How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S18, Ep8 Dawn French on fertility, friendship and being an anti-perfectionist

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

CW: suicide; infertility I know, I know, we don't normally release episodes on a Friday but when you're offered DAWN FRENCH, you release an episode on whatever blimmin' day of the week you can (and preferably all seven of them). I am so delighted to welcome the actor, comedian and bestselling author Dawn French to the podcast. She joins me to talk about being - in her words - 'a bit of a twat', anti-perfectionism, why so many comedians come from military families, how friendship doesn't mean you don't feel jealous and, of course, her lifelong professional and platonic partnership with Jennifer Sauders. We also talk about the death of her father by suicide and what this taught Dawn about grief and survival. And she opens up movingly about years of infertility followed by the decision to adopt her daughter, Billie. An amazing conversation with an amazing person. Thank you so much, Dawn. -- The Twat Files by Dawn French is out now and available to buy here. Dawn French Is A Huge Twat (the live show) is touring the UK through the rest of the year. Book your tickets here. -- I'm going on tour! To AUSTRALIA, mate! You can now purchase tickets to see me live at Sydney Opera House on 26th February 2024 or the Arts Centre Melbourne on 28th February 2024. -- How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [e-mail] -- Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabday How To Fail @howtofailpod Dawn French @dawnrfrench Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Dawn French is an actor, comedian and best-selling writer. She is also, according to her new book and one-woman show, which hilariously detail a litany of moments in which she's embarrassed herself, a huge twat. French's self-deprecating willingness to turn her mockery inwards is part of what has given her work a warmth and relatability that her fans associate with French herself. And yet her comedy has bite. When she wrote and starred in the long-running BBC sketch show French and Saunders with best friend and collaborator Jennifer Saunders, their work

was notable for its feminist edge and risk-taking laughs. French's lead role in The Vicar of Dibley was one of the first mainstream representations of a female member of the clergy. In 2006, French was named as the most admired female celebrity amongst women in Britain in a poll of 4,000 people. Her books, which include both novels and non-fiction, have tackled dysfunctional families, secrets and nature versus nurture, as well as being very funny. Her desire to create came perhaps from her youth. French's father was in the RAF and French had an itinerant childhood never quite fitting in. It was at the Central School for Speech and Drama that she met Saunders. The two disliked each other on site, then luckily

for both them and for us, changed their minds. They've gone on to work together in many capacities, most recently appearing in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Death on the Nile. The desire to keep doing different things is what allows us to make mistakes, French says. It's part of your learning. Dawn French, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. What love the introduction. Well, this podcast is all about making mistakes and learning, and I'm so delighted that you're here sitting in front of me. Thank you.

Yeah, no problem. You say in the book, The Twat Files, that you want to form an anti-perfection league. Yes, I do. Why is that? Well, I think I just came to the conclusion, and it was so simple. Like most good, honest, authentic things in life, it's actually very simple. And I realised that if you can own your mistakes properly and even wear them as badges of honour or display them or present them in some way, you are completely

liberated from any of the shame that is attached to mistakes. We all make them. We all know that we all make them. So why do we pretend that we don't? I'm not sure that we learn much from success. You know, success is great, isn't it? But, and we all want it, of course we do. But really your tinging clear moments of learning happen in your failures. And that for me is valuable. I mean, we all feel humiliation around them. We all feel certain amounts of regret or whatever. But when you look back at them,

and I'm an old bird now, so I can look back at them, I think, well, I'm glad that happened, because then I learned this. Or perhaps I learned not to do it quite in that way again. Or perhaps I learned a bit about my own skill set. Or I learned about my boundaries. Or I learned to have a bit of humility or whatever it was. Every single mistake is a lesson. So why we don't embrace them, I don't know. I mean, you're allowed a moment of cringe. And believe me, I've had many of those. But once you've got past that, really, there's fun to be had. Great. Well, we've done the podcast now that's perfect that's exactly what I needed you to say the end is there part of it as well that is in labeling yourself for twat which by the way I love the word twat don't don't I love it so good and I was advised at the very beginning you know

obviously my promoter said are you sure Dawn are you sure and even my agent I'll never forget when I don't this is what I'm gonna call it oh, Dawn, please don't denigrate yourself, please. And I said, no, no, listen, I'm calling it this. I'm owning the word. I'm not denigrating myself. I'm owning something. It's completely different. The power is entirely different. But I know the promoter said to me, well, I think you've just cut the ticket sales in half because there are people who will find this word offensive for various reasons and I said well I'm this age now I have to be okay with what I think is okay and that is a word my own mother would have been okay to use so I think it's an admonishment but it's an admonishment with a hug in it you know that's what I feel about it and my question was actually going to be,

you've sort of already answered it, but in calling yourself a twat, you reclaim the power. Do you think you're at a stage now, I mean, part of what you do as a comedian, you have to not care what other people think to a certain extent. You do, and that's hard, isn't it? So hard. In this particular cancel culture time that we're living in.

But I also, the great thing about being 65 is that you have to not give a toss at some points. And you have to know yourself. And you have to think, I think I'm at base. I think I'm a well-intended person. And I don't intend to hate or spread evil or incite violence or do anything like that. But I am allowed to live on the edges of my thoughts. I'm allowed to investigate the edges because how else do we form any opinions? Where's debate gone? Where's robust debate where we can all get a bit, you know, get our danders up and or even maybe dare I say change

our minds about something if we don't talk about stuff and comedy is certainly where all where would Lenny Bruce be where would Richard Pryor be where would you know all those comedians that I loved so much who lived right on the edge if they were so censored. I don't think young comedians, up and coming comedians are feeling that censored actually. In fact, I think what's starting to happen now is the pendulum's going the other way, as it always does. And they are pushing back a little bit and inhabiting those spiky edges a bit more. Because as I said in the introduction, and you've rightly pointed out a lot of your comedy has this edge this grit and the oyster that makes it so funny

and when I was lucky enough to be in the London Palladium to see your one woman show the other night I was so struck by how nice the audience was they were they were like people that you would want to spend time with and they loved you do you feel that love do you feel beloved I do I do and believe me I savor it but I do not rely on it I have learned something very important about audiences which is that you are a tribe and they are people that you you, that have followed you perhaps through a longish career, which it is now. So they've repeatedly returned. So they grow a love for you, which is good, or for your work, probably. They don't know me personally, although I try to open up in these shows. But you cannot find your real love in an audience because audiences are fickle.

And if one day they don't love something you do, what am I supposed to feel then? Betrayed? Unloved? No. You know, I have to know my own love and where it lives and where it is fed and nurtured in my family and in my friends. And then a love with an audience is a different thing. It's a beautiful thing, but it's not something you should ever take for granted. And it's not something you should ever rely on, actually. The minute I walk out, as I did the other night at the Palladium, there's this lovely, welcoming sound.

That is great. But in a funny way, the pressure's on then because I think, okay, you're expecting quite a lot from me. I'd better deliver now. And I fear that if I don't deliver, they might not love me so much. And I don't want to live in that place where my self-worth is dependent on their approval of me. Do you see what I mean? I mean, of course, of course I want their approval, but if I don't get it, I'm not going to be worthless because of it. Because if I don't get it, it's probably because I'm experimenting with something or I'm failing a bit.

And I need to be loved all the way through the failure to the other side. And I can't rely on an audience for that. You can't look for your real love in an audience. But what you can do is really be grateful, and I am, for the appreciation of pretty much everything you've ever done, which is what brings them to that place that night. And they make a contract with you, they buy a ticket, they spend their hard-earned money, and they hope that you will entertain them. And that's my part of the contract. I will entertain you. Whether we all love each other remains to be seen every night. But don't think for a minute I don't appreciate it because

I do but I regard it as a pressure in a way yeah have you ever fallen foul of the other side of the line where actually other people strangers attention has been very meaningful to you I haven't I don't think but I know people who. And I see people's self-esteem dip and fall dangerously low when things aren't going so well with an audience. And so I feel I don't want to go there. I've got to stay in my bubble of what I think about what I know, whether I think I'm working well or not, or whether I'm still discovering something, whether I've finally found the right way to do it. And you'll find with most performers, you know, even when we finish this tour, I'll still be thinking about how we could have done it better.

I won't torture myself with that, but that's part of the learning as well, isn't it? You know, I don't think if you're a creator, you ever create the perfect thing. I don't think it's possible. You know, perfection is not. My own mother used to say it. She used to say, we don't think it's possible you know perfection is not my own mother used to say it she used to say we don't do perfect and I thought oh oh that's right you're off the hook the minute you believe that we all try to but we as long as you know in your heart that it's not really possible then it's okay it's okay and perfection isn't human it's not funny and it's not relatable and so everything that you're trying to do is to communicate and connect, which is the antithesis of that. Absolutely that. Absolutely that.

So self-worth. I know that you've said in the past that you credit your father with an enormous amount of that. And I wonder if your knowledge, that deep knowledge that your love comes from your family and that's what you rely on did that start with him I quote that moment with him when he was very sweet with me one night when I was going out in some very bad purple suede hot pants to a dinner to a disco to a dinner guys if I would go be going to a dinner when I was 30 he sat me down and I thought, oh, I'm about to get a curfew. And instead, he just gave me this sort of five minutes of praise about how beautiful I am and how deserving I am of the best attentions and not to settle for anything else. And it was very clever, really, because

I left that room feeling like a majorly prized princess. And actually no boy was going to be good enough for me that night. So in a way, my dad gave me proper armour to deal with any dickheads really. And I've never forgotten it because it was quite surprising. Not that I didn't know that my dad loved me. I did know that. I know that my mum loved me. I knew that. But to have this said to you, it was very important.

So I do attribute quite a lot of it to that moment. But of course, my mum was also doing that, you know, and I was a little fat girl, I could easily have slipped into the cracks of my own low self esteem, I could easily have done and you're supposed to experiment with some of those feelings, I think, as you're growing to find out who you are. But I didn't because I just always thought that I was worth something. And I think that's to do with my upbringing. I think that's what it's to do with. I'm not entirely sure. And what is it about military childhoods?

Because you were the daughter of someone who worked for the RAF. So was Jennifer Saunders and Ade Edmondson, his parents were in the military as well. Yeah, his dad was a teacher but worked with the army, I think, yes. Yes, and then there's Abby, who we employed at Saunders & French, which was our company. We saw a lot of people to come and be a PA for us, or factotum, as she called herself. We chose her immediately because she had an RAF background. So you're drawn to other people. I mean, I didn't know that about Jennifer when I first met her. But, you know, the more I loved

her, the more I realized this is part of why I loved her. It's because you have this itinerant childhood, because you're constantly moving. You've never lived in the same house for longer than a year. You've never had the same friends for longer than a year. You're constantly putting on a personality fireworks display to make sure that you inveigle yourself into new friendship groups and you're not bullied or rejected. So you learn a bit of sort of social manners and you learn techniques. It's exhausting, actually. It's exhausting. And my mother used to say that I was a sleepwalker and I think that was where perhaps it showed the stress of it showed but as a child I didn't rest easy I don't think but it teaches you to be gregarious and to be ready for new adventures

if you like people who have moved around a lot people who understand the weird class system that exists inside the military oh i don't know or there are so many things about how you live where you live in particular kinds of houses and you move from that house to another camp in another part of the country but to a house that looks exactly the same with the same furniture but now new people you know you can never quite keep a dog and you can never you know it's you're moving and you're abroad and then your dad's away from you for two years and you know it's all very weird and so it's a relief when you meet other people who've had the same experience because you don't have to explain it what do you think French and Saunders and your

your long long collaboration both personal and professional, with Jennifer, who I know you call Fatty Saunders. What do you think it's taught you about friendship? Oh, goodness, so much. Well, you know, first of all, as you said, we did not really like each other on first sight. We're very different. We still are very different. I believe we're very different we still are very different I believe we're from different classes if that still is even a conversation I know it's more of a mushy scenario these days when I talk to my kids about class they don't know what I'm talking about they literally don't understand what I mean but I think it's still very it's implied now rather than spoken about openly but the fact that we constantly vote old detonians into office which suggests that there's more insidious really exactly isn't it yeah so when i met jennifer i mean you know i regarded her as out of my league entirely for lots of reasons she was seemingly

confident seemingly she was very beautiful she was an officer's daughter. Now, when you are in the military, these ranks mean everything. The officers live at the other end of the camp. They have detached houses. They have houses with bathrooms with sinks in. You know, there are huge things that make you very different from them. And so I'm part of the oik end of the camp. And really, I didn't mix with the officer's kids. And suddenly, she's an officer's kid. So I was thinking, you're not the type I mix with, slightly plummy voice. But I was so wrong. You know, this is why you should never judge the book. Never do that. And I have a prejudice against posh people. I realise I've always had it. And I still think I have it a little bit.

A posh person has to kind of earn my respect before I can freely give it in a way I would to somebody else, which is mad, really. And I should have learnt these lessons by now. But as soon as we were friends and we shared a flat together, then I thought, oh, that's ludicrous. But she did different things to me. She was invited to things called drinks parties.

She would get invitations, proper embossed invitations. And they'd be on the mantelpiece and they'd say, you know, Jennifer is invited by Fifi. You know, somebody double double-barrelled. Two drinks in Chelsea between six and eight on Wednesday. And I think, what is that? Who is Fiddley, Buddley, Buddley? Who is she? Why only drinks?

Well, you're not going to have your tea. You're not going to have anything to eat. Why are you going for drinks? What drink? What's standing about and drinking? This is not something I'd ever heard of. And I went to a couple of these things with her and they were pretty horrendous.

But these were young people mimicking their parents' behaviour of having their friends around for drinks. You know, this was not something I'd ever heard of. So she showed me all kinds of things like that. And I know that I was just, I was very chippy. And I think I was a bit blunt. I also, my dad had just died and I was dripping with grief

and trying to cover that up. So I think I was not quite entirely authentic, really. But she understood that with time. So yeah, we were very, very different. And it was only when we kind of fell in love with each other when we lived together that all of those prejudices melted away I love that language falling in platonic love it's so important absolutely I don't want to gloss over the fact that your father died by suicide and we'll come back to that I'm so sorry you went through that

at that age thank you a lot of what you say about Jennifer, I can apply to my own best friend. We didn't like each other. I didn't really like her at first sight. I thought she seemed really confident. I was like, she's not going to be the likes of me. And I think it's the most sustaining, most consistent love of my life.

And I think the thing that Emma has taught me is that there's great safety in our attachment. So we can have periods where we've had like one rupture that was then repaired and made us closer yes okay have you experienced that with jennifer yes but you've got to remember jennifer is my very very very close friend but i also have a bestie okay that's aside from jennifer and in fact i have other friends as well. So I have a little group, a little caucus of really beloved, valuable female friends. And probably in that I'd put a gay friend too, a gay man who is an honorary woman in that gang of people that, as you say, I feel entirely safe with, who know me inside out and who support me inside out and for whom I would support them in exactly the same way but Jennifer is right up there and yes I think I've never had a rupture your word

with Jennifer I have with my bestie which we similarly recovered from and learnt from and it was incredibly painful because you can't believe that you would have such a tearing with somebody you love so much but of course that's when it's going to hurt because you love them so much but Jennifer and I have a different kind of system and I think it's because we work together as well as play together which is that we take a sort of constant temperature of each other. So we never have got to a difficult row. We've never had a row. We might have had a bit of sulking.

And even that, I can hardly remember any of that. We seem to have a kind of innate compromise kind of gauge. And I think this comes from working together so because we're writing together we understand what the other person is contributing and who came up with the idea and who's writing it down and who's had the most to do with it but we will get to a moment when I can think of one sketch we did particularly well I had quite strong feelings about the way it should go and she had strong feelings the other way and it it was as if I took the temperature at that moment and thought, actually, she wrote this. It was her idea.

This is the time to surrender. You know, give in. This is her baby. I need to follow here. And she does the same for me. And I don't even know how we navigate it, but we do. And that is a testament to strong, empowering, female, understanding friendships.

Yes. I also love something you've said in the past about how you might've felt jealous about the Ab Fab success that Jennifer had. But because you loved her so much, the pride overwhelmed the jealousy. You could feel both things and actually the positive went out.

I've never heard someone put that into words before and it's so true well you have a cocktail of emotions that's what you have and I'm imagining it's very akin to what being a sister is like I don't have a sister I've got a sister-in-law who I love very much but I don't have a sister and I'm imagining this must be what sisters have to navigate all the time. You know, who's the favourite? Who's the most successful? Who's managed this? Does the other one feel failed because this one has succeeded? I imagine it's a bit like that, like a sisterhood. And so, yeah, again, what I'm all for is owning the rather ugly little moments of jealousy

or failure or anything you're feeling that's a bit difficult and explain it to the other person because we're all human and if that other person has it explained to them they can help you through it it's so much easier that way so much easier and then he had the vicar of dibbly anyway so yeah who's laughing now let's get on to your first failure because i'm just aware that I could talk to you for hours and never get on to the point of this interview but your first failure is that you failed to succeed in any of the dream jobs that you imagined you would have as a kid yeah so talk us through some of those well I mean I'm sure we've all had these kind of jobs but I genuinely believed

as a child that I would be any of these things, that I was definitely going to be at least one of them. One of them was a ballerina because I did ballet classes, which I absolutely loved. It was not, I did not take it lightly. This was serious for me. Age four onwards, but sort of four till age 10, I had a leotard on and went to ballet class with my little tutu in a bag. And I listened to everything I was taught. I read books about ballet. I absolutely loved it. But of course, I did not have the body for ballet. I'm a little round person. But that wasn't the point of ballet classes. Everybody should do ballet classes, men and women alike, because it's so fantastic. It's great for your bones. It's great for your grace. It's great for discipline.

It's great for your body. It's great for rhythm. It's great for every possible reason. And then it was a crashing disappointment to realise that I just didn't actually fit into the category of the prima ballerinas this was shocking to me absolutely shocking and there's something to do with that confidence again from my parents I never thought for a moment that there was something I couldn't achieve if I didn't really work hard enough at it and to realize that your limitations are your physicality it's really a terrible thing so there was that and then there was, like everybody, I've wanted to be, well, I say like everybody, maybe not. I wanted to be a pop star. You know, I've had the hairbrush in front of the mirror, but I've prepared the speeches for the awards that I was definitely going to get. And again, I had to come to the realisation, which I do

talk about a little bit in the show that you saw, that perhaps I can't sing that well. It's perhaps a truth that I have to come to terms with. Whereas in the shower, in my car, in my head, in my dreams, I'm a soaringly magnificent singer of many kinds, classical, opera pop everything and I would you know emulate people that I loved Ella Fitzgerald, Debbie Harry whoever it was and I genuinely believed that I had the ability and again had another crashing disappointment when you think oh people seem to be telling me that this is a door that is closed. Because in the show and in the book you it's incredibly funny you recount this audition for Mamma Mia which is in many ways

your dream role yes and then you had to sing these songs and you thought you were going to nail it and then actually didn't so that crashing realization did that come quite late in life well I think it started to happen early I think people were giving me the clues that I perhaps this wasn't the way forward for me, but I was ignoring them. Like a lot of people who can't sing, you don't know you can't sing. Or if you can sing a bit, you know, you just relish the idea, you fantasize about it because it's such a big dream. So that was another awful crash. And then another dream I had was to be an air hostess. And I think it was because my dad was posted abroad and we went on planes quite a lot when I was young.

And air hostesses used to be, and still are to an extent, but used to be, even especially when you're little, incredibly glamorous. With the beautiful little hats and beautiful little outfits and the walking up and down. I didn't for a second think they were waitresses or they were working hard. I just thought they were massively glamorous and traveling, going to the actual countries that the plane was going to. And when I was very young, I used to, my dad was very short and we're all short in my family. So my mother was forever cutting off the bottom of the trousers that he had and having to hem them. And I would be given the bottom, the fully intact bottom of the trousers, which I place on my head as an air hostess's hat. And I had badges that went on the side.

And so I had many trouser bottoms that doubled up as an air hostess's hat. And I used to push trolleys around my house, encouraging. I wasn't actually interested in serving people I was mainly interested in getting to fantasy destinations where I would just sit by a pool and be glamorous and put mascara on but there's so much here about the power of imagination and creativity yes and hope hope and so how do you how do you learn how to balance well you know here's the fourth one that I need to tell you about was that I genuinely believed I would be a show jumper because I loved horses, really.

Well, with such giant love. And my father, I talk about this in the book, but my father knew that I loved horses. We knew nothing about horses. Our family knew nothing about them. But my father was offered a horse in return for a debt that somebody owed him at a garage and literally one day my father brought a horse home and the horse came with a little foal that she'd had and I was so delighted that I had a horse but this was

an utterly unsuitable horse it was an old horse that hadn't been ridden for years. The saddle came with the horse, but there was no girth and nothing fitted this horse. This horse didn't really want me on the back of her at all. The foal had no interest in me except to bite my tits, which it did regularly. So my father made a girth out of an old tyre that went round the horse. And this is what I would ride and I would have such joy until I went to a gymkhana one day and saw the girls who understand about horses this is Jennifer's world so Jennifer's raised with family understood horses rather good quality horses horses that are suitable for you good tuck the correct outfit pony club all the right rules this is not what I was I was

in wellington boots bad jacket I didn't know that you had to wear um joppers I didn't know any of the rules at all and so I took part in a gymkhana where the saddle started to move around the horse as I was taking part and so there was a very strange moment when I was riding a horse entirely upside down with my head banging on the floor and the horse's legs clunking into my head can you imagine this was my dream of being a show jumper heartbreakingly it is funny but these are the moments in my life where the part of the process is the reality is this dawn. I am not an elegant horse rider on an elegant horse. I am not going to win badminton.

This is not what it is for me. However, there is joy in everything I have had. So in a funny way, what I would say about it creatively is that, yes, all these dreams were magnificent dreams for me, chances for my imagination to grow, but also crushing moments of reality when you realise. And you need those moments to find out where your limitations are and actually what you can go on to achieve and what perhaps you could prove people wrong with. But what I would say to you is that I then went on into a job, didn't I? Where I have been all of these things. I have been all of them. I have danced with...

Including in Mamma Mia. I've been in Mamma Mia. I have danced with Darcy Bustle and Adam Cooper. I've been raised aloft by Adam Cooper. I have been on horseback in beautiful sketches where I'm in charge and I've got the right job. And I've been a pop stars. I've been Bjork and thousands of people. So I've just been in the dressing up box and been able to recreate all of these things for myself for fun. So, you know, it's okay.

Beautiful. 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.

Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I want to talk about your dad yeah in this context because the way that you talk about him is someone who supported you in the pursuit of these dreams yes and he struggled very much with mental health although you didn't know that at the time I think I'm right in saying and he died by suicide when you were 18 yes which in a way is the most awful end to the dream of having a present father

and I just wanted to ask how you are really because I'm okay because I'm 65 now. And although I would definitely say I still carry the sadness of it, I now understand it in a way I didn't at 18. At 18, I was just furious and just so full of grief that it was virtually impossible to survive it, that it was so devastating. But I now, you know, like so many of us, I understand so much more about mental health. And I also understood kind of the battle, I understand now, the battle that my dad was having with his mental health. And bear in mind, we had a very happy childhood.

I had a very happy father, as far as I could tell, because the kind of depression he had was this proper black dog's depression that would visit him and then leave. So when it visited him, he took to his bed and that was called migraines. Dad's got a migraine and he just needs to be in this room and whatever. And my mum would just get on with life. I don't think she even entirely understood what was going on. But she just knew that he was, you know, low and unavailable to us. And he would literally just take to his bed and not be around for a few days. And then he'd get better. And then he'd be utterly cheerful, just exactly as he always was. And those moments were very few.

In my memory, maybe three times. So to me, it didn't interfere with my childhood in any way, but then it was such a massive shock. But of course, then you can trace it back. And then you realize just the mountain he was climbing to be cheerful in between all this stuff. So, you know, all credit to him actually for that. You know, when you make the decision, all credit to him actually for that you know when you make the decision as he clearly did to take his own life he's in seven kinds of hell by then I've never been in those hells so I can't appreciate that at all he's in a hell where he must have thought it is better for all of them if I'm not here that's a big hell as I say I've never been there. So I cannot fully understand

that. But I can forgive it. And I can think, oh, okay, you dealt with this for a long time. So as long as you have peace, I'm okay with that. How does your mother cope? It was very hard for her. And I was due to go to college. My brother was at uni. I didn't want to go to college. I felt awful. It was only a few weeks after it happened. And I wanted to stay at home and be with her. And she utterly refused to let that happen. And at the time, I thought she was being far too stoic. And I thought she was being a bit heartless. But actually, she did all the right things for both herself and for me. Because I went to college and I started my life, I would go home whenever I could.

And I was always keen to get home to check on her and to be with her. But she needed to also recover. And she didn't want to feel responsible for deferring my education for a year. And so we did all recover. We recovered really rather well. We never forgot it. We always spoke about it. And we became a fairly powerful triangle.

I love your Desert Island Discs episode with the great Kirsty Young. Yes. And there's this beautiful bit where you talk about your mother dying. Yes. And her saying it's win-win. Yes. Because either I get to stay here with you or I'm reunited with your dad. What a thing to say.

Do you believe that they're reunited? Oh, I do do I like to believe it I'm not sure if I'm as spiritually confident as my mother entirely was but I like to think it's true and I was at a funeral recently of a friend of mine's mother and they were talking all about that that she was you know joining her husband who died many years ago and I thought yeah this is a comfort to all of us that they're on the other side or whatever it is that people are reunited I mean of course there are holes in this theory because there are people on the other side that we don't like aren't there that we wouldn't want to be reunited with and

there are evil people over there that we really don't ever want to see again and i wouldn't want the stress of thinking you'd have to see anybody because you can believe in heaven where it's only the nice yeah okay yeah okay well done yeah yeah good let's filter out anything we don't like but you know we just make anything suit our you know that was a comfort to me to just think they were reunited again your second failure is your failure to relax yes so so this is why why why I can't relate as someone who watches a whole box set of the real housewives I know you watch yeah I do I do but I think you're probably relaxing while you're watching it yes I am not I am endeavoring to relax okay so has this always been an issue yes and i'm

wondering because we've been talking about my childhood and how how nomadic it was really if that's the right word itinerant certainly i think maybe it's to do with that yeah maybe it's to do with always packing always moving always, always never feeling settled, never believing. I mean, my brother certainly suffers from this, although he's wrangled his need to travel into a joyful thing. So he never stays still for very long, even though he's got a house he lives in. I don't think there's six weeks that goes by without him getting in a van and going somewhere. And I think that's definitely part of our childhood. And I think it's that. I think that there's always a bit of stress. I'm always catastrophizing about what could happen. I get this is a tease. Everyone who knows me and certainly my family have with me, I will have come into this room and I will check that I'm thinking about that bookcase falling on you you know I'm wondering if everyone's at the right temperature and everything's I'm forever on the lookout for things and some things are more catastrophic than others if you're on

stage on your own for two hours I think about the whole lighting rig falling on me I think about forgetting all the words I think about because I'm so busy catastrophizing I have to genuinely literally control that. And that takes a lot of effort. So when you're getting a massage, do you think, as I do, this person could kill me? Yeah. This person could actually strangle me. I don't think I think they could kill me, but I think, oh, I should be tackling to them.

Or, oh, that's slightly too much pressure there. Oh, no, that's going to put my back out. Oh. So I don't entirely submit to it although I have to say now I've moved near somebody who's really really good and she understands me and now I totally trust this one person because I go to one person now not very often once a month and the catastrophizing have you ever imagined something and then it's happened the worst has happened well my dad committed suicide so you know I think if somebody catastrophizes usually it's because the worst has happened

so you can't tell me it's not going to happen because it has but it's unlikely that this sort of thing is going to happen again in my life it's unlikely but I'm on the lookout at all times I also I'm never going to or I'm going to try never to miss the signals again in my life. I am to a fault, constantly interfering with other people's lives who I shouldn't be interfering with, just in case they're not okay. Or just in case there's a way to reach out. Not that I've got the skills to help at all. I haven't. But I'm not going to miss it. That's my mission, if you like. I mean, it is a burden. Because it means I can't relax. And television is definitely the closest I get to it. And I really like quite schlocky bad

television. I mean, I will choose bad television like The Real Housewives over a really good meaty box set of something because then I've got to engage. Whereas if it's schlocky and bad, I can just sit back and just let it come at me. Although I will worry a bit about the people involved, but not enough to have to be exhausted by it. Talk to me about your knee. Oh, my knee. Because that must also make it very difficult to relax if there's a constant thrum of some sort of pain in your body. But I think probably everyone who gets into their 60s,

who's lucky enough to get into their 60s, and believe me, I am grateful for it. I've got plenty of friends who didn't make it this far. You've got to accept things are going to go a bit wrong. The annoying thing about the knee, as I explain in the book, I'm in the show actually, is that it was mainly the result of a silly stunt that I did. Not the original puddle jump in Vicar of Dibley, to clarify,

but another one that I did. I recreated, again, people pleasing and helping out by agreeing to do something utterly stupid. And I did a big fall and I injured my knee. And it's always been a problem since then, but only a little bit of a problem for quite a long time and manageable with injections and so on. But I've got to the stage now where that's a diminishing returns thing. And any minute now, as soon as I finish this tour, I'm going to have a knee replacement. Not something I relish the thought of,

but I'm in such pain with this knee now that I welcome the chance to feel better about it. And it's such a disabling thing. I mean, look, I've got to put it in context. I'm going to recover from this and it's going to be so much better. And I'll be out walking my dog again, which I haven't done for ages. Because it's a funny old thing.

Arthritis in your knee. I was thinking about this this morning. You're told to ice it, keep it cold. You're told to keep it warm by moving it. You're told to rest it. You're told to keep going. I actually don't know all the things I'm supposed to do. So this very morning, I've done exercises to make sure that the muscles stay strong but then I've put it up and stayed very

still to make it then I've put ice on it then I've got in a warm bath and I'm thinking I don't know what any of these things are right I'm doing as I'm told but I'm not sure if any of these things are efficacious in any way but yes you know look I'm going to put my faith in the hands of the knee surgeon and and apparently it's not even a surgeon it's a robot oh that's even better though is it yeah yeah it's very precise my dad is a surgeon who then went and worked for the RAF so I can tell you okay okay yeah no he uh yes it's much more precise and much better success rates yeah Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So final question on this.

If you find it difficult to relax and you're a people pleaser, I imagine that you struggle with boundaries. Yes. Right. So where have you got to with that? Offer hope for the rest of us who are still in the real thick of it. I'm hoping you're going to say that in your 60s, you're really enlightened.

Do you know who you want to spend time with yes 100% I do and I have learnt I hope not to be unkind but to be straightforward with people and this is a lesson from Jennifer I have to say she's the queen of this Jennifer is the person

I could never believe it Jennifer can leave a room by saying a very quick goodbye and she's gone I have to offer to buy everyone a car and check that their holidays are sorted before I can leave. So I'm there for hours and it annoyed her. She said, honestly, this is boring. Nobody wants that. And you're making us late for the car.

So come on. And she also is somebody who can go into the hairdressers and say, I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to talk much. Is that OK? Because I need to read this'm not going to talk much. Is that okay? Because I need to read this or I need to do something. Is that okay? She's perfectly friendly and straightforward about it. Everyone accepts it. It's fine.

In fact, I think they even admire her for it. Not me. I have to be exhausted by the time I've come out of the hairdressers because I'm trying to entertain everybody there and make sure that everyone's happy and that I'm approved of and it's all OK. That's what I used to be like. I think since I turned 60, I thought, oh, please, it's too tiring. It's OK just to say no sometimes. It really is all right to have those boundaries. I thought you were initially talking about boundaries inside the family and things like that, which I don't think I'll ever get that quite right.

But what my family know about me is that I will say, look, I'm just about to interfere now. You're allowed to tell me to F off and I really won't mind, but I am going to say the thing. I'm about to say it. Do you want me to not say it

or shall we say it you know I get I give people their choice now yes and then I sometimes do get it quite wrong but I've found more often than not that if I establish where that I'm going to push the boundaries a little bit people have a choice and then they're much more willing love that your third and final failure although classic people pleaser that you are, you did give me four failures. I did. The fourth one was technology. Yeah, well, that's a bit dull, isn't it? I'm just old.

I'm no good at it. And I get things wrong. And I just don't like it. I know it's awful. I love my phone. I've got an iPad. I don't have a computer. Do you still write your books longhand?

Yeah, I do. And I like that because it looks like my handwriting it looks like my book also you're incredibly good at writing various vernaculars and I think maybe that comes from writing long maybe yeah I also think you edit more as you go along when you write longhand because rubbing out is such a pain in the ass so really I think it through before I commit it to the page. So I don't do a lot of editing after that. I mean, you know, the editor will give me notes, which I might take or leave. Mostly take. By then, it's already been typed up. So it's a bit easier.

But do you know what I would really love? I don't think this will ever happen. I'd like to write a whole book in my handwriting. My handwriting's good. You can read it. Why can't I do that? What a can read it why can't I do that idea why can't I do it I think people think you'll get tired reading handwriting or something I always find it really upsetting when other people unbox their books I mean you must have done this a thousand times you know it's a joy to see it but then I love the cover love it

then I open I think oh some typing I love this idea and I definitely think you should do it because it would change the way that we read it as well I think so yes and my character is in my writing yes and it's when I hand it over and it gets tight that's when I feel like I've lost it a little bit but maybe there's a you know I'm sure all the people at Penguin will be uh scuttling around going, shush, don't stop that. We need to trademark this idea. Yes. Stamp it right here on this podcast.

It's yours. But OK, so the final failure that I'm going to concentrate on is, and you put failure here in quotation marks, and it's something that I deeply relate to, your failure to conceive. Yes. Thank you, first of all, for choosing to speak about this. I have thought about you very often, which is such a weird thing to say, because this is the first time I've met you. But during my own personal journey, I've often thought of you because you adopted, and it was so beautiful to see a woman in the public eye talk openly about that

and offer hope for the rest of us so there's a very personal thank you there as well okay but tell me why you chose to talk about this because I'm not going to feel shame about it there's so much shame attached to it and it is personal there's an element of it where I think this is actually this has occurred inside my body do I really need to be talking about the insides of my body never mind the insides of my heart and my mind and my then husband's heart and mind and body and genitals and all of it really this is personal so it's private in a massive way and it's as you will know it's a huge process. And you never quite know when you're on the other side of it. Although I think I am on the other side of it now, which is why I

can look back at it. And I can own it properly. And I can also refuse to have anybody put any shame around it concerning me, and I would hope concerning you or anybody else who goes through such a tricky time people expect you to get pregnant immediately or whenever I was married into a Jamaican family where you know this was definitely expected and I remember Len's mum grabbing my belly and saying when is this going to be full you know and it was like this is my mother-in-law yes and that was my mother-in-law. And I loved her so much, Mama. Loved her so much.

But she was, you know, she was to the point. And she wanted a grandchild with us. So I was feeling that sort of pressure. But I don't blame her. This was what she wanted. Everyone's very clear. I like it when everyone's very clear. But we were trying.

I also really mind when all the pressure is put on the woman the kind of culpability seems to be with the woman because we tend to protect the guy because somehow it's even more unthinkable if there's any culpability there whatsoever and I didn't like this was I'm talking about friends of mine who were going through similar things and I thought you know in most cases this is a shared thing in fact the doctor I remember that dealt with us said to me 80% of the time when he's putting the sperm in the petri dish and finding they don't want to be friends it's for both reasons when the man and the woman I was thinking well yeah women need to know this because women seem to carry a lot of this and protect the man by doing

that and that annoyed me just the way that constantly it was me having to answer these questions but anyway I learned an awful lot all the way through it and can I ask how old you were when you started trying that's a good question I forget everything definitely in my late 20s I'd say so young you were young yeah and I'm assuming that a lot of your contemporaries were having babies with alacrity in the mouth yes and you have this awful dichotomy don't you you want to be pleased for your friends. It's joy. You don't want to piss on the joy. You want to be part of it. You want to celebrate, but you're dying inside a little bit. You have to deal with your jealousy.

You'd have to deal with your anger. I accompanied friends to their terminations. And, you know, the irony and the fury of that was just, you know, not lost on me. But that is life. I think as well, the language of failure that we assimilate when we go through that experience is often because the medical professionals use that vocabulary, where you are told that you're failing to respond to drugs, that you've got an incompetent cervix i mean not you specifically i don't know i don't know sure your cervix is very competent um i haven't got a cervix anymore haven't you oh that's my scoop for this podcast it's not news i have

talked about it in the past but yeah no because i had such a horrible time through menopause in the end i just oh i had such a terrible messy old timeopause. In the end, I just, oh, I had such a terrible, messy old time. And the doctor said to me, look, do you want this anymore? Do you need this womb anymore, really? It's caused you all kinds of trouble. It hasn't served you very well. And it's misbehaving very badly. Let's get it out.

Oh, the joy. Oh, the joy. Honestly, one of the best decisions I ever made. And the doctor, male, gy gynae was being so careful with me and so sensitive and saying a lot of women feel this is their womanhood that's being a of course it's your decision and I went no no no gone gone gone maybe because he was being so sensitive I was able to make a decision very quickly and honestly I could the liberation from that was enormous but

then I had a particularly difficult time with it I mean yes it sounds like it was the site of a lot of trauma yeah it certainly was how many years were you trying to conceive before you and Lenny started talking about adopting I think maybe five or six Because I remember when I was going through this whole journey, very often people would say, why don't you adopt? Like it was as easy as plucking an apple from a tree. Yeah. And that's not the reality. No, it's not.

And I would love to talk to you about that whole process and how challenging that process was. Yeah, very challenging. I mean, alongside lots of, I was going to say unkind, it's not unkind, it's just unthinking things people say, insensitive things. You know, stop trying so hard and it will just happen. People say these stupid things to you when you're watching your temperature and when you're injecting yourself and all of this stuff

and feeling such grief every month. So what I did feel was that I wanted to be done with the IVF, really feel that I was done with it, not interrupt it, but have had enough of it. You know, you need to be bored with it and annoyed with it and want it out of your life and grieve it before you start an adoption process. I don't think you can well maybe some

people can I wouldn't like to you know judge anybody's decisions but for me I wanted to have that chapter closed and then start a new chapter afresh and so that's what we did in our early 30s I think I'm really bad at days and dates and ages so we did start that process and again one of the difficult things about it just like with the IVF is that you know if you're in the public eye it's quite difficult to go to adoption meetings where you're in a group with a whole load of other people so everybody knows your business you know this is tricky so we had to find a setup where they were happy to come into our home and we did it all quite quietly and it is an amazing process because when they first

started it I remember thinking oh don't be judging me whether I'm a suitable parent and what with your 60 hours of interviews and deciding whether we are prospective people, whether we're a good catch or not for a baby. I felt very judged and I begrudged it a bit. But the more I got to know the social worker, the more and the more she explained her job to me, matching us with the right baby, the more I praised this process because it made me think about a lot of things. And I also thought, yes, yes, if I was her, I would want to make sure that we were the right people and in fact when we were going through IVF we were not considering many of the things that she presented us with and she asked us we interviewed together many many hours together then she interviewed us separately then she

interviewed us separately about each other and so we were asked a lot of very, very personal questions that we hadn't even considered. What is this person like under stress? What do you think they would be like if this or that happened? What if the baby had some problems? What if this? What if that? What if that? Lots of things you don't think about if you, or you don't have to think about if you get pregnant naturally.

Or even if you're going through IVFF you're so busy concentrating on IVF you're not thinking about what the whole future thing so there were lots of moments when I sat back and thought maybe should we be doing this or shouldn't we be doing this so it was very good it was very good process there was a very funny moment when we had to nominate some friends for them to go and talk to and I nominated I've got a friend called Jerry and her husband is called Barry and I put them at the top of my list Jerry and Barry then next was Jennifer and Ade so they went to talk to both of these sets of people and they talked to Jerry and Barry and she said I remember the social worker said you're being very bold putting a gay couple as your top choice i know they're not a gay couple she's a it's a woman jerry and said oh okay they went to talk to them and they went

to talk to jennifer now before they went to speak to jennifer and i said to jennifer obviously you need to give a good account of us and she said of course of course i will you know in any way there's nothing to say. Yeah, of course I will. Anyway, I saw Jennifer just after she'd done this interview and she looked ashen. And I said, everything all right? She went, oh my God.

She said, that woman came in and sat down and she said, we're not here for the benefit of these parents. We're here for the benefit of the child. So if you know anything that you need to tell me, you are now responsible for this child. You need to tell me if there's anything I need to know about this couple. And she said she was just searching in her head for any bad things she could think of.

It's totally the opposite kind of interview to the interview she was planning to give. But luckily mean you know there wasn't a thing terrible but she said she suddenly was very sober and she realized the enormity of the responsibility you know this is a process that is is very useful to go through before adoption happens thank you so much for sharing that I think it will help a lot of people who might be going through something similar or evaluating whether it's for them when you met your daughter Billy yes did it feel like well this is why all of this happened this is why it was a moment it certainly was. Well, the minute we met her and she came into our lives, I think, a week afterwards, you just hit the ground running.

And what, of course, you don't have the preparation time that a pregnant person has. You don't have nine months of thinking about this. You have been thinking about it because you've been in front of all these adoption panels. But suddenly there's a phone call. And in fact, it came right in the middle of, we were about to make a French and Saunders series. And we had the studios booked. We had the directors booked.

We had all our crew booked. We were writing the series, ready to go into the studio. I had the phone call. Jennifer was on the inside of this, what was then a sort of secret, certainly a privacy, about the fact that we were going through this process so she knew and I went oh my god they're saying there is a baby that might be

suitable for us shit I've got to go and she went right right what I'll do is I will take those studios take that time and I'll write that sitcom that I've been meaning to write called Absolutely Fabulous, which came from a sketch that we had done together, but she'd always had in the back of her mind. But Jennifer is somebody who needs a kick up the bum anyway. This was the perfect thing. She covered for me like a proper darling. And she also kept everything private and quiet. And I snuck off and was able to nest in with my daughter. But you do hit the ground running. Suddenly, there's a baby and there's no sleeping and there's everything that goes with it, of trying to understand it all. And it was wonderful. And I've never looked back from that, you know, at all. I don't now feel the grief I had about the infertility at all but I remember it I don't feel

it as keenly as I did but I do remember it I remember it was a process that we went through how old is Billy now 32 yes and I've allowed her to live well it's all your interventions it's all your catastrophizing interventions that have kept her oh she's delighted when i overstep the boundaries all the time and interrupt her life she loves it oh don't you're welcome to intervene with me anytime i just think you're such a wise funny warm enlightened soul i've loved our conversation and i suppose sometimes I end this podcast by asking the person sitting opposite me whether they feel successful and what success in essence

means to them so I'm going to ask you that okay okay that's interesting I don't think I ever think about it much I talk with Jennifer sometimes about work success and just say, God, we've done a lot, haven't we? Done a lot. And I'm pleased with that. What I would say is I'm reaching for contentment. That's what I'm looking for in life. And so I have decided to find my contentment in small things small attainable achievable things I don't want to find my happiness in climbing the pyramids or swimming with dolphins I'm not interested in bucket lists and things that I'm going to fail at I'm interested in time with my family, in a wood, you know, or things I know I can manage that give me great delights. Those are my happinesses. So if I can find contentment with that, which I can,

because actually I find my most contentment, don't tell my family this, in a pasty. And I can have one every day if I like. Yes. So, you know, there's happiness to be had. Dawn French, thank you so much for coming on How To Fail. You're very welcome. If you enjoyed this episode of How To Fail with Elizabeth Day,

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