How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S16, Ep8 How To Fail: Joan Bakewell - the legendary broadcaster on life, love and everything in between

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

For a long time, Joan Bakewell has been a professional inspiration to me: a broadcasting superstar whose professional longevity is a testament to her talent, curiosity and hard work. She is a few months shy of her 90th birthday but still as busy as ever, presenting Portrait and Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. She’s also a peer of the realm and the president of Birkbeck, University of London.Baroness Bakewell joins me to talk about her extraordinary career interviewing everyone from Marcel Duchamp to Nelson Mandela. Plus: sexism, class, her failure to become an actress, her memories of the Blitz, her two divorces and her long-running affair with the esteemed playwright Harold Pinter.It was such an amazing conversation and a real honour for me to talk to this thoroughly wonderful woman.--My new book, FRIENDAHOLIC: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, will be published next month and is now available to preorder - at half price - here.--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 @howtofailpodJoan Bakewell @JDBakewell 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. Very excitingly, I mean, for me at least, my new book is coming out. It's coming out on the 30th of March. It's called Friendaholic, Confessions of a Friendship Addict. And it sort of does what it says on the tin. It is the story of my journey to understand how and why I became addicted to friendship and what I went on to do about it. It's also an attempt to give friendship a language. It has a crucial influence on so many of our lives.

And yet for so long, it's been overshadowed by romantic relationships. It was a real journey of exploration for me writing this book. I loved it. I loved what I discovered. I loved trying to put into words one of the most crucial aspects of my life. And I got the chance to speak to lots of interesting people, including five of my dearest friends, each of whom has a chapter devoted to them and each of whom expresses a slightly different aspect of friendship. So in between all of that, there are thematic chapters that look at the history of friendship, that look at the social influence, that look at how we can put friendships into words, how we end friendships, what happens and what it feels like if you're ghosted, what impact

social media might have had on friendships. If that sounds like your bag, then I would be so, so delighted if you would press a pre-order button and buy a copy of Friendaholic now. It comes out on the 30th of March, but as I'm sure you all know, pre-orders really, really help authors and bookshops. So do press pre-order wherever you want to get your copy. You can also go to waterstones.com. They have copies of Friendaholic there. I'm so, so grateful for all your support. Writing books means the absolute world to me.

And being able to talk directly to you, my beloved listeners and readers, is one of the great gifts of my life. So that is Friendaholic, Confessions of a Friendship Addict by Elizabeth Day, out on the 30th of March 2023 and available to pre-order now. 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. My guest today is a broadcasting superstar, a personal journalistic hero of mine, and a woman whose professional longevity is a testament to her talent, curiosity, and hard work. She is a few months shy of her 90th birthday, but still as busy as ever. On screen, she presents Portrait and Landscape Artist of the Year for Sky Arts. Off screen, she's a peer of the realm. She became a Baroness in 2011 and the President of Birkbeck University of London. Joan Bakewell, for It Is She, was born in Stockport, Cheshire, six years before the outbreak of the Second World War. Both her grandfathers were factory workers. Her mother was a housewife and her father an engineer. After graduating from Newnham College,

Cambridge, she won a scholarship to study there. She had stints as an advertising copywriter and a supply teacher before finding her way to TV. She became known as presenter of late night lineup where her clever magpie-like mind was given full reign. Guests included Marcel Duchamp and Harold Pinter. For 12 years, she explored the moral and ethical conundrums in the documentary series Heart of the Matter. She also wrote newspaper columns, plays and books, a novel, All the Nice Girls, as well as three works of memoir, the latest of which, The Tick of Two Clocks,

reflected on the passage of time as she moved house in her 80s. She will sometimes run into one of her contemporaries, the equally legendary David Attenborough, and he has only one question for her. Are you still working? And of course, she is. Dame Joan Bakewell, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you very much indeed. It's so lovely to have you. You are a hero of mine and they say you should never meet your heroes, but luckily you've exceeded all my wildest expectations. I wanted to end on that note because I wanted to ask you whether you think you're a workaholic. I don't like not working. I don't like not being engaged in some activity. So it might be getting a dinner party ready for some friends, or it might be planning a holiday, booking, checking out this and that,

making administrative choices. I find it very hard just to sit and do nothing very much. Although since lockdown, I've been addicted to watching television more and more. But then when I watch television, it's a sort of professional activity because I'm watching the news and thinking, oh, that would be an interesting subject. Oh, I could write about that. Yes, you're not watching The Real Housewives of Cheshire like I am. You're doing something far more highfalutin.

Have you always been like that? Have you always been someone who needs to keep active in some way? I think I've got a very restless mind, yes. I keep going. I'm interested in ideas, ideas also from anywhere, it doesn't matter where, but I like to get my teeth into an idea and sort of shake it and see what I think about it, perhaps even make up my mind, but often just withhold my

own judgment. Simply think, what a strange thing that is going on in the world. I mean, for example, I asked a taxi driver yesterday, is he looking forward to the World Cup? But making, you know, small talk, and he erupted with enthusiasm, oh, a taxi driver yesterday, is he looking forward to the World Cup? But making, you know, small talk. And he erupted with enthusiasm. Oh, how wonderful this is and this. And do you follow it? And I said, no, I don't follow it. Meaning, in brackets, I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole.

But what was extraordinary, he said, but don't you realize how much it matters in our lives? And he gave a great sort of exposition of what football means. And I thought, yes, and we're about to see it explode across the country. It doesn't matter a great deal to people. Have you ever been bored? Well, if I'm bored, I do something. I mean, if I'm feeling bored, get up and go. I think being boring, my son has developed a habit of repeating something I said to him when he was a child. If you're bored, it's because you're boring. Because people don't have the right to be bored, really.

We've not got much time here, have we, between the cradle and the grave. So to be bored is to waste your life. But I can do things that other people would find boring. I mean, I'm sure people would think, why would you read such a book or that book? Or why would you want to make your own clothes, which I did for a long period of time. I just like to be engaged. I think I like to be engaged more with ideas than with activity. So I don't mind sitting and reading or drawing up plans for an article and then writing the article or writing a critique or something. It's ideas that interest me. So I read a lot of the papers and I'm online for the Washington Post and the New York Times. And I'd like to know what's going on.

Well, ideas like you are timeless. They're ageless in many respects. And every single interview I've read with you over the last few years does make a big deal of the fact that you are a certain age, but are effervescent as ever, look at least 20 years younger. But I wonder how, is that frustrating that people keep going on about your age? Well, age is just a token number, you know, it's to do with the seasons and to do with the various stages of your body's life. I don't think it necessarily has a great deal to do with your character, although people grow, as they say, they grow and develop and then they age, get tired. But I think age just moves around. I mean, you can find quite tired people in their 40s and you can find people like David Almbra, you mentioned, full of ideas. Any idea would interest

David. It's not just animals and the ecosystem. I mean, you mentioned something full of ideas. Any idea would interest David. It's not just animals and the ecosystem. I mean, you mentioned something to David about history or art. He's tremendously interested and knows a lot about art. It interests him. He'll grab the subject. People like that appeal to me. Now that you are 89, which decade of your life do you think has been the best for you or the most interesting? Well, the life-changing event was my going to university, going to Cambridge, which was, by comparison to Stockport in those days, which was a smoky industrial town, it was paradise on earth. I mean, it is, it remains very, very beautiful and lyrically beautiful.

And I was completely overwhelmed by the architecture and the tone of it, apart from the fact that it was seething with people my own age who were all interested in ideas. So that had a huge life-changing moment in my life. The other thing is, of course, that living through the 60s when change was so abundant and so positive was very exciting. So I remember the 60s fondly, although there was a lot of things about it that weren't very nice. I mean, there was a lot of things about it that weren't very nice. I mean, there was a lot of poverty and illness and all that kind of thing. People hadn't solved certain medical problems, social problems.

But I think the 60s were very challenging in terms of the rate of change they were having. And it was happening in music. It was happening in ideas. It was happening in government legislation. So there was a lot of positive things going on which I felt I could be a part because I was commentating on it. And there was a lot of changing clothes and we were chatting just before we started recording about the fact that I think you have an incredible sense of style and you will be lodged in the consciousness of many as this phenomenally beautiful young woman wearing a miniskirt, interviewing some of

the intellectual luminaries of your day, and more than holding your own, was quite brave to wear a miniskirt on TV. The miniskirt became possible once they'd invented tights, because we used to wear suspenders and stockings. Well, you couldn't wear miniskirts, well, only in pornography would you wear suspenders and stockings that showed. So once they'd invented tights, then the skirts could be shorter. And it was wonderful because once you got tights, you had long legs and people strode out and they had pretty coloured shoes came in. And then people like Mary Quant started designing dresses with very short skirts. And then it became cheaper. I mean, I used to shop down in Camden Town, where there was a shop I went to, where you could buy a dress

for three pounds because they'd run it up that morning out of two pieces of cloth. And then you wore it a couple of times, threw it away and started again. So it was, in that sense, very challenging. Everything was changing, have a go, don't take it too seriously. And that's what happened. Though there was the side effect of wearing short skirts on television. It prompted a lot of male, male in both senses of the word, spelled both ways, eager viewers who thought it was rather enticing. So I had to take care of that. Well, you became known, and I know that this is an epithet

that you have mixed feelings about, as I would, as the thinking man's crumpet. That's right. Yes, I'm afraid so. I think today, if that happened today, you would sue. You would, absolutely. You would sue. It was a remark by Frank Muir, who was a comedy writer, who was a friend of mine. I knew him relatively well, wasn't a close friend. He was an acquaintance, I suppose, but we were fond of each other. And there was an article in the Radio Times, which they rang different people saying, what do you think of him and her and so on? The nicest phrase was when they rang one of my co-presenters and said, what do you think of Joan? And he said, she's not bad for a bloke.

Oh, that's amazing. I thought, yes, I'll settle for that. That would be nice, because I was one of four, and the other three obviously were male presenters. And that was fine. Frank Muir, in a sense, spoke without thinking and didn't think it was any harm at all. What was harmful about it was that every editor in Fleet Street put it in inverted commas and put it in the headline whenever I was in a program or whenever I was interviewed. And that was really, well, eventually became distressing. I mean, the young feminist movement was getting stronger. And on one or two of the places I went to meetings, young women came up to me and said, why haven't you denounced this? You should call this out and say this is

absolutely disgraceful and not put up. And I said, do you know, I'd just rather leave it lie. And they say, yes, well, that's the trouble you're a generation. You've put up with so much for so long. And I thought, well, I'll have to leave that. And the young generation will change things. And good luck to them. And they did. Wonderful.

Well, that's a very interesting point because you have also lived through seismic change in terms of the collective consciousness of women and feminism. And you mentioned the 60s there and the fact that it provoked a lot of male attention that you wore a miniskirt and I know that you also had to deal with what would now be categorized as sexual assault and sexual harassment but which at the time seemed the price of admission you had to pay to be in that industry. It was just part of being a woman at all in life generally. You expected men to be predators and women to defend themselves if they wanted to. So it was the sort

of thing that people would rub up against you in a bus or so on and put a hand on your knee. And there was generally a sense that women were available for men in many regards. I mean, my father didn't belong to any community like that, but he had friends who would make very sexist jokes. And that was just the landscape. And there was no one protesting against it. No one pointed out until the Feminine Mystique was published. And I remember that having a tremendous effect on me because when it was published, I read it. We all read it. And I took it home and I gave it to my husband and I said, I think you better read this. This book has changed me. This has really drawn something to my attention, which I knew subconsciously, but I now realise has come out and is now real and it matters a lot.

It's an incredible book, Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, and it coins this phrase, the problem with no name, which beset a lot of women of that era, and there was a sense of dissatisfaction, even though socially they were being told, well, you've got everything you could need. You've got a mechanised washing machine. What more could you want for? Why aren't you happy?

And I can imagine the impact of that was revolutionary. I'm fascinated, before we get on to your first failure by young Joan in Stockport and I understand that your mother was someone who had unfulfilled ambitions of her own that's my reading of it I don't know that's no that's quite correct and also but it relates to what Betty Friedan said about this generation of women who were dissatisfied. My mother wasn't the only one. Other people have mentioned it to me. Margaret Drabble said her mother was to some extent part of that generation. My mother was very bright. She got a scholarship to school when she was 11. They lived in a working class area of Manchester Gorton and a row of terrace houses. She was one of eight children, and the children were expected to go

out to work as soon as they could. But she got a scholarship by the intervention of some beneficent local worthy, who said, she's very bright, why don't you put her in? She got a scholarship to Ardwick Grammar School and went there, and she couldn't afford the uniform. And also, she was clearly working class. and she suffered a lot. I mean, she didn't ever express it, but she wasn't happy there. So her mother said quite eagerly, yes, well, why don't you get a job? That would really be a help. It would be a help to me.

I'm having another child. You can study there. So she left and then she went to work in an engineering company where she learned to be a tracer. Now, it's long before technology copied machinery drawings. She used to trace machinery for engineering. And I looked up later when I was writing an autobiography about this. There was a tracer society in late Victorian times. Tracing was an activity done by women. They had small, neat hands, neat handwriting, and they could do it. And they did it in lots of engineering works,

which is, of course, where she met my father, the engineer. To that extent, she got a job as a tracer, and then she did very well. And there came a day when the top job of the office of people sitting at drawing boards and so on, the top job was available, and she was clearly the best, as indicated her colleagues. But she was a woman, so she wasn't eligible. She wasn't eligible even to apply for it. So that was that.

So in a sense, she didn't even know she was frustrated. She just had this repressed anger, which came out in middle age as depression. And then, of course, along I come and I pass the 11 plus and then I get a scholarship and I do the things that she would have done if she'd lived in a more equitable world mine wasn't equitable but it was a lot more equitable than hers and so she could see me having the opportunities and it built up a tension between us in which she demanded I do everything perfectly you know I mean

when it came to as as it were, laying the table, why is this not here? Why is the salt and pepper not there? Where's the sugar? And she became a perfectionist and transferred it on to me, which made quite rough going, really. Did you internalize it? Do you think you were a perfectionist or you were very critical of yourself in some way? No, I was very critical of her. I knew I had to get away from the degree to which she controlled both myself and my sister. I think my father knew that as well, because on the other hand, you see, my father's attitude, when I was in the sixth form, my mother thought it would be quite nice to have just a job in a local shop or something. And my father said, I'm a top executive

now. My wife doesn't work. You're not going out to work. So even that late in her life, when she wanted to seize an opportunity, her own family put a stop to it. So there was nowhere for her to go. So of course she was full of rage and she could see me getting away. And then she could see me eager to get away because of the impact that her own life had. So it was complicated and sort of predictable. It's now in a hundred novels by frustrated women. Did you ever have a conversation with her about it later in life? No. No, she died of cancer. She died of leukemia when I was what, in my mid-twenties. And what was interesting, they say, don't they, that the grief is terrible if you've never made up your quarrels.

They say, don't they, that the grief is terrible if you've never made up your quarrels. And I had never made up my quarrel with her. So I was enormously bereft by her death. And, you know, I knew that something had gone which could never be fulfilled. And she hadn't had her desserts, as it were, as millions of others hadn't either. I mean, you know, she wasn't exceptional in that. But she was rather sensitive to it and was deeply deeply unhappy internally unhappy she was and and she would say things like when we say what is the matter can you tell us why you should not speak you see for several weeks at a time can you express what it is and she would say if you don't

know you know i'm sorry if you don't know what's wrong i mean that's it so she couldn't explain it so I've always been rather sympathetic to that generation that crop up in novels when they're written about by people of my generation about their parents and how fascinating that you have made such a successful career out of expression out of finding the right words I feel that you are someone who is never lost for the opposite word. And I feel you'll also know this. I can't remember whose quote this is. I think it might be Carl Jung,

but that quote about living the unlived lives of your parents. Yes, it sounds very much like you were also... No, the other thing I was doing, I was fulfilling my father's dreams because he was an educated man. He didn't go to university. He worked at the same engineering company for many years, became a top executive, et cetera, retired at the retirement age with a very good pension

and paid golf for the rest of his life. He was brighter than that. He wanted to be an artist. There were lots of things he wanted to do that he didn't achieve. So to have a child, male or female, didn't matter, get a scholarship to a university and get a degree, fulfil his dreams. And so he was enormously proud of me and let them show that. So that was another important element of my life.

Let's get on to your first failure, which is that in your early teens, you wanted to be an actress. Don't all small children want to display and show off. I did to a very great extent. And we lived in an unmade up road. It was all rubble and it was part of a new development from the 1930s. And it stopped at the water and the building stopped. But the field stayed at the end of the road and we used to play in the field and there was a shed, a workman's shed. And the children, there were about 10 of us, used to go into the shed, open the shed and put on shows for each other, singing, dancing, la, la, la, la, la, Betty Grable, that kind of thing, and show off.

I mean, showing off, that was what it was. But I did like it when people applauded and I even liked it when my mother shouted, come in, come in, you can't be doing that rubbish late into the evening. I knew that it was kind of cheeky. I knew that it drew attention to myself. I knew that people liked it and the approval was very welcome. And it wasn't long before I was in the school plays. Drama was very important in girls' grammar schools. And I was in every play we did. There were a particular group of girls who liked acting. I played Malvolio. Can you imagine? I played Malvolio. I was good at getting laughs.

That was quite fun. So I did quite a lot of that. And eventually I was directing the house play and I was always in these things. And so I thought, you know, we all used to go to the local rep. Cities had reps in those days, theatres, which did a different play every week with the same cast of actors. So I used to go every Friday night with my friends to the local Tudor in Bramhall, and we thought that was wonderful. And I thought, it's acting. That's what they're doing.

They're acting every week. They do a different play. What a gorgeous life that must be. They learn the words, they go on stage, and while they're performing one play, a gorgeous life that must be they learn the words they go on stage and they while they're performing one play they're rehearsing the other and that's the life they lead I thought I'd like that so I found out that you needed to train to do that and I learned there was somewhere called RADA there was no internet I couldn't look it up on google or anything but I found out there was something called RADA. I didn't know there were any others. And then I found out, I don't know whether I wrote

to them or not, somehow I got to find out that it was extremely expensive the family would have to pay. And I put this to my parents and the mother said, out of the question, there's no way we're going to pay for that kind of thing. Now that of course embodied her dislike of the idea of me being an actress at all, because that was a showy, flashy career for a woman to pursue. Now that, of course, embodied her dislike of the idea of me being an actress at all, because that was a showy, flashy career for a woman to pursue. You know, actresses were no better than they should be, a lot of them. And she saw that as sort of bordering on scandalous. So she just said, well, we're never going to afford it. So I thought, I'll save up. I'll save up the money. So I took a job at the weekend serving cakes to local visitors to a hotel.

It doesn't make much. I got paid a pound a day, a pound on Saturday, a pound on Sunday, and a few tips. So if on the rate of about £2.50 a week for the summer months, that was never going to pay for RADA. No. And it slowly dawned on me that this effort I was making with all this ambition stoked up and all these cakes being handed round, they're never going to meet.

I had to admit that I was not going to do that. Did the unfairness strike you, that simply because of where you were from and your background, you couldn't fulfil this dream? Oh, no. No, no, no. That was the order of society in those days. Everybody knew their place, as it were, and not consciously, but you were aware that you belonged to a certain group of people,

a certain class. I began to realise it was cool that I was in the sixth form and getting more and more radical. No, I didn't mind that because I thought life was going to set you a lot of problems and it was your job to solve the problems. And this was my first realisation that you wouldn't ever necessarily triumph. You said in your email to me that you only got as far as £19 and I think it was £17. Was it? £17 and £6. I didn't quite make £20. What did you spend it on?

Oh, I can't remember. I can't remember. It probably went into my post office savings account. Are you still drawn to watching other actors? Is there still that burning love that you have for that sense of going to see a repertory play? Yes, I've always had a huge admiration for good acting and also for the personalities of actors. huge admiration for good acting and also for the personalities of actors. I mean, you do need to be able to survive tough times, bad reviews, criticism from directors, envy from other actors, dislike of the public, like of the public. I mean, it's a roller coaster.

They have enormous stamina and strength of character. You've only got to look at the leading stars and you know that they're groomed by, because I was going to say toughened, because actually that's, but that's not true. They're kind of groomed by experience to know what this life is about and to endure it for the sake of it. And they recognize that, and they recognize that its value comes

when they step out and entertain an audience and they please the audience or they have a relationship with the audience. The people out there who are listening to what they have to say and responding to the mood and the style of the work they do. And that's apparently tremendously rewarding, and I can believe it. We're probably going to touch on this a bit later. And I know that your story has moved and is much more than this. You had an affair with Harold Pinter, which was longstanding and known about by many people. And I wonder whether part of what attracted you to that was because you could talk about the craft of theatre. Maybe there wasn't that much talking, I don't know.

I don't think, Harold wouldn't have really talked about the craft of theatre. I was attracted to the voice, which was the most amazing, mellifluous voice, wonderful voice. And also he was always quoting poetry. He knew a huge amount of poetry off by heart. It just came into the conversation a lot of the time, any conversation and not just with me. So I enormously enjoyed his fluency with language. It poured out of his conversation. He was enormously witty company to be with. Everybody knew that. He was a marvell company to be with. Everybody knew that. He was a marvellous raconteur. All his friends enjoyed that.

All of that carried me along on a tide of admiration. But he was very exacting as well because when he had an acting career and was on stage more regularly than when I'd first known him, he certainly liked to be admired. And if you didn't immediately rush in with praise, there was a rather frosty reception. And eventually a sort of,

you were in the audience tonight, were you? You know, by way of reminding you, oh yes, you were wonderful. It's too late. Oh, the fragile male psyche. Let's move on to your second failure, because your failure as an actor meant that you had to come up with a different career path. And as you've mentioned, you got a scholarship to Neenham College, Cambridge, and you found yourself there, but you wanted to be a historian. What happened? historian. What happened? Well, I did enjoy very much studying. I enjoyed my schooling. I enjoyed studying for what was school certificate and higher school certificate. And you took five subjects in higher school certificate, which I took history, geography, French and Latin.

It was the history that I enjoyed enormously. I enjoyed the others too, but history particularly still do. And I thought that would be marvellous to study history at university. And I enjoyed the others too, but history particularly still do. And I thought that would be marvellous to study history at university. And I took the history entrance to Newnham, which was a specific exam for Newnham itself. And I didn't quite make it. And they sent me a very sympathetic letter saying, I'm so sorry, you're, as it were, on the edge. It wasn't phrased like that, but the faculty is just full. And I remember getting that letter

and thinking, that's it. That's another down the pan. And then I thought, no, no, there must be a way around this. And I still do this when anything goes wrong. I think, yes, but there must be a way around this. I wrote to Newnham and said, I'm so sorry not to be enrolling to read history, but it does occur to me that I'd be interested to take an economics degree, if by any chance there's a place. And they wrote back and said, how interesting a coincidence that is, because one of the girls has just dropped out, leaving a place for someone to study economics. Would you like it? And so I did go to Cambridge, and I did read economics for one year. A mystery it was to me then.

I mean, it's less of a mystery these days. I swiftly became a Keynesian and I became rather addicted to economics. But after one year, I switched to history and I read history for two years. And it was wonderful. In another life, I would have liked to have been an academic historian. Oh, me too. I did a history degree too. Did you specialise in anything? Did you

do a dissertation? I did. I specialised in an entire paper on the Anglo-French relationships between 1795 and 1796. Now, this was the height of the war with Napoleon. I was required to study all the diplomatic papers. So it was a really good training for the mind and also for a future career, if you wanted to be a diplomat or whatever. I mean, an entire paper based on diplomatic correspondence and how, well, you think of politics today, you can imagine what it's like. That was pretty dense and as thorough as you could be. That wasn't very jolly, I must say.

When you said there that you always look for a solution where there appears to be none, has that been something that has been a lifelong skill that you've had? Do you think you were born with that or did you learn it along the way? Well, it makes the way forward possible, doesn't it? If I get rejected for something, I try to seek another way to find the same satisfaction, I suppose. I wouldn't cite any particular example of done this. I must have done it over 40 years. But if an article that you've written is rejected by a newspaper, I don't let it lie. I would think, who else would be interested in it? Now, that's a very crude example. I'm happy to say they don't

usually reject my articles, but it's a way of not giving up on something. And I think that's what I always do. Because that requires a degree of self-belief, which I really admire, because some people might take that rejection very personally and think, well, it's not good enough. I'm not good enough. I give up. I believe that, you know, try, try, try again. These are old fashioned, rather puritanical values. If you're rejected, you must come back fighting. It's behind a lot of sport. It's behind all competitive matters, really,

that you must find a way to triumph in your own terms if the world is rejecting you. Now, it can go sour and lead to bad behavior. I mean, Trump is a classic example of that. But I think I don't take rejection easily. I don't let it distress me too much, or if I do, not for very long, and think, right, okay, what am I going to do about this? Am I going to give up? And if I give up, then it's a positive go up because I've switched my attention. So I'm still in charge, as it were. But very often,

I don't give up. I think of some angle around or something adjacent, which will help me find the same satisfaction. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo. All the time. So if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions.

If you're a hater first and a lover of pop culture second. Then join me, Hunter Harris. And me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast, Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mess, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry.

The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise. Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus

in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across

the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. How much do you think your psychology is formed by the fact that you have lived through massive social change? So you lived through the Second World War. I don't know how much you remember of it. Quite a lot. I'm sure. You lived through the 60s, as we've talked about, the first wave of feminism. And recently you've lived through the COVID pandemic. But I'm very interested in that idea of where you get up, you dust yourself down and you try again.

How much of that might have been informed by the war? No, I think that was informed by several things. I think it was informed by my school, which was a girls' grammar school, which wanted its girls to do well. And that was generally implied that if you failed, you tried again. So there were lots of marks and lots of tables and people being the top of the class or not. It engendered competitiveness in us. The other was the church, which I was very devoted to in my early years. I was a regular churchgoer. My parents

were. I would go on my own. I was devoutly connected to Jesus, who I saw as my mentor and whose life I believed. I certainly believed and still do in the actual message of Christianity. But that was a certain Protestant ethic of trying, making an effort to do well, to do well, to be good and to succeed. All that came with the church. So I've got the school and the church and then I've got society. We've got the class society. I don't belong to the upper classes who clearly have a better time than you do if you're really struggling at the bottom of the ladder. So the way then would

be to join them and go to a university. So all these existing situations were behind me. Do you think we've lost that now? Well, I think we've lost the church impulse. Indeed, what has happened has become the sense of the democratising of all ambition, so that people, as it were, feel more entitled to things. Nobody felt entitled in my day. They felt they were not entitled because people kept telling them to. They weren't entitled. You're not entitled to that. We don't do that. You don't go to grammar school, you know, whatever. And there's now a sense born of what I regard as a marvelous social revolution, which was the opportunity of free education, free health came with the welfare state. Marvelous. But somehow what has evolved in people's lives is a sense that they're entitled

to things as of right. And that really is quite hard to marry with the fact that we have different degrees of skill, different degrees of attention, different degrees of concentration, and different sets of background, whether we're from a prosperous house or living a poor home, whether our family are happy and settled and psychologically supportive, or whether they're a quarrelsome, angry family. So all of that makes people thinking, well, I'm not getting what I want. And aren't I meant to be entitled? You know, where's the Human Rights Act? We should all have this, that and the other. I only speak of that to caricature it, because of course, a lot of people just simply work hard to pass their exams. I think there's too much weight placed on the importance of doing well in exams. But that's

placed on children by, not only their parents, but with their parents' goodwill, because they want them to get on. And getting on is what people want. Now, when they do research to find what it is that children want, children often want to be happy. They would like to have a happy home. And they would speak of growing up and having a family possibly like their own. But there's a whole other world of social media and general magazine culture, which grooms children to want to be rich and famous. Rich, famous, glamorous, a wag, a showgirl, an influencer. How glamorous would that be? I think it would be a nightmare myself, but somehow they see that as a marvelous objective. And that's leading them to misunderstand where

to get the rewards in life because you become an influencer. Well, if you do and you have a lovely time, that's great. But secret of your happiness is going to lie elsewhere. And where's the secret of your happiness lie? going to lie elsewhere. And where's the secret of your happiness lie? A network of satisfactions. The satisfactions of my family, the satisfactions of a broad swathe of friends who matter a great deal to me, the satisfaction of having the time and the resources to access books and ideas and music and so on, all of which adds up to an extremely pleasant way of life and is very supportive. And against that background, I make an effort to do whatever comes my way by way of challenges or opportunities. They're thinning out a bit as you get towards 90,

but the rest doesn't, the families and the friends. A network of satisfactions is such a beautiful phrase. Before we move on to your final failure, I want to ask you two questions about this. One was, I sort of moved too rapidly on from the fact that you said that you remember quite a lot of the war. What's your abiding memory of that time? Was it rationing? Rationing I remember, but I remember the air raid shelter in the garden, which my father dug early in 1939. It was a rather ramshackle and it was the sides kept crumbling in. It was soil.

He dug a huge, huge pit. I mean, large pit, big enough to take bunk beds and two chairs for himself and my mother. Then it was a metal corrugated iron with earth on top and a staircase down. And it was full of spiders. And I remember I was a staircase down and it was full of spiders and i remember it was five or six it was full of spiders and we were meant to go to sleep with all these spiders on the other hand i do remember the air raid warning and going and my father scooping me up to bed to take me down to the shelter so i mean i was glad that you know i was out of the danger but then i had to be there with the spiders. The other thing I remember is Manchester burning.

I do remember the blitz on Manchester. Now, I lived about 12 miles south of Manchester, south of Stockport, indeed. But I remember the blitz burning. They went for the docks in Manchester. I remember my father taking me, I don't know why he would do this, into the garden and lifting me up. So I was, you know, five or so. And said, you see that glow in the sky.

It was like a huge sun setting. He said, that's Manchester burning. And I remember John Peel, the DJ, always remembers that happened to him in Liverpool. His father took him and said, never forget that's Liverpool burning. So we saw these great cities being blitzed by German bombers. And you don't forget

that. No, and it must give you a sense of the great uncertainty of life and therefore... Yes. And it was kind of apocalyptic. It was just a city full of people. I wasn't worried about the individuals. I was just amazed by this event, which was just visually so extraordinary. The second question I wanted to ask you about this period of your life, when you got to Cambridge, was it a struggle to fit in? Because that idea of having come from Stockport and being aware of your social standing in life and then getting to Cambridge, which is this incredibly elite institution, what was that like? Well, it was exactly as you say, it was quite hard to fit in.

I still had a Stockport accent, which I struggled to dispose of. And what was later pointed out to me was a sort of shameless snobbery. But my mother sent me to elocution lessons because she wanted to do well by me. She wanted me to do well in life. And she had a strong Stockport accent. And I didn't do very well at the elocution. I didn't score well. I kept my accent. I didn't understand it. So when I got to Cambridge, Newnham was a wonderful college and full of extremely bright people. Quite a high percentage of them came from sort of Rodin and St. Paul's and all the girls' public schools. And they were

enormously self-confident. I mean, they were staggeringly able to look after themselves, and I was in awe of their confidence and didn't know how to imitate it. Well, of course, the answer wasn't to imitate it, really. It was to find myself. But I tried to do a bit of imitating by copying how they spoke and using their words and just sort of admiring them, really. But then I took up the acting at Cambridge and joined several of the acting fraternity.

And then it didn't matter because I could act like they could act. We could both act and we acted together and that was fine. But it wasn't extraordinarily class ridden. I mean, they weren't horrible people. They were just, they came from moneyed classes and they had homes in the country and things like that. I lived in a semi in Stockport. And so I thought, oh, I see. Right. That's how the world works. Goodness me. It was quite a

learning curve. And then joining the BBC a few years after that, that also was a fairly class-ridden institution, very male-dominated. Did you feel an imposter-ish sense there as well? No, I didn't at all. It wasn't in the sense that the BBC then, you entered by virtue of passing exams to get in. There is skills. You had to take exams to join the BBC. Well, I mean, I had to pass an audition in which my being in the acting circle was counted in my favour. So a series of auditions of interviews. And then you were thought, it was thought you were able to do that. I wasn't able to do it because I became a studio manager, which was technical, and I was hopeless at it.

But they didn't know that until I got there. Its divide was between the sexes, particularly in the BBC in those days. It was run by a whole lot of men, some outstanding women. I mean, people like Joanna Spicer, brilliant women, but there weren't many of them. They had to be really tough and talented to get through. And there were some radio producers who were women, but there were just very few. And the men organized it. I mean, there were marvellous departments and brilliant

people doing it, but it was mostly run by men. So how did you handle that? Did you have to become tougher? I don't think so. I knew Did you have to become tougher? I don't think so. I knew that you had to be good at what you did. And I was quite sociable and I was quite pretty. So I was a reasonable person to have a coffee with or to go to the local pub. There was a lot of that at the BBC in those days. I think there still is.

To go out to the pub. There was something called the BBC Rep. Actors, male and female, obviously, about 40 of them who were in all the radio dramas. I don't know whether it exists or not today. Because I was a studio manager, I was stirring the tea in the tea, this is Dale's Diaries teacup,

and I was walking on gravel and I was slamming doors. I was making sound effects. Do you know you actually do use coconuts to make horses' hooves? That's brilliant. I was doing the horses' hooves. So I was doing that, but I was doing it next to Do you know you actually do use coconuts to make horses hooves? That's brilliant. I was doing the horses hooves. So I was doing that, but I was doing it next to the actors, you see, and they were rather sweet. They gave me a hug, like, why don't we have a drink and that kind of thing. So the whole social world within the BBC was really open to everybody.

And you made your friends where you did. Of course, the person I was to marry had come from Cambridge with me and he had a job in the BBC too. We're coming on to your marriages. Was it a struggle to be taken seriously? When you first appeared on screen and you were interviewing these extraordinary people, I mean, I wonder if one particularly sticks in the mind in terms of interviewee, but was there a struggle to be taken seriously ever? No, because they expected me, I'd got the job and I just had to get on with it. So once I got the job, no idea why I got it, they expected me, I'd got the job and I just had to get on with it.

So once I got the job, no idea why I got it, they tried me out. And I did some terrible interviews. But they said, well, okay, have another go. So it was kind of touch and go to start with. But I mean, the point is, we were all so busy getting the program on the air. You didn't, nobody patronized you. You just do it. Not bad for a bloke. It was as bad as it got.

Marcel Duchamp, tell us about him. Now, Marcel Duchamp was already celebrated and had already done his famous urinal sculpture. And he had an exhibition of his ready-mades in the Electo Gallery in London. And because our program was every single night, we were always putting out messages to PRs saying, if you've got someone interesting, tell us about them. And they said, did you know Marcel Duchamp's in town? And he'd be willing to come along. And we said, yes. And I don't know why I've always been interested in their art. They asked me to interview him. He was a rather view him. He was a rather slender, rather thin, thin-faced, focused, gentle, and rather gallant Frenchman. Very French, very Gallic. He smoked cigars even in the studio. And he brought with

him one of his ready-mades, which was a stool, which had a wheel stuck into it. Now, this was art in those days, but in those days, it was considered extremely bizarre. Now, this was art in those days, but in those days it was considered extremely bizarre. Now, of course, you said, yeah, there we are. That's obviously art. You wouldn't do that. But it was unusual. And he brought it and put it in reception. And he sat back and said to the receptionist, can somebody fetch me? And when I arrived to collect him, he said, I have been sitting, watching the public coming and going and watching my piece. And they go, oh, what's that? And he loved it. He said they all have different reactions to it.

That's what art should do. Oh, that's so good. Yes. It's about what we bring to it and how it changes our perception of the world around it. He had such a good time. Oh, that's such a wonderful story. So then I took him out to the studio and said, well, what is your art about? Just tell me what you're doing. And he gave me a complete exposition of conceptual art. And I think it's

probably the only time he did. I know it's quite rare because the Tate Gallery took an interest and said there's nowhere else that he has given such an explanation of what conceptual art is. He really wanted to talk about chess. He was completely obsessed by chess at the end of his life. And I can imagine he was, I've got an extraordinary mind, I can imagine he was good at chess, but also obsessed with how to work it and play it and how to, well, of course, I was no good at that. My mind was too flighty to concentrate. He was just very charming and happy to talk about art, which is quite tricky because artists on the whole say, look, I do the art. I don't talk about it. Look at the art and make

what you like of it. I don't want to talk about it. But he didn't. He liked talking about ideas. And just quickly, because I just can't let this opportunity go without peppering you with all the questions about the amazing people you've met. Nelson Mandela, we were talking about before we started recording. And you were the first person to interview him when he was released. Well, there was a great expectation that he was going to be released for months and months. All the media were getting very excited and all the newsrooms were ready to send people, which they did. And he came out. And if you remember, he walked with Winnie with their hands clenched together as he was released. And there was a huge press conference and lots of

people asked lots of questions about everyone got one question. But we had taken a different route because we had a personal contact with Walter Sisulu, whose nephew was a researcher working for us. And we knew that Nelson Mandela was going to fly once he'd done the press conference, going to take a flight to Stockholm to meet Walter Sizzulu, who was at that moment the chair of the organization, you see. And so we said, if we go to Stockholm, would he give us half an hour? And initially they all said, no, no, he's coming to celebrate now. He's done all the media. He's done the press conference. And we just said, just one person, one half hour. And he said, oh, all right. So at eight o'clock in the morning, I sat there and waited for him to arrive.

And he said, oh, all right. So at eight o'clock in the morning, I sat there and waited for him to arrive. He sat down, utterly charming, very elegant man, very tall, totally composed, already a leader in his own mind and indeed in the world's mind. And I talked to him for half an hour. We didn't cut a word.

We just lifted it and put it straight out. And he was very interesting. He talked about how he learned Afrikaans while he was in prison. And he was beginning to miss his warder, because while he was there, he had the same warder every day. And the warder, although part of the Afrikaans and part of the establishment, would bring him an extra blanket when it was cold. And he said that mattered so much. And he talked to him in Afrikaans. And he said, and I'll never see him again. And he was a friend.

Gosh, that's very moving. I mean, he was a real human being. He was a very, very moving person. Your third and final failure is divorce. And you wrote in your email, whether the unavoidable counts as failure, which is an extremely interesting question. Do you think it does count as failure? It's hard to know, isn't it? Because what makes it inevitable? Because in a sense, very different influences conspire to

make a divorce inevitable. And of course, my second marriage lasted 25 years, and I was one of the influences trying to make it survive. So I was doing lots of things in order to avoid failure. But eventually, it became inevitable because of the circumstances of personal behavior were so gross that I really had to stop. And life had become intolerable for both of us, I would say. And so it was my move to be divorced, at which point I had a total sense of failure. I'd failed to solve the conundrum that is an unhappy marriage. How do you salvage what it was that brought you together when you were so deliriously happy to be together? What has gone wrong? And what is the remedy? Well, quite often there is a remedy. I mean, I do know people who've remedied what seemed to be catastrophic situations and gone on to survive

well. We failed to do that. There were various circumstances that made it really, really difficult. And so it was inevitable. Nonetheless, in the weeks and months after my divorce, I had a great sense of failure, a huge sense of failure to salvage what had been very precious. This is your second marriage. So to put this into context, you'd had your first marriage, which lasted 17 years with the producer, Michaelwell two children and then your second marriage which lasted 25 years and ended in 2001 do you think part of your sense of failure was not just that you'd failed to solve this problem but your age as well I haven't thought of that and I don't think so because I've I know all the interstices of the relationship which did make impossible, which I won't go into now.

But they were personal and they were behavioral and they were to do with character and changing in character as people developed over a period of 25 years. I married at 22 out of Cambridge and we were probably innocent children sort of walking hand in hand to paradise I mean we thought life was utterly beautiful and wonderful we had a great deal in common and we were very happy for a long time both of my marriages were happy for a long time I remember interviewing Martha Gellhorn about Ernest Hemingway did she actually marry him I don't know I don't think so, but I might be wrong. But she had an affair with him, certainly, didn't she? And I remember saying, you know, and when a marriage goes wrong, I said something about your relationship was a failure.

And she said, stop. She said, that isn't so. That isn't the situation. A relationship can be very, very good and can then go wrong. And I learned from her not to judge so quickly that things are a failure. So I was reluctant to confront the failure. But then when I became inevitable, it was very painful. I totally agree with Martha Gellhorn that a relationship isn't a failure just because it ends. It's part of your life. And maybe it was only sent to you for a specific amount of time and for you to have learnings about yourself. I'm very fascinated about how much you feel guilt played into it or didn't play into it. When I have heard you be interviewed before about your marriages, but specifically your first one, when you had this long affair with Harold Pinter, I'm very struck by the empowered way in which you talk about it.

Because so many women, and probably a lot of men as well, are riven by guilt the whole time, are riven by the shoulds and the oughts that they inherit from social conditioning. And it feels to me as if you chose to have an affair with Harold Pinter, and you therefore chose not to feel guilty about it in order to have the full experience of it I've always thought if you're going to feel guilty and it's going to make you sound happy don't do it it's quite simple how to deal with guilt don't do the things that make you guilty well the corollary of that of course is if you're doing something don't feel guilty and make a decision and that's what I did when I was embarking on my relationship with

Harold, which was incredibly important in my life and serious. And the dilemma it presented was very serious too. But in a sense, in a nutshell, which sounds like a cliche, I had to say to myself somewhere, if you're going to do it, do it, but don't feel guilty. If you're going to feel guilty, don't do it. And I took the option of doing it and not feeling guilty. And I did it quite consciously. I mean, I knew that the alternative was to feel guilty, but it wouldn't have been any satisfaction. And I got a great deal of satisfaction out of my relationship with Howard, who was an extraordinary person. And I don't regret that.

It went wrong, not particularly in any disastrous sense, but it didn't last more than seven years. Not bad considering. And, of course, we remained close friends. I've spoken about circle of friends that support me. We remained close friends for the rest of his life, right until his death. Indeed, he phoned me. I knew he was very ill. He'd been ill for about two years. But we regularly had lunch to catch up with all our lives, our children's lives by that time. But he rang me two weeks and said, this is the last call. I'm dying. But I have to make this call because of what we

meant to each other. So I mean, and that was years and years. That was 2000, I think, the year 2000. So, I mean, it wasn't a shallow relationship at all. It survived the sexual excitement of the affair and what was all in the play and became a very important bond in my life. You mentioned the play, the play is Betrayal, one of my favourite plays.

I hope that's all right to say. Partly because it's short. What do you like about it? It's short. I think too many plays are overly long and I think it's just concise and stripped back and I really appreciate that. Harold would be furious. I'm so glad he's not here to be across with me. No, beyond that, I do think it's a wonderful examination of human relationships and I could relate to a lot of it but that idea of rejecting guilt is fascinating to me does it have to be predicated on a sense that you're not going to deliberately hurt other people because I know that when you were having this affair you were very protective of your family in a way you would always ensure that you would be back.

And in those days, you were cooking the supper and you'd be back in time. And so was there a sense that you had to protect those people and not hurt them? Well, yes, I did want to. I mean, I love them. I love them all. So of course I would. The whole idea of protecting people, I think, is as a natural from my upbringing. You know, I spoke of, you know, church and home and society. I was taught as a natural from my upbringing. I spoke of church and home and

society. I was taught that you didn't hurt people. I still don't think you should. And I still try not to. That was a natural to me as an impulse, which I perhaps didn't fulfill totally, or I wouldn't have had the affair. So we've got the impulse to avoid hurting people with the whole business of guilt and the whole drive of this enormously powerful relationship. So you're trading the different values as you go through. It makes for quite an interesting life. Yes, but how wonderful now, looking back, that you did take those chances, that you didn't deny yourself this extraordinarily important aspect of your life? There was a point at which, in the course of knowing Harold, first of all, when I thought,

am I going to go on with, when it obviously became a rather serious commitment, am I going to go on with this or am I going to stop it here and now? Just decide. And I decided to go on with it. And once I'd made the decision, then it was made. That was it. Your second husband was 12 years younger than you. Go, Joan. Very proud of you for doing that. And it sounds to me like that was the marriage failure that had most negative impact on you personally in terms of you feeling bereft.

And perhaps maybe you were also dealing with, once the emotional scaffolding falls, maybe you were also dealing with the loss of your first marriage too at that stage. No, I don't want to go into all the roots and all the by-highs and by-ways of this relationship. But I was mostly angry. Okay. So it was anger that fueled me into this last divorce, and rightly so. And in a sense, the anger was my own rage at my not being able to resolve all the dilemmas that I knew existed.

And my anger that they persisted and that they wouldn't go away and that I couldn't solve them. Anger, anger rose and eventually said, I said, that's enough. That's enough. Do you think that's the first time you've experienced that kind of anger? I think so. I mean, I don't know. It was just its own kind of anger, its own kind of anger? I think so. I mean, I don't know. It was just its own kind of anger, its own kind of wrong relationship. So at that level, with that strength, I would say yes. Over a matter in which I had invested so much of my ideas and my life, yes. In the aftermath of that, how did you get through it? If someone is listening to this now and can relate to what you're saying,

would you have any advice for them? I do think you have to fill your life with things generally. But when you're wracked by the sense of disappointment, you lean on your support system, your friends and family, as much as you can and take care of yourself. Work hard the work you enjoy. Do what you find fulfilling. Be as creative as you can and don't smoke and drink too much. Great advice. And now looking back at those divorces, what do you think they taught you?

I think both situations taught me that life comes and goes and you can do things well and things can go wrong regardless of that. You can't always claim to be right. You can be in the wrong and have to sort things out. I'm not sure that I learnt very much except self-reliance and making a decision and staying with it. Once you make a decision, you feel much better. It's letting things meander on in the hope that things will get better. And this applies to

all sorts of things like jobs and where you live or whatever. Once you make a decision about something you're unhappy about, then you feel much better immediately. Shall we move house? Yes, I don't know. Oh, I don't know. And then, yes, we will. Let's buy that one. You feel better. You feel better if you make decisions. Decisions make you feel better right away. Sometimes when I'm a bit depressed, I think, I need to make a decision. I'll go online and buy a dress.

Oh, that's so wise. It does make you feel better. Yes, but that's such a good way of putting it. You're making a decision to do something. It goes back to what we were saying at the beginning really you're making a decision to keep interested to keep doing to not be boring we're drawing to a close now and i'm aware that we are talking a few months before your 90th birthday although i can't quite believe it and i will need to ask you about your skincare regime how do you feel about turning 90 i don't think about it very much, except to think,

am I going to have a party and where? Yes, you should. I don't know where. I don't regard it as anything other than continuing of aging. Aging is an interesting process. You have to commit yourself to it. You can't go on pretending to be young, but you don't have to start sort of deliberately withering and calling on help. I was saying to someone the other day, I'm giving some thought to how I will behave in my 90s. And they went, well, probably just the same. And I said, yes, but I just want to think of it as a concept. What will the 90s be like? How I will keep going? Because I will get more infirm. I will fall in in various ways and hope to recover.

I will certainly save. I've done my downsizing, so I'm living here. You're sitting opposite me in the room where I live. I've done that. I've probably saved just enough to be able to live on my pension, and that will suit me fine. I would like to continue to travel. I shall miss traveling. I said to someone the other day, I'll probably never see India again, and I love India. So I've got to reconcile myself to not seeing places again. Okay, once you've decided that, then you can go to Bath and look at how beautiful Bath is or somewhere local.

So it's a matter of trimming your ship really so that you can get through these different seas. And that phone call that Harold made to you, have you made your phone calls? Have you made your peace? Have you had the conversations that you want to have with people? Not yet. It's much too soon. I've told my children where my will is. In the will, there are certain bequests to various people of small pieces of jewelry and things like that, but there's not much. I'm thinking of having another look at it or adding a few things because that comes to mind. I sometimes think, oh, what will happen to that when I die? Will it

just get thrown out? Because occasionally my daughter takes a look at a lifetime's photographs and says, jokingly, I know, don't worry, I'll just get the skip at the gate and they can all go to the skip. But there's a sort of wealth of photography, rather blurred photographs of my lifetime. Well, I agree it's far too soon to talk about it. Dame Joan Bakewell, Joan, you are a force for good and a wonderful person. And I can't thank you enough for gracing my podcast with your presence. Thank you. Elizabeth, that's fantastically flattering. Thank you very much. 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