How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S6, Ep7 How to Fail: Fearne Cotton

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

Fearne Cotton blazed the trail for podcasts like mine. When she launched Happy Place in March 2018, it went straight to the top of the iTunes chart and has seemingly stayed there ever since. It has done so much to bring discussions about mental health into the mainstream, partly because Fearne has also been honest about her own experiences with panic attacks and anxiety.So when I started How To Fail in July 2018, I always knew Fearne would be top of my list of dream guests. A few months later, we ended up sitting next to each other at the British Podcast Awards (spoiler alert: neither of us won but embarrassingly, we both presented awards to other winners) and having a good old natter, and then I was sent to interview her for a magazine and we got on so well that we hatched the idea of doing each other's podcasts now HERE WE ARE.What makes Fearne so special is not just her impressive broadcasting career as a TV and radio presenter, or her bestselling books or the fact that she turned Happy Place into a full-blown festival, complete with yoga workshops and inspiring talks. No, it's that she is unafraid to be honest. She believes, as I do, that true strength comes from true vulnerability, and it's these qualities that make her a phenomenal guest.Fearne joins me to talk about failing most of her GCSEs, a failed engagement and, in one of the most powerful passages of any interview I've ever had the privilege of doing, about her failure to be herself in her 20s and how she lived with an eating disorder for years. This is the first time she has ever spoken about it, and I am so truly grateful that Fearne felt this was a safe enough space to bare her beautiful soul.Thank you, Fearne. Your words and your courage will help a great many people.*The How To Fail Live tour is almost over. SNIFF! There are limited tickets left for Belfast with Sinead Burke (14th November) and Gateshead with Jess Phillips MP (8th December). Dublin with Amy Huberman (15th November) has SOLD OUT! Thank you! These events are not recorded as podcasts so the only way to be there is to book tickets via www.faneproductions.com/howtofail* The 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.*You can listen to Fearne Cotton's Happy Place here* This season of How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp and sponsored by Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty are offering listeners 20% off full-price items with the code HOWTOFAILTo contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayFearne Cotton @fearnecottonSweaty Betty @sweatybetty       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. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest this week is someone who needs several descriptions. She is a TV and radio presenter starting out in live television at the age of 15 and going on to front primetime shows including Children in Need, Radio 1's Chart Show and to occupy a regular slot as quiz captain on Celebrity Juice. She is also the author of best-selling books, has produced her own clothing ranges and has even climbed Kilimanjaro for charity. But most importantly for our purposes, she is a hugely successful podcaster. In her podcast, Happy Place, she interviews inspiring individuals with her trademark empathy and insight

and asks them how to be content in this sometimes confusing world. She recently turned it into a festival with a line-up of brilliant speakers including Russell Brand and Dame Kelly Holmes. Along the way she has been open about her own mental health, talking about her experiences with panic attacks and anxiety in a way that has made the rest of us feel less alone and more understood. So much has happened, she said in an interview earlier this year, all for the better. Although there have been moments that have been incredibly dark and low, all of it feels absolutely right in a way. She is, of course, Fern Cotton. Fern, it is such a pleasure to welcome you onto How To Fail.

I'm so happy to be on and that was much less cringy than I thought it would be sat here listening to you talk about me. It was actually very lovely. Listening to your gorgeous voice. It's all the facts. It's the facts. And when I started doing How To Fail, you were one of my dream guests. And I think it's because you really blazed the trail for podcasters like me. And I just want to thank you for that and for Happy Place, because I think it's a momentous achievement what you've done. Well, it was a total happy accident. So I can take some credit, but really, it's the people that have, you know, listened and got involved in the conversation and the guests that I've had on, you know, they've been so open and incredible in wanting to share their stories.

So I play a small part in something that is a joy to create. How did you start doing the podcast? What was the impetus behind it? I guess after I'd written Happy and seen this bizarre, unexpected reaction that I honestly thought that book would go under the radar and that it would just be kind of a nice side project and it's turned into this, you know, beautiful monster. And sometimes as much as I love radio, you feel confined to having to talk about, you know, certain things and there are certain things that aren't appropriate to talk about. And I love the medium of radio. And this just felt like kind of radio with an after party attached to it. Like you could just go for it and talk about whatever you wanted.

And that felt liberating. So I did a tester just chatting to my mate Zephyr, who is this amazing friend who's a yoga teacher but has had a very tough time throughout her life. And I knew she'd be willing to be open and very honest. And that ended up in the first series because we just thought, you know what, that was just a really nice conversation. Let's see what people think. And it snowballed from there. I mentioned in the introduction that you have been open about your mental health, which again is an incredibly generous thing for you to do. Have you always been someone who can speak the truth openly? Are you someone who kind of connects on a deep level with the person that you meet on

the bus? Yes and no. So yes, like me, regular Fern in reality, yes. I don't like small talk. I kind of can't be arsed. It's why I hate going to parties because it'd be very weird to just go in deep at a party. I love going for like a cup of tea with someone and really like chatting it out. And I guess I always have been like that. And my mum is very much like that. She can't do small talk at all. She is straight to the jugular. But in my working life and in that sort of capacity, no, I don't think I felt comfortable until quite recently so I did keep it fluffy and light and appropriate to the job that I was doing which was fun sometimes frustrating but very much you know still fun I got to interview thousands of amazing bands and artists that I love and you'd never necessarily go that deep but you'd

have a great time but I've now just moved the real me into the sort of work portion of my life so I feel really comfortable luckily in this space of doing podcasts and with the continued sort of writing that I can just be me. And what's the reaction been like with people, for instance, on the street? Because you are in a conventional sense famous and your face is very recognisable. Has the attitude of strangers shifted? Yeah, I think I've sort of witnessed a strange reaction from the age of 15 to now 38, where, you know, first of all, I'd get kids coming up with their mum and the mum would go, she says you're off the telly, I don't know who you are. And I'd go, oh, thank you. Hi, do you want a picture? And it'd be quite confrontational and strange. And then, you know,

there was the phase where I was doing Top of the Pops or radio, whatever. And people just, you know, are being very sweet and kind and have listened to the radio show. And now more often than not, it's people wanting to have a hug, you know, people wanting to share their story, people wanting to tell me something about themselves. And it's not just the spectacle of there's someone off the TV. It's a bit deeper than that. It's, you know, they they've they've listened to the podcast or they've read a book and they want to chat and they want to share their story and and I am massively grateful you know every time that happens I've met some lovely people like at the happy place festival this year and or even just when I'm walking up and doing the school run it's kind of weird and

wonderful every time it happens I'm going to get onto your failures in a minute, but do you have strategies in place for dealing with that? Because as much as it is a privilege and you're so grateful for it, and it's a beautiful thing, I imagine that a lot of people also share their stories of pain with you and that can be quite hard to assimilate. Yeah, I, you know what, I really noticed it this year because say, for example, at the Happy Place Festival, we had 6,000 people in London and 5,500 people in Manchester. And it was beautiful.

You know, I walked around as much as I could to meet as many revelers as I could. And it was pretty much that all weekend. People wanting to tell me why they had come along, what their story was, the pain they'd suffered, what a certain talk they'd just listened to and, you know, how that had impacted them. And it was pretty heavy. And I'd really underestimated that. I just thought

I'd walk around and have, you know, like high high fiving everyone. And actually it was this really amazing, deep connection with a lot of people. And, you know, one thing I'm really careful to do is never give any advice because who the hell am I that's not my place I'm there to listen and to encourage people for sure but not to give advice and I always make sure if I've got something like that which is quite a unique situation I'm only going to do it you know once every year that the week afterwards is very very normal and I am at home and I'm with my children and I'm not doing anything worky or weird it's just me getting grounded going for runs playing sylvalian families with my daughter just like regular stuff because I had to really like process all of those stories and thoughts

and feelings and you know it also of course brings up a lot for you personally if there are certain stories that resonate with you so yeah it was gorgeous and it was heavy and I I guess next year I'll go into that more educated from experiencing it and we'll be able to probably recover slightly quicker afterwards that's 11,000 people I've just done the maths well done Elizabeth that's really incredible you should be so proud of yourself you've got to come next year I'd love you to do a talk or something I've said it on mic so you kind of have to now but um but it was really special and again I sort of underestimated it I just thought people would come listen to the talks do a bit of yoga but it was this real sense of community and loads of people turned up on their own they didn't go in a group

of friends they didn't bring their partner or their best mate they just came on their own by the end you know everyone was mixing and chatting and it was just oh I get goosebumps thinking about it it was really gorgeous I was under a lot of pressure but for a very good reason you talked earlier on about when you were 15 and people would come up to you in the street and your first failure is around that age. And you say that you didn't recognize it as a failure at the time, but there are reasons that you want to discuss it. And that's that you didn't get most of your GCSEs. So what was happening? Because I'm imagining you weren't at school that much. Yeah, it was a complicated time in a sense. I just saw it all as fun. This was like not a bad period of my life at all. I had this extremely lucky situation.

So the backstory being, I come from a very regular working class family in the suburbs of London, and I went to a regular state school. And then I lived for my drama classes at the weekend and my dance classes and after school I would go as well and it was just a local dance and drama club in a church hall around the corner from my house but it was my everything and I was and still am to some extent a big dreamer so I was daydreaming constantly about all these amazing acting jobs I was going to get and how I would end up with Leonardo DiCaprio in Hollywood. And, you know, I was constantly dreaming. So school just seemed a little bit obsolete in all of that, which is not something I wouldn't necessarily promote to younger people, but that was how I felt. And I was probably working, I'd say at this point, two to three days a week. And then I would do

school the other days. And I didn't really care when I was there much I had a great group of friends it was brilliant slightly bullied from the people in the year above me because you're an odd child if you're on tv at school you stick out like a sore thumb as much as I didn't really want to be there because of that I didn't really care because I was doing what I loved and I couldn't believe that I'd sort of been plucked from obscurity to do this amazing job that was just so fun and so far removed from the first 15 years of my life where I hadn't seen anything like that so my GCSEs were not part of the plan but I did a few of them I missed a couple because I was filming and I didn't re-sit them. I got good grades in three

of them because I really enjoyed those subjects and the rest I just kind of flunked. And although at the time I didn't see it as a failure, I think later down the line, I saw it as this kind of social expectation and also kind of like key to a door of this club I wasn't involved in, Also, kind of like key to a door of this club I wasn't involved in, like the smart kids, the smart gang. Oh, my God, the insecurity I have sometimes still around people that went to university or who, you know, have amazing masters. If I get interviewed by journalists, I think have been to a great, you know, Oxbridge or whatever. I feel such paranoia because I fucked up at school massively so although at the time I didn't see it as a failure I think it affected me much later down the line and can I ask you because at the age of 15 you were doing live television which is routinely described as the

most terrifying facet of broadcasting and you're very well known for being very good at it. But at that age, were you scared of it or nervous? Or did you just not know? I'm much more nervous now than I was then. I think as a kid, you're just so gung ho about everything. Like, let's just give it a try. I was the ultimate risk taker. I still am. I'm a big risk taker. I really believe in taking risks, which means you're definitely going to fail. But at that point, I just saw it all as this wild fun. I just couldn't believe that I was getting to do it. I dreamt about it so often for so long that to then finally be doing the job that I wanted to do or something. I wanted to be an actress, but, you know, I was doing something in that world, was just so exciting to me. I kind of didn't care. So, you know,

I didn't have sleepless nights or anything like that. I just used to turn up, give it my best, smile loads. There was no social media, so I had no idea about what anyone thought of me. And I went home back to my family, normal life, and hung out with my regular school friends. You know, I didn't have a showbiz life at 15. I had a regular life, but a really cool job. But the fear wasn't there. And what did your parents think when you failed your GCSEs? Luckily, my parents are very liberal and chilled and really hardworking. And I think that's always been the thing that they will fundamentally root back to is do me and my brother work hard at what we really love and what we want to do.

And if we are, then great. It doesn't matter what it is. So, you know, my parents, I only realized recently because I had this chat with my dad and I'd never understood what they were going through at that time. I just thought I wasn't thinking I was just having a great time but my dad used to have to like go to the local town hall get all these documents signed so I could be signed out of school and then go off filming and have chaperones and all this sort of stuff and for them they were both working my dad was a sign writer until recently for his whole life my mum was working four different jobs trying to, you know, keep everything going. And they just let me get on with it. And they knew how desperately I wanted to do it. They recognised that I was very strong-willed from a really young age. And they've, you know,

told me about that again more recently, that I was slightly unusual as a child. And they kind of recognised that. And I'm really lucky that they gave me the space to just do it and try. And not all parents would have allowed that. Do you feel that mainstream schools don't really allow that as well? Do you feel like they should be more flexible in terms of what they teach? The thing that I really passionately believe schools need to be more up on is soft skills. And it's something that I work with the Prince's Trust on because I'm an ambassador for the Prince's Trust and it's a focus of theirs. You know, soft skills in life can get you really far if you work out what you want to do.

And I'm talking about, you know, working as a team, either as a team leader or being in a team, being polite, being kind, being a good communicator, making eye contact, having good etiquette, all of these things that will seriously serve you well in life are completely abandoned for a very sort of old school archaic method of learning and there's still obviously room for all of those things especially if you want to be a teacher a scientist a doctor whatever but if you don, you are definitely made to feel like a failure. And I was told in all of my, you know, you have to do those like interviews with a careers advisor. And I would give them this long, dreamy list of things I wanted to do. And they would always come

back going, you need to work with children. That's what you should do. Work in a school or whatever. And I was like, I don't want to do that. You're not listening to what I'm saying. And there was no other option. And I had teachers say to me look good luck but this is not going to work out for you so knuckle down and do your studies and I will try and reach a good balance with my own kids that they work hard at school but also allow them a space to try other things if that doesn't fit them I had one of those aptitude tests and it told me I should be a building society advisor what went wrong Elizabeth what went wrong didn't go according to plan did it Fern I failed you

failed terribly there but do you because you see it you've got one child in school now yes is it do you think school is just highly pressurized oh my god way more so than when I was there. I don't think I would have gotten away with how I was educated and worked at 15 today in schools. I've got two teenage stepchildren, one doing his last year of A-levels and my stepdaughter is 14. So she's approaching all of her big exams. I mean, the pressure is crazy. This is why I'm so fascinated in the subject you talk about. I think we're getting worse at failure. There's more pressure. There's much less room to fail and learn from it. And it just seems sort of suffocating for kids these days. And I do think it's really worrying because I'm sure there's loads of kids out there today under that pressure

that don't feel like the academic world is their world. And that's a terrifying place to be at, if that's the case. So I think schools are getting better at it in a sense that they do encourage the arts, sport, music a little more than when I was at school. But I do think the pressure to have, you know, these beautiful straight A's or are they marking them with numbers now? I don't know what the hell it is. I'm so old. But the pressure to get that, that supposedly means you're then going to do well in life, like that isn't an equation that works out. I know people that got straight A's, went to university, got masters and then floated around for years going, what the fuck am I doing with my life after? And then friends who did no further education and have the dream job

they lusted after forever so we do need to look at how we communicate that to children and that there are other options for sure you said there that you were a risk taker and I think that some people who know your particular journey will be surprised by that because you have spoken courageously and honestly in the past about anxiety and having panic attacks. So some people I think would think, but then why would you take risks? But tell us why you think it's important. Okay. First of all, I am quite a strange fish in many ways. It's weird because sometimes I'm taking a risk to alleviate myself from the anxiety that I'm feeling. So some examples that you may have witnessed, me leaving Radio 1, like the peak of my career there when I was, you know, running the

live lounge and had this amazing time slot and was interviewing all these amazing people every day. Not a single person said to me, good choice, good on you, great, great idea. Everyone was like, ah, what? I don't get it. Why are you leaving? Again, bar my parents who are very cool about stuff like that. And I left Celebrity Juice when it was all going brilliantly. And there was nothing wrong with those jobs or what was going on within them. I just felt like I needed to change and to switch things up. And they, you know, it's always a huge risk for me because I'm self-employed. I've got nothing to fall back on. Mum and dad aren't going to help me out. I mean, they've retired, they're chilling out. They don't want to be helping out their 38 year old daughter and they couldn't anyway. So, you know, it's a huge amount of risk taking every time I

make a change or leave something and for my family. But I always lock into that intuition and deep down know it's right and sometimes that will dissipate a certain anxiety that was there and I hadn't realized what the root cause was or you know I'm not great at sleep sometimes and making a big change like that will just stop that and its tracks and I'll go back into beautiful REM sleep. So I guess it's about following your gut. But yes, I am big on risk taking. That's so interesting, because you're so right that it's in those moments that you grow, that shaking things up can be so terrifying. And yet there's something putting you to do that. I can't ignore it. Like I've tried, but then I become obsessive thinking about things. You know, when I was leaving Radio 1, I obsessed about it for about six months and I couldn't even articulate

why I needed to leave. I just knew it was time and I wanted to learn and shake things up and try new things. And I just thought I want chapters in life rather than one long career of the same thing I want there to be like oh that was that chapter and then I went on and there was another chapter and luckily that's accidentally happened in a way I had not imagined one chapter of your life see seamless linkless. She's so good. She's so good. Learned it all from you. So one chapter is about when you got engaged and at 29 that engagement failed. Yes. And there was an element you said in your email to me that was based on the social pressure to have everything sorted by the age of 30 that made you feel like you'd failed there? Oh, massively, massively. So yeah, before I met my husband, I was engaged to somebody else.

And we get on perfectly well now. And there's no like, bad blood, there's nothing bad to say. It was just one of those situations where we'd been together on off for a while, for quite a long time, actually. And there was a wedding venue booked booked and I really thought I had my future planned naively like we all try and control things and grab hold of that and think if I map out my future I'll be safe I won't have to deal with failure all of those things I know you've talked explicitly about this in your own life so beautifully and of course life doesn't always pan out that way so the engagement ended and it was a weird life shake-up that I hadn't really expected and you know looking back at the place I'm at now I think

it was great for everyone he's happily married to the most lovely lady who I've met a couple of times in a door they have a baby you know I met my wonderful husband and I've got two kids and two step kids and you can retrospectively see how those social failures aren't really failures because it was just time for you to walk down a different path. But at the time, I felt absolute despair because I had imagined that I would be getting married, having children, and then my 30s would be family time. And that's how it was going to be. married, having children, and then my 30s would be family time. And that's how it was going to be. And at 29, about to turn 30, I panicked. I really, really panicked. And my panic turned into,

I just want to be on my own now. I don't want to meet anyone. I am quite happy on my own. I'm not going through that again. And then I met my husband. Yeah. But I think that so many people respond like that. They try to cut themselves off and they avoid anything that could make them feel. Yeah, you put a big suit of armor on. You just think, I'm too delicate to go through that again and to invest emotionally and energetically into fixing future plans. into fixing future plans. I mean, you know, obviously it's been a big learning curve because I do that less so now and I'm a bit freer with how I think about things and I plan a lot less. But in my 20s, I tried to plan everything because my career was so wildly out of control often because I was traveling back and forth from the States and juggling lots of jobs and doing really like high octane, scary, crazy things that I tried to have more control over my everyday life. So rigid plans

kind of made me feel a bit safer. And I definitely don't do that anymore because I've got kids. So everything's just like chaos. But prior to that, I really and and taking the wedding out the diary and and all of those plans that have been set in place yeah I definitely felt like a massive failure for sure had you bought your dress I had bought an inexpensive dress that I thought this could work but I wasn't and I think that's when I started to realize things were going down the pan I'd really thought about the venue and then I started to invest less and less into it as we got nearer to it because I could see it was falling apart part of me was in massive denial hence still buying a dress but I knew it wasn't quite right

so I think I was admitting failure to myself around that point and then the royal wedding happened between the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and it was such a beautiful thing watching them get back I mean I was there doing all the reporting so I was kind of right outside the palace gates watching it all take place and it started to kind of hit home that that wasn't going to happen for me and it was pretty much straight after that that it all just imploded. So it was quite a weird, a weird moment. And can I ask without getting into too many personal specifics, but earlier you were talking about those instinctive moments

where you left Radio 1 or Celebrity Juice. Was it an instinctive moment for you to end the engagement? Is that how it ended? No, I think I've always been much more intuitive with my work than I have in my personal life and also much better at work than my personal life me too a hundred percent I think so many people feel the same they can set agendas take risks but in our lives it almost feels I mean too chaotic and too precious and too raw to make those really gutsy decisions so I have always been awful at that I'm only getting better at that now, like really recently,

making better choices within relationships, friendships, you know, just decisions with dynamics in my life. Work's always been a little bit more clear cut for me. And your husband now, Jesse, do you just communicate very plainly to each other. Is that the key? Yeah. Yes, we do. And that is great and can be fiery. And I've written about, and it's been put into headlines that are obscure and truncated or whatnot. You know, we'll have great old shouting matches about stuff, but the main thing being is we're communicating very honestly about how we feel. There's no suppression. There's no hiding things from each other. We deeply feel the need to get everything out in the open. And we can always tell if there's something in the other's head and we will wheedle it out of the other. And it's not always pretty, but we end up being in a better place a closer place and in a really

healthy relationship so the engagement imploded in a yeah in a strange way that I don't think there was ever any closure for either of us it just sort of went wrong and it was one argument in a string of many which just felt very final and both knew, and I don't think either of us, you know, it wasn't one or the other saying it, it just was that there is no more. And that is, that is that, which I guess didn't make it easy because you almost want in that vulnerable place to be able to blame. That's always the easiest way out of a difficult situation for anybody is to start pointing fingers because you then take the heat off yourself I don't think either of us felt we could do that we just knew it wasn't going any further and that is still a difficult thing to live

through for both parties but at least we didn't walk away blaming the other for everything it just reached a natural end but it did feel like I was at an age where it should be progressing and thriving and it was a bit of a scary time and do you feel looking back now that that relationship happened and ended for some sort of reason absolutely for both of us I think we could both happily say that I think you learn so much from being in any partnership mainly about yourself you think you're learning about other people and how the world works you're just learning about yourself and how you react to things and why and how best to communicate and I came away having learned a lot I didn't then instantly start acting perfectly in all other relationships obviously I think it just goes on for your whole life but I certainly walked away

having learned a lot about myself I don't really see him that much but I have bumped into him and his wife recently and they they've got a wonderful setup and he's doing brilliantly at work and they've got a gorgeous baby and Jesse and I in our home are very settled and we live a really nice very quiet life here you know we keep it really small and quiet and very regular within our home and we're content. And I think you at the time feel like everything's going wrong and to share and all these plans laid are no longer. But the big thing I've learned in all of the mistakes I've made are that the new doors open. It's such a cliche, but it's so true. If you properly shut doors and you do have to properly shut them, they can't be a tiny bit open so you can peek in and

look every now and again. They have to be properly shut. And then other ones that you were not even expecting open up. And I've experienced that in my life, in my work life, that you get new opportunities and I'm very impatient. So I want to see results now. I want to see what other new doors, where are they? I can't even see them. And I've really had to lock into patience and just having hope, which when you're not religious can be quite hard, but having a little bit of hope that other experiences and learnings and excitement will happen. other experiences and learnings and excitement will happen. That's so interesting you say that about properly shutting the doors.

So in terms of breaking up an intimate relationship, are you one of those people who's like, I am not going to speak to my ex. I won't try and find out what they're doing. I know that this is a pre-Instagram age, but so you wouldn't be looking at them on Instagram. And professionally, like I need to leave this job for the next you're that definite about it yeah sometimes I think I've had to be because I think when you leave certain situations work or personal it can be so painful to delve back into it and

I've definitely been self-destructive in other ways but sometimes it's been so painful to do that that that door has to just close for me to properly move on and I know that that will make things heal faster and it's not even about discipline or me being very resilient in those situations it's just too painful to look so I can't and it's been like that even if I'm honest with Celebrity Juice I haven't been able to watch it I made the decision to leave but it'd be so weird for me to then tune in to watch it because you know they're my mates and it's my gang and I'm not there and it might bring up a lot of feelings and might make me feel regret or whatever although I know intuitively I made the right decision for where I'm at in my life why would would I put myself through that pain? You need to,

in any situation, properly close the door and respect other people's space, respect your space and breathe a little bit, like have breathers, like moments of nothingness where you can process and digest and just be rather than scrambling into the next thing to distract yourself. Just being is important. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters, and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, these words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis.

Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to thomas beckett by subscribing to gone medieval from history hits are you less of a planner now than you were when you were planning that first wedding? I plan so little because I've realised the sort of beauty of not planning and sort of letting go in a sense because I am naturally a bit of a control freak but having experienced this sort of weird and wonderful career this new tangent I've gone off on, sprout out of nowhere, has made me realise how exciting it is to not really plan very much. So all of this stuff I'm doing, you know, with the podcast, the festivals, I didn't sit one day and plan out all of this stuff. It's just sort of

snowballed and I'm going with it and it's really exciting. And I think that can often be the case. I'm not talking about in a work sense, but in life, if we just sort of really let go, loads of cool stuff happens. that feels really genuinely random and lovely and can take you on another trail of thought or to just think differently about life. So yeah, I try. And also because I've got kids, it is so hard to plan stuff because everything's constantly changing and you change your opinion on things and where they're at development wise. So yeah, I just try and go with the flow a little bit more you need to clear the space to listen to instinct I always think because there's so much white noise that otherwise drowns that so much there's so much exterior noise for all of us and unless you have those gaps and those breathers you don't stand a chance you'll be making decisions based

on what everyone else thinks and it can only come from you because it's your life at the end of the day so talking about other people's opinions of you and this kind of expectation brings us on to your third failure and I'm extremely honored that you are going to talk about this and I think it's going to speak to a great many people and it's about a failure you put it as a failure to be yourself for most of your 20s because in your teens you'd been vividly you I imagine because you weren't as aware of what you were doing and you were just enjoying it for what it was and then what happened in your 20s well yeah so I'd had that like lovely period of being a teenager on the tv and there was a

small element of me going oh my god I don't really look like all of these pop stars that are coming on here and they all seem to be really coping very well with all their confidence levels in this weird world but but I still kind of was quite naive and just went with it but then in my 20s sort of at 19 I guess I started doing Top of the Pops and in my 20s and I started on the radio. So I was doing like proper big TV stuff and very wonderful, respected radio on Radio One. And I'm not saying I was well respected, but I mean, I was working on very respectable stations and it just felt a lot scarier. And that's when I started to really wonder how people were seeing me and what their thoughts were. And it was just a very strange time. And I guess a lot of people go through this in their teens,

but I was sort of infantilized to some extent because I was this kind of kid on TV. And in my twenties, I went through like my teen years almost of trying to emulate other people, whether it be like I dyed my hair every color under the sun, it was red, it was black, it was white. I just wanted to not be me. I didn't feel cool enough, didn't feel smart enough, didn't feel like I was good enough at the job, didn't feel like I was doing anything well enough to be defined by it in a positive way. Yeah, I just kind of felt very discombobulated and not enough. Always, always felt like imposter syndrome, just off the scale. I was just very negative about myself in every way, intellectually, emotionally, physically. I was just not happy being me, weirdly.

And how did that manifest itself? In a lot of ways but the main one having the disordered relationship with my body and food for 10 years and it's so strange because I even feel you know nervous talking about it because I haven't and I think I've got to the point which is why I wanted to talk today that I talk the talk and I love being honest but I don't 100% walk the walk because I haven't gone there you know I've definitely talked about a big period of depression that I've had and I've talked about that prolifically and panic attacks which was really scary to talk about because I still get them so there's all sorts of weirdness going on with that when you're still experiencing them but this one is a strange one because it's been like this weird secret that I felt a little bit embarrassed about, a little bit ashamed of, a little bit worried.

Like I'm still worried now. Like what are people going to think when I tell this story and share this side of myself? I have a weird worry like I did with talking about the depression, that people won't hire me to work, like silly stigma that I still attach to all of these situations that I know loads of people are going through. But the main problem I had, and this sort of weird new release that I invented for myself was to have bulimia. I had that for on off a good decade of my life. So the beginning of my twenties, it was quite intense and sort of ruled everything. And then in my later twenties, it was more like a bad habit I would kick into if something emotional

was happening or if I felt out of control, it would be my go-to thing, but it wasn't as regular. And another reason why I've been nervous to talk about it is, you know, I've experienced so many times how the press will jump on things I say and then take them out of context and use wild headlines. And the one kind of thing I have to talk about is the reaction that I've had to that period of my life has been my 30s, which have been all about health and looking after myself and eating extremely well and healing and recovering and being really on it with my health, because I denied myself the pleasure of cooking

and food for so long that it's now become my everything. So it's really important that that side of my story is also really communicated because it's something I'm so passionate about. And I know because I read a lot of articles about it, There are so many people out there, men and women, going through this situation with disordered eating, bulimia, and feeling like they'll never ever get out of it. And I don't define myself by being a bulimic. I'm not. I, for the last eight years, have been very studious with food and very careful about how I eat and how I cook and how I talk about food. And I feel really good and recovered. I hope I'm not being naive by saying it, but I do feel like that. It was a period of my life, but I'm not in it anymore. It is the past, but it does signify a big chunk of my life where I failed at being me because I'm just me these days. So whatever anybody thinks or says, that's their issue.

Back then, I felt I couldn't be me. It had to be something wildly different. And that became my little secret to contain it, I guess. That's such a beautiful way of putting something so difficult. And thank you so much for that. Because I know how much it will speak to so many people, myself included. I know people very close to me who have lived with that condition. And I think the reason it's so hard to talk about, and the reason that

there's still unfair stigma attached to it is because we're expected to be perfect. And you're expected, particularly in the job that you had, to kind of have it all and to have it all without seeming to put effort into it. And so it feeds into this narrative that you have to be in control. And I think that one of the misunderstandings about disordered eating, bulimia, anorexia, is that it's about your physical presentation of the outside world. And actually, my understanding is it's a lot about control when you feel out of control. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. I didn't recognize that until a lot later down the line. But for me, partly it was something that no one knew about me because I felt at times very overexposed.

Partly that was I take responsibility for that, but it was still the case. And also about control, because I had this first chunk of my life, which is very normal. And I was doing normal family things. And then the next chunk of it overnight switched up and was just bonkers at times. So it was a way of feeling like I was calling the shots and I was in control. And it's sad to look back and see that it was obviously the absolute opposite of that. I felt so out of control that it came to abusing my own body. And it took quite a while physically to kind of move on from that but mentally a very long time I will still

have unkind thoughts about myself on a physical level because there was an element of that in there as well and that's something that I remedy by doing the opposite eating a really lovely meal or doing some very gentle yoga you know I used to I was never the sort of person that binged and then puked up after. I would eat relatively regular meals, but then still go and get rid of it all and have, it felt like a release, like every worry, every problem, thought was just like gone. It was like a little bit of euphoria afterwards. Of course, it wasn't. I want to be very clear about that. But at the time, the mental state I was in, it did feel like that. I was exercising, you know, like going running to the gym and like pounding my body. And now it's all about being gentle and being kind to myself and exercising when I feel like I want to and doing it so I'm energized rather than exhausted and eating so that I'm vibrant and energized to have energy for my family and I also have shame attached to the fact that I purposefully hurt my own body when I'm so grateful for my health today I can't tell you like

absolutely the main thing I'm grateful for every day is I wake up and I'm here I have a healthy body like thank god and to think that I damaged it on purpose you know I do have some shame attached to that and I guess that's why I've also found it very difficult to even admit like sometimes I feel like did I make it all up like did it really happen because I've never talked about it you know even to my close friends I haven't really felt like that was a place I wanted to go to and I'll go there you know I like being honest I like putting it out on the table but this one has felt I don't even know why just too spiky to deal with. Did anyone know when it was happening or did anyone suspect and try to talk to you about it not that I know of bar my mum and I think she'll probably be quite upset that I've talked about it

I think and it's probably another reason I haven't but I do think once I've explained to her my reasons why and the fact that she knows that I want to help and do good. So I think she'll be on board eventually. But I do think, my honesty, she'll find difficult because I know as a parent, it was a horrendous time for her. And she definitely started to suspect things. And then she confronted me on it. It was around Christmas. It was really late at night and I really was being quite stroppy early 20 something about it denying it not wanting to talk about it not being very helpful at all I think it took a lot of courage for my mum to do so and it wasn't a very nice time and I know that she's beat herself up about it a little bit I think she feels she should have done something

or that she's somehow partly responsible, which is absolutely not, you know, it was nothing to do with my mum at all. But I think it probably was a very difficult time for her. Because how do you help someone in that situation until they're ready to help themselves? It's really hard. And I did have to naturally find my own way and get to a point where I knew that I just couldn't do it anymore. How did you get to that point? It was a long period of time. It was just little moments that built up to a realisation that I didn't want to do that anymore. And also, I had met Jesse at this point and I wasn't regularly purging but it would still be

a fallback if things felt stressful and I at this point then desperately wanted to have a baby. I was going out and drinking quite a lot you know like nothing excessive but like anyone in their 20s and it was just a realization of, I need to start eating really well. I need to really not keep going out on the piss like I am. And again, it wasn't anything excessive at all, but I just thought that needs to change. And I need to just get into a new rhythm of life that is more fitting. So it was fateful that I had met my husband at this point. And I naturally felt like I wanted to just get back to being the real me because the real me in my teen years was the me I am now. Small life, quiet, reading books at home, loving my own

company, cooking. And, you know, I used to bake a lot in my teens being a homemaker very simple pleasures that was what I did throughout my teen years and then in my 20s through this need to feel like I had to be more exciting more vivacious you know an exaggerated version of parts of me I kind of just wasn't me at all so I reached a point where that got boring and I wanted to just be me again so for the last eight years it's just been about being at home and enjoying that. I'm not feeling like I'm not having FOMO. I've never had FOMO in my life. Like I kind of probably had it in my 20s inauthentically, but I don't get FOMO.

I don't want to be out. I want to be here with my family doing simple things. And I just gravitated back towards that. And with that, I had to shed a lot of layers. And that just gravitated back towards that. And with that, I had to shed a lot of layers and that particular illness was a big one of them. It sounds to me as well, as if it was a rather beautiful journey from what you felt your body wasn't to what your body could do and how strong it could be and having babies and discovering more nurturing exercise massively I started to honor it and to want to look after it and very naively I thought I'll get pregnant straight away you just naively think yeah just get pregnant straight away and it didn't

happen like that it took a little while and really reinforced the fact that I needed to properly look after myself and be kind to myself and that's not just in a physical in a practical sense that's with your thoughts and how you talk about yourself how you talk to yourself and that's still what I battle with to this day and I really I think most women do we're so negative about ourselves it was a shift at that point and then getting pregnant with Rex which was a beautiful moment I really just let go of all of it and I ate everything in sight I didn't have any weird feelings toward food it just went overnight it then came back like the feelings of self-hatred or self-loathing and weirdness about my body after birth, which I think is a vulnerable time for most women.

But I didn't go back to the illness. I knew I had to stick to a very practical way of looking at food and health to sustain my health for my own benefit and my newborn baby and can I ask a final question on this which is you have a young daughter now as well and we've spoken in the past about how influential incredible people like Bryony Gordon are on Instagram in terms of that overused phrase now body positivity but how much of an impact has that held on you and how careful are you of the messages you as a social media user and as a mother of a girl put out there yes it's something I think about a lot Bryony's a great friend of mine and I adore her and her work is beautiful

angel work, you know, that she's doing. And also I had a real seminal moment this year talking to Megan Jane Crabb, who is body posi panda on Instagram. And I can't tell you how transformative that chat was for me. I just was just hanging off her every word and it's again been another shift of consciousness for me where I'd realized how unkind I was still being about myself and how much I assumed everyone else was being unkind about me when that's never the case we all know that everyone's worrying about their own shit in their own heads so that one I kind of went off on a beach holiday afterwards for a week and usually I would like hate wearing a bikini and beat myself up about this and that and I just didn't give a shit and it was so wonderful I am very careful

because obviously I've got a stepdaughter who's a teenager as well not to talk about food or in a negative way obviously in a positive way great but bodies and and food in a negative way I am very careful to use positive language or just not even make it a thing I don't really talk about it to either of my daughters at all it's just we just get on with it and have fun and I make food a big celebration in our house. I don't know how I'll react when honey is a teenager. I will just have to go with the flow of being a parent and see where it takes me because we never know what's going to happen and how things are going to play out. But I am very conscious to just make food a big celebration and for our bodies to be celebrated for being capable and strong and nimble and you know we're all very

active and and then looking at social media I mean I am naturally a small person my dad's like this giant stringy beanpole and my mum's a tiny little miniature person and I am quite small so I'm not going to be out there posting pictures of me like embrace your bodies, whatever it could be seen as patronizing. And I've got my own issues, you know, mentally and internally going on there. So I just don't make a thing of it. I just post pictures of me as I am, as authentic as I can be, as real as I can be. Whether that be dog tired with hummus smeared on my shirt from my children, or actually looking a little bit glamorous going to work sometimes because I, you know, my life is a bit of everything.

So all I can be is me. I don't think I'm putting out any particular message about bodies. I hope by me talking about it a bit more, I can open up a new conversation for me about how kind we are to ourselves and how we think about ourselves and and I'm still on that journey but yes I think as long as we're always honest then we can't go wrong I can't be any different to who I am and I'm not a hundred percent like yes in love with my body but I've made a lot of peace and to think of where I've come from I've gone a very great distance away from that time. Thank you. Can I ask you how you feel after this conversation? Relieved in a sense I think I was sort of dreading talking about it but the thing I've learned over the years, especially with the book, with Happy, is that, you know, I was terrified to talk about this depressive episode I'd had.

I felt like an absolute freak having been through it. And it was a painful time. But the thing I've realized is once you've spoken about things, they're not these ugly, dark monsters locked in a cupboard anymore that can jump out and get you when you're least expecting it. monsters locked in a cupboard anymore that can jump out and get you when you're least expecting it. And the more honest I am, and the more I put out there that is authentically me, the less fear I have because I can't be anything else but me. Whether people react well to that or not, that's their choice. I can only be me. And by locking bits of me in the cupboard because they're not good enough, I'm ashamed of them, I'm embarrassed, I'm worried what people will think, because they're not good enough, I'm ashamed of them, I'm embarrassed, I'm worried what people will think, makes them bigger, gives them a heavier quality, makes them louder when you're

trying to sleep at night. So I do think that the more I talk about these subjects, the better. I will have to see, you know, how other people react, which no one knows, and also how the press will flourish these kind of stories but that I'm robust enough to deal with and I think you know worrying about what my mum might think because I do you know obviously care about her reaction to these things I think once she knows like all the work I do that there's goodwill and I want to essentially connect people and have a sense of community, she'll be fine. And that she knows that it's, you know, nothing to do with her or her parenting, which I'm sure is an undercurrent worry. So yeah, I think as I approach 40, I'm just feeling like I'm shedding lots of stuff that doesn't serve me anymore, I guess. And I can just

be me. And as I said, you know, if people like that or don't, that can't be my issue anymore. I can only be me and hopefully my stories, anecdotes will help other people. That's all I can hope for. Fern Cotton, I don't like it. I love it. I think your parents did a fantastic job. And you don't like small talk, but you talk big and bold and brave. And I cannot thank you enough for coming on How to Fail. Oh, thank you. if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with elizabeth day i would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist