How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S4, Ep5 How to Fail: Charly Cox

Episode Date: May 1, 2019

I have my FIRST POET on the podcast this week - and my, what a poet. Charly Cox is not only a beautiful soul but a beautiful chronicler of what it is to be human. Her first collection, She Must Be Mad, became the bestselling poetry debut of 2018 and Cox was named by Elle magazine as one of their 20 ‘power players’ of the year.Although still only 23, she's accumulated an astonishing store of wisdom and I was so, so happy to have her on the podcast because what Charly has to say is deeply important for anyone struggling with how to value themselves for who and what they are rather than how they aspire to be perceived. She's been dubbed an Instagram poet for the millennial generation, but I think her work has relevance for all ages.We spoke about anxiety, depression and her diagnosis with PTSD and Bipolar II disorder. We also discussed dropping out of school and failing to find lasting romantic love (and her fear that she is ultimately unloveable. AS IF, CHARLY). And we chat about a career failure that left her on a hotel bathroom floor in the grip of a panic attack at which point she remembers thinking: 'I will never work again. I can't believe it's taken this long for everyone to finally see I'm an imposter. I can't do this.' One of my favourite things about Charly is that she made me realise that the personal can be universal - that by being open about our vulnerabilities, the things we feel most shame about, we not only diminish the shame, but we connect with others who experience exactly the same emotions. And that, my friends, is what creates SOLIDARITY as a force for meaningful change. Charly Cox's bestselling She Must Be Mad is available to buy hereHer brilliant new collection, Validate Me, is out in October and available to pre-order here How 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 now and is available 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. This is NOT being recorded, so the only way to be part of it is to be there or...erm...be square?  Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayCharly Cox @charlycox1Chris 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. They publish many great books, like Hold by Michael Donker. And, well, they publish books by me. How to Fail, everything I've Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong, is a sort of memoir about all I've learned from failure. Like the time as a teenager that I wore a neon orange backpack to school and thought it was the

coolest item of clothing ever. It wasn't. How to Fail, Everything I've Ever Learned from Things Going Wrong is out now and available from all good bookshops. 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.

Charlie Cox is a poet, but not just any poet. Her first collection, She Must Be Mad, became the best-selling poetry debut of 2018, and Cox was named by Elle magazine as one of their 20 Power Players of the Year. She began writing poetry as a secret hobby as a child, keeping a diary and scribbling notes in the back that she only realised were poems as she got older and began to battle with depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. Her poetry, she says, became a form of therapy. Her poetry, she says, became a form of therapy. When she began sharing her work on Instagram, the response was immediate. Cox's poems resonated with a generation whose online connectedness masked a deeper isolation.

We all have a collective responsibility to be kinder-minded with what we post now, she says. Poetry is such a meditative thing to throw into that machine, a small slice of hope or reality amidst the madness. Cox's poetry is profound, moving and often very witty. Her work destigmatises mental health and examines coming of age as a young woman navigating the modern world. The Sunday Times calls her social media's answer to Carol Ann Duffy. All of this, and she is still only 23. 23, Charlie Cox! How dare you be so young? I'm so glad that you picked up that tone at the end because I was nearly in tears.

Thank you. I joked with you over email before you arrived here that although you're 23, you have the spirit of a 150-year-old Native American chieftain. That made me laugh so much on the tube. And I read it quite a few times back to myself. I wonder what part of my body is big enough to get this tattooed on. Where can we slip this somewhere so I never forget it do you feel that do you feel an old soul yeah I've always said that I can't wait to be in my 30s I was built to be a 35 year old woman maybe older I feel like this is a wasted time for me it's just

it's complete pointless peripheral age stuff I'm an only child and grew up always being on my mum's lap she was desperate to sort of like try and get me to go and hang out with like children I was like nope I'm sat at the table I want to be with the adults and similarly spent so much time with my granddad I was always around adults and older people and you know similarly now all of my friends are much older than I am and I think I've taken a lot of that in and I'm now sort of externalising it in a way where I've never felt my age. And in a way, I do feel like I've missed out. I missed out on being a teenager because I left school so young. So maybe I've just always been trying to make up that I'm an adult.

And now suddenly I am. It's really interesting that you feel that your 20s are sort of a peripheral thing and that you can't wait to be in your 30s because you have unwittingly become the voice of women in their 20s. Was that a surprise to you that your poetry connected on such profound level when you started sharing it? Yeah I was so shocked. And even, I mean, up until the book came out, the book, until it came out, I didn't get it. I didn't understand why anyone would read it and like it. I think because I'd never written for an audience before. I'd never written with the idea that someone else was going to look at it, or it was never written for somebody else to feel something.

So it was really jarring when suddenly I had an editor and an agent like this made me cry or I was like really why it's just about that awful day I had when I was 16 what's that got to do with you and through that and posting it online you know you learn that the most personal is so often the most universal and that's really hard to understand personally until you've chucked it out there. But yeah, I'm still shocked. I still don't really understand it. And can I ask, I mean, I know that this is actually a super annoying question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, about your process, because your poems are phenomenal,

and there is so much bad poetry out there. Thank you. There really is, isn't there? Yeah, there's a lot. And I think people... Some of mine included't there there's a lot and I think people some of mine included but there is a there is a lot but I think a lot of people are under the misapprehension that they can write a poem because it's just a short sentence without a full stop but um how do you do you craft your poems do they sometimes come fully formed or do you really like work on each sentence and is it a process of kind of weeks and weeks? I would love to say for the sake of people taking me seriously in my future career that I spend a lot of time

looking at form and how it all comes together but it's literally like brain vomit into my phone and I feel a feeling it feels too intense I find somewhere quiet to sit and then I just tap it out on my phone forget about it like I refuse to read it back I don't want to sit and then I just tap it out on my phone, forget about it, like I refuse to read it back, I don't want to try and perfect it, it's a feeling, I'll never feel that feeling in exactly the same way other than in that moment so I don't want to ruin the authenticity of that, that sounds so wanky. It doesn't at all. And then leave it and then a couple of weeks later I'll go back to it and if I think ah maybe that was a good of weeks later, I'll go back to it. And if I think, oh, maybe that was a good idea. How can I shift it a little bit?

I'll neaten it up, but I try not to touch them too much. And are you influenced, because it's very rhythmic, your work. Are you influenced by the rhythms of rap or music or the lyrics, the kind of half rhymes of music? It's really weird. I've spent three years not listening to any music which is mad my dad is now retired but was in the music industry for 13 nearly 40 years and I've grown up with music and love music and always I was that annoying teenager it's like um I've just found this great band and you haven't heard of them yet but they're going to be massive or you know at 18 I was like

um yeah I once saw Ed Sheeran in a bar in Clapham and there were only 15 of us so you know I I predicted that and I spent a lot of time listening to lyrics and thinking that god that's so smart or that's so funny or I just loved the neatness of it I loved the roundness of rhyme and how you know I remember listening to the Arctic Monkeys at 14 and thinking that's so cool that you've just told an entire story I know exactly who that woman is I know where she's sat I know how she's feeling and you've done that in two and a half minutes and I've tried to replicate that I guess in some way but then yeah last three years I've listened to no music and I'm starting to again which feels weirdly poignant in my life.

Why did you stop listening to music? Was there a deliberate decision? I felt like I had musical PTSD in that every time I listened to any song, I felt sad or I felt like a person I once was that I didn't want to be anymore. like a person I once was that I didn't want to be anymore. Or again, it's sort of hysterical in that nearly all of my ex-boyfriends are in some way musicians or in the music business. Or it's funny that it's plural because of course they're in music. Of course I've had many. I just felt like it wasn't my thing anymore. Music wasn't mine to own. Music wasn't mine to decide on what my taste was. And I felt so embarrassed, like cripplingly embarrassed by what I like listening to. So I just, I didn't feel a discernment of music anymore.

I mean, I've never said that out loud, but that is exactly what it was. And I feel as though now I'm picking myself up again and going, you're in person. You're allowed to listen to whatever you want. And it's definitely influencing my writing and I hope in a really really good way wow and was your dad involved in performing or was he on the business side of the music he was a tour manager okay for lots of old school rock and roll bands stories that I will never be old enough to hear okay I love that phrase secretly veryly very, very pleased about.

That's a great title for a memoir. Yeah. Oh, don't. I don't need anything more to write. You mentioned there that you left school so young and that brings us onto your first failure, which is that you left school at 16 due to crippling anxiety and depression. And up to that point, you'd been a straight A student. So tell us what that was like. It was really horrible. Full stop. It was horrible. I've always been someone that's felt like they felt too much.

And as a kid, I was always upset. I was always sad. I was always worried about something. I was always on the brink of having a go at someone out of, you know, an anxious like, ah, I don't get it. Why? Why do you think differently to me? And I really struggled with that, particularly at school. I went from being Charlotte, the sort of chubby geek to Charlie with straight short hair who'd lost a lot of weight very quickly and being one of the popular girls. with straight short hair who'd lost a lot of weight very quickly and being one of the popular girls and that was a lot for me to process my parents split up and I had all this pressure that I was the straight a student as I said I'm an only child and none of my family had been to university and it always sort of been pumped into me that you're going to go to Oxford you're going to read English you're going to become a successful journalist you're going to read English, you're going to become a successful journalist, you'll be a politician. And they're amazing things to have around you as a child, you know, that level of support and hope for achievement. I'm so fortunate,

but I didn't accept it that way. I had that as anything less is not good enough, or anything even slightly off that line is not good enough and yeah I was 16 and we were picking A levels and it just broke me I couldn't do it I went to college which was the first fail to my parents was well Oxford won't accept you if you go to college I was like I'm gonna study media and photography and psychology and they're like and photography and psychology. And they're like, media, photography? Can you imagine what they're going to say about that? And I think I started to realise maybe this isn't going to happen. And six weeks in, I wrote a letter to the college on my parents' behalf saying, Charlotte will no longer be attending. She'll be going elsewhere.

And I just stayed in bed for six weeks and didn't tell them and then one day they went hang on a minute you have a lot of free periods at the moment like I'm not going back to college and they didn't take it well my dad particularly was really cross about it and my mum had a much more sympathetic view on it in that she could see I was struggling so much and every time I got the train to go to college I'd have a panic attack or every time I woke up in the morning I was being sick or it was so heavy and so bad and I just thought I can't do this anymore.

But my mum then said, OK, well, you've decided that. You have two weeks to find a job and if you don't get a job in two weeks you have to go back to college oh okay okay I just want to stay in bed now I've been in bed for six weeks I'm never leaving again and very fortunately that summer I had met a model at Reading Festival celebrating my GCSE results and he had just got a gig at Burberry and he started to come around the house a lot and was a great support actually during that time. And I said, can you get me a job at Burberry?

It's like, don't be ridiculous. You're 16. You have never worked in fashion and they're never going to take you. And he left and he'd left a cool sheet behind. passion and they're never going to take you and he left and he'd left a cool sheet behind and so I being the idiot that I was went okay well it's a sign you've left this that's got her contact details on I'm emailing the studio manager and I did and said look my mum's given me two weeks to find a job or else I have to go back to college here's a portfolio of pictures that I've styled of my friends in like you know awful Abercrombie polos please just take

me for a day and I got an interview and stayed there for six months. That's amazing wow what spot are you showed doing that? I'd never have done that had I not been so desperate to prove to my parents that me leaving college wasn't a failure. I was so scared that I had let everybody down, myself included, and I still admittedly do feel an element of failure in that I didn't go to Oxford. I didn't get to go and read English. I do feel sad about that. There's plenty of time for it. I know absolutely at 40 I'm going to Oxford. I'm going to do it and enjoy it. I didn't want them to think that their only child had wasted it for them. And you described there the feeling of it being so heavy. I think a lot of people struggle with anxiety, but there are so many different facets of it.

What was your experience of it? I had it real bad. I still get it really badly. But I was having like nigh on three or four panic attacks a day where I was hyperventilating. I always remember this really weird pain in my hands, which at the time I didn't know was anxiety. And now I know is being incredibly anxious where you know shooting pains in my hands I couldn't think about anything other than being in mortal danger it was never oh I just feel a bit weird today it was oh my god I've got to go home I've got to go home I can't be here people are going to look at me and then that would either be passing out throwing throwing up. It was so bad. And at the time, I don't think I ever realized how bad it was. I'd come to accept that that was who I was as a person and that's how my

body functioned. And it's taken me a really long time to get out of that mindset of, no, that's really bad. And that means you're ill and you need to spend some time looking after that. And it's all right to do that. But as a kid, I was like, oh, no, I'm just broken. Here it is for the rest of my life. And do you think that something triggered those episodes or that you were born with it? So when I think I was 15,

my friend dragged me kicking and screaming to a GP and said, Look, I love you, but I can't help you over MSN Messenger for the rest of your life. You need to see a doctor. And I went and I sat there with my arms folded. I don't understand why I'm here. And she said, you know, you have anxiety and depression and what seems to be PTSD and that made a lot of sense to me when she started explaining it and then about three years later I was then diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder. Anxiety and depression for me I find really

simple to understand I get it and I know what those feelings are. The science is, it's not A++, but it's, you know, it's a middling B grade of, it's there, you know what it is, you know why you get it, you know what can trigger it. But with bipolar, there's so many different variants that they haven't understood yet. So I don't know if I was born with bipolar, or if it's something that was triggered in me at 14 or if it was a result of having such terrible anxiety and depression and that cocktail blew my brain up a bit you know I have absolutely no idea which is so frustrating because when you don't understand the foundations of something you kind of feel like it's impossible to conquer. How did your parents respond to the diagnosis? I didn't tell them for a really long time. Yeah, it took me maybe six or seven months

to tell them. I was so frightened that I thought that they would think I was lying. And my knowledge of bipolar is sort of that weird Hollywood movie, she's batshit crazy. That wasn't a person I knew, so it surely couldn't be me. And I knew my parents would think the same thing. And they are now incredibly supportive and becoming more intuitive with it. But it's one of the worst things that you can sit and tell your mum. Like, hi mum, my brain's bad and I'm going gonna be on this medication and it gets worse as I get older and it broke my heart having to tell her I remember it so vividly and it was just awful

so with that I again I just really wanted to prove that whilst things were bad there could be some good from it or there had to be reason in in what was happening which sounds sort of very sort of pseudo-spiritual but I was just so sure that there was an absolute reason why I got the broken bad brain and had all these hopes and dreams I've always been so wildly ambitious and I thought that you know there has to be a reason that there is something stopping that success being easy for me I've just got to work out what it is that's such an interesting thing to say because I wonder if I can ask you an impossible question which is I think you're a wonderful poet so this is my opinion

do you think you would be that wonderful poet if you hadn't had this particular struggle I think I'd write about something different. I've always written poems. I've always loved it. I've always loved writing. And that stems way before my life got really difficult. I'd know, maybe I wouldn't. I think there is a lot to be said in the tortured artist, like the pain making it so appealing and sound sounds so good but you know as we said earlier the most personal is the most universal and I think that's that's why people like reading poetry is it's so deeply personal and everything that's in She Must Be Mad I would never have dreamt of sitting in front of someone and talking about let alone letting a couple of odd thousand people

read it and feel their own experience within it yeah maybe it wouldn't be so good not that I think it's good but maybe people wouldn't connect with it as much and does it get worse as you get older you said that your condition gets worse as it gets older apparently I mean I was so gracefully and gratefully told that at 17 oh love you think, you think things are bad now, poppet? It's going to get a lot worse for you. I'm like, cool, thanks. I'm going to start heavily drinking as soon as I leave this appointment and never coming back ever again.

I think that was probably the first time I ever ordered a glass of wine. Yeah, again, the science is so off on it. We know so little and there is so little money that goes into funding mental health research which I think about a year and a half ago I became an ambassador for a charity called MQ Mental Health who are incredible they are totally public funded and they're putting money into science and you know nowhere else is doing that so long. We've got all these labs for so many different things that we don't have labs for brains. And that kind of seems ironically insane

when it's the most important part of our body and we know next to nothing about it. How do you manage it now, day to day? I take medication now, which again, that in itself feels like a completely separate life and battle that I've lived through. I just try and check in with myself every hour. Not even just on a daily basis, but, you know, pretty much every hour I have to stop and think, how are you feeling? Why are you feeling? And then I, you know, bat it out with myself and go oh yeah that's probably a bit stupid

isn't it maybe let's not do that and then try and move on from it sleeping a lot I'd love to be the person that says I go for a run makes me feel better the thought of going for a run would spiral me into an episode I think I'm so glad you're not that person there are enough people saying that I'm so glad you're the one who's like sleep I'm so pleased that it works for some people I need sleep and I'm at total mercy to if I wake up at nine o'clock in the morning and think I need to stay in bed until one I will absolutely do it because those extra couple of hours are worth my sanity and you know living with a mental illness having a mental illness is exhausting it is physically and emotionally exhausting so it's no wonder that sometimes you think god I just want to stay in bed good do it do it just don't wallow sleep

I love that your second failure as outlined in your excellent email to me all capital letters i know actually no they were beautifully placed capital letters and i was like this is why she's a brilliant poet because she understands the power of like placement even as i'm looking at it now it's like a beautiful tapestry so your second failure is capital letters love love l-o-v-e love love and you said and i just want to quote this bit because it's so lovely I am still but a small child but I've never had a serious relationship that's lasted longer than three months I feel perpetually failed by myself that I am unlovable and but explain to me a bit about that you see I I have my own theory about it which is that you're dating men your own age which given

that you're stopped right good there is a heavy black line over that time in my life where I date anyone under the age of 27 it's not happening anymore no offense to previous ex-boyfriends but also actually like mass offense to all of you you are all idiots uh not and it's not to say that there aren't great men out there who are your age I've heard I have not seen as a teenager all of my friends had boyfriends and like fairly serious ones you know for like 14 15 I went to a school where some people we've been together since we were nine I was like cool great nobody fancies me how are you doing this and then I really properly had my heart broken at 15 which now in the timeline of all this sadness makes starts to make a lot of sense of things and I was devastated like properly all consuming I will never love or be loved again this is it and it kind of sort of has felt like

that ever since my friends always used to joke that I am a serial dater where a couple of years ago there was not a night of the week where I wasn't going out for dinner with someone and I loved it like I loved the thrill of who am I going to meet what what are we going to talk about what am I going to learn about myself it was a very talk about? What am I going to learn about myself? It was a very selfish endeavour. But I think I've just, I've always wanted to be loved. And, you know, like we all do. I've never found someone that gets it.

And I get that that it is quite confusing. And, you know, I'm, nothing more, feels more mortifying than three dates in and having to be like, so, I've got bipolar. Want to go have a drink? Also, so much of my life is online and it's very honest and it's warts and all stuff that's out there and I think a lot of men, boys, whatever, are terrified of being written about.

I had a relationship that ended at the beginning of last year because he was so terrified that I was going to write a poem about him I was like first of all it's very very simple for you to avoid that just don't be an arsehole second of all might be a nice one yeah also don't be so presumptuous. Yeah, also, I'm not writing poems about you. Yeah. Which leads me to, I do have a constant sadness about that. And I have the best relationship with my grandfather. And really sadly, he had a stroke last year and now has dementia. I'm so sorry.

And it was so hard and horrible. And it still is so hard and horrible but I've always had this image in my head of having this family dinner and bringing my lovely boyfriend who loves me very much to meet my granddad like the only other man that loves me as much as anyone could and now I feel like time is running out I mean I'm 23 it's so so stupid to be like I must find love in the next two years but I do feel that way in saying that I'm so glad that I've been through so much heartbreak you know I got a book out of it I yeah all of my favorite things I've ever written have been about heartbreak and I fear that I might have to sort of

go Adele on my life and start deliberately breaking up with people for the sake of pushing out another book but but I think you're right that it is my experience of heartbreak is that it is where you feel the feelings like you go through a whole gamut of emotion and you appreciate the texture of life because of it in a way everything feels like it has a sound or a color you know it's suddenly things that didn't exist other than in your brain feel like they're in front of you and you have to work out what they are and what they're called and what do you do with them. And I'm very good at being heartbroken. Very, very good at being heartbroken. But I've learned so much about myself in the last couple of years

where I have always broadly said said I just want to be loved I just want someone to love me but now I know what that means and I know how I want to be loved and I know who I want to be loved by and I know what I want to feel in that situation and that is you know I've constantly felt like an imposter in my own life so I'd love to not feel like an imposter in love I would love to not be cringed out by the fact that I'm a poet there are all these things that beforehand I would have totally left on the wayside me like I will feel all of those things if it means that you love me like no I don't want that anymore and I'd never have I can't even believe I'm saying it I'd never have that sort of sureness and certainty that I am deserving of feeling good about myself

to then be loved. Oh Charlie this is there's so much I want to talk about here but I think so many women in their 20s will relate to what you're saying and if I go back to me in my 20s I would have related massively to it as well because I spent that decade trying to tailor myself to other people's needs to shore up my own lack of self-worth and the idea that like being in love and being in a relationship was enough for your self-esteem is is just incorrect because you're completely right that you need to work out who you are and what you want in order to have a sustainable real love and it sounds like you've almost been on a kind of crash course immersion therapy of that like Like a perpetual three month cycle of learning. Every three months.

I'm like, OK, good. Next. Right. We've worked that out. And what do you think it is about the three month time scale particularly? What is it that happens in those three months? Is there a pattern? There is a great level of hilarity and irony for me personally for nobody else that I think also with bipolar it's very

cyclical and it changes every year but usually it's every three or four months where I either hit a high or I hit a low and I think that that is no coincidence that my relationships are very similar but the things that I've faced within that is boys will meet me and quite shiny and interesting and a bit novel and it's like oh who's this like this is fun like she's you know what what's going on here and then three months in they're like god this is exhausting I still don't know what she is the novelty is worn and I'm still in a maze of like but who is she yeah I think it just gets a bit exhausting I'm just now I'm just I've gone past therapy into outrage I'm like what I just sort of gazed over your head like I cannot believe I'm telling you about this so like and then he said I'm just so sorry you've had to go through that what a disappointment what a disappointment

onto better lovelier more handsome smarter experienced things can I talk about your grandfather for a bit yeah and because I know he is such a formative part of your life and you have written poems like it's one really beautiful poem about him and what is it about him that has been so important to you we've spent so much time together growing up it was the best thing in the world saying that we were going to granddad's at the weekend was like oh I'm counting down the days and sometimes I'd call him on the house phone and be like can you can you come to London and he'd get on the train and come to London and my mum would open the door and be like hi dad what are you doing here it's like

Charlotte Charlotte called and he'd just turn up he was always at my beck and call and I learned so much from him and I still continue to learn so much from him there aren't facts they aren't bits of academia they aren't like stories from the war they're feelings like he taught me how great it is to feel loved and to feel comfortable and to feel accepted and to have weird quirks and to sort of laugh them off he gave my life texture from a very early age and he helped me make sense of what feelings were and even still going to see him I can learn new feelings all the time just from being sat with him and that's magic I've never felt that way about anyone before or I doubt I'll ever get that ever again but he just always knew he's always had this glint in his eye with me that he never really had with, sorry to my cousins, but I am the favourite grandchild. I'm more than happy to admit that. I put the work in. But he always just knew something about me that I didn't know. And he was always very sure to give me that confidence or the courage to know that one day it would be great and when I gave him a copy of the book you know I was so angry with him because he had this stupid

stroke like three months before my book came out and I was like grandad just pull it together like just three months and three more months you know he hasn't really read it but I often see him and I'll read him the poem and I I say, can you believe it? Can you actually believe it? That's published in a book. And for a man who is now very little words and very little facial expression, it always smiles. I'm like, of course I can.

Yeah, what a man. Just the complete opposite of an alpha male. He's always been the soppiest, cuddliest. I feel so lucky that I got him I'm so lucky yeah good man and does he still recognize you and yeah I mean thank god I think I think that's gonna be the end for me when that happens he's still very cheeky. It's good days and bad days, but dementia's a minefield. I've never experienced trying to understand it or any sort of feeling of what that is or how someone can change so suddenly.

He still recognises us. He's got a completely different sense of humour now. He's very naughty, very, very naughty. But when I'm in a room with him and there are lots of other people, I feel like I don't know who he is anymore. But as soon as we're on our own, it's almost like it never happened. What's his name? Len. That's so beautiful. Thank you for talking about him. Why did you call your collection? It's a brilliant title and why did you call it she must be mad so like two years ago I thought oh maybe I'll try and be a poet and I got one philagion and she said you know that that means

you're gonna have to start performing now and I said absolutely no way in hell am I performing anything to anyone ever. She said, oh, no, no, no, that's what you have to do now. You're going to have to start reading your work in front of other people. And I thought, I can't do that. So, you know, fought the fear and decided to, in very, very typical me fashion, decided I couldn't go to an open mic night. I would have to headline my own show. So sold, you know, mocked up a poster and I thought I must be absolutely insane to do this and it sort of was like she must be mad you know she must be mad we all know I am mad all of my

friends can attest she is mad and also the whole endeavor of reading poetry in front of people just felt a bit nuts so that's where it came from and it's been a really negative slant on my life for you know for a really long time at school when I was so clearly and desperately unwell I just remember boys in the years above being like she's mad like there's something not right with her or you know I do dumb things that be like she must be mad and it just always stuck with me it's always been such a niggling memory in the back of my head and there felt like no greater fuck you then she is yes you are right but she got to write about it and she lived through it and she actually survived what you all thought was a bit funny and now it's a book and that feels pretty damn

good like the best kind of reclamation I could have of it how amazing what an act of claiming back. And performing, you are really extremely good at it, but do you get nervous about it? Yeah. Oh yeah. I would never have told. I mean, that's an annoying thing to say sometimes because you can act confident, but it did not come across at all. You just seem so in your skin. It's the weirdest thing where I've never performed anything ever. I had a bit part in one school play and I even, like, I messed that up because I fancied the lead actor so much. And I was supposed to be a cleaner flirting with him. Oh, God.

Humiliating on so many levels, your crush. And he forgot to walk out and I was just stood there in front of all of these people like, Mark, Mark Mark and that's really my only experience of performing and thought I'm never going to do that ever again and there is something now where I feel placed for the first time ever in my life where when I stand up and I get to read poems I feel like that is the most me I could be in a moment and I never knew that that's where it would come from. It's taken me a couple of years to get here and to work that out. Understand and know is a painfully disgusting, awful thing to say at 23. But, you know, I've

done a lot of things in the last six, seven years and always thought maybe this will fit, or maybe this will be me, or maybe this is the woman I want to be. And it never quite materialised. And now getting to do that, suddenly nothing matters other than the words that I am reading and being the most authentic version of me that I can to the words that I've written. A lot of the stuff that I perform now, I started writing when I was 15 or 16 and it becomes a real performance of,

imagine 15-year-old you being sat in front of you right now and looking at you and the clothes that you're wearing that you always dreamed you'd be wearing you know talking about how upset and broken you were and you're fine and it becomes this process you know before I start performing is I don't really think or see anyone else in the room I just very selfishly think of myself and how she would feel about that and it's like the most weirdly spiritual thing that you could possibly do it's kind of like taking acid and like sort of sitting in your own body like oh amazing let's talk about a period of your life when you hadn't got to that point and you were doing things that didn't seem you and that didn't seem to gel. And one of those periods was

when you were a documentary producer. And that is the third failure that you have agreed to talk about. I have never spoken about this before. And when I was, I was thinking of, it was really hard to whittle down my failures to three. I was trying to think of it was really hard to whittle down my failures to three I was trying to think of the most poignant to who I am what I do now and after my lovely stint at Burberry I started a blog and I've really outed myself to be so awful I started a blog because I fancied one of the models and I knew that he lived near the King's Road. So I thought I'd start a blog about Chelsea and just go and hang out there hoping he'd see me sat in a coffee shop reading a book. I mean, it's a complex plan.

But I was so sure. It had focus. So sure that it was going to work out for me. that was it was going to work out for me and through that became master blagger of I made a fake press pass and would just sort of like walk into clubs and be like I'm a journalist and I was 16 and they're like okay come in I did a lot of mad stuff and one of the things that kick-started my weird career that I've managed to literally fall into was I started interviewing people and I'd get in touch with like Sony or like major agents and say, hi, my name is Tali.

I'm from Star The Natives, which is the name of my blog. I would be delighted to offer your client lunch at the Bluebird on the Kings, 16, like da, da, da, da, and do a profile piece on them. look forward to hearing from you oh my gosh these emails are better than i could possibly write now and they'd always reply like oh uh yes absolutely and one of those people was a guy called jack harrys who is now one of my best

friends and he at the time him and his brother had started a youtube channel called jack's gap it was in the era where hitting a million subscribers on youtube was whoa who are these guys like what are these kids in their bedroom doing we went for lunch together and halfway through he said so you know how many people work at star the natives i was like um uh one one one one one of us. He's like, oh. He's like, and then, you know, the conversation tailed off. And I was like, oh, no, I'm 70. I'm 70. I am going to get the bill.

He's like, you're what? And I started working for him and his brother. After that, we were like, God, we're never leaving each other's side now. This is it. And he was thankfully very impressed by it and not mortified that a small child with a glass of Chardonnay in her hand sort of, you know, like, oh, interesting. Tell me about the time you did this. So we started working together and I learned to be a producer. And again, looking back, I was so so miserable there not because of what I was doing but I was so unwell and I wasn't I wasn't dealing with it so it kind of felt like anything that I

could do career-wise or anything that was remotely anecdotal would mask how bad I was feeling on the inside and you know if I could go home and say to my mum, like, I'm a producer now. And, you know, I've just booked 12 flights to India. Then I wouldn't really have to face up to what I was feeling inside. So I was just constantly running on this adrenaline of, oh, like, what's next? You know, what's the next job?

What's the shiniest thing that I can stick on my soup stained lapel like what what is next and I was really lucky that nobody really understood the internet in a way of making short form content and I was so young when I started seeing the behind the scenes of it that I could then in a couple of years go on and advise people so I was going into huge huge companies like big celebrities um did a lot of stuff with Russell Brand and you know all these things where I was fueled on adrenaline of if I stop doing this then I have to work out what's going on in my head and I really don't want to do that so I'm just going to keep doing these jobs and I don't really think I'm enjoying them but they're kind of a piece of me now. And they sound really cool when I go to a bar. And it completely spiralled.

And the last job that I did as a producer, God, was awful in so many respects. And it left me in a budget hotel room in Brussels with like 50 grand's worth of camera gear. And I was just sobbing in the bathroom, like, I will never work again. And I mean, I was working with an awful team of people who were concerning that they walk the streets. But I knew that I failed. I knew that I couldn't control what with all the mess that was going on around me and it was the first time professionally I felt like people were starting to realize that I was an imposter you know I was this young girl that didn't really didn't actually

know what she was doing just like quite efficient at making decisions it was just so bad I sobbed and I sobbed and I sobbed and I was just looking at all of this gear thinking I can't get on the Eurostar with all of this stuff but I don't want to see the people outside because they hate me and I'm dating this awful boy who was making me feel so awful about myself and what do I do and I called my mum and I was like mum I need to come home and she was like right well you've got a Eurostar ticket get on the Eurostar I was like no I need to come home. And she was like, right, well, you've got a Eurostar ticket, get on the Eurostar. I was like, no, I need to leave now. And bless her, I mean, she was furious.

How can these people leave a young girl on her own in Brussels? I was like, no, but mum, I'm your daughter and I am a young girl, but professionally, I'm the producer on this shoot. I shouldn't be calling my mum in hysterics on the bathroom floor. And I got on a flight home and I didn't sleep for a good two weeks. I didn't eat anything. I was so mortified. I could not believe that I had managed to fuck up something so monumentally

and from it developed PTSD and you know any bang any anything remotely to do or the sound of a camera made me feel physically sick and it was just oh but to pick it up I then realized that I actually had never really liked being a producer I was like I feel gutted and embarrassed and mortified that I've professionally shown myself up. But I actually don't feel that frightened that maybe I don't have to do this ever again. Maybe I've given myself a really good out. And two weeks later, I got an email from Papa Colin saying, we want to offer you a book deal. And I just couldn't get my head around it.

Wow. I was like, wow, that really was supposed to happen. And had I not had that email, I would probably still be sobbing in various bathrooms around Europe. Preferably not in Brussels. I can't imagine any more depressing than a budget hotel in Brussels. I'm so glad that I have bad memories of Brussels, so I have an excuse to never go back. It was raining. It was horrible. But I still can't believe that that was the time of events. That's how I went from that to this. It just shows you

that I'm a big believer in the universe unfolding exactly as is intended and that it gives you what you need even when you don't know you need it I completely agree how extraordinary by the way I'm really sorry if you heard any drilling or banging during Charlie's incredibly emotive story that was not me doing DIY that was like someone outside my street doing something incredibly noisy with the house like you know you can sort the shelf out after I've stopped talking exactly you're known somewhat unfairly I feel as an Instagram poet because I feel that that's reductive but you do have a big following on Instagram and I wonder how you cope with that given everything we've talked about because that must be quite intense the amount of messages you get every day, I can imagine, is off the scale. Again, I've sort of had my formative growing up experience around internet famous people.

So when I compare it to them and what they deal with or dealt with, I'm like, oh God, I shouldn't complain about this. This is a dot on the landscape in comparison. But yeah, it is really intense. And I've always thought that I dealt with it quite well and you know I've I've had my share of trolls I particularly when I was working for Jack and Finn you know they had this sort of Beatles mania like fangirl following of teenagers who I was simply the only girl in the picture you know it was them and me so they hated me and I'd get all

manner of you know we just don't want you to die you know I grew a very thick skin to it and I've taken that on now but what has been really I think the most difficult is because of the nature of talking about mental health and mental illness is people then sort of see you as a I don't know a mentor yeah and because of the nature of online you're an available mentor and that's really hard to work out your own personal boundaries on when the book first came out I was getting like nearly like 20 messages a day from these young women who are all around the world being like I'm thinking about killing myself or I've been self-harming or I think my best friend's got bulimia and I don't know how to deal with it and I was just sat there like I'm 22

I'm not all right oh no I've I've tricked all these people into thinking I have answers and and now it's my responsibility to into thinking I have answers and and now it's my responsibility to go through all of this and and you know obviously you don't have enough personal energy or strength to give to everybody that wants it from you um or needs it more importantly and now I used to be really hard on myself if I didn't reply to a message I would convince myself that I was the most selfish awful person in the world and and now I just don't which sounds really bad but I would be doing a disservice to them trying to advise them on something that I myself know very little about and I hope that you know even just initially reaching out to someone to say that there's something wrong is often enough of your own mental note to then seek proper help.

But yeah, it's hard. And also writing, because I'm an Insta poet, apparently, which is nonsense. I post more pictures of my face than I do of my poetry. So I don't know. Also, because that gets more likes. It's so weird that, isn't it? it's a freaky thing to think about I was like oh I'm so glad we're all here for the right reasons validating me on some level people expect you to post stuff all the time they're like oh you haven't posted a poem in ages like yes because I'm writing oh but we want to see it

that's not that's not how it works I'm currently I can finally say currently writing my next book and you know I can't post any of that online because it's for my book that you have to put money towards you don't just get all this you know we have this idea that you know suddenly because everything's so available we can get shit for free all the time that that might sound awful but it's now my work it feels weird I don't know no I totally I'm a big believer in that that you pay for quality content and there's nothing greater than having a physical object that is a book in your hand like I find that the best way to read even though that makes me sound like I'm about 85 no I completely agree

with you and yet you would never expect a novelist to start posting pages of their novel. Yeah, exactly. You'd be like, I'll wait for the book. I can't wait, Charlie. I'm going to stop this interview now because I want you to rush back and start writing it. No pressure. You are a delight. I'm so glad I met you.

And I'm so honoured that you came on this podcast and shared your beautiful stories. Thank you so, so much. And I hope you meet a man who is worthy of you. But that's not really relevant because you're the most incredible woman in your own right. Thank you. Love you.