How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S3, Ep8 How to Fail: Pandora Sykes

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

This week I get to interview one of my favourite fellow podcasters: Pandora Sykes is a journalist,  co-host of The High Low and all-round woman of impeccable taste (I mean, she must be to have agreed to come on How To Fail, right?) Sykes is also a contributing editor at Man Repeller and Elle magazine and writes regularly for other publications. Her High Low co-host, Dolly Alderton, is a former How To Fail guest and - fun fact - Dolly's episode is the most downloaded OF ALL TIME.I'm so happy Pandora agreed to come on the podcast and to talk eloquently and insightfully about not fitting in with friends at school, being fired from an internship in her 20s and 'failing to harness/ contain my brain after having a baby' even though, on the surface, her life seemed to be picture-perfect. Her words will carry so much resonance for so many of us and I loved doing this interview (partly because I got to nose around Pandora's beautiful house and to meet her mother who was as terrific as you'd expect and makes a mean sausage plait).If you haven't listened to The High Low, hello who are you and what are you doing and please download it right now. It's a brilliant weekly take on high and low-brow news and culture. You can order Pandora's essay, The Authentic Lie, via the crowd-funded publisher The Pound Project. (Full disclosure: I wrote the foreword). 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. Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayPandora Sykes @pinsykesThe High Low @thehighlowshowChris 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. Okay, so embarrassingly, I'm now going to have to talk about myself in the third person. Here goes. myself in the third person. Here goes. Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How to Fail, Everything I've Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong, is Elizabeth Day's brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong. They wrote that, I didn't.

Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. If you would like to pre-order How To Fail, and I would sincerely love it if you did, please go to www.waterstones.com. Thank you. 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.

Pandora Sykes is a journalist, podcast host, and all-round woman of impeccable taste, who you probably follow on Instagram to see what colour she's painted her living room. Mustard yellow, by the way. Sykes is a contributing editor at Man Repeller and Elle magazine, and writes regularly for other publications on everything from How Best to Style Tartan, The Collective Power of Female Anger, and interviewing myriad celebrities including Margot Robbie and Alexa Chung. But Sykes is probably best known for co-hosting one of my favourite podcasts, The Hilo, where every week she discusses pop culture and current affairs with How To Fail alumnus Dolly Alderton. Sykes was once asked what was the best piece of advice

she'd ever been given and responded, pick your battles. I'm still learning. Pandora, how is that learning exercise going? It's so weird hearing someone else summarise you. Do you have that as a journalist when you go on to other people's shows and stuff and you're like, this is bizarre because you're so used to shaping narratives? 100%. And I can always tell if someone's just looked at my website, which I endeavoured not to do with you. And also I updated it because I've only just come into your living room, which is staggeringly beautiful. And I had to identify the colour quickly to sort of put in my introduction. But you do have a beautiful home. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. So picking your battles, is that something

that you think you've got better at as you've got older? Definitely as I've got older. I think it's such a boring thing to say. And it's something that you recently mentioned that you really do know yourself and the best way to sort of operate in the world the older you get and I'm now aware that probably sounds really patronizing to people in their early 20s but just time being a healer cliche very true getting older and learning and picking up wisdom with age absolutely 100% true so yes I think I've definitely learned that. I used to be really confrontational because I'm a massive believer in honesty.

And I thought, well, it's best to tell the truth. And then I realised that when you are confrontational, so saying exactly how you feel, it can make you feel worse as well. So now I have something where I think, shall I say how I feel? And then I think, I think I can't be bothered and it does make a much easier life I'm now understanding why people weren't so brutally

honest so you're the youngest sister aren't you how many sisters do you have the youngest of four I've got two older sisters and an older brother and how much do you think that plays into your need for honesty and like speaking up for yourself I don't know how much it plays into your need for honesty and like speaking up for yourself? I don't know how much it plays into that it plays into a lot of things like being worried when there's food about whether or not I'll get some which I think is common in big families I'm also very stubborn I think that comes from a youngest child always being told how to do stuff you know well your brothers and sisters never did that so I'm quite singular I think and I have a lot of conviction I find making decisions very easy you know I can just I do that and then I move on and I think that probably comes from having lots of older brothers and sisters and not wanting to be the same as everyone else and

not wanting to do just what they did but speaking up for I mean maybe a bit I am a bit sort of ratty in that it's so interesting though because we were talking just before we started recording about the fact that both of us are journalists and have to write a lot of stuff otherwise we couldn't pay the rent and a lot of our journalism is kind of comment led and you said well you know I've always got opinions about something is that something that you've always had yes definitely I love comment pieces and op-eds are my favorite thing when I was about seven all I wanted all I'd still quite like actually is a social commentary column I have always been fascinated by other people and I love just talking about the minutiae and the banal and the completely everyday. Yeah, absolutely. I think I could generate an opinion on absolutely anything. And I think that's sort of the premise of the

high-low is that when pushed, Dolly and I could probably natter about paint drying if we had to. We'd find some way of getting there and having an opinion about it. Have you always been stylish? I realise that's probably a horrible question for me to answer. I love that you've just told me I'm stylish when I'm wearing leggings and Nike trainers from going to yoga, my first yoga class later. I have always been creative. I've always loved putting things in places. Titillating and titillating is my favourite thing. So when I was about six or seven, my mum would come to wake me up in the morning and I'd have moved all my bedroom furniture around on my own after she'd put me to bed, just to see how it looked in different spaces.

People often say, you know, have you always been really keen on fashion? I've never really been keen on fashion. I'm interested by style. I'm interested in how things look. I like unusual things. I like searching for fun things. Yeah, I find that I do find that really exciting, like antique hunting or vintage shopping. I love the stories in it. It always comes back to storytelling. For me, I think how can you tell a story with what you're wearing or the way a room looks and what stories do all of those objects hold it's much more fun to ferret around finding things and then sort of compile situations or outfits from that well talking of stories you very sweetly sent me an email outlining your failures for this podcast and then even more sweet said, I'm just not sure that these failures are good enough in comparison to everyone else's. But they are excellent ones.

And the one that I'd like to start with, because we've just spoken about you as a child, a six and seven year old child, is that when you were 12, there was a friendship group that wouldn't allow you to be their friend. Tell us about that and what happened. I love, by the way, what that says about being a good schoolgirl, as I'm worried that I was failing at talking about my failures. Well, when I told you about this one, I was almost embarrassed because I said, I know it's really pathetic. And you said, no, I think it's truly one of sort of the most horrible things when you're young and you're forming relationships in the world.

And up until that point, if you're not in the playground at school, then I think you're so kind of completely loved and cosseted. If you're lucky like I am and you have a loving family, you're so loved and cosseted that you don't really have to think about people ever leaving you. to think about people ever leaving you and then when you sort of get closer to puberty I suppose you realize that actually some relationships are transient and that no one owes you anything and I think that's what was really scary is realizing that the world did not owe me anything and that definitely speaks to my own privilege as most of my failures do but I was at boarding school and in hindsight I often felt very lonely at boarding school even though I was lucky to have lots of friends but there was a distinct feeling that I had that I don't have now and I remember when I was 12 there were four of us who were friends and one of them is still

my best friend to this day and we are godparents to each other's children so thankfully this interlude didn't didn't scar our friendship but I got a note under the door do you remember when you were younger these endless passing of notes yes terrible and when we were because we were at boarding school they all came under your door into your bedroom and then you'd go and post a note back into someone else's dorm total waste of time and paper and I remember I got one from this girl saying there isn't room for you in the group and I think that was all it said and I was completely devastated and I felt sick I felt so sick I remember crying into my baked beans at supper in the canteen because I was at a catholic boarding school one of the nuns asking us all into her little office and I always remember that at one point she looked like

she was trying to stifle a laugh because she had four sobbing 12 year olds and she must have just thought god girls you wait till you get into the real world if you think this is strife and this girl who'd put the note sort of ringleader I suppose he'd put the note, the sort of ringleader, I suppose, who'd put the note under my door, told this sort of metaphor, is it a metaphor? About how they had opened the door and asked me to come in. And I had said no. And then as soon as the windows were locked, I'd knocked on them. Elizabeth looks so confused. I'd knocked asking to come in and they'd say, you know, the door was shut and the windows were locked.

And I don't know if that was to say that when the friendship was open, I had taken advantage of the friendship instead maybe seeking whoring myself out to other pals and then when I decided I wanted in that avenue was shut anyway it was quite confusing and everyone was quite confused but and then the most riveting thing about it was that it just dissipated and I was never really friends with her but we were never really enemies either so it was this incredibly intense moment of understanding about the world and friendship and I do think actually that teenage or prepubescent friendships and fallings out are the most brutal things in the world like little girls can be cruel to one another I totally agree with you because I remember at primary school when I was about nine, a new girl joining my year and there were only six of us in the class

and I had my established best friend. It's the world's smallest class. It was tiny. It was rural Ireland. It was tiny. I had my established best friend, Susan Marshall, and this girl came in

and took Susan away from me. And that was the language. Someone was taken away from you as if by aliens. They were abducted from you and they became better friends and I was the language someone was taken away from you as if by aliens they were abducted from you and they became better friends and I was excluded and from that day I have had a real issue with groups of three particularly groups of three women of where I am always the third wheel and it's that thing of fearing exclusion and pressing your nose up against a window and you're so

desperate to be let into that room, talking of windows again. Do you think that that, in the way that it did with me, has had a long-lasting effect, that you've wanted to be included in things? Well, my mother always warns against the power of three, actually, to the point where I never even have gone on holiday with just three of us, because she was always so terrified of that third wheel thing that you speak of. It's very valid. Yes, that definitely stayed with me. I think my biggest fear is ending up friendless. I have always been fanatic about maintaining friendships, sometimes probably to the detriment of, you know,

I don't know, my health or other things, because I am really terrified of people leaving me, other things because I am really terrified of people leaving me I think and I don't know if it comes from that or just always being someone that's obsessed with people liking me which is weird because I'm not actually always that likable so I don't know why I'm so obsessed with people liking me but my mother always says that when I started school age four I would come out and say I don't think that teacher likes me I don't't think this person likes me. I would always walk into a room, and I still do it now, but I'm trying to train myself out of it, and identify all the people that didn't like me. So I think it pre-existed that, and it has definitely stayed with me. However, I am lucky that I have very, very good old friendships. Most of my best girlfriends I've known since I was 10 or 11.

So there isn't really a reason for me feeling like that. I haven't really been abandoned. That's so interesting because you're now raising a daughter and I know, Zadie, your baby is only nine months old, but are you very aware of making her feel likeable and loved? I really hope that she doesn't see the world in the parameters that I do I hope that she'll take after my husband who is intensely secure doesn't worry what anyone thinks of him and even if someone doesn't like him or is rude to him shrugs and moves on the

ease with which he moves through the world and I know that we say that a lot about men you know that men get to do that because women don't but it also just comes from being very content and his skin and being a very only child has excellent relationships with both his parents he has that that's something that allows you just to feel completely at ease so yeah I will be as careful as I possibly can that she won't inherit that but there's not really a particular reason that I'm like that because my mother as I possibly can that she won't inherit that. But there's not really a particular reason that I'm like that, because my mother, when I was growing up, which I always loved, would never bitch in front of me.

I mean, she doesn't really bitch anyway. So I would never hear her saying, you know, oh, Linda did this, I don't like Linda anymore. I would never hear that. She would never talk about liking or disliking. I will endeavour to do the same with Zadie, but yeah, my mother never did that. You mentioned insecurity there do you think of yourself as insecure?

Yes and no I am very hard on myself so I think I experience the world as a harder place than I have to but I'm not insecure in that if someone else does something I would really like to do I tend to think how great they've done that I wonder if I could do something I'd really like to do I'm not insecure in that I

see other people's successes as my failures but I subconsciously I think I'm very hard on myself because I feel like I need to succeed as much as possible so that definitely comes from an insecurity but I suppose it manifests itself as less quote-unquote stereotypically girlish ways. Like I don't use the word, but this is probably because I think it is quite damaging. I would never say to someone, oh, I'm so jealous, because I think it's a really bad thing that we all do, that whenever someone goes on holiday, like whenever I go on holiday, I'll always have a friend that goes, oh, I'm so gel. and it's quite a weird thing to put on someone I think isn't it because it's almost suggesting that you don't it has a subtext that you don't

deserve it or that they should be there so I think the word jealousy is awful so even if I am jealous of someone I would try and re-spin it in my mind which I think I'm quite good at of thinking god how wonderful I'm so happy for, of thinking, God, how wonderful, I'm so happy for them. How can I make sure I feel fulfilled? But that's just what I do at a conscious level. Subconsciously, there's probably a lot more darker shit. I know you have a brother, but leaving him to one side for the moment, I'm fascinated by the interplay between sisters. Do you think that capacity, which is a really generous and lovely characteristic for someone to have, has that come from having sisters?

We have quite big age gaps in my family, which I think is quite interesting with us as sisters. So my oldest sister is 15 years older than me. And then my middle sister is five years older. So my oldest sister was always quite maternal and actually a real shift in our relationship as we got older is that I was now an adult and that I didn't have to listen or do things exactly how she would do stuff so we sort of had that readjustment and now we're much more peers although I do whenever I have a complete freak out I do still call her actually I would call either of my older sisters and hopefully vice versa but that dynamic I have learned so much from them and I think I have been able to slightly avoid that annoying thing that often women in their 20s do where they don't have awareness of life getting

harder as you get older so just tiny kind of semantics is if people were talking about having babies and you know one of my friends might say oh I'm going to have four children and so I would always say well I hope I'm lucky enough to have. I was just quite careful with the way that I spoke about a lot of things and also between us sisters we've all got quite different life experiences. So my older sister is a bigger clothing size than me and so has experienced the lack of generosity on the high street if you want a better word so as a slim woman I'm quite careful how I talk about my body and I have a real antipathy towards other slim women who go god I feel so feel so fat. Because I just think that's

such an inappropriate way to express yourself when we move through the world pretty seamlessly, thanks to the shape of our bodies. So having all the sisters who have had different experiences has meant that I have expressed myself differently, maybe. Fascinating. The reason you were at your Catholic boarding school is predated by another failure that you outlined to me about your failure to get into grammar school i was really devastated by that which is interesting because it was predetermined that i would go to that boarding school because both my older sisters had gone and i was always going to go exactly where they had gone there wasn't the individualism there which perhaps feeds into why

I'm quite individualistic now yeah but so I was never going to go to the grammar school but definitely doing that test was a real way of finding out if you were smart and we all knew that at school you know the people that got into grammar school were the people that were really smart and even though I never suspected I was really smart I was just a really hard worker not getting in and it's funny because when I'd say this to my mother now she says well you did get in you did and I said yeah I think I got in the day before you know when you're on a reserve and then they offer you a place the day before can you imagine just day before saying yeah okay I'll come I suppose you would so I did get in in the end mum but not getting in there just confirmed my belief that I wasn't really very special and I was just a very hard worker.

But actually, as I've got older, I've realised that if I had to pick between being monumentally intelligent and being a very hard worker, I think I'd probably choose the very hard worker because I think it's better for your soul yeah than to rather have everything handed on a plate is to know you've really bloody grafted to get those things so it was pretty devastating then but it did mean that I have ever since then I think worked really really hard to make sure that I've not had to risk getting those things that I would have really liked that I could have been prevented by for not having I don't know what my IQ is do you know what your IQ is no I'm probably really low because I'm really bad at those kind of tests where you have to draw backward s's and stuff I love that you said it's probably really low because I'm really bad at those tests qualified no there I mean clearly Pandora both of our IQs are sky high. It's just they

haven't developed the test to reflect the accuracy. If their algorithms weren't so terrible, then it would be 190. That's very smart of you to pick that up. But not smart enough to get me into grammar school. Well, but I think there are different ways of testing different kinds of intelligence. But when you didn't get into grammar school, I mean, that is pure and simple and academic test. But did you take it personally rather grammar school, I mean, that is pure and simple an academic test. But did you take it personally rather than just academically? Did you feel a failure as a person? I definitely felt a rejection.

But I think I have a quite bad capacity to turn most things into a rejection of myself rather than just someone placing a choice elsewhere because obviously life is full of a gazillion million choices from what coffee you'll get that day to if you work in a company who gets a certain job but I definitely when people make choices elsewhere again though something I'm getting better at as I get older so I think it's like we were saying it really comes down to learning from age and especially doing the job that we do is trying not to kind of attach massive importance to all of those things. But yes, I definitely saw it as a rejection of me. And in the past, when you've been rejected romantically, for instance, has that felt similar to that? Yes. Yeah. Yes. It all comes into the same little rejection wardrobe.

Yes. Yes. It all comes into the same little rejection wardrobe. And also I have never dumped anyone because I'm loyal like a Labrador, which is actually very useful. My husband and I both never dumped anyone. So I think we'll probably, fingers crossed, have quite a long marriage because neither of us is a dumper. So if neither of us is a dumper so if neither of us is nothing else then we will by default be together for a long time but then I don't see myself as a rejecter of anything or anyone but of course other people might see you as that grammar school then boarding school and a catholic boarding school which I find fascinating how defined defined are you by faith? Not particularly. I got used to going to church all the time but I still don't really know much about the Catholic faith even though I was taught it exclusively in RE. I mean to the detriment of learning about any other

religion but interestingly I have recently started going to church again and someone very close to me is very ill and I have really enjoyed the practice of prayer I don't really know what I believe in terms of godly things but I actually don't think that prayer has to be religious which is actually quite I had a sort of twitter debate about that recently because I think that prayer can just be like meditation it can just be a way of hausing and reflecting and streamlining your thoughts and clarifying your mind and I also slightly believe that you don't have anything to lose by going to church and interacting with the community in London particularly where neighborhoods are

slightly harder to forge it's a really lovely way of almost feeling like you have quite a villagey relationship and praying and taking part in ritual and I like routine I like practice and I like the process of all those things so I actually think I understand more about religion because it hasn't I'm now 31 not 11 at school it hasn't been foisted on me it's an active choice and it's one I can question as much as I want while still taking part in it so yeah faith in something even if just in myself do you feel guilt yes tons and I think that is unfortunately from a catholic upbringing if I'm honest because my mother feels tremendously guilty and there's a lot of self-loathing and that's the same as me there's a lot of guilt I'm driven by guilt a lot of the time which is

something I assumed most people were it's a sense of duty but again I think that's a generational thing so my mum always impressed me that if you RSVP'd yes to something then you went which is why I hate the modern tendency to flake because I think well I know I don't want to go either but you've said you go yeah and Dolly and I once did a for and against flaking I think it was for Red magazine well she wrote in defense of flaking and I wrote in defense of duty so yeah I think a lot of that probably does come from Catholicism. And also being governed by the oughts and the shoulds of life rather than the wants and desires. Yeah. Pandora came to my birthday party recently and was a huge hit and was one of two people to write me a thank you card,

which is an incredibly lovely thing to do and incredibly lovely for me to receive, but vanishingly rare. And it just made me think, God, you are a very busy person and to take the time to do that, actually to put pen to paper, is such a lovely thing to do,

but makes your life more stressful than possibly it needs to be. I can't believe you only got two. Paid for all those vodka gimlets. Well, I'm quite behind on quite a few thank you letters because I have a brain like a sieve. And actually, I have a terrible habit of writing two thank you letters. I constantly get pictures from people going, thanks for the second thank you letter as well. That's how bad my memory is. Yes, I think that is 100% from my mother. I think I place undue importance on things like that. And actually, Dolly has taught me a lot of quite useful lessons about that because I get kind of hung up on if someone doesn't do something small, I will see it as a reflection on me, rather than just that being an element of their character. And Dolly has been really helpful, actually, in helping me see

that, well, it's just personalising everything, isn't it? That people don't move through the world expressly to make you happy or sad. Sometimes, and most of the time, they are not thinking about you at all in the way they behave whereas I would not if someone doesn't write me a thank you letter because as you say it's a disappointingly vanishing act despite there being many lovely paper makers of this world yep not sponsored by Papier hashtag not spawn but yes I do I mean I remember when I'd first had my baby and I went back to work very early and people were coming over to visit her and I would insist my husband was so tolerant about this I would have an absolute breakdown if the house

wasn't immaculately tidy so even if I was completely exhausted I was making sure my bed was made and all the washing up was done no one else would care but I cared so yeah I definitely get fixated on the tiny things then I also think that that's a to use us you know the modern buzz phrase I also think that's quite an important part of self-care I I know that do you ever hear that phrase when you're younger like tidy desk tidy mind yeah and that's really true for me is I feel much more able to take on the world when I've done slightly small probably meaningless things like written a thank you letter sent my post done my laundry tidied the house when I've done those things I feel more able to move through the world I think

I think we're so similar it's actually hilarious hearing you talk yeah but also it's that for me it's an attempt to exercise control over what is fundamentally uncontrollable deeply controlling and I think a big lesson of getting older is realizing that I can't control everyone and everything and also being controlling is really unattractive and I think it was helpful for me when someone I think someone said to me that not everyone has the same standards as you do and that's not a pejorative thing there's no shade in someone having different standards they're just different yeah and therefore their standard won't be to write a thank you card every single time and that's fine because that doesn't mean they don't like you or value you and all of those sort of things and that was immensely helpful for me immensely helpful and also hugely humbling

because you assume that everyone else has the same standards as you which is only looking at the positive parts of yourself what you're missing in that is that they might not have all the same faults as you so if i thought oh that person hasn't written a thank you letter and I did but that person probably didn't do something really annoying that I did it's just cutting people a bit more slack in your brain yeah isn't it I think one of the things I have loved about getting older and again I really this is a real testament to the friendships I have is that when I was in my teens you were always in a fight with someone I remember I'd wake up in the morning and think who am I not

friends with today like it was exhausting there was always something that was going wrong and I don't want a drama filled life I don't like drama I find people that seek drama quite exhausting or who bring drama and cynicism to conversations, quite draining. So I am really trying as I get older, which I think comes back to that not confronting people so much, is trying to create the most calm, content life for me and the people around me. But I honestly think I've only learnt all these things about the last 18 months. I know it's a dreadful cliche, but I think I learnt a lot about myself from having a child, actually.

The pregnancy as much as the postpartum. I want to get on to you having a child, but to do this in an attempt at chronology, let's talk about the internship that Pandora Sykes got fired from. I didn't even know you could get fired from an internship, but I'm extremely proud of you for having done that what internship was it you don't need to mention them by name unless

you want to no I won't mention them by name which I know is annoyingly withholding I'm not sure you can get fired from an internship but it was actually quite dramatic at the time that was yeah along with the uh note under the door age 12 one of the most horrific things that had ever happened to me because I turned it as a lot of us do I turned it into a and I am aware this is very snowflakey I turned it into a sort of cognitive trauma that I would revisit when I felt low so when I felt sad I would think you know you're so shit and then I would think and remember how shit you are because you got fired from that so it loomed massively large in my life in a way that the person that fired me would have never believed and I used it as a tool of probably

keeping myself in check or I'd have liked to have thought I was keeping myself in check it was funny because now obviously I know this isn't the way the world works but it was my first ever internship and I was desperate to be a writer I'd always wanted to be a journalist I set up a blog as soon as I left university when blogs were not the things that they were now had a black background and hot pink writing it was truly offensive visually to behold and I set it up just to write to make sure I was writing every day and it was social commentary which is something I still love doing now so it was very much in keeping with what I wanted to do and I was writing on that blog every

day and I'd written for the student newspaper I think the most meaningful thing I wrote there was about smirting is the smoking ban that our new love connection and the idea was that now you had to go outside to smoke so you would smoke and flirt and you would meet new um genius yeah so that was a proud moment and I'd interned and I'd basically done everything I possibly could to make sure that I was in a good space to get a job in journalism when I left university anyway so I got this internship and I was really excited. And when I got fired from it after five months, I thought that was the end of who I wanted to be. And I was absolutely terrified. I thought, oh God, this has been taken away from me. I can't be who I want to be anymore. I now realise that no editor has the power to make sure you will never work in

this industry again. It's not like that. The then editor did have a fairly inflated sense of self because I remember when I said to him, will I ever work again? And he said, yes, I think you could write a party diary for a newspaper. So I think one of, and no offence to people who write diaries, because that is a thankless, exhausting task, but one of life's greatest triumphs now, eight years after that happened or seven years after that happened, is that I am still writing. And that no one but me seems to remember this. And that people now find it quite comical. But it also means that in general I have behaved pretty damn well at jobs. So seven years ago, so you were 24 when this happened?

I was 23. I'm trying to think. I left. No, I would have been 23 because I when this happened I was 23 I'm trying to think I left no I would have been 23 because I left university when I was 22 and I then went and worked as a PA to a screenwriter for a year which was incredible he was called Christopher Hampton and he is hugely prolific and I would type up some of his scripts for him I remember typing up a sex scene once and feeling terribly gauche and coy about the whole thing and i would drive him to and from the airport i got his car impounded three times in one year and he very generously paid the first two but i had to pay didn't he do dangerous liaisons he did and he wrote the screenplay for atonement

and he he's incredibly clever man he speaks lots of languages and he translates a lot of Ibsen. So he writes his own things and then he also translates a lot. And he was a hugely generous, kind man. He didn't fire you, even though you got his car impounded three times. So what did you do at this internship? Or what was their reason for... So at this internship, I asked for a press discount. discount and as an intern i wasn't allowed to do that right and i didn't know that so it's quite underwhelming which is what's so hilarious the brand said to one of the editors is pandora allowed a press discount and they said oh no she shouldn't

have one of those she's an intern and um i got fired for that which is genuinely quite bizarre because everywhere i've ever worked i've given a lot of press discounts to interns. I was a slightly strange one. But do you know what? The loveliest thing to have come out of that is that one of my fellow interns who was a bit senior to me, when I was fired, I thought a lot, what will she think of me? And actually, do you know what? I think I was a bit excited by the frilly bits of that job. And I think I wasn't probably as mature as I could have been and I thought a lot about what she must think of me and I felt embarrassed so if I saw her I would not really talk to her because I thought she just thinks I'm some silly blonde who learnt

my lesson or got you know taught what I was doing and she's now my editor at Elle magazine and she's one of the loveliest, most generous women. And I sent her an email, and this was hugely satisfying, actually, and gave me a lot of closure. And I sent her an email about six months ago saying, I just want to thank you so much for giving me a second chance and for the way you edit me and for being so generous. And she replied saying, don't be so ridiculous. I love working with you. It was a million years ago. And I think that was just a real reminder to me that most people generally don't give a my lad swear on this

yes don't give a fuck about your failings only if you do it in an American accent I remember Dolly being really happy that I'd sent her that email and that she'd responded so positively because I had so wanted to make amends oh I think that's I think that's such a beautiful thing to have come out of that failure me too the power of female solidarity and the fact that you were brave enough to send that email because that is a vulnerable and exposing thing to do but also that you were humble enough to send it and it sounds as if you really did learn a lesson from that in terms oh I absolutely didn't also it was very embarrassing for. I was embarrassed about how people at that magazine would see me because it did make me look grabby. And the irony is that anyone knows me is that I had failed to parlay myself correctly into the world.

They were seeing someone who wasn't me. And I think that's why I used it as a sort of trauma tool, because it's a reminder when I felt low or feel low that my brain likes to play on me, that I'm not understood and I'm not liked. And I think that actually I've just written this long form piece of writing about authenticity for an independent publisher and the thing that I was so interested in and that a lot of people said is behind this desperate search for authenticity is that it's an evolutionary tool to belong so if you are not liked then you feel like you're not belonging and that is the way that even the cavemans existed in this cavemans yeah that's fascinating cavemen god damn and women cavemen and women cave women yes because actually cave women would have cared more about being liked

than the cavemen wouldn't they yeah that is likeability is inherently quite a female thing yes and also if you're being left behind and stirring the pot while your man's out hunting although apparently that's all a myth and cave women went out as well yeah yeah yeah fascinating that both what happened to you at school with that friendship group and the internship come back to that feeling of not being liked or understood I think though a lot of those things that we experience as humans tend to come from the same place and return to the same place. I have changed a lot as I've got older in that I think I am nicer and I think I am more at ease and I really enjoy life. But internally, you know, your internal makeup, it's very hard to change your thought patterns. They're sort of

squashed right down from the age of two or three really I definitely have tried to make sure that I have been invested in our interns from being an intern I mean I interned collectively for almost two years I had three long internships and I learned a lot but there's the only way I could do those is because I was lucky to have family friends who would let me stay with them for free. Otherwise, I don't know how you would in London. You know, it's ridiculous. And I've tried to be really invested in our interns because I think there's this quite weird sense of being an ambitious intern is quite annoying. You've got this endless stream of interns and no one's really got time to look after you. And someone going, can I write that or can I do that was annoying and my advice actually now is keep quiet smile a lot

matey you've got more chance of being asked back than you have if you're someone that goes I just wrote this little thing last night no one wants to read what you wrote last night and I had this blog the whole way through and no one I ever interned for read that blog but that blog is what helped me get my job at the Sunday Times so writing for yourself can end up paying dividends later but yes as an intern no one's really interested in you or what you're doing but I did try particularly at the Sunday Times and have to even mentor a tiny bit the girls younger because I think interning is absolutely terrifying and actually not wildly dissimilar to a lot of devil wears broad yeah no I agree with you I always I'm very aware whenever

I've been working in offices that the personal work experience is as worthy of your time as the editor because one day they'll end up being your editor FYI i know yeah so anyway that internship was a failure but turned into something that taught you a valuable lesson and you went on to the sunday times and then straight from that felt basically it's just like the next day i was watching the sunday times started the high low um and then you had your baby and I'm so grateful for you for saying that you want to talk about this because I think it will resonate with so many women but that was something that you wanted to talk about the disparity between how your life looked on the outside for those who follow you on Instagram and the actuality of what was going on inside your head once you had your

baby what was going on I'm interested that you said for those on Instagram because it was actually some of the people that knew me the most as well it wasn't just people on Instagram it was everyone that knew me I think there's this really odd idea that when you have a baby the hardest thing will be the baby so people kept on saying to me don't worry it will get easier and I'm sorry if this is annoying thing to say to other people who've had children not experienced this but I think we place too much importance on a collective story rather than singular experiences of motherhood and my baby was not difficult has never been difficult and I've never found it difficult to be her mother in fact it was something I found very easy and

have derived instant joy from and I'm incredibly grateful for that and if I could afford to I would have 400 of them however what I did completely fail out or feel like I was failing out was the rest of life I thought I knew myself quite well and there is something truly disorientating about no longer being able to holster or harness your brain it was like I was observing myself from far away and I now realise so passionately why it's important for people to take maternity leaves. It's not to be in the baby bubble, although I'm sure that would have been lovely and I will forever miss not going to monkey music with my baby. It is to mentally heal more than to physically heal. Because what your body and your brain goes through and the hormones is absolutely extraordinary.

I felt like I was on drugs almost all of the time. And it wasn't until the physical side effects started to present themselves to me that I realised I really wasn't doing very well. So not sleeping at all. The irony being that my baby slept through the night from a very young age. So everyone would say, how's she sleeping? And I'd say, she's great.

I'm the one that's failing at this. So not sleeping and I lost my appetite and I had panic attacks and all sorts of things like that. But the thing that made me really sad and that made me realise that we still have such a long way to go in the way that we politicize and talk about women's bodies is that I lost my baby weight quite early because I lost my appetite and because I was back at work after five weeks and not just like this is the thing when you're freelance I think people think that it means you don't do like a couple of hours a day whereas as a freelancer I'm sure you've had this too I'm busier than I've ever been in a full-time job so it wasn't like I was just doing a couple of hours. I was very intensely back to work,

three days a week at five weeks and four days a week at three months. Because I had lost my baby weight, everyone was saying to me how amazing I looked and how I was nailing it. That is the word I got all the time. You look like you're nailing it. I had a house that I decorated and I had a bonnie baby and I was my pre-pregnancy size and work was going well so I must be really great inside and I couldn't understand why I wasn't when everyone else was telling me I was why wasn't I feeling that and I've really tried to learn from that now not not to look at women and think, well, they must have a charmed life, because there is no rhyme or reason for the way that you feel inside, and actually the worst thing about feeling like that

is I had everything I'd ever wanted. I had a nice partner, really nice partner. I had a really nice baby. I have a really nice house, and I have a really nice job, and I have really nice friends. I have so many really nice things and I couldn't understand why I felt so terrible and that made me feel more terrible. So yeah I felt like I was failing to live up to the me that everyone else seemed to think I was and no one

except my husband and Dolly probably because it was obvious that I wasn't really being myself. I'm a natural worrier but I was saying some pretty bonkers stuff, I think. I think I was expecting to be doing my best work when I was still sort of leaking breast milk everywhere. How did you get out of that stage? I think the answer is it so often is, and I wish I hadn't waited so long, is medication and therapy. I never thought I'd do either of those things. And I felt really sad about having to do those things. But the combination of them both has been life-changing. And, you know, the unfortunate or fortunate truth,

for those of us lucky enough to be able to afford to have therapy, is that, you know, if you find a great therapist, it's the best money you will ever spend I'm a massive believer in that I see it as equivalent to a pension like I'm saving for a pension actually I'm not saving for a pension ironically but I'm putting the money for your mental future well none of us can afford to ever retire because we don't have a pension so actually it's right to put your money into your brain because you're going to need that to keep going till you're about 93 Elizabeth 100% and I'll need to keep affording therapy when i'm

like in my 90s and i can't retire it's a bit of a chicken and an egg situation isn't it but was it someone you say there about you feeling so bad that you weren't living up to these things because you didn't have anything to complain about was it someone else who stepped in and said Pandora I think you need to have some help and that's okay or yeah it was my sister okay it was my sister I just rung her one day and she said hi what's up and I just and I hadn't shown anyone that side and I just said um I've just had this panic attack and I haven't slept again last night and I can't get a doctor's appointment and you know I'm just really tired and I just don't know what to do. And there was something about the way I sounded where she said, go to a private doctor.

She said, you're lucky enough to be able to afford to go to a private doctor. Here's a number because my sister's a midwife in the NHS. And so, you know, tends to know a lot about medical stuff. And she was like, here's a good private doctor. You're lucky enough to be able to afford it. Spend your money where you need it. But's the mad thing isn't it is I have realized that I haven't really taken care of myself for a really long time and you think I thought if you can physically do something then you can do it and because I can physically I'm a bit of an ox you know I moved house when I was seven months pregnant I decorated the whole house while still working

full-time at eight months and nine months pregnant I thought if you can physically do it you can do it but your brain at some point steps in and goes I don't care if your feet are still walking I'm not walking anymore and yeah so it was my sister it was my sister saying you need to go do something about it and he immediately gave me a prescription and you know I don't have insomnia at the moment I mean my god they're just so closely related aren't they I remember one night I slept for 45 minutes between 1 and 1.45. The amazing thing is that you can still actually function on that. I mean, you feel pretty weird, feel quite loopy, but you can still function. Yeah, well, not for no reason is sleep deprivation used as a torture tactic to extract information from terrorists. Yeah, it's a form of insanity. And the strangest thing is that I had always

thought because you know, when you're a bit hungover and you haven't slept enough and you're really hungry you have that insatiable hunger well you wrote about how to deal with a hangover the other day and there was a lot of food in there and the odd thing is is when you're truly not sleeping you're not hungry at all and that was so weird for me I think people have that slightly ridiculous belief that if you're slim you're not that interested in food and I'm very lucky that I've never struggled with my weight, but I do not miss meals. And as you know, I do quite like a donut or three. So it was extraordinary. I felt like I was fully fragmented.

I was definitely watching myself during that time. And I remember watching going, it's so strange. I don't even like eating at the moment, which was very weird, but I don't feel fragmented now. Do you feel that you've grown into yourself more from having faced the side of yourself yeah I mean this has been an enormous year for me in so many ways professionally personally mentally I feel like a completely different person yeah

definitely and I think I'm also now really resolved to try and learn more about myself and I'm also on this quite nerdy because I'm so scholastic forever I'm on this quite nerdy journey to identify all the things about me that I think aren't great and see what I can do about them so definitely I go into my therapist because now I'm in a good place I'll go in and my therapist will say this is so weird by the way I've never ever talked about having therapy I'll go and she'll say what do you want to talk about this week and I'll say well I've noticed I'm being a bit angry so So I'd like to talk about that actually. So I do literally, I'm going through a checklist of things about myself

that I don't think should be there and trying to better them. I'm on a course of self-betterment. How interesting that you pick anger and then say immediately about things that shouldn't be there. Because you wrote a brilliant piece about anger recently, about the collective power of female anger. That's a useful anger. So the anger I wrote about is when we have a political anger. And I think that's really important. And I don't mean it's not a shouty anger. It's kind of a quiet, determined rage. Where anger is really not useful is the kind of anger that makes you shouty and pace. It's kind of a personal anger. It's normally like pretty pithy and irritable

that kind of anger I don't like in myself and I have it 99% of the time when I'm in my email inbox I don't know how emails managed to get me more angry than anything else in this world so I'm trying to tackle that because I want to calm a life as life gets calmer I want to make it more calm both you and Dolly are very good at putting out of offices on your email when you're doing because I want a calmer life. As life gets calmer, I want to make it more calm. Both you and Dolly are very good at putting out of offices on your email when you're doing something else. I mean, Dolly puts a gif in hers. I know, they are hilarious.

Please don't leave me this way, yeah. But I think that's actually just a brilliant practical tip, that when you're doing something, so for instance, when you're recording the high-low, and I send you an email, an out of office will will come back saying i'm busy recording the hilo today i'll get to your email whenever i was like blew my mind when i got it i was like oh my gosh you can actually take control of your emails in this way i think it's extraordinary that we now have this utterly rapacious culture where you are expected to be contactable at all times and Dolly and I are both introverts

we're really loud and really sociable but we also need a hell of a lot of time on our own to recharge it's why I love working from home alone I airplane the hell out of my phone to the point where I've actually had to have a landline installed so that my family can get hold of me because I airplane my phone so much so I put an out of office on more as kind of a salve to myself knowing that I've told people I'm not contactable but I still had so many extraordinary examples you know two weeks after my baby I had a publication getting in touch asking if I could do edits on a piece and I just replied saying no I'm on maternity leave and he replied saying oh congratulations I've attached the piece so you can see and I didn't and it never ran and I'm okay with that because it was really important to me that I made a stand and I have had even from

people I really like actually you know I've tried to make it really clear that I work eight till six because that's when I have a nanny for when I work and people say oh could you just work on this it's just a tiny thing no I can't work on it after six because I'm bathing my baby and I'm putting her to bed and then I need to chill the fuck out because I've been working since eight and I'm really tired because I have a child so I'm really on a mission to try and make people understand that yes I could be physically available on a Sunday via email but I'm also with my family I'm going to church and then we're going out for lunch and I don't want to be at the behest of my email and I think we talk a lot at the moment about detoxes and balance, but there is still this idea that you are available at all times. And I really don't like that.

I don't like being available at all times. Plus for people like us who are worried that someday we'll have no friends and no one will ever ask us to do anything anymore, that it taps into a really profound, fearful psychology that I think we both have. We're like, oh, if I don't reply to this email now, they might never ask me again. I know that's a hard, I think, thank God, because a lot of my friendships are such old friendships. I don't have that fear because I know it would take more than me having my phone off for a day for them to give up on our friendship. And I also think it's really good if you kind of have that mentality, then other people can have that with, because they know they can do that with you.

And it's quite freeing for other people as well. Sometimes communication between Dolly and I can take about four years because we're tag teaming in the airplane. About a week later, we might have our phones on at the same time. Oh, Pandora Sykes, this has just been bliss. I could talk to you for hours, but you do have a baby to look after and you do have those endless freelancing hours to get back to. You can never write me a thank you note again and I will always be your friend. Thank you so much for appearing on How to Fail

with Elizabeth Day. You've been amazing. Thank you for being so honest and vulnerable. And thank you for promising to keep being my friend. That's an utter relief. I should turn my phone off now and have a nap. Thank you for having me. Thank you.