How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S3, Ep4 How to Fail: Deborah Frances-White

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

My guest this week is Deborah Frances-White: an award-winning stand-up comedian, author and quite possibly the defining feminist of our generation. You'll probably know her from her hit podcast, The Guilty Feminist, or from her book of the same name and if you don't then WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, WHERE?Deborah joins me to talk about failure at improvisation, failure to be a biological mother and how to rebuild your life after leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses. Along the way, we discuss her adoption, the Syrian refugee who lives in her house and why learning to be joyful about miserable failure could actually be the key to long-term happiness. Deborah is such an impressive and clever woman and every time I hear her speak, I learn something unbelievably helpful and new. This occasion was no exception. My favourite bit is where we talk about dating as a data-gathering exercise. Enjoy! How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books The book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day is available to pre-order here. The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White is out now published by Virago.  Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayDeborah Frances-White @deborahFWThe Guilty Feminist @GuiltFemPodChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks      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. This season of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day is sponsored by Fourth Estate Books. Little Black Book, a toolkit for working women by Otega Uwagba, is the modern career guide every creative woman needs. Packed with fresh ideas and no-nonsense practical advice, this travel-sized career handbook is guaranteed to become your go-to

when it comes to building the career you want. Atega was a former guest on How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, and I speak in a completely unbiased way when I tell you that you need this book and this woman in your life. You can find out more about Little Black Book at forthestate.co.uk. 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 this week is a woman who, just like Martin Luther King, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Conan Doyle, needs three whole names to contain her greatness. She is an award-winning stand-up comedian, author, and quite possibly the defining feminist of our generation. Her podcast, The Guilty Feminist, has attracted a stonking 50 million downloads since its inception in 2015, and has a legion of admirers, myself included, who respond in their droves to the show's clever mixing of comic pathos and serious feminist analysis. It has become famous for asking its

guests, who have included Gemma Arterton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Shappi Korsandi, to start a sentence with, I'm a feminist, but. My personal favourite is, I'm a feminist, but I de-tagged myself from a picture at a women's conference where we were all standing in front of a sign which said empowered, not coward, because my ankles looked fat. Yes, that's right. My guest this week is none other than the insanely talented, brilliantly funny, wholly impressive women's woman that is Deborah Francis-White. Deborah! What a lovely introduction. When you said like Martin Luther King, I was thinking, oh my God, where is this going? Hopefully nowhere that compares me to Martin Luther King, but I do

like Uncle Martin have three names. You do? Which is your favourite of the three? Of mine? Yes. I think Deborah. I think it's, yeah, it's go with the lead. And do people always try and shorten it to debbie no well if they do i wouldn't answer because i wouldn't think it was my name it was like someone called me barbara or something else occasionally someone takes that liberty and i make it very clear i'm just like oh you mean deborah i will correct a friend's called me devil debs that's fine you know when people get to a certain level with you but never debbie it really annoys me.

So I'm obviously Elizabeth, which many people complain is too many syllables. Well, I mean, they've got all day. What are they worried about? Yeah, it's often men. It's often men who just automatically call me Liz. I'm like, no, no, mate. No, I'm not Debbie.

I don't do Dallas. I do do Derbyshire. Anyway, it is so lovely to meet you in person because I have been fangirling you on Twitter basically for the last few months. Right back at you I'm a big fan of your podcast I binged it. I love hearing that. How do you feel about failure generally? Is it a concept that you are okay with embracing in your life? Yes so when when I was 14, my family became Jehovah's Witnesses. So I got very kind of involved in this very high-potence, high-control group where men decided everything. Everything you did was pre-thought for you. And there were very,

very strict rules. And failure was like a constant within that because you were never living up to Jehovah's perfect standards. And that was quite tiring. And when I was in it, very, very limiting, it really bonsai'd me for a long time. And when I was still in it, I remember getting a copy of Keith Johnston's Impro. Now, theatre sports in Australia was on the television and there was lots of, there was always lots of Impro in in Australia I was born and raised in Australia and I just loved it I was just attracted to the

playful nature of it so like you know like here you have whose line is anyway that kind of comedy naughtiness impishness playfulness and it was really the opposite of the cult I was in so I started secretly going to classes with some other Jehovah's Witnesses in our secret Jehovah's Witness improv group, a sort of whose eternal life is it anyway? And we used to sneak out or sneak off to do it because the elders obviously would tell us not to, but we couldn't tell the improvisers who we were because that would bring reproach on Jehovah's name. And also they think we were weird. They knew there was something weird about us though, because we couldn't do scenes about sex

or death or anything like that. So I got this book as was recommended by a man called Keith Johnston. And there was a chapter in there called Notes on Myself. And it was about the way we hold these expectations of ourself and the way that within creativity, we set ourselves up to, we have to succeed first time every time. So when I left the religion, the first thing I did when I decided I wasn't going back to any more meetings, I was already living in London by this point. The first thing I did was find theatre sports, find improv, sign up for classes, go to all the shows. And it's like the antidote of a cult. I started working with a teacher who'd worked with Keith for a long time and been trained by Keith. And her name was Patti Stiles. She was

from Canada. And her mantra that she used to get us to say because obviously getting up to do an improv scene is quite scary because you've got no script so it's just sort of like Elizabeth and Deborah up you get okay so you're going to do a scene in a hairdresser and I'd have to come in and go oh your perm's gone wrong hasn't it and you'd have to go you're meant to say yes and Elizabeth oh sorry I was just going to say for the listeners, I actually have very, very permed hair right now. It's incredibly tight curls. It's just to be clear, just to be clear, it's not.

But in the scenario, it is. So I would say, oh, your perm's gone wrong. And you would say, I know, I don't know what to do about it. Yes, and you would try and add a yes and, and I want you to fix it right etc so we so that's it can be quite scary when everyone's watching you you well see now this is what people say but what patty's mantra was for this and she'd get us to shout it at the beginning of every class and at any point if we were feeling tense and tight and like incapable and tongue-tied

you just say we suck and we love to fail. But you'd have to say it in a very, very positive voice, like this was funny. She taught us two things. One is the structure of story and ways to create characters, so lots of technical skill, but at the same time constantly taught us to understand that failure in this context has zero consequences. And then I started

to work, I went to Canada to work with Keith Johnston, and he came over here to London. So I managed to cobble together some training with Keith himself. And Patty's teaching, by the way, is, I would say Patty is the best teacher of Keith's work in the world, even more than Keith, in a way, because she's such an incredible teacher of people and makes such a great connection with you certainly in my experience for that long term but Keith is also absolutely astounding and it is nice to go to the well where it originally started but I remember being in Canada working with Keith and I remember he taught us a game called seen enough and this was the idea of it you would get up on your own and start doing something all on your own and when someone in the audience was bored,

didn't want to see anymore, they would leave the room. And then when someone else was bored, they'd leave the room and you had to keep going until the room was empty. Oh my goodness. And at first that sounds horrific. Cool. Sounds like, oh my God, that's your worst nightmare. And for that reason, it's absolutely brilliant because something starts to happen where you start to treat it like a science this is what keith would always say like scientists don't go oh those two chemicals didn't mix and give me the cure that i wanted she's demonstrating what i know about science um

that experiment didn't work i'm a failure i'm rubbish i'm an untalented scientist they understand that to find the best process you have to keep going and going and going and going and going and all of all the time you're ruling out what doesn't work so at first you think oh my god this is horrendous i'm going to get up and have a go but then everybody leaves and you go oh nothing happened then someone else will come well everyone will fill up the room again so i'll go okay i've got an idea and eventually people are desperate to get out first you can't get anyone to volunteer but if you keep doing this people will be rushing up and i remember doing it people laughing going i've got something i've got something this is going to keep the audience and it became like a process it wasn't

about my individual talent it was about what processes will keep an audience transfixed this has blown my mind because you can apply this to everything in life, that it's not you, it's the alchemy of something. Like relationships, everything. You're so right about the scientist blaming himself for chemicals, not for using or whatever. I did single science GCSE, so I'm similar. But that's so interesting. Yeah, it's very much how I've shaped a lot of the rest of my life.

So the two enemies of creativity are fear and ego. And he used to say, separate your ego from the work. When I started teaching rather regular classes with undergraduate students and summer school and stuff, I always used to say, when you're auditioning, your first year of auditioning out in the real world, you're collecting data. Don't ever go on audition to get the job. Go on the audition to find out how you best do auditions.

How do people respond to you if you're going really confidently? How do they respond to you if you're going a bit tentatively? How do they respond when you really prepare everything? How do you respond when you let yourself kind of be loose in the room, when you don't say too much at the beginning, when you build rapport and every time you keep this manual of this sort of like little diary because what you're doing in the first year after drama school is getting good at auditioning and discovering what process best works for you and so many people phoned me to say thank you for that because they said I'm getting them all because I'm not going in to get them I'm getting going in to collect data it's like it's

like dating I find because I went through a spate of online dating at the beginning of this year and found it immensely dispiriting in some ways but when I started treating it as an exercise that I was doing to learn more about myself and what I wanted it became so much more manageable yes and that's when I met someone did you apply what you learned from improv to your personal relationships I did yeah I mean I really try and do it there were times I think after I started this improv company worked with Patty I went to uni again were you at Oxford no yeah I know for the first time because I wasn't allowed to go to uni as a Jehovah's Witness so I was a little bit

I mean I went after my gap year years um so I was a little bit older. I mean, I went after my gap year, years. So I was a little bit older when I went to uni than, you know, I was an 18. When I got there, everybody else I felt was ahead of the game and more confident. And if you're in your early 20s when you go to uni, you feel, I don't know, I felt, because I also had been in a cult and I didn't have those basic skills around, I don't know, just flirting or just connecting with people. There were so many people. I went to Oxford and the pressure was on because everyone I knew seemed to have gone to St. Paul's or something and had already directed an oratorio. I'd done anything, you know, and I was like, oh, my God.

And I didn't want to tell anyone I'd been a Jehovah's Witness because I didn't want them to frame me that way. my God. And I didn't want to tell anyone I'd been a Jehovah's Witness because I didn't want them to frame me that way. And I remember really struggling at first because I remember doing the freshers debating at the union. At some point I got knocked out and I took it really hard. And I was like, well, everyone's got to get, really looking back, I think, you know, you did it and you did a few rounds and everyone's got to get knocked out at some point, except the last person standing almost. And I remember I auditioned for the Oxford Review sketch group and I didn't get it and I was devastated. But of course, first years hardly ever got it.

They had to hang around and write sketches for other people and you had to wait until you were second or third year to get into it. And I didn't know that. And it was actually in my second year, I was too scared in the first year to write a play for the Cameron McIntosh New Writing Festival because I thought everyone else there at Oxford are better than me. And I remember thinking I won't be able to compete.

And then I saw some of those plays and I thought, oh, well, I can do that. And the second year I entered and mine was one of the five selected and I got put on. And that gave me enormous confidence. The thing is, the reason the people who run this country are as arrogant as they are and put things on sides of buses and crash about and steal the golden snitch when parliament is on. I understand it. I understand that there is a system that breeds entitlement. Entitlement is the residue of privilege.

So if you continue to be given privileges, you will start to feel entitled to those privileges and i remember writing an essay for my tutor i was in my first year and my tutor questioning me as they do one-on-one and he got something out of me and he said well why didn't you say that in your essay and i said well none of the critics have said it so i wasn't sure it was right and he said you are an oxford scholar wasn't sure it was right. And he said, you are an Oxford scholar. Your opinion is as valid as any opinion in the world. And that starts to get drilled into you. But the first year at Oxford was very difficult because I just felt like I was completely inadequate next to everyone else. And I was also very aware that that kind of entitlement building wasn't healthy, but I could see other people had turned up with at 18 years of age they'd been in school uniform the year before but they were absolutely sure that everything

they thought was right and that they should be directing a sort of ancient Greek play at the Oxford Playhouse with you know 700 seats or something and I just thought where is this coming from? Did you feel having grown up in a cult that there was something quite cultish about Oxford and British public schools? No, because they really encourage critical thinking. And that's the opposite of the cult. You're not bred to feel entitled to your own opinion even. It's a complete stripping away of entitlements. You give everything to Jehovah, you serve Jehovah. And so this sort of manspreading way of walking through doors and taking up space and shouting your own opinions. No, I'd never seen it before, except from the elders.

But again, they were still serving Jehovah and doing what the Watchtower Society said. So when do you think you became a feminist? Was there a moment when you can remember it happening or was it just something that you've always had within you? I was a feminist when I was a Jehovah's Witness and I wasn't allowed to be but I used to secretly say things all the time say things to friends about how I felt about how women were treated in the Bible and my ideas for how Jehovah would rectify this power imbalance between men and women after Armageddon and because I was such a devout dowdy Jehovah's Witness I was allowed to get away with some of that but it was very much frowned. If I'd said it to the elders, you just wouldn't be allowed to.

And mostly you'd get reported by your friends for saying that kind of thing, but I used to find a way of saying it in a kind of cheeky way. But no, I was always a feminist, couldn't wait to get out to do feminism. And you were adopted at 10 days old, is that right? That's right, yeah. When you were brought up by your parents, were they open about the fact that you were adopted? Always. And did you feel then when you were part of this cult and you were developing this feminist consciousness and you were going to

these improv classes secretly, did you feel that you didn't belong in many ways? Nothing to do with the adoption though, because I just, you don't know anything else I was adopted at 10 days you know my family were my family and I still feel that even though I found my biological family and I adore them my family is still my family that I was raised with sometimes people say your real mum and I think yes my real mum and I realize they think they mean my birth mother and I'm like no that's my birth mother who I adore that she's fantastic and I'm so thrilled to know her but it's not the same as your mum and she would say that too you know she raised three girls and she knows what motherhood is you know and it's that that relentless nature of being there so it

wasn't about the adoption but yeah I definitely didn't feel I belonged in the Jehovah's Witnesses definitely interestingly I reconnected with the cult in 2015. I'd done a Radio 4 show about it. And a young man in Canada had got in touch with me and said he wanted to get out. And so I went over to help him because there were circumstances that meant that that was important for me at that time to do that and important for him. And I had this massive connection. Like, it was like being plugged back into the mains in 2015 and I realized I ended up getting locked in the back of a kingdom hall which is the Jehovah's Witness church and two

elders interrogated me for half an hour until eventually I said you have to let me out now you have to unlock the door and let me out I got really angry with him and I walked out it was like seeing the movie where oh and I felt like a bond break that I just slipped away the first time and I'd never formally said I don't want to be here you're controlling me and I felt this massive release a bit of a breakdown a bit of a post-traumatic stress disorder from it and I cried all the way home from Canada and I had this massive like outpouring of grief I hadn't connected with years and suddenly there I was. And weirdly, Patti was over from Australia to do a workshop with me and an improv company I was working with

at that time. And it was exactly, it replicated exactly what had happened the first time, which is I left the Jehovah's Witnesses in a dramatic way and then was straight into the arms of yes and, be in the moment, stop trying so hard to be good that's what patty would always say stop trying so hard to be good go out to say yes and be average when you're an overachiever you feel like what be average no i can't be average but she used to say trying your hardest is not your best strategy and i remember keith once watching me improvise i'd become a very good improviser and then i sort of lost it and i was struggling we made a made a TV pilot, didn't come off, you know, all that sort of stuff. And I was just in a bad place.

I think Keith was over. And I remember he saw me improvise. I said, Keith, I've lost it. You have to tell me. What am I doing wrong? And he watched the show and he went, yeah, it's not enough to be okay with failure. You have to enjoy being bad. Oh, my God.

And I went out the next show I remember it was so clearly I walked out to the stage and I thought I'm going to enjoy being bad and of course it was a brilliant show and those moments in my life where I've been guided by Patty and Keith have been so important to me this is just so fascinating this whole thing I mean I'm not being facetious when I say it's blowing my mind it really is because it connects to so much of what I think about on this podcast and just in general in life because I just started boxing recently and my boxing teacher Honest Frank who listens to this podcast hello Frank um is always saying that when you miss a punch or you do it badly that is part of the process you need to feel comfortable in that and not let it drag you down

and actually you let your body take over and you're like in the flow and you just need to think about the next punch rather than what this means to you as a person and how it defines you or doesn't and I do think in this world of constant communication and 24-hour soundbite culture we all know so much about what's happening all of the time that we forget just to be in the present discomfort or comfort of who we are right now yes and understand that i remember keith saying when he wanted to ride a unicycle when he was a professor at a university in canada and he said he he got a unicycle and he kept falling off and he thought i'm rubbish at this and a student who was there said to him um oh, it will take you seven hours to learn to ride a unicycle.

And he thought, oh, well, I can do seven hours. So he said, I did a half an hour a day for two weeks. And then I could ride a unicycle. And he said, if someone tells you it will take seven hours, then you're not an untalented unicyclist. It will take seven hours. And those things are different. cyclist it will take seven hours and those things are different and i think also in terms of feminism because of the power structures and the way women are coached by society for this expectation of perfection or well if you're going to have play in the men's corner you've got to be

twice as good as a man to be considered half as good we obsess about our failures and i know if i listen to you know my radio 4 show which is all my kind of life stories done in storytelling and comedy, I'll hear the mistakes. I'll hear the things that I wish I'd... They should have put that edited wrongly. I don't like that music there. I wish we'd kept that in and cut that out. And Fiona Thompson and I are writing a book called Super Tribe

and it's about how we tribe. And we were looking at some of the principles. And Fiona was saying she's worked for Number 10 Downing Street. She's worked for JP Morgan. She's worked for McKinsey, lots of male-dominated environments. And she says, she notices that men notice what they've done. And this is, again, coached and coded. But men will go, look at that.

Nothing was there. And now there's six episodes of an amazing Radio 4 storytelling comedy show. And I will look at what's not there. That ending isn't quite right. That joke got dropped. I don't like that. Why did they do that with the soundtrack? And she said that's a pattern she's noticed again and again and again.

And something I've noticed from coaching people in the city, from coaching people in business, is that women think they can't go forward. And this is a pattern I've noticed. Men are taller than women than women it's just a trend this doesn't tell you anything about individuals similarly with patterns of confidence but there's a strong trend I've noticed that men in coaching sessions will say right well I can't get to the next level because my you know I've gone up for this promotion three times not happening because my boss's boss doesn't like me so I've either got to get him to like me or I've got to get around that and

get another stakeholder. And I'm like, what? He doesn't like you. What? You know, don't care about him not liking me. Care that I can't get what I want. It's all external. The reasons I can't get forward are external. There's this new training program you have to do now. So I have to do that. And when I work with women, I can't do this much anymore because I do the Girls Feminists, but I did it for years. And it's so interesting when I work with women, I can't do this much anymore because I do the Guilt of Feminist, but I did it for years. And it's so interesting. When I work with women, it's all internal. The reason I can't go forward is I don't have these skills.

I've been given feedback that I'm like this, that I'm not good enough at that. I don't think I've got the confidence. Always, always, always. I mean, it's more than a trend in these private conversations I've had with people. That the men are going, well, if I could just get him out of the way, it's like Game of Thrones, if I could just get him out of the way, it's all fine. Whereas I'm like, but there's a man walking around who doesn't like you, what are you talking about? What are they thinking of you? Exactly. That's so interesting, because I remember reading this research, and I think it's from Carnegie Mellon University, and I think it's the terrifically named Linda Babcock,

who's done a lot of work in this area where she analysed when people go for promotions by gender she gave an example of a man meeting six out of ten of the criteria required to get this promotion and a woman also meeting six out of ten and a woman's focus in this research generally speaking would always be on the four attributes that she lacked therefore she wouldn't go for it because she wasn't perfect whereas a man would be like I've got six out of ten give me a 100 grand pay rise I mean I'm exaggerating for comic effect and obviously not all men hashtag but I do think that's so interesting and that we can learn as women from that sense of entitlement and confidence there's a similar statistic on the HuffPo that goes around every six months

that says women think they need 100% of the skills on a job spec to go up for it, men think they need 50%. And the conclusion is always the same, women should be more confident. And I always think, yeah, but maybe also men could start going up for jobs they're not qualified to do, like President of the United States of America and crashing everything into a wall. Because actually, confidence without substance is just recklessness. You do talk about this in your brilliant book, by the way, also called The

Guilty Feminist, about how it's all very well saying, well, be more confident. But if you haven't had the space in your life to be confident, and you haven't been raised like that, and you haven't had the opportunities, then it's very difficult suddenly to acquire this enormous skill. Yes. Well, I talk about it as the root word of confidence is confidere. It's Latin and it means trust. So a confidence trickster is someone who betrays your trust. So self-confidence is trusting yourself. And I think that should be based on your experience.

Where the problem lies is if you know you can do this, but you cannot communicate that you trust yourself to the room. So you turn up to do this amazing PowerPoint presentation to sell this idea into your colleagues or to your clients. And you've researched it, you've prepared it. But when you walk up to do it, you signal physically, I don't know what I'm doing. And you start off by saying, hello, a lot of you. I hope the PowerPoint holds up there with us.

Anyway, so I'm going to chat to you first about where we see this going. And then we will look at the budget. I mean, Sarah will break that down for you. So probably shouldn't talk about that now. But I will hand over to Sarah in a bit. And, but firstly, what we should really be looking at, well, I'll bring up the first side. What you're signaling there is I don't trust myself, even though your presentation is brilliant.

You do trust yourself. You're signaling something else to the room. You're telling the story. Don't give me your money. I don't know what I did with that last lot of money. It's just gone. And you're doing yourself a disservice by doing that. Now, you've been trained to do it since you were small, if you do do it. At some point, that behavior kept you safe. I always think that's

important. I think sometimes women get berated for having a lack of confidence or demonstrating a lack of confidence, demonstrating a lack of self-tr lack of self trust and men who are under confident as well there is a patriarchal assumption that to be the perfect woman one must also be a mother and that is one of the primary functions of someone with a womb and one of the failures that i'm so delighted that you want to talk about because from it has come an acknowledgement of how your life is positive in many ways is your failure to have a baby with your biological sister. Would you explain what happened how that came about? Well I was trying to have a baby didn't work so I was doing IUI then I was going toF. But it was clear that I was going to need to borrow a donor egg. And at around the same time, I came across some information about my

biological mother. And I googled her name once a year. And there was never anything there. And then someone had archived electoral records on ancestry.com. So suddenly, it was there. And it happened to be the same time I was doing facility treatment. And I think, in a way, it was there and it happened to be the same time I was doing facility treatment and I think in a way it was no accident I was googling then I think if you're thinking about replicating yourself you'll start to think about where you came from genetically anyway I did a whole show about finding my biological mother which I will bring back and my biological family I went to visit them in New Zealand and I was very lucky because they were very excited to meet me and very, very receptive. And it was the second night I was there, I was in the bedroom that my birth mother had put me in, doing some emails before dinner and there was a knock at the door. I've got three Kiwi sisters.

There was a knock at the door. Do you mind if we come in? They said coming in and they sat on the bed with this bottle of wine and i all like the only way i can describe it is by the at the end of the bottle of wine we were sisters absolutely extraordinary are they full biological sisters oh okay yeah and do they look like you yeah yeah my birth mother looks exactly like me my grandmother who sadly died before i met her looks exactly exactly like me and I think I look the most like Devon of all of us of all of my sisters Devon's my biological mother anyway they've all got children and Mel said to me so are you gonna have children and I said actually I'm trying at

the moment but I can't have my own biological children I'm going to use a donor egg and she said oh no don't use a donor egg I'll give you an egg and i said oh no i've got one coming from russia she said well don't get don't use the one from russia you don't know where it's from i said i do it's from russia that's the only thing i do know about it she went no don't no don't use a russian egg i'll give you an egg i'll give you an egg and then the baby will be related to you and i said well look emotions are high at the moment we're having this huge massive family reunion i mean they didn't really even know about me not properly anyway there's some debate about what they knew but I said look why don't I wait till I go back to London that's such a kind offer but I don't I

don't want to take you up on that like I'll go back to London we'll think about it and we'll reconvene she went no I'm ringing the clinic tomorrow to find out what I have to do I've always wanted to do that for somebody and I've never had anyone to do it for. It's perfect. Yeah. Because the baby relates to you, right? That's what we'll do. And I was like, oh my God, you know, they're going to think I've come for an egg. They're going to think that's why I found them for an egg. That all sounds amazing, by the way. Maybe it's just the way you do have voice. She is amazing. She's totally amazing. And I was like, oh my God, they're going to think I'm here for an egg and a kidney and a payday loan. I was like, this is the worst. So I was like, this is such a

generous and kind offer. But at the same time, I don't want them to think I've turned up here. Anyway, the next day, we went for this big family brunch. And it was like this hipster place. And Devon said, oh, it's my treat. She said, I'm going to go up to the counter and order for everyone. So she goes to order. And we're all having a lovely chat. And I felt like for the first time, the kids were all there. We were all playing and joking around. And the first time the kids were all there we were all playing and joking around and the first time I thought I really feel like this is family and Devin came and sat down my birth mother and Mel just turned to her absolutely out of nowhere absolute non-secretary just went mum I'm giving Debra one of my eggs and Devin said did you not want the full breakfast and she went

no mum not one of my eggs benedict she don't want one of my eggs benedict one of my eggs from my body so she can have a baby I'd never given

one of my eggs from my eggs benedict oh I couldn't believe I was just like no and I went Devin Devin

I didn't come for an egg I've got a Russian egg and she went oh don't use a Russian egg you don't know where it's from genuinely that happened and then my brother-in-law leaned over and said to me, well, if he's a boy, I'll have to call him Benedict. And after that, the joke was,

better get cracking under the legs, Benedict. Anyway, so Mel came over to London and we both did all these injections and to try and get enough eggs out of her and into me and I remember it didn't work the the IVF didn't work but I wrote Mel a letter when she got on the plane because she said I feel bad like you know I've come over here and it's not worked and you know I wanted to give this to you and I remember I wrote her a letter and I said oh we took on biology and we lost but in another way we won because this has made us sisters that's really beautiful if you're listening at home we're both crying a bit yeah so how does it feel that that process didn't work and that you don't have a child the thing is now my life has taken so many different turns. And at first, there was a part of me that always was scared

of what a baby would mean for my life. I really wanted a baby. And I also wanted all the things that you lose when you have a baby. That absolute freedom of movement, that ability to just go, oh, yeah, I'll go and do that gig in New York. Actually, I might stay on for another five days. Oh, I've just thought of a podcast we could do. Let's create it.

Let's put a show on right here in the barn that's the way I live my life I think of an idea and then I can just do it and I don't have to go actually I've got three hours when the little ones at nursery and then another two hours when I've just got one and if I can get some help at home then I've got another two hours to write this I don't do any of that I can stay up all night writing something because it occurs to me and then sleep in the next day I can create and invent whatever I want and I don't think I'd have the guilty feminist and all the remarkable things are you now fully at peace with not having children ever like is that done for you have you been able to draw a line under it well i had an amazing experience remarkable experience just over a year ago i did a podcast

one in fact that chris your sound engineer recorded because he records our podcast as well hello chris love chris love a bit of chris a little bit of chris sharp i'd say get him to record your podcast but i want him always to be free for mine i haveitto, I have the same issue. People keep asking me who he is. You could not book Chris Sharp for anything and it helped me out. It was an episode of Global Pillage, which is a podcast we do about cultural diversity. It's two teams of comedians versus the hive mind of the audience. And I was doing something in association with Timepiece, which is an app that connects refugees with local people to skillshare and get to know each other and so steve alley came on he's a syrian refugee and i really liked him and afterwards we were chatting and he said in syria he was an architecture

student and he just had to pack up one day and run because of the war and he was going to get drafted into the army and he said it it was as much what he was going to be asked to do that he was scared of that he couldn't hurt anybody else, you know. So I said, where are you staying at the moment? And he said, oh, I'm just sofa surfing with friends that I met in the Calais Jungle refugee camp. He met a lot of volunteers there and he became friendly with them. His English is amazing and he's a very erudite, cultured, capable man.

And he said, I'm sofa surfing. And I thought, well, that can't be good for your back or your soul if you've been in a war zone and then you've been displaced for years and tom and i were going away tom's your husband tom's my husband and the producer of the guilty feminist and uh we needed someone to mind our cats mimi and toast and so i said we've got a spare room and we just knocked through we only newly had a spare room we'd knocked through to the attic so we'd put our own bedroom and bathroom upstairs and i said would you like to come and stay in our spare room for three weeks and mind the cats and he said oh i miss my cat so much from Syria and I miss my cats that I

had in the Calais jungle that I found he had found little stray kitties in the jungle so he said I would love that and then he stayed in our flat for three weeks and when it came time to go it became apparent that if he left Toast would go with him. So they'd bonded so much. But also, we'd come back and forth in that time and we'd just got to know him. And our mutual friend who'd introduced us said, I'm looking for somewhere Steve can unpack his bags for three months. And I said to Tom, look, it's a bit much us having a spare room. It was meant to be my room and one's own workspace.

And I was like, I don't really work in it anyway, to be honest. I like working upstairs where it's more light. And I said, it's a bit much. Millions of people are displaced and we're sitting there with this spare room we don't have kids we should just say to Steve he can stay for three months and then at the end of that three months Steve got his papers and so spending time with Steve I think has given me this ability to nurture and I don't want to patronize him and say parent you know he's a very capable man he came to me at the age of 25 but when people have lost this the infrastructure not just to their families Steve's family have fled as well and some of them in Turkey and you

know some of them in Germany but he hasn't been able to see his family again he hasn't seen his family in quite a few years but also you know if you go home to where you're from, there's the school, there's Mrs. Miggins, there's the corner shop. Oh, that's new now. That building's there. That wasn't there. And so-and-so's moved away.

But there's the basic infrastructure is still there. There are still kids going to your school. And that isn't the case for people who've left war zones. The whole thing's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. So the need for refugees sometimes to have a family and to fit into that family and have an absolute place of safety is so strong and that's what I've realized you can't just love someone you can't and you shouldn't offer someone your love but the things

that you you know until it develops organically but the thing you could do is you can make someone feel safe and important because they've lost feeling important they've been treated like cattle they've been made to feel unimportant for a long time and so it's been my pleasure and my privilege to make Steve feel important and make him feel prioritized you know your point being I guess to connect it to where we started is that you wouldn't have met Steve in that way and had him to live with you had you had a child because you wouldn't have had the physical space, let alone anything else. That's right.

And I don't know if I had two small children. Some people do. Some people absolutely do that they'll invite a refugee in and they'll live as a family. But I can't guarantee if I'd had two small children that I would have invited a man I didn't really know into the family.

You know, there are other considerations going on there. And I might have, but I just, you know, it's a different transaction. It's a different proposition if you've got minors in the house. And I mean, Steve is the loveliest man in the world. But do you know what I mean? Like, I think it's just you don't have the room. I'm certainly not in London. Who's got the room?

You know, if you've got kids in every room. But secondly, your priority has to be towards someone else. And I think one time Steve and I were having a bonding moment. And I did say to him, I don't believe things happen for a reason. I think everything happens for a rationalization. We rationalize things. Oh, that's why I'm, of course, if I hadn't gone to Japan, I wouldn't have met Kenji. But I don't think everything happens for a reason because then I have to say all the bad stuff that's happened to Steve has happened for a reason and I don't believe that. But if I did think everything happens for a reason. Because then I have to say all the bad stuff that's happened to Steve has happened for a reason. And I don't believe that. But if I did think everything happens for a reason, I would think the reason I couldn't have children is so I could be there for

Steve. And do you think that women of our age need to be more open about the benefits of not having children the thing is i would love to be and i will be here but i often think if you sort of say oh i don't want children we did a podcast once where susan calman came on she was hysterically funny on the guilty feminist about what she loves about not having children or basically saying i love my niece so much but she's quite you know it's quite boring spending time with young children. She did this joke about this whole, that was a phenomenally funny riff about, I don't want to play imaginary post offices and can't we just be quiet and watch Judge Judy? And it was very, very funny. But so many people wrote in and said, you know, you're dismissing children to all of us. It was me, it was Sophie Hagen was doing the podcast then, so it was me,

Sophie and Susan, none of us had children, but I'd said I wanted them and had tried and hadn't had any. Sophie said she didn't want any at the moment, but she could well in the future and told a sweet story about when she was a nursery teacher. And Susan said how much she loved her niece. But, and I thought if any, three mothers were sitting there going, God, sometimes it's really boring playing post offices. And yeah, sometimes you don't want other people's children talking over your breakfast. Everyone would be like so sympathetic, but because we didn't have children, I felt like we were monsters and I felt really upset about it because I was like,

I've heard mothers say all of this stuff about how boring it is. So I think I have to be very careful about what I say. What I will say is, I mean, I'd very much like to adopt some teenage refugees. I know someone who's just done this, adopted kids at 15, put them through their GCSEs,

put them through their A-levels and really been there for them at a very difficult time of life. And I would love to do that. And my dream is to be able to afford to get a house, so I've got more space. And we could be this sort of family. Because then I think, you know, you adopt them, they are your children. Like, I'm adopted, I get it. You know, like, I was obviously adopted as a baby. But you know, I think you can give them that feeling of completely, you are completely one of this family and you are part of us and you are legally part of us. I would absolutely love to do that. And I really hope

to do that. But I think there's an advantage of having a shorter period, like you don't have to teach anyone to talk or walk or use the loo. And then I can do all these other wonderful things as well. I feel like, and it's awful to say this, I don't know if I'm going to get flack for saying this, but the way I feel now is that my personality, my career, and this is not for anybody else because there are so many people who are so sad that they couldn't have children and will do anything to have them. adore them and can't imagine their life without them but I feel personally I might have dodged a bullet that I thought I desperately thought I wanted children but also part of me knew that I wanted other things as well and I will say that I think okay what I said to Tom is if we're not going to have children if we're going to wind this ship up not have children we are not going to sit here and watch Netflix till we die we are going to have to do something wonderful we're going to have to use the freedom and take a purpose because people with

kids are always going i'd love to be able to just have that lifestyle that you do of you know starting a podcast or yeah i'm going to become an amnesty ambassador and let's do this and let's do that and let's build this and let's take on this revive the secret policeman's ball and the things we're doing now i'd love to be able to i can't do that secret policeman's ball and the things we're doing now. I'd love to be able to do that. I can't do that. And I think I said to Tom, we're doing the things that people with children regret not having time for. We're doing them. I don't know. How do you feel, Elizabeth? Do you feel? First of all, I feel very grateful for you having said that. Thank you. Because I honestly do think that for the narrative around women and children and babies to change and to be

open to different women experiencing different things we need to be honest about that and I feel I still have a bit of the process to go through myself I do now genuinely feel at peace with the idea that I will probably not have my own biological child genuinely at peace but that has taken a long time for me I always thought I would and it took it took a while to get over it yeah at the same time I was talking to the head of the Environment Council the other day and she said we've got 12 years to slow climate change after that it's a runaway train and she reckons we will do it she said Trump getting a second term is a very bad thing for the environment but she's saying no government's working on it companies working on it she said as individuals the three things we

can do is fly less so my trips to new york have to be much reduced go vegan and not have children okay oh well that makes me feel great because i don't eat a lot of meat. Well, no, me, I've totally meat-reduced. I try not, never to have meat. And actually, what I will say is if you become a godmother or an auntie, I'm a codmother currently to three children. And a codmother, it's like a godmother, but it's cod, like a cod accent. It's a contract between you and the child. It's nothing to do with the parents. I mean, get there by hand. Don't just go up to a random kid on a bus stop. But I have bonded with three little girls in different ways, and they've all got godparents,

and some godparents are not very attentive or have got their own kids and live somewhere else or something. All the godparents are great, but you and that child bond, and then you say, I'm not your godmother, I'm your codmother, and I've just taken on another codchild in L.A. Oh i love that idea it's a fairy codmother um can we be each other's codmothers oh yeah just like an adult uh well we could be i think we could be fairy cod sisters yeah but it's cods with a c and that that is clear nobody sort of said oh you must bond with my child you don't know that child till they've come out. But you then nominate. You kind of go, you and I have a

special thing, so I'm going to become your fairy godmother. It's a big deal in their lives because you don't have to. Because you're not their auntie, you're not their mother, you're not their godmother. You've chosen this. And I think there's something about that with children. Children don't appreciate their mothers. What's the reward for it, to be honest? Whenever anyone I know talks about their mum, they're like, oh, God, you know, you know, I mean, I do love her, but, God, she's just so annoying.

And she's now going on about the fireplace. And I've said to her, I've said to her, it's fine. It is a gas fireplace. Yes, it's not working, but we're not going to blow up in our beds. Oh, my God. You know, the conversations you have with people, there's no one that can annoy you in a way like your parents. But that person that took an interest in you as you were growing up, you adore them. You worship them because they didn't have to be there for you. And they weren't being annoying. They weren't going, oh, yeah.

But I've got people who now I now need for children who I know feel they can come to me and talk to me about things or we have a special connection. And I think the best parts of parenting, and I've had parents say this to me, that they think I've had the best parts of the nurturing, nourishing, growing up experience. The best parts are snuggled up on a sofa, reading a story or making up a puppet show together. And I do all that. I've done that with a couple of generations of children almost now. I've got, you know, ones that have grown up and ones that are still growing up and I'm like I don't know that you get a lot of extra of course there's an experience we are missing out on but when you balance it out with all the great things you can have I just if you're us if you're lucky if you're you know if you've got a certain amount of satisfaction in your career and I mean I say

this with an amount of privilege that I'm satisfied with my career and I have a certain income that I'm not living hand to mouth. Do you know what I mean? I just feel there's so many mothers who, when they get very drunk, say to me, don't do it, don't do it. grab me after a few martinis and go don't don't step away you don't have to do it one woman said to me motherhood's a con it's con it's just said you're programmed to think you absolutely have to have this but then you are in servitude that's the other thing and women who have had babies who actually of course they adore them and they wouldn't give them back but at the same time if they had their life over again they might have picked a path less traveled by feel they can never say that because too hurtful to the child so we don't hear from parents who think actually my life would have been just as rewarding and in some ways more rewarding and certainly more relaxing and i could have achieved more we don't hear from those people because they feel too awful to say it but trust me they're out

there so if you've not had children but there's something else in your life there's a purpose to your life live that fully just do everything that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise just go and do the volunteering find other children to bond with that you have a true connection with live large write the novel go to Brighton and sit on the beach front and meet new people and do all of the things that you couldn't have done otherwise and your life will be full and rich and there will be children at your funeral who grew up there will be deborah francis white i feel like i could talk to you for hours and we're going to go for a drink now so i can but it is dark outside this has been an enlightening conversation i feel every time i listen to you on other people's podcasts in person on the radio I learn something from you and I just want to thank you so much for being eloquent and inspiring

and campaigning and all of the wonderful things that you are and I will come to your funeral and it's a promise yeah if I live you yeah well this is the thing it's now a race to who can be the other one's funeral that's that's very much the case a race to the death yeah that's how i like to think about friendship i mean hopefully hopefully we'll die in each other's arms on the same day elizabeth perfect thank you so much it's been an absolute delight thank you for having me