How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S4, Ep3 How to Fail: Tracey Thorn

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

My guest this week is the fantastic Tracey Thorn, who I basically grew up listening to. She was one-half of Everything But The Girl, guest vocalist on Massive Attack's phenomenal Protection album and lately has launched her own solo career alongside writing three critically acclaimed memoirs, the latest of which, Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia has won rave plaudits from Julie Burchill, David Nicholls and Dolly Alderton, to name but a few.Tracey joins me to talk about failing to get into the university of her choice (but meeting her husband as a consequence so...y'know...swings and roundabouts), being an utterly terrible driver, as well as living with stage fright and bouts of serious anxiety that have shaped much of her life. Our chat also takes in the jostle between career and motherhood (three kids, including twins), the difficulty of understanding our own parents, the experience of ageing as a woman and why she'd never, ever consider growing her hair long.I'm so grateful to Tracey for being so warm and generous and to Teatulia in Covent Garden for lending us their beautiful tea-shop for the recording. Teatulia sells a wonderful range of teas, some of which you can buy online here, and also makes absurdly good tea-based cocktails. Do pay them a visit if you're ever in the area. Tracey's Sunday Times Top 10 bestselling memoir, Another Planet: A Teenager in Suburbia, is out now published by Canongate and is available to order hereHow To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, recorded by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate BooksThe Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out nowand is available to pre-order here.*IMPORTANT NEWS KLAXON* I’m doing a live How To Fail With Elizabeth Day event on 5th May at The Bridge Theatre in London with ZAWE ASHTON (who is amazing). There are still some tickets available here.   Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayTracey Thorn @tracey_thornChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. The chances are you have already heard Tracy Thorne's voice. As one half of the duo Everything But The Girl and the guest vocalist on Massive Attack's Protection album, she sang much of our soundtrack to the 1990s, her voice a beguiling mix of depth and surface, of wit and reverence. She grew up in suburban Hertfordshire and read English at the

University of Hull. There she met Ben Watt, who would become her long-term partner in both music and in life. The couple formed Everything But The Girl in 1981, had three children, and got married, firmly in that order. More recently, Thorne has garnered critical acclaim and commercial success for her writing. Her first memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen, was published in 2013. Her second, Another Planet, A Teenager in Suburbia, is part autobiography, part meditation on suburban life, and was published in February. David Nichols called it a wise and funny book. John Niven said, Thorn is the rarest of things, a singer whose phrasing is as good on the page as it is through a microphone. And as for the woman herself, as she put it in a 2018 interview,

I've had the success bit, the pop star bit. I've been there. That was enough to fulfil my ambition, which was never enormous in the first place. Now, I'm too content to be malleable. Tracy, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. We are recording in the splendour of Titulia tea shop in Covent Garden. So you might hear the occasional clattering of a teapot. We're surrounded by books and lovely

furniture. And I have a nice cup of jasmine tea. But if you do hear any background sounds, that will be what it is. But Tracy, can I start with that quote about being too content to be malleable? Because I think a lot of women will relate to the notion of being malleable. I think I was probably talking about whether or not you can be persuaded into doing things you don't really want to do anymore. In my case, that means there are certain aspects of performing, appearing things that I've just quietly withdrawn from. I don't do live gigs anymore, even though I still make music.

And that's considered a bit unusual. So I often have to answer that question. Why don't do live gigs anymore even though I still make music and that's considered a bit unusual so I often have to answer that question why don't I do it and the answer is just that I am in this fortunate position where I can choose what I want to do so there isn't really any pressure anyone can put on me and say well if you don't do this you won't be successful enough because I can turn around and say but I've been successful and now I'm settled enough that I can turn around and say, but I've been successful. And now I'm settled enough that I can just do things because I want to do them because they feel important. And there's a motivation in me to do it rather than because there's some end goal. Did you feel happy to be successful when you were successful? Or is it only in retrospect that you realise you were? I very much enjoyed our sort of second phase of success.

So we had a period of success during the 80s and then our career took a bit of a downturn in the way pop careers do. And I thought that was probably the end, it was probably over. And then we had a sort of second wind in the 90s. And that's when we had really our biggest success. I did the work with Massive we

had the biggest hit single with Missing and we had our biggest album after that and actually I think I enjoyed that more because I was a bit older I was in my early 30s by then I had a bit of perspective on it all I'd had that experience of having success and seeing it go away so actually to have it come back, I really appreciated it. I suddenly saw how precious it could be and how much fun it could be. And perhaps knowing that it was bound to be fleeting again made me just think, oh, just enjoy it while it's here. And it's interesting because when we were chatting before we started recording, you said something to the effect of you'd rather someone liked your writing than

your singing. Is that true? Not in every respect. I mean, that was about a very specific review I've just had from Julie Burchill. A rave review. A rave review of the new book, who was my heroine as a teenager. And if you could have said to me fast forward, and she will say you're a brilliant writer, I would have given anything for that. Yeah, that made me very happy. You mentioned yourself as a teenager there, and I've just finished your wonderful book, Another Planet. And in many ways, it's a memoir about what didn't happen. There are these wonderful passages where you go through your past diaries, and you say things like, oh, I went to Debenhams, but I didn't get the waistcoat I wanted. And there was a broader concept there about the suburbs being somewhere where things didn't happen. It felt like the exciting stuff was happening off stage. How much did that inform your teenage years, the idea that you wanted to

get to the excitement? I think it did a lot. I wasn't really aware of the fact that where I was living had this sort of uniquely deadening atmosphere. I think as a child, I'd just grown up thinking this was normal. And it was only as I got through my teens a bit and got more glimpses of the outside world that I just got the inkling that there was more out there than they were letting on. It was such a narrow place to live in.

I think the sort of version of life that was on offer was very conventional. And the assumption was that, you know, you would just sort of follow in these footsteps and live this same life. And I just began to get glimpses of a wider world out there, which had a lot more diverse people in it doing a variety of things. And I just thought, well, I want some of that. You talk very movingly in the book about your relationship with your parents, and the fact that the more you succeeded and the more you quote unquote got away from the place where you were brought up, the more inevitable distance there was between you. Do you think that you've reconciled to the fact of that distance now?

And do you think it affected how you've been a parent? They were the classic aspirational parents in that, you know, their move to the suburbs had been aspirational in the first place. They were leaving behind their working class roots in North London and escaping London after the war and moving into this nice little semi-detached house in the suburbs. And it was, you know, supposed to be an upward move. And then I was the first child to go to university. So again, there's a sense in that that you're sort of pushing your child, you know, onwards and upwards. But it did sort of open up a gulf between us. That gulf was opening up already because I had already, as a teenager, wanted to branch out and do all sorts of things like buy a guitar and join a band and go to gigs that freaked them out a bit.

in a band and go to gigs that freaked them out a bit. But I do think that ironically, the thing they thought they wanted for me, which was education and getting out there in the world, again, it did turn me into someone who they didn't quite understand or thought they couldn't understand. And how do you think that's affected you as a mother? Well, I'm just different anyway, I think, because generationally, my style of parenting has been so different. I think because generationally my style of parenting has been so different. I think their style of parenting was in many ways about sort of keeping lots of things unsaid and secret so there were lots of mysteries you know anything that was a bit difficult emotionally wasn't talked about difficult subjects like sex or your period starting up was never properly explained to me so I sort of went through these

things in a bit of a fog, as we did at that time, trying to find things out for myself. And again, without the internet. So just asking friends or picking up rumours of what things were like. So that was a sort of distance between me and my parents as well, that there were just things that were off the menu in terms of what you could talk about and my style of parenting is the absolute opposite really it's much more open and you know when there's been difficult things we've tended to be just much more open about talking about things which means that with my kids I feel we've stayed closer even when they've had difficulties I feel that in the end we've tried to sort of team up together and work out how to get through things. You mentioned there that your parents were pushing for you to go to university, which you did.

But your first failure is that you failed to get into the University of East Anglia. Yes. But actually from that failure came a wonderful thing because you ended up at the university where you met your collaborator and now husband. Yes. But tell me about applying to UEA and not getting in and how that felt. Yeah, so I'd always been considered bright at school and English was my subject that I was good at. So I was expected to do well in it. And I applied to a couple of universities to do English and sort of took for granted that I would

just be able to choose where I wanted to go and I'd get in. And I went for an interview at UEA and they put me on the spot in a way I'd never been put on the spot before and asked me to talk about books in a way I hadn't been asked to talk about them. I'd just studied at school in a way that you sort of read the text and read your Brodie's notes and did your essays and answered the questions. And suddenly they were talking to me in a much more grown-up way. You know, let's discuss this book. They asked me to compare King Lear and 1984, which were two things I'd said I'd read. Now, even now, that strikes me as quite difficult. And as an 18-year-old student, I think I just gawped at

them. I just couldn't think what on earth they were talking about. So I did this disastrous interview, and they didn't offer me a place. I think I just got a letter saying, you know, thank you very much for coming to the, unfortunately we don't have a, and I remember being quite shocked and just thinking, oh my God, this is going to be difficult getting into university then. I just thought you sort of went. I also applied to Hull, who I was very grateful when they then did offer me a place. And I just about managed to get the grades and got in there. And when you had that rejection from UEA, say that you felt shocked did you feel a sort of personal rejection or did you feel oh this is a sort of task that I need to approach differently?

I felt really stupid I mean I felt I'd been caught out that classic imposter syndrome thing that all along I've fooled myself that I'm clever and that I'm good at English. And here I am, I've met the first challenge to that and I've been proved not to be very clever. You know, I couldn't work out how to get through this interview. So yeah, I think I did take it very personally. I can still remember it very vividly. I can remember the feeling of sitting there and suddenly feeling out of my depth and being asked questions that I just thought, I can't answer these questions and wanting ground to open up. Do you still have imposter syndrome?

Nowhere near as badly. No, I do think it's one great advantage maybe of getting a bit older. It sort of lurks in the back of my mind, but I've almost developed a kind of defiance about it. I sort of know it's there. And I know, especially as a woman, that I'm prone to it. I'm prone to it sometimes when I write something and I think I'll be picked up again on making mistakes, even when I'm writing about something I really know about. Like if I write about music, I sometimes have this fear that, you know, some man will say, oh, you've got the B side of that single wrong, you know, because men can be very factual about their kind of curating of music and I have worried in the past I'll get caught out I'll get picked up on something but then another voice inside my head speaks up and is defiant about that and says

stop it you're doing that thing you're doing that imposter thing of thinking you don't know that you don't have the authority or the right to speak about this and you do so I kind of fight against it when I and it's the defiant voice a female voice yes that's so interesting so you have the kind of the male and the female dynamic going on in your own brain I know I'm fighting my internal feminist battle have you actually it's interesting to talk about gender because one of the many defining things about your look is your short hair and just thinking back to the sort of time that you were famous, it was a noticeable choice.

How do you feel about your gender and femininity and things like that? As a young teenager, I struggled with the notion of feeling I couldn't quite cut it as a sort of conventionally pretty girl, which I was trying to be early on. I had slightly longer hair and was trying to go for it and feeling it wasn't quite working. And when I started to get into music, and it was the time of sort of punk scene and post-punk, there was an alternative look on offer, which was very androgynous at the time. You know, rock looks for women have often been quite androgynous.

And I thought, well, maybe I can be a better version of that. Maybe if I stop trying to do the conventional thing, actually, I can come up with a look that breaks out of those gender conventions a bit, and maybe I'll be more successful as that. And I always felt it did work. I mean, I knew there were people who didn't like the look. And even when I was in the band, and we were quite successful, I'd get reviews that would criticize what I looked like for having short cropped hair. But I just sort of thought, well, I'm not trying to appeal to you. You know, that kind of is the whole point of looking like this. I'm sort of saying, I'm not trying to be just a conventionally pretty girl. I'm trying to make you look past that and look good in a different way. Have you ever wanted to grow your hair long?

Never. The longest I've ever had it since then was sort of-80s. I went for a little sort of short Louise Brooks bob. Yeah. And that's the longest I've had it in my adult life. I had that for about a year and I thought, no, it's a bit long. Gets in the way. Chop it off. I think it's great, your hair. I never want you to change it. I never will. So you ended up going to the University of Hull. And are you grateful then that the failure of UEA happened? Well, here's the great twist in the story. I went to Hull where I met Ben. And if I had gone to UEA, I would have met his girlfriend. Oh my gosh.

Plot twist. Plot twist. Because when I met Ben, he had a girlfriend who he'd been with for a few years who had gone to UEA. So yeah, I've always thought that was kind of funny little postscript to the story. How did you meet Ben and was it an instant connection? We met on our first night there because we had a connection already, although we hadn't met. We were both making music and separately from each other, we'd both got a little deal with a small indie label in London. But we were both those kind of people who said, well,

I'm going to go to university anyway because that's the sensible thing to do. But we'd sort of been told to look out for each other. So my interpretation of that was, I thought, well, if I bump into this guy, Ben, he'll be someone, I'll sort of know who he is. Ben's interpretation was on the first night there to page me over the tannoy system in the Union Bar.

So my first night there, I was standing at the bar having a drink and over the tannoy system in the union bar so my first night there I was standing at the bar having a drink and over the tannoy came a message if Tracy Thorne of the marine girls is in the building would she come to reception and I remember thinking oh it's probably that bloke Ben and so you went so yeah I went trotting off to meet him thinking oh I suppose I better humor him and there he was and we got on very well, very quickly. How does a creative partnership like yours work? Do you allot tasks?

Is it sort of quite compartmentalised or is it sort of incredibly creative and everything is splurging out of your brains all the time? Is there a format? Well, I mean, I think our life falls into two separate halves really there were all the years when we were living and working together during which time we really were incredibly intertwined every aspect of our life was interconnected getting up in the morning writing songs maybe we were in the studio recording or maybe we were on tour you know

just being together all the time but we haven't worked together now for almost as long as I think in fact possibly for longer than we did work time. But we haven't worked together now for almost as long as, I think, in fact, possibly for longer than we did work together. You know, we haven't worked together in nearly 20 years. And so our lives now are more conventional in the sense that, you know, we're married and we're parents and we each do creative things, but we do them separately. We've got our own working lives now and, you know, we're working on things independently of each other. And if you could take one thing from that episode of failing to get into the university that you applied to, what do you think it taught you in a wider sense? Well, as I say, I do think it was my first experience of that thing of having your confidence undermined and realising you've just got to pick yourself up from something

like that. It wasn't the end. It didn't mean I wasn't clever. It was a bad experience. It was unfortunate. Looking back, I think those interviews actually were pretty mean. I think that was quite a harsh approach to a new student walking in. And perhaps they might have sensed after the first question that, you know, I was a bit out of my depth and tailored it. So, you know, looking back, I think you weren't really massively in the wrong. It was just a bad day. You were caught on the hop. And actually, I carried on. And oh, I did really well. Yeah, you graduated with a first. I did. So it proves to me, okay, looking at that failure to get in, you might think,

oh, I'm not meant to go to university. You know, I'm not cut out for this. I'm not good enough. But actually, it was just one bad day. Yeah. Your second failure is one of my favorites because I would consider it one of my failures too which is failing to be a good driver but you failed your driving test and you say I took it again and passed but I was a terrible driver and always thought the fail was the correct result I ended up crashing and never drove again yes tell me about the first time you attempted to take your test. I honestly don't remember it. So this is how much I have blanked out my driving. I cannot tell you

whether my driving instructor was a man or a woman. Wow. Again, that seems quite weird to me. I've literally erased it all from my memory. It was so horrifying. I hated it so much. So I must have had enough driving lessons to take a test, fail it, take it again. Again, I can't remember whether I passed on the second or third time, something like that, but I've just erased it. And was this when you were 17? No, no, no, no. This was when I was in my late twenties. See, I never wanted to learn to drive ever. I knew I, I knew I wouldn't be able to, but everyone always says, oh, come on, anyone can drive. Anyone can learn to drive. You must learn to drive. So I finally gave in in my

late twenties and thought, okay, well, maybe I will. So I had these driving lessons, which as I say, I've erased from my memory. Failed my test, which seemed to be entirely the correct result. I came home quite happy with that. See, told you, but everyone just said, oh no, everyone fails first. I'll take it again. So I duly went along and did it again and passed and I remember coming out just thinking this is ridiculous what are you talking about I've passed I shouldn't be allowed out on the road and then I drove for about a year very badly not in the way that I think people imagine nervous bad drivers drive which is you know tootling along in the slow lane, but like a maniac because you're terrified and you're just trying to get it over with.

So I would be foot to the floor, pulling out at junctions. I'd sit at roundabouts with no sense at all of when I should go on the roundabout. And then people would honk behind me. So I'd just pull out onto the roundabout. And eventually I drove into the side of someone through doing exactly that. I want to come back to that but what was it about driving that was it did it scare you the prospect of it

of getting behind a wheel? Yes I honestly think I lack some brain connection or sense of spatial awareness or something so whilst I was technically completely able to handle a car, obviously the driving bit is easy, you know, knowing what to do with the wheel and the foot pedals. It's knowing how to negotiate traffic that's the real skill of driving. And I honestly couldn't do it. I couldn't judge how fast anyone was going or at what point. I'm not a very good pedestrian, if I'm honest. I'm not very good at crossing the road even on foot. It's a wonder you got here today. It's a marvel. It's a marvel, quite frankly. So yeah, I just couldn't judge things. And it never got better. And the thing that people keep telling you is, oh, well, you just need to keep practicing. You know, you'll get better. And I think I got slightly worse.

because I find driving utterly terrifying. I've got no spatial awareness. Every time I get behind the wheel, I'm like, this is an instrument of death. And I just don't know what I'm doing and how is this allowed? And if they're allowing me to do it, imagine all the other people who are allowed to do it on the road who you've no idea how they're going to react to certain situations. The whole thing is completely terrifying. It is. That was my feeling about it.

And it made me think that actually it should be much harder to pass a driving test. There should be many more failures. What happened with the crash? Did you emerge unscathed? Yes. No one was hurt, luckily. So it wasn't that I had terrible, traumatic crash. It was a bit upsetting in that I drove into a man who was driving and I think he had his mother in the back seat or something so he got out and was very angry with me and shouted at me but again I did think well fair enough I have just driven into the side of you but it was a bit aggressive and I suppose that was slightly scary as well the knowledge that if you crashed you could hurt someone that was horrifying or even

if you didn't that you could just get into something that could be really nasty so it did really scare me and I didn't do the thing that people say which is oh you should get straight back on the horse and carry on because I honestly did feel vindicated bizarrely by the crash I just felt that it was an accident waiting to happen and there it was it had happened and I felt you know like saying to people how much more proof do you need that I'm really not a good driver are you like that in other areas of your life do you think of the worst almost as a preparation tactic like? Yes I am a catastrophic thinker yeah um I've got better at not being and I've got better at learning how to deal with that as well which we can come on to in a minute and talking about other failures but yeah I, I think probably my, one of the things that made me

fearful about driving is that I'm not very good at just sort of breezing on through and thinking, well, it probably won't happen, which you sort of have to as a driver, I think. You have to have the conviction that, you know, you probably won't hit someone. Because if you start thinking you might, it's not very helpful. I've done exactly that though I've been driving and then I start thinking oh my god I'm gonna have a horrible crash I'm not going to get to the destination and I've had to stop myself thinking that and stop unspooling the visual imagery of some terrible pile up and then just get to the destination and sort of rewire my thinking process as a result of it but it is it's such a sort of profound thing really because it's also a take on life like the only way you can get through life is just sort of get on with it and

not think about all the terrible things that might happen every single day yeah I mean as a mother I'm not a mother but I I can imagine when you have a baby and you're being allowed to take this precious new human back home in the hospital the first time there's a similar feeling of like what do I do there is and I think you're right that sort of catastrophic thinking imagining what could happen can be exacerbated when you're a mother the only good thing that sort of dampens it down is that you're so exhausted all the time you don't really have the energy to actually work through all your catastrophic fantasies and that's almost a blessing I think so much of motherhood parenting is just manual labour. You know, it's just sheer physical drudgery. I do think that

powers you on through the endless worrying that you would do otherwise. And do you think your parents, their move from North London to the supposed safety of Brookmans Park, was that an effort on their part to make their children feel safe in a world of potential catastrophe? Well, I'm sure it was. I do think that for that generation who lived through the war, both my parents were teenagers in London during the Blitz and both had horror stories, really, of near misses, bombs falling falling nearby which they told to us in this sort of ealing comedy style of oh bomb landed and blew me out of bed ho ho ho you know and as a child I took it in that spirit though all that sort of stories about the blitz spirit and everyone mucking in and

getting along I did have that jolly version of what the blitz must have been like and then getting older and suddenly thinking but hang on that, that meant my parents, you know, actually experienced their neighbours' houses being blown to bits and everything. And I can only imagine that that generation carried a trauma around with them, but they were a generation who didn't speak about it. They didn't speak about anything that was difficult or dark. So yes, I think what suburbia represented to them was this idyllic dream of somewhere perfect and a place you'd have a comfortable life and a place you'd have a safe life. And it sounds to me, both from what you've written in the book and what you've just said, that as a child, some of your formative experiences were listening for the

things that weren't being talked about. It was sort of understanding the stories beneath the surface. Yes. You know, I was a sensitive child. I was very emotional. I was reading books from an early age. And I was curious. I would have been described as one of those children who sort of thought too much about everything and took everything too seriously and was always asking questions things which were considered a bit problematic I think and difficult and it was sort of charming but actually you know Tracy's always worrying about things and thinking about things and I think yeah from quite an early age I just started to notice things and be aware that there were things I was thinking about and wondering about but which weren't talked about and so I think when you grow up in that environment you learn very quickly that there were things I was thinking about and wondering about, but which weren't talked about. And so I think when you grow up in that environment,

you learn very quickly that there are things you don't say and can't say. So then again, they just sort of go round and round in your head. You internalise them all. And instead of it being sort of ongoing open conversation, they just swirl around in your head. Until you write a song about it. Until you start writing about them. And I do think that's part of the impetus that got me writing things I think I'd reached the point in my

mid-teens where I had so much stuff bottled up in me once I started writing songs I wrote reams and reams of them and and diaries and things you know because it all sort of had to come out and when you were releasing music and I know that you still are, but do you care what people think about it? Do you read your reviews and do you worry about them? Not so much now. I think early on you do. Yeah, I think it would be dishonest to suggest when you're starting that you don't care what people make of you because you're trying to establish yourself out there. don't care what people make of you because you're trying to establish yourself out there. But again, when you're younger, you have that amazing confidence of youth that spurs you on. I'm a bit more impervious now, I think. I have reached that stage where I've sort of read everything that can be said about me. I kind of think, well, if you don't like what I do, I kind of know probably what the things are you might not like about it. And that's sort of fine.

You also get to that stage where you're thinking, thinking well nothing can be liked by everybody I think you do become more resilient about it because you're very active on Twitter how do you handle that I mean I a bit like you I love Twitter and I find it sort of useful tool and also because I work from home a lot which could be a really solitary existence exactly that yeah it's my kind of community exactly I do spend a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop you know I'm answering emails or I'm writing that's my office space and Twitter is like just having company in your office so many of the people I talk to are freelance writers and people doing similar stuff so it is a great community. And I still really

like it. I completely see how there are downsides to it now that weren't apparent at the beginning. But I should touch wood, as I say it. Where's some wood? But I feel I've kind of avoided most of them. I haven't had any horrific experiences. There's actually a really lovely passage in your book as well, when you talk about how the internet has brought you and your children closer together because there's so much criticism of the internet for everyone having their separate screen time but you make the rather wonderful point that actually you've been able to be shown hilarious cat videos or like memes by your kids and it's a focus of conversation we share things all the time I mean the girls are 21 now they've moved out and we've still got our youngest at home and I've always done family dinner so

we've always eaten together as a family in the evening and that I still do that now even with only one at home but dinner mostly means we sit and eat and then he gets his phone out and shows us something funny or plays us a song because that's his life obviously they conduct their life through their phone but the alternative is you say oh you mustn't look at your phone or you know I mean obviously they're complete no phones at the table rule well yes you don't want people to be sitting there on their own not talking to each other but getting something out and sharing it why is that any different to saying here's this brilliant passage in a book I've just read I mean you're just sharing something that's either funny or informative or I still just think it's just a tool you know it's not a good or bad thing in itself it's just what

you choose to do with it you mentioned the girls there and the reason it's girls plural and they're the same age because they're twins yes what is it like being the mother of twins when they are under four? Does that feel like an exercise in failure? No, I don't remember feeling that. I mean, it's full on. Yeah, it is full on. Maybe it does force you to not impose on yourself quite such high expectations. So when you use the word failure maybe in a good way I can remember from very early on having to accept that certain things about my mother baby experience were not going to live up to the sort of ridiculously high ideals I wasn't able to give birth naturally I had a cesarean okay that's supposed to be a bit of a failure but I was so

grateful for it saved my baby's lives thank god I tried to breastfeed them but that's supposed to be a bit of a failure, but I was so grateful for it. It saved my baby's lives, thank God. I tried to breastfeed them, but that's tricky with twins. So I did a bit of both. I did a bit of breastfeeding, a bit of bottle feeding. Again, that's supposed to not be ideal, but it worked quite well. They grew. You can't always pick them up the second they're crying. So they have to learn to wait a little bit and they survived it. So I suppose I did become quite, in some ways, a bit more accepting of the notion of good enough parenting which rang very true with me anyway I thought that was a good standard to aim for you know just to try and be good enough and not set that ridiculously high bar of trying to be perfect I love that thank you for saying that because I think that I think so many people

struggle with the sort of yeah the socio-cultural notion of what one must do as a young mum. Yeah, well, with twins, you know, a lot of those choices are taken away from you. And so then you're slightly liberated from it and you just get on with it and you try and do your best. And then you are grateful for any little achievements, you know, a moment when you do manage to get them both dressed and in the pushchair and out the door you feel amazing and on bad days I did used to bung them in the push chair and go outside because someone will come up to you and go you've had twins well done and you just think yes well done me it's like someone pins a little medal on you every time just for having

had twins so that was always good you've clearly done a terrific job because one of your daughters listens to the podcast yes so I'm a big fan of hers for that your final failure is a really interesting one because I think it will surprise a lot of people listening to this to learn that you had and perhaps still have stage fright and you had hypnotherapy to cure it but it didn't work work. Yes. So all through the years of touring, I suffered from stage fright that was sometimes better, sometimes worse. You know, it used to come and go a bit, but it was kind of ongoing. And I stopped playing live when I had the kids, really, and I was quite happy to.

I remember thinking, well, actually, I'm using the kids as an excuse, really. It gives me a chance to stop, and I was very happy to stop. But then after a few years of not playing live, people would constantly ask me and say, oh, why don't you just come on and do one song at this gig? And I started to think, oh, well, maybe I should confront this. Maybe I should try and overcome my stage fright. And how did it manifest itself?

Oh, well, fine once I'm on stage, but terrible anxiety in the run-up to it, which made then the time around performing just miserable because you're sort of constantly anxious in the build up to it. And then I'd be OK really once I got on stage, but feeling fearful in the run up. So I went for a couple of sessions of hypnotherapy. But you see, I think there were all sorts of things wrong with me going for that. I think I was sort of looking for a quick fix. It was as though I was saying, well, I just want something to fix this one thing.

And I didn't truly believe it would. So I was a bit sceptical even going in. And really, I think I wasn't addressing the fact that what I was actually trying to confront was something much bigger than stage fright, fact that what I was actually trying to confront was something much bigger than stage fright, which was a much more generalized anxiety issue, which I just hadn't ever acknowledged, even to myself, let alone anyone else. So I had the hypnotherapy, came out of it feeling absolutely no different, no inclination to get on a stage and just thinking, oh, well, that didn't work. But it sort of triggered off something in my mind, which was, have you been entirely honest with anyone here? Were you very honest to the hypnotherapist?

And the answer was not really, because I didn't really give the full picture. I sort of presented it as one little tiny problem that could just be fixed. And so it made me think, you know, maybe you need to actually look at this in a broader sense and actually, how about talking about it to someone? And so I went for some actual therapy instead, actual, you know, talking about things,

and started to talk about suffering from more generalised anxiety than just stage fright. And that was much more helpful. So again, I think what I call the failed hypnotherapy was more perhaps a sort of tentative first step in admitting to something. That's fascinating. Yeah, kind of gateway. And do you feel that, I know a lot of people feel reticence about going into therapy. And I think often it comes from a worry that your parents are going to disapprove or people around you won't kind of get it. And I wonder if you had your parents still in the back of your mind

thinking, why would you need therapy? Definitely, and not even them specifically, but the voices sort of that I'd grown up with were inside my own head by now. And the thing they were really saying is, you don't need therapy, what's wrong with you? And it was true on paper, There wasn't anything particularly wrong. I wasn't suffering from such crippling depression that I couldn't function.

I wasn't suffering from anxiety to such a level where I couldn't get on with my life. I was. But I felt I was using all sorts of coping mechanisms, which were really all about just trying to repress things. And again, going back to the childhood thing of not talking about things in the hope that they would go away, you know, magical thinking, which I sort of thought I'd rejected. You know, I liked to think I'd rejected that stuff. And I had in so many other areas of my life, the way I was with my kids was much more forgiving and open and accepting than the way I

was with myself. So I just thought, well, this is crazy. If this was anyone else talking to you, you'd say, go and talk to someone about this. You know, it's fine. It's normal. You'll get some help. But it took me a long time to do it to myself. And what do you feel you've got from therapy now? Well, a much better understanding of myself, the basic thing, really, and much greater acceptance. The fact that I can even now just say, okay, I'm someone who has suffered and struggled with anxiety things, and that's fine. I would have been mortified with embarrassment a few years ago to say that. I went to such lengths to hide that fact. I liked to think of myself as someone who was very rational, very in control, very unshakable, you know, not prone to sort of over-emotional or irrational

thinking. So I'd sort of constructed for myself this persona that I thought was admirable, which I just was a very sort of partial version of who I really am. And now I think I've got a much more complete picture. And do you still get sort of jagged moments of anxiety? Yeah, definitely. But again, you know, I think most therapists would probably say it's not really about saying you can make something go away. Again, the hypnotherapy failed because I was trying to do a quick fix and make my brain stop thinking in a certain way. But I suppose the point of the kind of therapy I had was that it's just about, you know, accepting,

it's a sort of mindfulness approach, you know, learning to sit with uncomfortable emotions, learning to give them space that doesn't overwhelm everything else. I suppose it's quite a holistic approach to your emotional life. And again, you know, I do think a lot of this does go back to my upbringing. I talked right at the beginning here about growing up in an atmosphere in which anything that was difficult or dark was not to be mentioned. And that has an effect on you. And it's taken me until here I am into my 50s, to come to a point where I think, okay, I'm getting better. I'm getting better at being

able to allow things that are difficult and dark to have their place. You mentioned being in your 50s there, and I relatively recently turned 40. And I do think that those demarcation points for women are very interesting, because my experience was that I was dreading it, dreading it, dreading it, and then it happened and I felt really empowered by it. What was your experience of turning 50? I don't remember marking it in a massive way. I had a big party for my 40th. I remember my 40th feeling, I mean, my kids were quite young still.

The girls would have been about five and the youngest about two. So it was a time in my life when I felt I was in sort of full flower. I was feeling a lot more confident about things. I had these three kids, everything was muffled. I had through a massive party when I turned 40. When I turned 50, I had a very quiet lunch with a few family and friends, which was equally lovely. But in a way, I suppose, symbolized the fact that it felt like a more quiet little moment you know okay 50 okay that's that's kind

of something I'm kind of getting on into life now a bit aren't I maybe a little bit ambivalent about how I feel about that not quite so triumphant as I felt about showing off that I was 40. Look at my wonderful life. But yeah, so it's fine. But you're right. They are interesting, those milestones and how they make you feel. I certainly don't dread them. I don't have any of that sense of, you know, oh, God, this is like shameful. I don't want anyone to know I'm that old or whatever. I do think I approach them now with a sense of just partly gratitude you know every extra year you get onto you kind of start thinking wow okay good still going strong and you understand yourself better I guess you do the process of being around longer and that that is so true it sounds like

such a cliche you know these are the kind of things that you realize people have been saying forever that you know with age comes wisdom and self-knowledge and all those things. But then you kind of find yourself getting on in years and thinking, oh, it's actually true. I didn't think it would be true. I thought they were just trying to make me feel better about inevitable ageing. But, yeah, there are definite upsides to it. Do you think you'll ever know yourself well enough and feel unanxious enough to drive a car again?

No, no. I know myself well enough to know that I must never, ever be allowed to do that. Does Ben drive? Not in any possible world. Yeah, he does. He's a very good driver. So we're fine. You know, there's a driver in the house. But also I've, you know, when I had kids, people said to me, oh, you'll have to drive. Well, now you've got kids, you'll have to go back to driving. And I kind of went, oh, well, okay, let's see. But, you know, I've managed to bring up three kids and you know what, you don't need to drive so it's interesting because you mentioned at the very beginning that your music career you kind of gave up performing live when

you had kids and you sort of used it as a nice excuse it's a very male dominated industry still the music industry at sort of executive level and I imagine it was ferociously so when you were at the height of your fame as Everything But The Girl. Did you experience sexism? Yes, yes, definitely. I mean, you know, and from the very beginning, really, just in the fact of being, when I first started, in such a tiny minority, you know, in so many of the environments, whether that's from even before I was performing, you know, going to gigs or going into record shops you are walking into what for some bizarre reason has become a male

dominated world it's still a mystery to me why music rock music alternative music especially became so much the preserve of men but from the very beginning and then once you start doing gigs all your crew are going to be men you look out into the audience a lot of the time. It's quite male dominated. Doing interviews. I spent my entire career being interviewed by, I don't know, I'd love to do the sums, but it felt like 90% men. You'd be written about, described by men. Yeah, the record company executives. It's an incredibly male world. How did you feel when the Me Too movement started? Amazed and just thinking, well, God, not before time. I'm sure like a lot of women, I just felt like what's remarkable

is not that anyone is saying anything new or that we haven't all been saying to each other for years, but it's just, oh, what, so people have decided to listen. OK, well, that's a step forward, I guess. And obviously some very brave women speaking out very publicly to get something started but once the sort of flood of stories started coming through you just thought but we know I mean the reason it's me too is because literally everyone could join in because everyone has the same story and yeah I hope ultimately obviously that it's going to be something that leads to some kind of change. I do feel things are changing. I do. I do think

things that would have been taken as normal are being questioned. And that's the start of any change. Definitely. I do think they're changing. And I also feel that for me, it was a sort of categorization issue because I looked back and I thought, well, I've never been a victim of anything. I'm really lucky. But actually actually what I realized was that I just accepted the sexist landscape yeah as how the world was yes and and even to the point I think where as women you sometimes almost congratulate yourself or count yourself lucky if something hadn't happened to you because you'd know other friends who'd had something and then you think wait hang on what so I'm supposed to go through my life feeling grateful that that hasn't happened when only this this and this has happened and again you think okay so that's a category error isn't it

that's that's looking at things from a very skewed perspective. Tracy my final question is going to be whether you feel successful. Gosh that sounds like an awful kind of tempting fate kind of question that actually with my magical thinking makes me a bit scared to answer. My answer would be yes, but it frightens me to say so a bit. I mean, because you think, I don't know, is it too simple? But yes, I think really, because by any marker, I am so happy, and so that's that's got to be success I look at the things that surround me and the number of things in my life that give me so much pleasure that I think wow well that must be success Tracy Thorne that is such a beautiful note to end on I'm so glad you were happy and I'm so glad you came on this podcast thank you you so, so much. Thank you.