How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S16, Ep6 How To Fail: Rick Edwards on confidence, competitiveness and the lessons he's learned from past relationships

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Rick Edwards is a broadcaster, author and podcaster. He's the co-host of Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show and presents the podcast Eureka alongside the quantum physicist Dr Michael Brooks.He's also, as it happens, my ex-boyfriend. In this episode, we not only discuss Rick's past failures but we do a post-match analysis of our own break-up. It's not often you get a chance to pore over your former relationship with an ex and enough time has elapsed (20 years, but...y'know...who's counting?) for us to feel able to do it. We hope that anyone listening who is currently going through heartbreak takes some comfort from knowing this is possible. Shout out to our respective spouses for being thorouglhy excellent people (Hi Emer and Justin! Thank goodness we're with you).Also: there's a memorable anecdote involving Rick, a tube journey and a pair of underpants that has to be heard to be believed. You're welcome.--Rick’s podcast Eureka! Getting under the skin of science is available on all podcast platforms. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/eureka/id1612482633--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail]--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpodRick Edwards @rickedwards1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello 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. The broadcaster Rick Edwards was once told early on in his career by a senior TV executive that he did not have what it took to be a presenter. When asked later what impact this had on him, Edwards replied that he used it as motivation. And it has proved to be quite a successful motivation. Today, Edwards is the co-host of Radio 5 Live's Breakfast Show. He replaced Nicky Campbell in November 2021. A natural sciences graduate from Cambridge University, he also presents the podcast Eureka alongside the quantum physicist Dr. Michael Brooks. Each week they answer such pressing questions as, should we fear an alien invasion? And will we ever talk to animals? I can solve that one for you because I do have lengthy conversations with my cat. The duo have

co-authored two books in their trademark intelligent yet accessible and humorous style. Edward started out on T4, Channel 4's youth strand, alongside Alexa Chung and went on to present Tool Academy, the quiz show Impossible and in America the Regency era dating show The Courtship. Growing up, he has said, we didn't have much money, but I was an only child and definitely spoiled with attention. Hence me being an attention seeker and ending up in the ultimate industry for narcissists. Rick Edwards, welcome to How to Fail. Hello, Elizabeth. I wanted to end on that quote because I think it's hilarious. Do you really think that about the industry that you're in? Is it for narcissists? Yeah, I think so. Probably not quite as bad as acting, I guess.

I guess acting is really the pinnacle. But there is an egotism that you have to have to want to put yourself sort of front and centre and for people to be looking at you and listening to you. So yeah, I think I mean it. It's slightly tongue in cheek. Yeah. But I do mean it.

Where are you at with your ego? Are you friends with your ego? Yeah, I think I'm okay with my ego. I think my ego has got slightly more chilled with time, I think. And actually, the sort of slightly odd transition that I've experienced is that when I was younger, I was an attention seeker in quite a detrimental way to my sort of school life. I got in trouble at school

because I just sort of messed around and wanted people to laugh and, you know, all that kind of nonsense. And so school was tricky, not particularly for me, but definitely for my classmates and my teachers who didn't really like my stuff, actually. And then when I got to university, sort of found an outlet

to kind of do that legitimately in doing some sort of, you know, like sketches and a bit of stand-up. And that was good. And then eventually sort of, you know, ended up doing TV stuff, thinking that I would really revel in the kind of the attention because that's sort of what I'd always been seeking. And the reality is, I don't particularly like that side of it. I would never anticipated that. I think I thought it would be everything that I ever dreamed of. And...

Why wasn't it? I don't know if I could really explain it. I guess maybe I'm a bit more private than I'd previously imagined or my imagination hadn't sort of extended to figure out what it would actually be like for people to sort of feel like they know you. There are lots of people who really delight in that and it turns out I'm not one of them. So if there was a kind of iteration of my work that meant I could do exactly what I do but sort of be entirely anonymous I'd take that immediately

I'd really like that but I don't think there is no I just got a vision of those American court cases where someone testifies from behind a dark screen where it's just a silhouette of a head yeah yeah so like i mean witness so i mean witness protection exactly the only presenter constantly in witness protection and i have like a voice changer yeah yeah i mean it's sort of it's not been done before it's worth giving it a go now i feel we should be up front about this because this is a unique situation for me because I have insider information in terms of having witnessed the start of your career because we used to go out you're my ex-boyfriend yeah well you're my ex-girlfriend so touche and I have to say that I really enjoyed the idea of talking to you in this way because yeah I mean I feel I feel sort of

slightly nervous about it yeah and quite unusually I don't really get particularly nervous for stuff and on my way here on my electric scooter I was sort of thinking oh this is gonna be odd yeah maybe awkward maybe weird maybe all of the above maybe really fun i don't know i think my voice just broke i mean we don't worry i'm not going to ask you loads of questions about why we broke up okay don't worry let's put that to one side sure but it's just because i wanted to be upfront about the context in which we're talking yes and so i how many exes have you interviewed previously you're the first one oh that, that's a great honour. Thank you.

No, you're welcome. I have actually interviewed my husband for this podcast. Okay, that doesn't count. No, it doesn't. So, but going back to that sense of wanting to be a TV presenter, and I also know because we used to have conversations about you being an only child, and I always thought that you had such an interesting perspective on it because you felt that it had given you confidence and so much is spoken about the negative aspects of potentially being an only child and I'd love to hear your take on that it's tricky isn't it because I think there's a temptation to sort of try and retrospectively explain stuff that happens

yeah but you do need to be I think you need to be a bit careful and need to be aware of the fact that you're sort of creating narratives that maybe didn't exist at the time but they sort of fit now so I would caveat everything by saying that also my memory is quite poor so yeah I'll make some stuff up but definitely when I was a child as you said in the intro I was spoiled for attention and I really enjoyed that and my parents were sort of endlessly patient and supportive and always sort of had the attitude of you can do anything you want and my my mum is incredibly shy and she kind of was self aware enough to realize that's not a great thing to be. She still is incredibly shy. But she went all out to try and

make sure that I wasn't shy. And I don't really know exactly what her technique was. But I think you could probably make an argument that she did it too well, because I'm definitely not shy, make an argument that she did it too well because I'm definitely not shy or certainly not in most contexts so she kind of engineered that part of me I think one of the things that it might give you as an only child is a rock solid foundational knowledge that you're loved I mean if you have nice parents which you do have yes and I wonder if that makes you less needy for other people's approval. Possibly, yes. I definitely, I know lots of people pleasers

currently being interviewed by one. How dare you? Well, are you saying not guilty? Are you saying whatever you want me to say? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm not really a people pleaser and I think that probably is partly due to that like I don't particularly feel like I have to sort of prove myself I have a slightly unhealthy arguably unhealthy sort of attitude generally

which is if someone doesn't like something that I do or say, I will just automatically assume that they're wrong. Yeah. But it's quite a sort of good protective mechanism in that it just allows me to just sort of sail on unaffected in most cases anyway. Or I'll sort of mask the sort of slight worry just with being quite quick to sort of attack, I think. Doesn't make me sound very nice does it well no I think it makes you sound very self-aware and I'm sure that it's not always the

case I think you're talking about potentially mainly professional settings oh yeah but if you behave really badly in a personal way I'm sure you wouldn't just be like oh no sailing on by you're wrong no no, no, no. No, I don't think so. Let me save you from yourself. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

I mentioned in the introduction that you've got this. Well, it's not really a new job anymore. So you've been, we're recording in November. So it's almost your year anniversary. My year anniversary on Tuesday, in fact. Yeah. How's it going? Because it is a very specific skill set that you require to do

that kind of live radio i think from my perspective it's going well i enjoy doing the show i don't enjoy my alarm going off at 3 30 every morning obviously my career has with the best in the world been a bit of a mess in terms of like trying to sort of create a coherent through line of what what does this person like doing what are they interested in it's all over the place but that is a reflection of sort of who i am like i i do have very disparate interests and i'm quite sort of curious about a lot of different stuff and this is the first time professionally that I felt like I'm doing something where I get to look at all of the things that interest me and that's great and that feels I feel very lucky to have found that what's it like

living through the news era when you have to be engaged with it because for a lot of people our response to daily assaults of trauma from different parts of the world is to ignore it but you actively have to listen to smooth yeah it's that sort of thing yeah or to a lovely podcast yeah for example it can be quite emotionally taxing when the ukraine war broke out I felt hopelessly out of my depth and speaking to some of the people in Ukraine or escaping Ukraine particularly in those first few weeks I was really struggling to hold it together and on a couple of occasions didn't and I just sort of broke down really because I couldn't really get my head around how awful it was and then just speaking to these desperate people I'd just not done that before and it was hard but oddly that does give

quite good perspective on everything else yeah because that is truly awful and the other kind of frantic news stuff is sometimes bad but it's not Ukraine being invaded bad, if you see what I mean. Where do you take that emotional load after you come off air and you go back to your place in Manchester? Do you have a way of processing it and leaving it behind or do you talk to people? How do you do it? It's been a slightly curious existence so I was just renting a flat in Manchester it was sort of like a like a bachelor pad in a sort of new build where it was just me and then some footballers and some people on Love Island

so it's just quite sort of surreal setup that would maybe have been quite fun when I was 25 but to be fair not 25 and my wife didn't really like it out there so she wasn't coming up so it was just me sort of rattling around in this odd building and my cat wasn't there either so it was sort of quite bleak truth be told and I wasn't really talking to anyone about it which probably wasn't very healthy I think I was just sort of trying to work through it on my own and I don't know how how successfully I did that also the other thing is it feels incredibly self-indulgent uh and also I'm asking you to yeah but do you know what I mean like I'm not the person who is being affected by that stuff. I'm just hearing about it. Yeah.

And it's upsetting. But I wouldn't want to suggest that I am one of the people who is suffering. Yeah. And you're not. And I think lots of people will relate to it because even though they're not Radio 5 presenters, it does feel as though we live in a society where we are constantly assailed by news. And sometimes that does have an impact.

And that's why I think it's really helpful to talk about it. And thank you for sharing that because it does sound dislocating and lonely. Yeah, yeah, lonely for sure. But I think that's slightly sort of circumstantial as well, because actually the one person I do speak to about everything is my wife, Ema, and she's incredibly sort of emotionally intelligent in a way that I'm probably not so.

And she's amazing at making me feel better about anything. But, yeah, there's a kind of, yeah, the circumstances currently have been not perfect for that. And without your cat as well. Without. I'm not mocking. No, I know. No, I know.

I know you know. I miss my cat and I genuinely find the presence of my cat very, very soothing. Yes. Like if I feel any kind of negativity, just sitting with tippy for a bit we'll kind of take the edge off I know yeah I know how do you feel about failure broadly before we get on to your specific failures yes how was it thinking about failure in advance of this recording actually fine because I I think a while, I had a sort of realization that I definitely used to be someone who would be prepared to be wrong about stuff, and to evolve

your thinking about stuff, and take on board new information, and be quite open to that. And failure broadly gives you an opportunity to learn stuff, I think. And I see it as a sort of self-improvement thing as well. So the more that I learn, the more knowledge I have. And I kind of, yeah, as I said before, I'm quite curious about everything. So yeah, I think failure is pretty useful. Great. Failure is data acquisition. It's almost as if I've primed you. Yeah. Failure is data acquisition. It makes it feel like you're sort of interviewing an AI. Yeah. And the slight problem with that phrase, as much as I love it, is that it implies that I'm saying you should go out and pursue failure actively. And I'm not saying that.

No, no, no. But it's a good way of framing it when it does happen. Exactly. Which brings us onto your first failure, actually, because it's about the fact that you gave up on your maths degree. And the reason I say it brings us onto that is because I want to ask you about the notion of failure in maths and in science, but we'll get onto that. Tell me why you gave up your maths degree and why you consider it a failure. Well, it was definitely a failure because I gave up.

It's not really any other way of... Well, I don't know, you see. Because I actually think knowing when to quit is a form of empowerment and isn't a failure. That's a good way to think of it. I'll take that. That's not how I have viewed it. So I think I had a pretty standard route into doing maths at university. Most people who do maths at university have found maths easy up to that point. maths easy up to that point you know maybe you've been the best at maths in your school and you're used to it just being sort of quite fun and straightforward and you just like you just get

it and so fine and so that's very much how I went into my maths degree and then very quickly it got very very hard and this sounds like a deeply conceited thing to say i don't think i'd found anything hard before up to that point or if i had i would have just sort of shelved it but i don't really remember anything so coming into contact with something we go not only this is hard i feel like i can't do this shook me totally and i didn't have the personality type, certainly then, to kind of rally and be like, no, okay, you can get through this. You just need to work harder. I sort of immediately threw the towel out. I was like, fuck it. Because I hated the feeling of not being able to do it. And I still regret that decision. It wouldn't be like that now. And I guess this is probably quite a common experience.

But for me, school and university both came at the wrong time for me. And I didn't really have any, I wasn't really interested in studying or academia or working hard or even learning unless it was absolutely on my terms. Whereas now, I genuinely fantasize, like one day, one day, I will get my master's degree, like I'm convinced of it, I have to go back and do that. And I think I'd really enjoy it. And I'd even enjoy finding it difficult, and working through that. But when I was 18, 19, it just I didn't have it in me. But it's sort of it hangs over me as a, yeah yeah as something I didn't complete and should have done and it also feels like a personality defect to put this into context

you don't have to agree with personality defects by the way I want to come back to your personality defects oh good but to put this into context you were at Cambridge University so yeah this is also like an elite form of maths degree yeah I think it's the hardest I mean it's amazing that I did it to myself really I think it's the hardest maths degree or was then in the world so I don't know what I was expecting I do I was expecting it to be easy yeah there are two things I want to ask you off the back of that one is the personality aspect of it how much up to that point and perhaps afterwards do you think that you connected your character with being the best at things where you couldn't separate between the two so if you weren't

the best at something it meant you were a failure as a person um yeah not at all well i'm very competitive yes and i think that speaks to that doesn't it anything that why are you competitive I think because my parents are competitive I think this is I think it's that simple and and my and what's quite funny about that is my mum would say that she is not at all competitive I mean she really would she would just be like well no absolutely not but she really is in a kind of subtle and gentle way. And my dad is quite competitive. And, you know, just sort of growing up playing games, we're just, you're always sort of playing to win.

Yeah, I've definitely taken that on in my adult life. And so I do always want to do well at everything. And then if I don't do well at something, I don't like it. But do you always want to do better than other people at something? Ideally yes. Okay. Because that's the best form of competition when you're sort of when you're beating someone. I quite want to do better than I have done previously so I'm sort of interested in competing with myself as well.

But you've got to remember I mean this is the funny thing about being an only child. I can remember having a tiny little snooker table, but like a child-sized snooker table. And I would spend a lot of time playing snooker against myself. And that's quite an interesting sort of psychological exercise. I'd also play scalextric against myself. At no point did I think this was strange, but I suppose it is. And so you've got, you're sort of built in competing with yourself and then if other people are around also compete with them and I suppose I do probably attach quite a lot of

value to winning what's the feeling that you get when you win sort of feels like oh yeah that's the way it should be like I feel I'm actually this has definitely improved but it would it would sort of eat me up to lose at stuff which I'm sure that's not particularly healthy. What class would you describe yourself as? Well, that is also quite complicated and I have a real issue around this stuff. class but I also think that I would like to be like my family who are working class but I'm not so I've sort of straddled the two and it really shouldn't matter at all but it sort of does and I've never been able to shake that like it's a slight sort of chip that I have on my shoulder I only realized this quite recently so I went to a fee-paying grammar school on a scholarship so I was surrounded

by kids who were well off and definitely better off than that than I was and so that sort of solidified in my mind the idea that I was actually sort of that we were quite poor but I don't think we were I think if I'd just gone to the local comp I wouldn't have felt that and I probably wouldn't have this strange sort of sense of yeah what my upbringing was like yeah it's warped that and I hadn't gauged that at all but I'm pretty sure that's why I sort of feel like I'm a bit more working class and in fairness like my family are working class but you know I definitely grew up in a sort of middle class environment and went to a school of middle class and then went to Cambridge. I mean, it's extremely straight down the line middle class.

It's a specifically British question that I've asked. And actually, I don't know how helpful it is, even though I asked it, because I think that what you're getting at there is that sometimes the idea of class really obscures who you are as a person or people can't see you as you are because of how you are now and I had a similar thing in that as you know I sound quite posh but I actually grew up in Northern Ireland got a scholarship to a boarding school all of that sort of stuff and I found it upsetting that people assumed I was your two dimensional posh person when I wasn't because there was so much more story behind it. And I think it's that thing. It's that lack of curiosity that are label agendas. Yeah.

And a kind of defensiveness as well, I think. I'm definitely defensive about that. I find it impossible and it's pathetic if, and it doesn't really come up anymore, but if it does come up that I went to a fee-paying school I cannot not say on a scholarship on a scholarship but do you know and yeah like why like it doesn't really matter but I sort of yeah I feel like I'm and this doesn't even really make any sense but like betraying my roots betraying my family to make out that I've sort of come from money when I definitely haven't but

it's all sort of in my mind I don't think anyone really cares what was Cambridge like for you then given that internal chippiness it definitely bought out a bit of that chippiness particularly you know when we were there it was very public school dominated and that as a sort of category of person is quite full-on and I found them quite hard work and that sort of made me sort of rail against that slightly or always want to make sure that I didn't get associated with that it was quite an exclusive but massive club wasn't it of people who all sort of looked the same and dressed the same and spoke the same and sort of whose parents were friends I had a different experience from you I think at Cambridge and yes there was that aspect but I felt that my friendship group was more diverse than I had anticipated it being it was certainly more

diverse than my school interesting and because I was lucky in the sense that I loved my degree and so there was an enormous amount that came from that but my best friend didn't have a good time there for very similar reasons that you're outlining but you gave up your maths degree. Yes. Or you quit it at the appropriate time. Yes. And you started doing natural sciences. Yes. What does science, she says, as the GCSE single science alumnus, what does science teach us about failure? Effectively, it's the whole point of science. I think sometimes that gets lost.

We mentioned this quote, the Isaac Asimov quote, where he says, lost. We mentioned this quote, the Isaac Asimov quote, where he says, the most exciting phrase in science isn't eureka, but that's funny. As in, it's just less interesting when you sort of prove a thing that you thought you were going to prove. It's more interesting when something totally unexpected happens or something goes wrong or something's really peculiar that's when it's exciting and so science you could look at the history of science and say it is a history of failure because you're constantly trying to kind of fine-tune your picture of the world and you're always just replacing theories with new, better theories. And one way of looking at that is those previous theories have ultimately failed. And that's absolutely fine.

And that's what progress is. I love that so much. I'm good. I'm good. I don't, yeah. I am. That's that self-belief. That Rick Edwards self-belief.

Good. I wanted to say I'm happy. But in the end, I went with, I'm good. 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.

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wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's get on to your second failure. So now you've graduated from university. Yes. 2015 rolls around. Yes. You give a TEDx talk. Yes.

About voting. Yes. And your second failure, sorry, just quickly, is not getting young people to vote. So tell us what happened. When I was growing up, there was not really any sort of political discourse. I didn't have any interest in politics. feel that I understood what I was voting on. I hadn't studied politics at any point, never taught any at school. I just felt totally disengaged and disenfranchised from it. And also just that classic thing where if someone is speaking about politics and they drop in a term that you don't understand, I was just too embarrassed to say, I'm so sorry, I don't really get what that is.

I don't know what that bit of jargon means or whatever. And so I would just totally check out. And then in about 2013, the BBC wanted to start doing a sort of young voters version of Question Time. They approached me and asked if I would do it. And I was a bit like i don't know i think that might be tricky but it was live and actually oddly it was live question time is

pre-recorded so they do it an hour before and then put it out and free speech as it was as it was called well i mean you know your word not mine but. And, you know, it's a wrangling, alive audience. It felt sort of exciting. And I just figured, actually, maybe it's useful for me to be coming at this from a position of not knowing anything because I can kind of learn stuff. And I'll probably ask, I hope I'll ask questions that will be useful for the audience that we're trying to serve. And so I said, yes, I started doing it. And as soon as I started doing it, I just got sucked in. I just really enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed particularly talking to young people about it. But what I quickly realized is that young people, and this still applies now, I would say, much like I was

when I was younger, just quite sort of disengaged. And I didn't feel like it was their fault. I thought there was a failure of the system to bring young people in and to give them the knowledge that they needed to get involved. And I also thought that was adversely affecting them. And it definitely was, and I think is, because there's a sort of fundamental truism, which is if you don't vote, then politicians a load of smart people about it and kind of put it together into a TEDx talk that went quite well. I was very nervous before that, actually. Yeah, I bet you were. More nervous than before this.

Wow, I can't say it. Yeah, I know. I know. Do you know why you get butterflies? You know what that is? No, tell me. It's part of your fight or flight response. And so there's all kinds of physiological effects of that. And one of them is your body starts pushing all of the blood and oxygen and stuff to the muscles that are going to be required for fighting or flighting.

And the stuff that isn't important for that, the blood flows away from it. So the blood flows away from your gastrointestinal system. And that's what gives you a funny feeling. so does that apply for love as well when you're falling in love and you get butterflies is that the same thing because you're about to blow apart the myth of romantic love i don't think it's going to be this i mean obviously there's going to be some similar brain chemistry going on but it's not going to be the same i would say it was i think that's different i think that's different sorry but i don't know so i did this talk it was pretty well received and then a publisher just sort of said do you want to try and put out a book before the 2015 election they were like you wouldn't have that long to write it i'd never written a book and they said you'd have six weeks and i was like

that seems it seems all right i think and did that. And it's not long enough to write a book, it turns out. And it was an absolute nightmare. It's so miserable. But I managed to do it. And all I was trying to do with the book was just lay out in simple sort of jargon-free terms, the sort of political landscape in an entirely impartial way and just sort of say, well, look, this is somewhere you can get the information you need to come up with a view on who to vote for because that's what i felt when i i went around to schools and talked to kids and it was never a lack of a lack of interest it was just they didn't know who you literally go into schools and i'd say what do you know about the conservatives what do you know about labor and it'd be stuff like well i know i

think the conservatives are the blue ones it's that and i was like well this is clearly not their fault it's not being told stuff and and quite often a question that would come up when i was talking to them was like well where can i go to find this stuff out then i was like i don't know really because there's so much information that you know just going online it's hard to navigate so I was just trying to amalgamate stuff into a sort of palatable form and it just sort of I had a real sort of fire in my belly to try and effect change I guess and so I did lots of talks and I put the book out and and really sort of threw everything that I could at it and I honestly felt like oh maybe I've got a sort of threw everything that I could at it. And I honestly felt like, oh, maybe I've got a sort of unique opportunity here

because the people that I'm trying to talk to know me from doing stuff that they'd like at Tool Academy, that they've sort of enjoyed watching. And so they might be more inclined to read a book about politics either than by a sort of political journalist or what have you. That proved to be sort of political journalist or what have you that proved to be sort of partially true in that I did get some genuinely heartening feedback from people

who read the book and literally said oh I wouldn't have I wasn't going to vote and then I read your book and I voted and I still occasionally get messages that make me sort of slightly well up by someone who'll say, I read your book and now I've just started doing a politics degree and that sort of stuff. But in very stark terms, it had no effect. I don't think I did anything wrong exactly, but it rankles. I feel weirdly sort of guilty about it. I don't know.

It's your fault. What's happening to politics now? Well, not quite that that it sounds like as well you were genuinely passionate about yeah yeah and so when you're seeking to cure disenfranchisement and you're really enfranchised emotionally in that yeah and then the response is more disenfranchisement even though it's probably less and you have actually made a difference and that's great but such a small difference though like but i feel that probably the entire political system was geared up against you because there are powers that be that don't want it to change absolutely

because what's the incentive for the political classes it's just a bit more effort if you have to start trying to curry favor with more people but I just wish I'd been able to do more. And I don't know how I would have done more. But as you say, I genuinely, I really cared about it. I wish it worked out better. But I also came into contact with lots of other people who were sort of doing a similar thing, who were proper activists. And I realised that to be an activist, it has to be the one thing that you do.

It has to be your sole focus. And I was sort of trying to do that alongside also just sort of my normal work. And maybe that's the number of it. I'd see that there probably was a way I could have done more, but I didn't. I sort of did everything that I felt that I could at the time. And we just had greta tunberg

on the podcast and that's absolutely the case with her her entire life is built around this central focus and i'm so grateful for people like her in the world and i know that i couldn't do that and just by talking about it now who knows who will be prompted to go and vote and buy your book and so I wouldn't be too hard on yourself and you still wrote a book in six weeks which is yeah extraordinary I cannot recommend it I can recommend the book I can't recommend the process also you'll be unsurprised here that a book written for an election seven years ago is hopelessly out of date I mean it would be quite funny to revisit the chapter where I sort of lay out what might happen with the EU.

Oh my gosh. I don't know if I could bear to read it. A lot's gone down. Yeah. Let's go on to your third failure. Yes. Which I'm wildly intrigued by. Of course, yeah.

Your third failure is relationships. Yes. And that's how it came to me. It's like a single word failure. Yeah. And I was like, okay, great. Let's have this conversation. Well, I think it's good to. It's a great idea. And I'm so pleased that you chose it.

Yeah. Why did you choose it? A few different reasons. I had a real wobble in 2013, where I was in China, visiting friends who were living there. And for a a few days I went off on my own just because they were going back to Beijing and I and we were in Shanghai and I went to went stayed in this really lovely hotel in the middle of nowhere in a sort of tea plantation about two hours outside of Shanghai I'm not brilliant on my own actually in general which is strange given I'm an only chart but I like it for a little bit and then I want to be with people but I was on my own and it was lonely I went on a walk and this hotel

was sort of in the middle of nowhere I took my phone and a little sort of hand-drawn map that a guy from the hotel had given me of a good loop to do I went out at about midday I don't know why I did that it was unbearably hot I've never sweated more in my life I bought two bottles of water with me I drank all of my water within about the first 20 minutes and then I got lost in this bamboo forest and I was wandering around this bamboo forest just sweat pouring off me my phone had overheated so I couldn't use the maps on that and I had this horrible thought which was genuinely I think I might die here and then my next thought was I don't think anyone will realize for quite a while oh and then I was just and it was sort of quite crushing the really

perverse thing about it was I was in a relationship at the time and I think I'd been in that relationship for a lot longer than I should have been that's what I mean by I think out of fear I probably have stayed in relationships for longer than I should have done and it took this moment of me thinking oh if I die here i don't think anyone's going to particularly care so then when i subsequently it was okay and i managed to find a very friendly little chinese man who helped me to a shop where i bought up their water supplies but when i then got back because i've worked through it and i was like oh okay i did this i shouldn't be in this relationship even then when i got back from china it still took sort of a week for that relationship to end. And really it was my partner who ended it

because she also knew that it was over and it had been over for a while. But I was like an idiot as well. Like we'd lived together and she'd moved out about sort of three months before that. And I was still sort of holding onto the idea that maybe that was a good thing. And it wasn't't and when I look back I'm just like this is very much criticism of me and not of her but we should probably have broken up years before that I think that's on

me and I think that comes back to my just not being very good at sort of dealing with emotions confronting my emotions expressing my emotions sort of thinking deeply about what I want and just kind of being a bit blinkered and just sort of carrying on regardless with stuff so I feel like I've slightly failed there with failed her and failed myself in that regard in that probably there's definitely a version where we split up a long time before and have much better memories of that relationship. Yeah. And I guess, I mean, I'll just ask you what you think about this,

but when we went out, we broke up and then got back together again. And I wonder if we should have got back together again. What do you reckon? I know what you mean. And I think we should have done. together again what do you reckon i know what you mean and i think we should have done oh let's go okay that's good okay good because there was no doubt in our minds i don't think when we split up that it like as in i'm glad in a way that i had a less satisfying experience of our relationship for that last few year or nine months whatever

because it taught me something that I needed to know whereas I think before I had felt that our relationship shouldn't have ended and I still held out hope oh that's interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I think it was actually quite good for me I could let it go with a sort of finality more than I would have been able to before okay why do you regret it no i don't really i don't i genuinely wanted to want to ask you this is so interesting it is and i was as i was on my way in i was like what's good about this is you don't get generally you don't get to do the sort of post-match analysis no with your good to know yeah 20 years has passed as i was trying to work a long time yeah and so time enough has passed that it's fine to talk that it's fine to talk about it

yeah and i hate breakups i find them really really difficult yeah and our breakup taught me something instructive because i didn't feel resentful angry like I didn't no no that's true actually and I think you were very nice to me like when we were going out you were very loving and really good for my sense of self and confidence and my mother still says that to this day and I actually have to thank you for that because I it's quite an annoying thing for your mum to still say, I guess. Oh, I mean, she doesn't say it often, no. Just like once a week. If she's seen you on, you know, the Made in Chelsea reunion,

she'll be like, oh. Because I didn't have a lot of self-worth when we started going out. And so I'm always grateful to you for that. And there's a lot of, well, not anymore, now I'm fine, but there are a few exes that I felt really angry at and upset over. And you're not one of them. That is lovely to hear.

You're welcome. Yes, I'm pleased about that. And I genuinely mean it. And I'm not even lying. And also the other thing, and the reason why I love we're talking about it is because I think that there'll be people listening who are possibly going through a breakup or feeling resentful or feeling lost and confused and upset. And I have been there and I hear you. And I hope that we offer them a sort of hope that actually it ends up being okay. And you end up being grateful for a relationship, even if it ends sometimes.

Sometimes even because it ends. And I have never met your wife other than on Instagram, social media, and like following her career in a weird, creepy, stalky way, because I think she seems phenomenal. And I'm so glad that you're with her. So she's a writer, actor. She recently wrote Karen Pirie, adapted it for screen. And I'm genuinely really happy for you.

Look at me. I'm so grown up. I'm so grown up. You are so grown up. Equally, I have to say that the last time that I saw you was about seven years ago. And you were in not such a good place. No. It was the darkest period of my life. Yeah, yeah.

a good place no it was the darkest period of my life yeah yeah and now when i see what you're up to and you've got justin yes and that makes me really happy as well i'm like i'm so glad that things have sort of worked out yeah for you so so i i what i'm saying is i'm also a grown-up yes well done you're better actually i don't think you are better at being a grown-up than I am. No, I don't think so. I'm not going to give you that win. So the other thing that I feel is that maybe in my 20s into 30s, I was sort of trying to get ahead of myself. I sort of wanted the thing immediately.

And it doesn't need to be the thing immediately. No. And I also think if you're a high achiever, which you were and are, then you're used to feeling like I put in the work and I get the results. And sometimes that translates. So in my situation, that translates in a personal way when I first tried and failed to have a baby. It's that kind of thing.

So maybe your way is sort of personal relationships in tandem with a career that you wanted to happen straight away and I do remember that being a flash point for us because I was probably quite annoying to go out with because I always knew what I wanted to do and I was always super focused yeah and very successful very early I would say I mean doing, yeah, I was doing... You might not see that, but I think that from my point of view, I was like, I'm going out with a girl who's really sort of together and has like bought her first flat and is, you know, working in journalism

and she's started to work on her writing. When is the Artichoke book coming out? Oh my God, I can't believe you remember that. That is amazing. Do you know, I thought of that the other day, as I reached for an Artichoke in my fridge. What Rick is alluding to is the fact that I always knew that I wanted to write books. But I felt that I needed to write something. And I think this is what puts a lot of people off. I felt that I needed to write something completely unique. And at the time, there were some books that had become bestsellers that were like the history of salt. And it was kind of offbeat. And felt that I needed to write something completely unique and at the time there were some books that

had become bestsellers that were like the history of salt yeah and it was kind of offbeat and I had been advised by someone to find that to find my history of salt I was like okay well I like artichokes let me introduce you to your friend of mine the artichoke and I used to spend time in the British Library researching yes the history of the artich. And what I found out from all of that was that it's not actually that interesting. There's not that much to say about it. There's a pub just north of Great Portland Street called something like the Queen and the Artichoke. And genuinely, I go past there quite a lot. And when I see it, I do do think like and the thought doesn't

go anywhere it's literally just artichoke Elizabeth's artichoke book on a go that is so weird sadly it never went anywhere no but well maybe time to resurrect I mean maybe as I was saying with your maths degree it's good to know when to quit sometimes yeah you were definitely a lot further down the path of sort of what you wanted to do than I was yeah at that time for sure and I also feel that you're the early days of your tv career so when we were together you got that job on rise yes which was like your big break and you had it was early mornings again and I was thinking of you when doing research for this like the early mornings that you're back in that ring I'm so sorry that is awful because you have to go to bed at like 8 p.m but I felt that tv changed you oh interesting and I don't think in a good way

not in an entirely positive way sure but I don't know how you feel about that because I feel you've been on this like extraordinary personal growth journey know how you feel about that because I feel you've been on this like extraordinary personal growth journey and I salute you for it because I think you seem so much more fully rounded and that's not a dig at your fat face which yeah sure which you don't have but you've always been proud of that but I don't know it's just really nice to see that you have grown and that makes it sound like I'm passively aggressively judging in the past I'm not but I did feel like I can't compete with a glitzy tv career yeah I think the sort of the first flush of and it was such a minor thing but this sort of the thrill of being on tv maybe wasn't that good for me but in it in my mind

anyway definitely that settled down very quickly the sort of the novelty of it all and also as i was saying at the beginning like just the realization that i probably wasn't yeah i actually don't like that element of it yeah but initially i think it was all just a bit like that element of it. Yeah. But initially I think it was all just a bit too much probably. Yeah. It was a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just laughing because there's another, just one more thing that I wanted to talk to you about, which is, do you remember that when we split up the first time? Yeah. I had bought tickets, I think for your birthday or something,

for a Justin Timberlake concert. Yes, I do. Yes. And we went. Yes. Yes. I mean, I don't know whether you really enjoyed it, but I found it quite an awkward evening, but that I had been the one to insist that we do that. And I have reflected on that many times subsequently because it's about, and I think lots of people have this this there's a sense sometimes when you break up with a romantic partner that you still want to inveigle your way into their life you still want to have some sort of hold on them yeah and you insist on meeting up and and actually it's the worst thing for you you're sort of meeting up in a very like adult way yes we're

just cool yes it's awful yeah i do remember the Justin Timberlake awful and I came to realize over the course of years of trying to do similar things with people that it was never about what I was telling myself it was about it was about my fundamental lack of self-worth and wanting the other person to say I was wrong and it's never going to happen and it's not about how much you love the other person it's about how much you fail to love yourself shall i tell you something that you might find funny in hindsight about that evening yes so i was very very hung over but thought you gotta go just gotta do this like yeah this will be fine and on the tube on the way there, I soiled myself.

I did not expect that story to go that way. On the tube? Yeah. Yeah. On the tube? Yeah. What happened? Okay.

So what do you do? Well, then you're just thinking, well, this is a nightmare. i'm about to go watch justin timberlake with my ex-girlfriend and i've just shit myself yeah yeah so no i certainly remember the evening but what did you do well i had to basically had to sort of waddle in to meet you. And then at the first opportunity, go to a toilet and try and sort of, you know, deal with the situation.

Oh my God. Yeah. Bad evening for me. Did you take your pants off and just like leave them in the loo somewhere? Yeah, I think I threw them away, yeah. Okay. You can say me a lot of trouble with a massively different spin.

I'm actually embarrassed that I didn't notice that there was no like a whiff of, well, this is, okay, this has been. Enlightening in all sorts of ways. For any listener who feels like they want to have this. And amazingly, that's not one of my failures. Okay. So wait, so bringing it back is your failure in relationship.

Yes. Because there is a plural there. There was a plural in the failure. So you've mentioned the long-term relationship that you were in that maybe both of you were in longer than should have been. Yeah, yeah. But do you feel like it is a repeated failure? So my girlfriend at university before you,

I definitely stayed in that relationship for too long as well even more clearly I mean I probably shouldn't have ever gone out in the first place and I think she would probably think that as well yeah so those two and then as I said I was interested to ask you about the fact that we got back together because I wondered if for me it sort of fell into a pattern of just trying to sort of persist with something when I shouldn't yeah the thing is I didn't feel that at the time it's good to get your perspective on it yeah that makes me feel quite good yes I don't feel that at all I'm really glad that that happened actually so you could have that shit nine months and be like exactly good god after the literal shitting yourself I had the shit nine months it wasn't you got you got back together with me after that so

that's good isn't it i know if only i'd known and then we could then it wouldn't have been a failure and i but i am a huge believer that relationships aren't failures just because they end because every single relationship i've had has taught me something worth knowing. One is not to go to a Justin Timberlake concert with your hungover ex. Just in case. And bring us up to date now. So your marriage now, do you think you have learnt the lessons and you're more emotionally open? Yeah, I do. And I don't...

It's a relief. Yeah, it is for everyone but I do think that that has come less from past experience and more from Ema's kind of she's in quite a big family they talk about everything she's very open and all of the things that I'm not really and she's just sort of encouraged me and being very patient with me I mean it seems mad to say it but sometimes I just don't know how to express how I'm feeling like almost like literally like the words I don't have and she's sort of helped me with that I think I mean she's not like my therapist but yeah she's sort of improved me massively, I think.

But that's very beautiful that you have someone that you feel safe enough to do that with. That's what a gift. Yeah. Yeah. I feel massively lucky because I think I can be quite difficult. I don't think I'm sort of an easy person to go out with at times. Sorry. difficult i don't think i'm sort of an easy person to go out with at times i think you can you can go detached rather than sharing your pain that was my experience exactly and actually if you give yourself the benefit of the doubt there that's quite a generous thing to do it's like you feel like you should be able to work it out yourself you don't want

to have to burden someone else with it. There's definitely an element of that and sort of just being quite closed off and finally sort of recognising with Ima's help that being closed off is not good in the long run. Bottling stuff up isn't good. Sulking isn't good. I'm much better at not. Occasionally, I've still got it in me, but I'm much less of a sulker than I used to be, which is, and that is good

because sulking for me was such an odd and is when occasionally I sort of slip into it. It's such an odd sensation because I feel like you're sort of vaguely trying to punish the other person, but also simultaneously making yourself feel a hundred times worse. So no one, like literally no one is winning from sulking,

but I'd sort of, I think both my mum and dad sulk and you learn a lot of stuff from your mum and dad. And you like cats and you learn a lot from that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cats always sulk.

Yeah. But it works for them. Yeah. Somehow. I don't think they've got the sort of cognitive capacity to sort of feel bad when they're doing it. How dare you? But I genuinely don't think they do i'm sorry uh-huh yeah well my cat's a ginger cat and they're known to be the sort of

emotionally intellectual elite of the cat world there's a yeah there's a whole thing i would i would never ever describe tippy as the intellectual elite of the cat world she's no she's a tortoise shell and she's quite a strange creature but i love her to bits i've loved this it's been super enlightening and enjoyable yeah how has it been for you the same actually really enjoyed it yeah yeah no need to shit yourself no well well listen even if i you won't notice. You just find some pants later and be like, he did it again. How has it been for you? And what's it been like talking about your failures

over the last hour? I think quite illuminating, actually. I think you asked some quite good questions. It's funny to me to think about how this would have played out if we'd done it 10 years ago I would have struggled I think so so I'm kind of patting myself on the back again it is sort of quite a uniquely funny situation to talk to you about it as well yeah but not in a bad way and there's obviously the fear that it might be in a bad way yes it's been great

Rick Edwards thank you so much for coming on How to Fail. Thanks, Elizabeth. 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.