the table and just trying to like get things done and you know making a bit of music and doing a bit of this and working at the lighthouse and then I get another job somewhere else did a bit of food at Psalm Studios for about five minutes and you know just anything just like constantly moving I've never been able to go right I'm gonna go and do a job in an office and because I'm just not built like that my brain doesn't work like that I'm not very good I'm really bad with authority I'm really

and this must come as a huge shock to everybody I'm not very good at like having a boss do you know what I mean I just think don't tell me what to do shut up stop talking to me I don't I'm not interested in other people I have a real thing also about men telling me what to do shut up stop talking to me I don't I'm not interested in other people saying what to do I have a real thing also about men telling me what to do this is a bit of a digression because my dad was a real bully he constantly was telling me what to do obviously he was my father but he was always telling me I couldn't do things that my brother was allowed to do because he was a boy and it used to make me absolutely incandescent with rage as a child, which is also why I'm called Andy, apparently, because my name is Andrea and my mum told me, I'd forgotten about this the other day,

that when I was about 10, my dad had said, another thing I wasn't allowed to do because I was a girl. And I said, well, then I'm no longer a girl and made everybody call me Andy in an attempt to become a boy so that I could do what I liked. But it didn't work, obviously. I just changed my name. Do you think, serious question, do you think if you'd been born now,

because there's so much language readily available now, you would have asked to change your pronouns or to actually be known as a boy? Or do you think it was just a phase of fluidity? No, I didn't give a shit about being a boy or a girl. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. Do you know what I mean? I just wanted to go out, Elizabeth.

If it had meant that I could go out, then I probably would have done, yes. But only as a ruse to get my own way, not because I necessarily felt any sort of gender fluidity. Although I have to say that growing up at the time that I grew up we were far more open I feel like we spent most of our lives trying to divest ourselves of labels like you know men women boys girls what a man was supposed to be what women

were supposed to be what girls were meant to be and what boys you know we really didn't give a shit what we wore who wore what when they wore it boys my brother used to wear all my skirts and my used to steal my clothes all the time used to wear wedding dresses on stage and the whole band used to we just used to wear each other's clothes we used to do everything but we just didn't have a name you know now people are quite keen on a label I find and I find it a little tiring I have to say god bless everyone please live your life and be happy in whatever shape form or way that gives you joy and peace and light i just don't know why i've got to keep talking about it all the time i know we've chatted about it before we know we've chatted about it before it's not no i think what you're saying is we live in a non-binary age, an increasingly gender fluid age, and thank goodness for that.

Yeah. But that also coexists with a tribalism. And that's what's weird. Also, it's not a new idea. It's not a new idea. I don't understand why everybody thinks it's a new idea. I'm like, why do you think that's new? It's like Harry Styles wearing a pink dress.

Go for it, Harry. I love it. Most of the boys I knew used to wear dresses all the time. I don't understand why you think it's such Harry Styles wearing a pink dress go for it Harry I love it most of the boys I knew used to wear dresses all the time I don't understand why you think it's such a big deal it's great you look good quite nice legs go for it kid I love it but do you know what I think's different what's different is that I think the youth of today she said sat and doing 85 they are brave enough to take on people like your dad and to say, actually, it's important to me that you respect my choices. And that's something I don't think I would ever have done.

Well, we did you see, cause we were punks. Okay. You're much cooler. I was so unrebellious. I was quite a sort of handful. Maybe what it is,

is like it's enabling people who aren't naturally rebels to take a bit of that do you know what i think a bit of that ownership i think anything that gives people a chance to find people like them so that they don't feel on their own is a good thing because there's nothing worse than isolation isolation is horrible and i don't want anyone to ever feel that way but what i find tricky is people explaining things to me that I already know because I'm 50 fucking 8 I'm not brand new if that's all it is

I'm just like mate it's great just get on with it I don't understand why you're explaining all this stuff to me but that is the nature of teenagers and young people that's what we do the hubris of youth you think everybody older than you has not really experienced anything so you know and I remember being a sort of snotty annoying teenager it's just what you're meant to do it's part of life isn't it

let's leave that there let's go back to the work-life balance let's go straw a line onto that um yeah the work-life balance thing i joke about my diary but then i think of yours and you are one of the hardest working people that i know and i think so often because you are such a natural on screen that that can sometimes be ignored the years and years of hard graft have gone into this plus the hard graft that you continue to do that people don't see behind the scenes yeah you don't just wake up being able to do that stuff no and do you think you've had to work harder because of that sense that your face didn't fit you know what happened because so I was doing quite a lot you know a bit here a bit here and

it was all very quite piecemeal and I just sort of wandered away from it because we couldn't get anything made that we wanted to get made. Commissioners weren't interested. Channels weren't interested in anything. We did a really brilliant thing for a channel, I won't say who, years ago. You know, the feedback was it was too black. You know, we did this sort of culture. The feedback was it was too black. It was too black, so they couldn't commission

it so you know I got very bored of having those conversations again and again and again and I also got very bored of being called in by channels and to tell me that I was brilliant and clever and exciting and interesting and why didn't I give them some ideas of things I want to do and then never commissioning anything so I just got bored of it and started to really focus on cooking actually you know start open a restaurant over the pub with my friend Kelly. Well, we had several pubs, actually, and Kelly still works with me now. She's like my other arm. If I didn't have Kelly, I would fall apart completely.

I just got fed up of it. It wasn't even a conscious decision. I just walked away from broadcasting because I got bored of not being able to do anything or sort of being pigeonholed all the time or being told that you know you could do this or constantly losing out to somebody in my opinion less able to do the job because of yeah physical attributes shall we say and then broadcasting came to find me in one of the pubs and said oh please come and do this stuff so I was like hmm maybe and then I started doing a little bit more food broadcasting and then Nana and I did a cooking

show together actually and then I started doing a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit more and then I suddenly got this Great British Menu gig I did a bit of Saturday Kitchen and I suddenly got this Great British Menu gigs seemingly out of nowhere it felt like out of nowhere but really it was like out of 20 years of broadcasting experience and everything else I suppose do you have the freelancer's curse of thinking if I say no to this I'm never going to work again yes and and also that everything is temporary everything feels temporary all the time and I think in some ways I don't say yes to everything anymore but I do either work all the time or as I said to Mikita I feel like I'm just like bumming around I'm not

very good at lying down and doing nothing I'm exactly the same I start getting really twitchy and I start getting a little bit like oh I should be doing something like when we got stuck in Antigua I know what a nightmare I started writing a book and everybody was like what are you aren't you on holiday well I was that was for four weeks but if I'm going to be here for three months I've got to do something so I started writing a book and I got so into it you know and I got a routine I would get up at six and I'd go I found a gym there and I'd go and do an outside workout and come home go shopping right for a couple of hours do a new recipe take some pictures and then I'd be able to chill out but I'd have to have done all of that in the first half of the day otherwise I wouldn't be able to

relax in the second half of the day you got stuck in Antigua because of lockdown yes yes we we we got on a plane and the travel advice was that you could travel and when we got off the plane they went no one's going anywhere and we were like oh no but it was luckily it went that way around and we so we were just there and it was absolutely incredible I've never spent that much time there either three months in a row like that so that was incredible but I do wish I could learn how to this thing you know when people just do nothing I don't really understand doing nothing well I can't do nothing but I can watch a lot of reality TV. And I think that's my saving grace.

Me too. Really shit telly is the backbone of my relaxing time. And I love you and Makita on Gogglebox, by the way. Just beating you. And Scout obviously makes an appearance on that. And Scout, Scout's of course. No, I do. I watch a lot of terrible TV and I watch a lot of weird things

with people with superpowers. I like all Superman films, all Batman. I like any superhero film. I am there. Even terrible series like Charmed. I watched all of Charmed. There's a new Superman series

on Makita right now. I bet you're getting that all queued up, aren't you? I was like, you bet was like you betcha you betcha I can hardly wait for a little time on my own with nobody to judge me and I'll watch Smallville do you know what I mean that's my idea of relaxing well my darling Andy Oliver you are my superhero you have so many magical powers I suppose I want to draw this to a close by asking you what you think failure has taught you I think failure has taught me to love actually because I think

vulnerability gives you insight into the heart of life the stuff of life that really matters. Vulnerability gives you like a laser beam direct route into the heart of sadness and fragility. And I think that all of the things that I feel that have been failures have given me a direct route to my own humanity, feel that have been failures have given me a direct route to my own humanity which helps me love people don't make me cry a third time I mean is that just off the top of your head are you reading that from a pinterest board quote that was phenomenal do you want to host this podcast next this could this can be like your 56th job I know I've got a bit of spare time obviously while I've got me well I'll get the suit finished I'll just come over do that amazing no but do you know what I mean yes I do know what you mean but you put it more brilliantly than

anyone else could have done that is so beautiful I cannot thank you enough for being you and for coming on how to fail I'm so honored that you asked me, Elizabeth, honestly. I hope that I have anything to say of any substance. I just feel a bit like, what the fuck am I talking about? The last one I heard, it was Chimamanda being so poetic and profound. I'm like, oh my God, I'm just talking about weird shit again. Talking about Smallville. Talking about Smallville. Chimamanda, we cut out where she was talking about Smallville, okay?

You are a wonder. Well, honestly, thank you, honey. I love you. Love you too. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently, it helps other people know that we exist.