Love Lives - Author Lorraine Candy: ‘Perimenopausal rage made me feel I was unravelling’

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

Journalist, editor and author Lorraine Candy joins us to discuss her latest book, ‘What’s Wrong With Me?’: 101 Things Midlife Women Need to Know.Lorraine talks about a “huge unravelling” she experienced at around 47 years old, when she went through the perimenopause, and how a lack of knowledge about this process made her feel she was “going mad”.We also discuss female rage, older women being sidelined in popular culture, and why the the myth that women can ‘have it all’ is a dangerous one.Check out Love Lives on Independent TV and all major podcast platforms, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com The idea of women having it all.

Talk to me about that phrase. Do you feel like there's a place for it today? No. No. Tell me why. No. No. Tell me why. Hello and welcome to Love Lives, a podcast from The Independent where I, Olivia Petter, will be speaking to different guests about the loves of their lives. Today I am delighted to be joined by the best-selling author, award-winning writer and fellow podcaster Lorraine Candy. She joins me to discuss the loves of her life and her latest book, What's Wrong With Me? 101 Things Midlife Women Need To Know.

Hi Lorraine. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show. As I mentioned, you have such an incredibly impressive career and as someone who, you know, basically grew up reading all of the magazines that you edited when I was trying to be a journalist, I'm thrilled to have you on the show. But I won't just ask you about journalism because that would be very selfish of me. So before we get on to discussing your newest book I want to ask you a bit about your first one Mum What's Wrong With You? 101 Things Only Mothers of Teenage Girls Know. It was a bestseller as I

mentioned, a huge success. So can you tell us a bit about what you examined in that book and why you think it resonated with so many people? Well I think throughout my career what I'm trying to do is make women leading their normal daily lives feel less alone and I seem to have with both books actually sort of tried to define something that came as it was a bit of a shock having teenage girls and you know coming as a woman from women's journalism it was a bit of a shock having teenage girls. And, you know, coming as a woman from women's journalism, it was really odd to suddenly find myself in a really strange place with my two eldest daughters. They were a bit mean.

They were really unfriendly. They seemed to be going through such turmoil. And I just couldn't work out what was going on. I couldn't work out why we were kind of separating in this really, it seemed a really uncomfortable and unhappy way and why it was such hard work. And loads of other mums were saying the same to me. And I thought, this bears exploring. Let's investigate it. Let's find out what's going on. And I found out that, you know, there are scientific reasons. You know, it's a very big emotional change. Their brains are being taken apart and rebuilt. That's new neuroscience that they've only really found out about in the last sort of few years.

And as they do that, the separation process is quite difficult, much more difficult than you would think. And it's not for parents experiencing kind of extreme situations. It's parents who just on a daily basis thinks, why are we rowing about this all the time? Why is there so much mess everywhere? Why am I so cross with her? Why is she so cross with me? And all of those things are explainable. I mean, finding and building your identity is an enormous thing to do. Trying to do it while your brain's being taken apart

is an enormous thing to do. Trying to do it while you're grappling with social media, is an enormous thing to do. Trying to do it while you're grappling with social media, peer pressure, your sexuality, your identification around gender, grappling with all that, it's so huge. And I learned just not to take it personally as a mum. And I learned that really what you do is you hold the rope while they're flailing around

on the end of it. So before I was taking it personally and there were all these tiny little things that you could do as a parent that would make such big difference. Learning to listen properly, you know, never quizzing them about things, just chatting with them side by side, just being in the room rather than solving all the problems. And I just didn't know any of that. And I thought, well, it seems very simple, but I can't I couldn't find that information anywhere and I'm a journalist so I thought well let's just put it all in a book and tell some of the stories and try not to you know still guard my children's privacy because I felt I hadn't done that earlier on in their childhood I'd written about them and

actually in retrospect that probably wasn't a wise thing to do especially knowing what we know about social media and stuff now so I was learning so much and I think when you've got a big audience around you you know all my readers have come with me from magazine to magazine it would have been a bit unfair not to show yeah it's interesting I think it's such a difficult time to be a teenage girl now you know I have a sister who is 15 and you know I grew up with social media but not not really you know Instagram came around in 2010. We weren't really on it until we kind of got to uni. And even then it wasn't that big a deal.

And I think now, you know, my sister is on TikTok all the time, Instagram all the time. They're posting like sexy selfies of themselves. They're doing like sexy dance videos. And it just seems like an incredibly difficult time to be a young girl because all of those kind of pre-existing issues that are normal for young girls to have I feel like have been exacerbated by social media. Yeah I think it's a very difficult time to be a young boy as well actually I think whichever gender you are or identify as it's a very difficult time because there's so much coming at you. I don't think, and certainly I talk to a lot of scientists

and I talk to a lot of researchers, I don't think social media per se is to blame. That I think is how we teach our children to curate it. It's how we prepare them mentally to deal with it. And, you know, we need to learn what's going through their mind before they've even picked up a phone. I think that's the key here. And we need to have some boundaries around it.

Actually, teenagers do tend to set their own boundaries and we need to trust them a lot more. I don't think we can police it in a hard line way because I don't think that's helpful. Because, you know, you can say, I'm not going to give my children a phone ever, a smartphone, and they will find a way. So, you know, and that will just make them secretive.

But what we did was say no phones when you're on your own in your room in the dark of the night because that's when your brain's not working yeah in the same way so we had rules like that but otherwise we allowed our children to have phones we allowed them to explore it themselves and there is no smoking gun here that that has not been found yet in the research it It's certainly, it was reminiscent for me of the, some of the discussions I'd had around girls' mental health and weight and body when I was editing a fashion magazine. Sometimes you're so desperate as a parent because it's so worrying. And when you see your children, your daughter's in pain, you need to find one thing to blame.

Actually, you have to look in a bit. You have to look at the family circumstances. You have to look at how your children are being supported at school and what's going on around them. And to know also that they're all really, really different. So one child can deal with things. Another child may not. And I learned about a concept called the orchid and the dandelion, which really hadn't crossed my mind. And, you know, we are quite dismissive when Gen Z talk about their mental health. And, you know, we call quite dismissive when when gen z talk about their mental health and you know we call them snowflakes which is a terrible thing to call a generation but actually there are dandelions in psychiatric terms who are quite strong and who can deal with that's just their genetic and neurological makeup and there are orchids who are a much more fragile

mind and that's not your fault as a parent and that's not society's fault and that's not social media's fault that's very specific to your child so specifically when you have four as well like I do watching each of them very differently dealing with things it's just I learned to be slightly more tuned in and not to blame myself for everything because I think parents do blame themselves for everything and that's that's not good either well that's really interesting because I've never heard that before the neurological explanation because i think today there's such an obsession with things like attachment theory and this idea that you know if you are a particularly sensitive person or you are hyper aware particularly in romantic relationships it's because of the way you were raised it's because of the way you were brought up but

actually of course it's not that simple there are probably just basic neurological reasons as to why you are the person that you are so I think that's really important context and time and what you're going through at the time and you know how other people react to you it's so specific and tell us about your new book so what was it that compelled you to write this one and tell our listeners what it's about? Well, it's called What's Wrong With Me? Because it was a phrase I, around the age of 47, I just seem to keep saying every day. 101 things midlife women need to know.

So it pays. Partners, the other book. But I had gone through, completely unexpectedly, a huge unravelling. There's no history of mental health issues in my family so I knew there was no genetic issues but I had stopped sleeping but not only stopped sleeping I'd had night terrors I was waking up covered in sweat I couldn't remember anything I mean literally couldn't remember anything I got in the car I didn't know which side of the road it was the oddest feeling My joints ached and I was just monumentally depressed and I just came apart and it was the weirdest. I was getting up earlier

and earlier. I was doing more and more exercise. I was drinking less. I was doing all the things thinking that, you know, I've obviously got a brain tumour or dementia or something, something really seriously is wrong. I just couldn't see the point of anything. And it was kind of a horrendously dark place to be. And I thought, why am I going through this on my own? I better not talk about it. It's kind of shameful. I've been very capable and now I was completely incapable.

And I was absolutely filled with a rage that was so murderous and furious. It wasn't just a kind of, oh, someone's left the lid off the milk. How annoying. It was like, if someone does that again, I'm going to stab them to death with a knife. It was just the worst place to be and it was so surprising. And I talked to my friend Trish Halpern, who I co-host Postcards for Midlife with,

and I said, Trish, I've got to tell you something. I think I've got a brain tumour. She said, I've got cancer. I've got something awful going on. I've just thrown a hoover down the hall I've attacked you know it was just we just we had the same thing and then we thought well that's a bit weird how can we both be going through the same thing and then I'd written vaguely about it at work and uh in a piece called The Creeping Sadness and Ellen a friend of mine rang up said I've got that too and she was the same age. She said, it's awful.

It was like tendrils of darkness coming into our world every day. And it was so weird. So I went to the GP, I went to the GP twice and they offered me antidepressants. And I said, I just don't think, you know, that might work for somebody. It just doesn't feel like the right thing for me.

I've just got no joy in anything. And you know, these night terrors are getting worse and worse. And then I did some research and found, I suppose you would call her the medical expert who kicked off what is now the menopause revolution, Dr. Louise Newsome. And I went to see her because I was writing a spa special for Sunday Times Style. And I thought, well, we better get this information out there because obviously something going on. style and I thought well we better get this information out there because obviously something going on and she she said well you're going through this thing called the perimenopause which is the 10 or 12 years before the menopause so the perimenopause is when all the hot flushes

and all the kind of traditional symptoms that we sort of laugh at women getting older for having happen so you but there's over 40 symptoms and there's no blood test that tells you this but it you know every woman will have one of the symptoms and depression is quite a big symptom because estrogen is in every single part of your body when it fluctuates and disappears it affects your whole metabolism so it's a mood regulator in the brain so it helps serotonin work so to carry the messages so when it goes there's no one regulating your mood. And it stops you sleeping because it raises your temperature when it disappears.

So if you can't sleep, sleep is a mood regulator. If you're losing nights and nights of sleep and you can't regulate your mood and all your estrogen is disappearing and your progesterone and your testosterone, it's a hormonal depletion that's causing absolute chaos. Now, not everybody goes through exactly the same things but you know it leads to live women leaving work leaving relationships it we we have spoken on the podcast and in our private facebook groups of women who've been very suicidal and you know people who've written their notes before they've got help so

we just thought this is awful why are people not talking about it? And I just kept waking up every day going, what is wrong with me? And, you know, you hit this point as well where society doesn't value you anymore. You are almost invisible because most of Gen X are used to being judged by their looks and youth being what is valuable. You don't see any role models on screen. You don't see them in books. You don't see them on the telly. And suddenly there's no one in front of you. You're not you anymore. And your identity is just floating away. And it's a very strange time that most women will go through. If you know it's coming, it won't ambush you. And I just thought I should write all this down because this is not it's not fair if I don't share this. and then at the same time as we started the podcast

to talk about it we interview you know mainly women over 40 it started to kind of rumble behind us because you know generation x are not quiet we're not a quiet generation and we we want to talk about it so we've started to talk about it I'm really hoping your generation if you're millennials will come through saying oh oh, well, you know, if I change a few things now and I know what I went through as a teenager and how my periods are and how my gynecological health is, it's coming at me. I know how to deal with this. I won't be plunged into this terrible place. And, you know, because the rest of midlife is magnificent. You know, it's a great place to be. I mean, hearing you say all that, it just makes me so angry because I was going to ask

why don't we know all this I know the reason why we don't know all this because women's health is not prioritized there's not enough funding I've literally just written a piece about contraception and how you know on this other end of the scale women are forced to kind of play Russian roulette until they find a contraception that doesn't make them crazy or make them you know depressed or give them really sore breasts or migraines or whatever and it's just like all of this stuff we should know it we should know it in school and you know when you talk about the perimenopausal symptoms I had no idea about any of the stuff until I started listening to your podcast and reading your work about this and you know I would have probably thought menopause oh yeah hot flushes that's like the one thing that most people my age and younger would probably most women don't get hot

flushes which is just ridiculous I mean the miseducation it just makes me so angry um I want to talk to you a bit more about the identity thing that you mentioned because it reminds me of this passage in the beauty myth by Naomi Wolf that I kind of always come back to when I think about the way that the society views women over a certain age who you know obviously women as they get older they get more powerful they get they know their bodies more they become more confident they become more successful at work and so what a patriarchal society does is tries to find ways to oppress them further to stop them from getting more powerful, I guess, subtly. And I think one of the ways that we see that is we see women over a certain age positioned

as undesirable. And we see this messaging really, really clearly in popular culture. You know, you look at any rom-com, the heroine is almost always in her 20s or 30s. And the women who are in their 40s or 50s or 60s are sort of the mothers or the wise figures giving them sage advice and it's like the idea that you know once you get over a certain age you're not desirable you're not attractive you're not worthy of love certainly not sex and I just I want to know what your opinion is on all of that now because I think there have been efforts to change that not enough and it's a bit slow but what do you make of that and particularly within the context of sex because I know that that's something that you talk about in the book and on the podcast

quite a lot well all of it just makes me absolutely furious as you can imagine um we've had medical gaslighting um for such a long time There was a survey about HRT that was just wrong 20 years ago. That caused all the problems. I write about that in the book, hormone replacement therapy. But it's just about not having the role models. But what is happening is more and more women are in positions where they are directing movies so they can put the role models in. I mean, if you look at the Golden Globes, the Oscars this year, Jamie Lee Curtis, you know Michelle Yeoh, I mean all of the

people winning were older women. It was like they'd all been hidden somewhere and suddenly they were allowed out but it isn't that, it's just that society hasn't really deemed us valuable and we've slightly colluded with that by not being more vocal about it well more of us not being more vocal about it we interviewed georgia pritchett who's one of the writers of succession on the show and she talked about creating jerry because originally jerry was supposed to be a man and and the female writers said if we do that most of these scenes in boardrooms and places and where the power stuff happens, where the money stuff happens and the sex stuff happens, will just be men. It will

just be screens and screens of men. And they said, OK, bring in a woman, make her a motherly maternal figure. And St George's women writers said, why? Why make her a motherly? You know, women are still sexual beings at that age.'s make her you know let's make her top of her game in business let's make her a sexual being let's let's make her part of that and it was a slightly revolutionary thing to do even in this time i think but what is coming and i think this is so you only really change things when you hit sex money because those are the things that give you power so that's the things if you want men to change their ideas and thoughts or the patriarchy

around things it's sex and money where you where you hit it so a lot of women in midlife have terrible sex lives because we get something called vaginal atrophy which I know that's I can see your little face that must be a terrible thing to hear as a millennial. Absolutely terrible. Yeah, no, it's a kind of, you know, estrogen is in every part of your body. The lining, the membranes get thinner. So sort of vaginal vulva membranes get thinner. So it's very difficult for many, many women. And there are many, many symptoms. But we don't have to do that anymore.

The estrogen pessaries is an over-the-counter thing now. So a lot of women are rediscovering their sex lives and they will because what we found is released from the burden of periods, released from any chance of getting pregnant, it makes women suddenly much more interested in their powerful around their sex lives again. the sex toy sales are going through the roof we've had two women on the show in their late 50s and early 60s who talk about all their relationships with men under 40 a lot of women in midlife who are single um are dating much much younger men yeah because they say they are so confident they the women are so confident in bed and they don't want

to find the one so they're in a really powerful place so I think that will shift society a little bit I think men will start to think what the hold on you know middle-aged men who were in positions of power who slightly threatened that they aren't anymore so I think that is coming I think there's a really big sexual revolution coming there's a piece in one of the papers literally yesterday about the joy of midlife sex you know midlife women are much more experimental sexually and they have relationships with women as well a lot of women change who they want to be with in terms of sex as they get older we did a survey on it last year it's a really really important for the podcast part of women's lives and is a way of regaining power. And that erotic charge is really energetic. And I think that that's a good thing. And I think women are staying

in work longer. So, you know, the women over 50 are the fastest growing part of the workforce. And once you get what you need to help with perimenopause and menopause, you've got so much experience. I mean, I point out in the book, in many cultures around the world, Japan and places like that, older women are really revered. It's kind of that people are quite proud, pleased to have older women in the room. They're given more positions of power, doors open for them. But somehow in our Western culture and actually in our culture culture, in our media, in the UK and America particularly, they're not. And that's unfair. But I just I don't think women will stand for that much longer.

It sounds simplistic to say, but I think it will take a while. But I think there are more women in these. We're seeing so many more women. I mean, you know, you look at JLo at the Super Bowl, you look at it's just kind of, you know, even if you don't want to do that and put in that effort and look like that at age there are still women in really powerful positions now and I think it'll just get more and more. And finally before we move on to the loves of your life I want to ask you about because you referenced this in the book and you know having worked in magazines for as long as you did I feel like this is something

you will be very familiar with the idea of women having it all and what's interesting about that is I think that someone might look at someone like you with the children four children the career that you have and have had and think this is the archetypal woman that has it all so because really when we say have it all I think in my mind you think of a woman who is very successful But also has managed to have a family life because those are I guess the two things that are constantly pitted against one another So talk to me about that phrase. Do you feel like there's a place for it today? No, no It's only why I think it's a terrible terrible phrase. And I work for Helen Gurley Brown, who invented that phrase. She was the founding editor of Cosmopolitan,

probably the most successful print magazine in the world. It dominated the globe. Everywhere it was sold, it was number one. And the premise of it was you could be brilliant at work, you could be brilliant in bed, you could have a family, you could be financially independent. It's a dream that was sold to women. And actually, I think what we heard was do it all.

So we just worked so hard. I do a whole chapter in the book about burnout and this bizarre endurance mindset that we had as a generation. And it's really common. I interviewed hundreds of women for the book. this is you know and I interviewed women from incredibly different backgrounds you know I come from quite a working class background I left school at 16 I have no qualifications and I grew up in Cornwall but I interviewed black women brown women I interviewed you know women from every background I could to just get some sense of whether this endurance mindset was just a more white privileged it's a Gen X mindset it really is you know whatever you do where we worked so hard and we tried so hard to do all the things and men didn't back us up they

said they would they might have been at home more but they still needed a to-do list from us they didn't have the emotional labor there's been so much written on this in their minds. They just weren't there for us, even if they really wanted to be. You know, helping out was still helping out instead of being truly equal. It would be really refreshing if the generation under us decided that, you know, you didn't have to have it all. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Kirkshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy.

You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no, that's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com Okay, let's move on to the loves of your life. So your first one is a place that's very special to you. So tell us what it is and why you've chosen it. So this place is Damier Bay in North Cornwall. I grew up on the moors in the middle of Cornwall and we would go camping to the north coast as a holiday. So those were our summer holidays. And I couldn't really swim when I was little because it's quite expensive to learn to swim and there aren't many indoor pools in Cornwall so you know you can't swim in the sea and I couldn't so but I wanted to spend time with my dad so my dad used to drive me on the back of his motorbike because he was a policeman, he had a police motorbike to

a pool on a Sunday and we'd swim and I was useless at it but we'd also swim in the sea and then when I hit midlife and unravelled the one thing that I found helped me was cold water swimming now it's not I don't know what you call it wild swimming but this was six seven years ago so we started it it really it was like meditation for me I mean and I learned to do front crawl and I did a big swim across Lake Geneva with friends it was just huge I learned so much and it brought Damer Bay back into my life again because we go a lot we've got a house in Cornwall now there and it's a tiny little beach and we I swim there when I think I'm going mad again and we used to go there and my kids have been brought up on that beach you know you've got four kids you can't really take them on holiday abroad it's too expensive and it's chaos so it's a really special

it is a love of my life but then it's made swimming the love of my life as well so it's a kind of swim place uh thing and i've met loads of when you're an outdoor swimmer you will swim with anybody because not many people want to swim on their own it's quite dangerous and I've met about three friends just on the beach at Damer and they're really good friends now um it's just it's just a really special place. I want to ask you about cold water swimming because obviously I think now it's quite well known that this is brilliant for your mental health but I also know so many writers who love it and find it really helpful I wonder if you think what the link might be there between being someone who is a writer and has a creative mind and also finds a lot of solace in that kind of physical activity? I think it's um there's a lot of research being done on you know what happens

in the brain with the fight or flight thing because when you first I mean I swim right down to nought degrees I swim all the way through the winter, which is a bit unusual, but it's amazing. So there's that kind of research going on because it does, I feel, brilliant for about three days. But for me, it's the lack of audio. It's just not being able to hear the whole of the world going on around me. I think when you swim, once you change what you can hear, actually you go you go into your head a little bit more and i think you can start to unknot problems and you can start to solve things yeah i mean and also i think the really we know and from all the research and i spoke to so many experts on this

the number one indicator of a long happy healthy life is your social connections it's it's it's healthier for you you can you can eat the best diet you can do all those things but unless you have those social connections you you physically won't live as long that there's so many surveys on it was such that it just kept coming at me all in all the research so you have to meet people and i have met so many people new people and been very curious to them in midlife from swimming. It's just you're outside, you're meeting people. So I think that's probably as important as the physical.

I think the physical aspect is probably kind of... I mean, I swim also with a lot of swimmers who don't put their head in the water and just have their bobble hats on. Do you put your head in the water? Yeah, I'm a front crawl swimmer, yeah. Oh my God. I feel cold even thinking about it.

The most I've done is the ladies pond because I'm a millennial cliche and I only do that in like hot hot weather and that I find okay but I used to live quite close to it and the thought of and I remember there's a real community of women who go there every day because it's open all year round it's kind of uplifting you know I've met so many you know people will support you chat with you even talk to strangers. It's really lovely. So your second love is a really useful writing tool that I think is very helpful to aspiring writers listening to this podcast. So tell us why you've chosen it and what it is.

It might sound a bit silly. It's not a pen. It's not a pen, but it's the other thing. I noticed when I stopped working three years ago in a full- time job editing a magazine that my house was filled with notebooks, which obviously it would be. I'm a journalist. That's, you know, old school. You keep notebooks. But also I suddenly remembered back to my childhood when my house was filled with notebooks and I wasn't a journalist then. And I used to make I used to be a big scrapbooker, I used to make magazines and keep notebooks as well. So right the way from probably the age of five or six all the way through all

I've done is write things in notebooks and I've noticed that now I have more time to think about it. It's sort of that what a millennial would call journaling I guess in a way. I had a parenting column, I had to keep notes. I did big investigations. I had to keep notes. I did cover star interviews. I had to keep notes. So all of these notebooks are kind of surrounding me. And weirdly, I just keep getting sent notebooks. And I've got a real, when paper chase shut, I got real anxiety. I got very nervous about where I would get notebooks from. books from them. I get a bit stressed if I haven't got a notebook. It's like when your kids are little. We had two kids that had dummies and two that didn't want them. And I used to get a bit nervous taking the one that dummies out because I'd think, oh my God, I better take this in case she gets upset. Whereas with notebooks, I'm exactly the same. I think if I haven't got one, it will be difficult for me to be who I am. So notebooks, I'm very attached. And finally, I want to ask you about your third love,

who is a brilliant musician. Why have you chosen the phenomenal Patti Smith? I'm completely in love with Patti Smith. I think why I chose her is because she never, she wouldn't call, I don't think she'd call herself a musician. She would call herself a poet, an artist, a performer, a writer. She just is all the things that women can be, and she's completely unapologetic about that.

You can't really put her in any box. And I think when you get to your late 40s and early 50s, there's a sense of playfulness that comes back in your life, and you want to be creative again. And if you've got lucky enough to have a sense of playfulness that comes back in your life and you want to be creative again and if you've got lucky enough to have a bit of time to do it you start to explore that you stop thinking I must do this because I will be a success and then I must do this around it you start thinking well I might you know we've met so many women on the podcast you take up all sorts of hobbies and completely change direction because they tap into this kind of creative bit.

And Patti's had it since she was born. So I just look at that and think, wow, that's kind of amazing. She just, and I don't know if you've ever seen her, her stories, when she performs live, she has notes in her pocket. And she does a bit of musing, she does a bit of chat, and then she gets the notes out of her pocket and there'll be notes she's written on something she's seen during the day and she'll just talk about that so every time you see her it's completely different and I you know you would know you could see her on Thursday

and on Friday it would be a different show so she's just this sort of living breathing thing that makes you question and think and be more curious and not shut down and think black and white about things I think I just and also obviously I worked in fashion for 30 years, sat in the front row for 30 years. And I would say I've never seen a fashion shoot mood board without a picture of Patti Smith on it. She is absolutely integral to every kind of fashion shoot there. Her defining visual aesthetic is subliminally in almost everything

you touch fashion-wise. So it's so important. I think she's touch fashion-wise so it's so important I think she's just one of those women that's so important to us and she was one of the first people on Substack with the new newsletter platform and you think how can Patti who's 70s now be I don't know she just plants those little seeds there as well she's quite amazing and I know you've met her haven't you yes so what what's it like disappointing itribly disappointing. It was really upsetting for me. Oh, no.

I was going to ask you this because what do you make of the phrase never meet your idols? No, don't. Oh, really? Never, ever, ever, never, ever meet your idols. It was terrible. I met her at a literary festival. Obviously, I'm obsessed with books.

I judged the Women's Prize of Fiction last year. Again, I can't move anywhere without a book. I read loads and loads of books. And I thought, well, this is perfect, isn't it? I know about books. I can't, this would be brilliant. And I went backstage with a friend to be introduced. And I was introduced, I was editing Elle at the time. And there was a terrible, terrible pause. There was just a pause. And I didn't, I just froze. And I've met, this is going to sound such a show I just froze and I've met this is gonna sound such a showy off here I've met presidents politician Prime Ministers

I've interviewed every a-lister for covers of the magazine I've had famous singers sing things to me Madonna sent me a 40th birthday car is I've literally done I am not story in any way faced by famous people they really don't mean you know they're just people it's not it's I'm kind of immune to it. It's lovely when they're very talented, but I'm sort of immune to it. But I was, I just couldn't move. I couldn't speak. And Patti said, you have nice hair. Which was, you don't want that on your gravestone, do you? It's the least, how you look is the least important thing about you and I

thought that's what that's the worst thing I'd written down what is the worst thing that Patti Smith your idol could say to you that would be that would be it and it had happened and it was I could see the phrase come out and it was floating around and I thought I don't I just said thank you that was it that was the end mean, it is a funny thing. So don't be your idols. Yeah, I have a similar story with someone I met whose work I just adore and really admire. And I met her at a party and a similar thing. I was quite drunk and so was she. So I don't remember all of the tidbits of conversation. But one of the things I remember is that she told me that I had a nice bum.

And it was great. But also it's like, I'm also clever and I'm a writer. And I want to talk to you about these things, but I can't. nice bum and it was great but also it's like I'm I'm also clever and I'm a writer and I have really I want to talk to you about these things but I can't and then I was just like thank you also they're in your mind aren't they people as a thing because you touch them in the places that you know mean something to you so they're seeing them in real life makes it sort of takes the walls away I would I just think just think one should not ever do it. I think you're not supposed to, though, are you?

Because it's like the fact that they're removed is part of what feeds your admiration, I think, doesn't it? And part of what feeds the kind of glorification in a way. Because maybe you're not supposed to be mates with them. I did meet Oprah Winfrey, who is another one of my huge, I just think she's been amazing. That was a better scenario. You interviewed her didn't you?

I interviewed her but she was much more, that was the worst thing anyone, that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my career, to go and interview Oprah Winfrey on stage. Oh my god. I was nearly sick in the waste bin before I went out. She was absolutely what you would expect. She was just the whole package. But she's a different thing, isn't she? She knows how, you know, Patsy is, Patty is an artist.

It was a different... Yeah. Yeah. It's a different medium. I think I was less emotional about Oprah than Patty. Finally, before we go, I just want to ask you what you think the future of this great print journalism industry is, where it's going now, you know, in 2023. Where do you think is there a place for it? What does that look like and how is that going to change? I mean, it's already changed loads.

Well, I mentor a few journalism, young female journalism students. And I, you know, we ran some really great competitions to get you know writers from more diverse backgrounds into newspapers when I was at the Sunday Times but it's it's hard to envisage what will happen to actual print but journalism the world needs journalism everybody needs to be you know we're partly our own journalists now finding things out but what I find is the checking of facts is a really big skill that is missing quite a lot from social media and online people don't and that's that authority is really needed and an absolute love and passion

for something really means people will explore it to its utter depths and become an expert on it and we still need that so i don't think there will ever not be storytelling. There will always be storytelling via journalism and investigations. So I think that will always, it'll just be the medium, won't it? So, you know, mediums change almost every year now, don't they? What I fear for is the lushness of fashion and the beauty of that visual art. I miss fashion photography because I don't see as much of it as I would like to see. is the lushness of fashion and the beauty of that visual art there.

I miss fashion photography because I don't see as much of it as I would like to see anymore. And I don't see the glory of it from the old days when these big 20-page stories would appear in Italian Vogue and you could absorb them and look at all that. It wasn't really about the clothes. It was really about photography and the art and the medium. So I miss that a little bit. I think there's less of that than there should be. God yeah I mean I could have a whole conversation

with you about the fashion industry now that's all been kind of ruined by social media but I'll save that for another another thing I find whenever I go to the shows now I'm like so uninspired because everyone's also just on their phones and well I think young designers are pretty phenomenal actually I think that's kind of being everything trying everything I think fashion will come through this because it's a massive industry. It's an economic banker for most companies and for most economies in the world. So that will always be there. And what you wear is so firmly part of what is so important, such a huge part of your identity.

And I see a lot of exciting stuff happening with young fashion now. That's it for today, thank you so much for joining us. You can listen to Love Lives on all major podcast platforms and you can also watch us on independent TV, all major social media platforms and all connected devices. I will see you soon, bye! Can we make a battery so powerful it can run the next generation of renewable energy? At the University of British Columbia, we believe that we can. Dr. Jian Liu and his team are developing safer, more powerful batteries for electric cars, solar panels, and more. Building a Western Canadian supply chain to bring them to the world. At UBC, our researchers are answering today's most pressing questions.

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