Miss Me? - Listen Bitch! The Parent Trap?

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Lily Allen and Andi Oliver answer your questions about parenting.Next week, we want to hear your questions about FEAR. Please send us a voice note on WhatsApp: [phone]. Or, if you like, send us an email: [e-mail] episode contains very strong language and adult themes. Credits: Producer: Flossie Barratt Technical Producer: Will Gibson Smith Production Coordinator: Hannah Bennett Executive Producers: Dino Sofos, Ellie Clifford and Jonathan O’Sullivan Assistant Commissioner for BBC: Lorraine Okuefuna Commissioning Editor for BBC: Dylan Haskins Miss Me? is a Persephonica production for BBC Sounds

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. This episode of Miss Me contains very strong language and adult themes. Hello and welcome to Listen Bitch. I am Lily Allen and I am joined by my usual co-host Makita Oliver's mother, Andrea Oliver. Hello babe. And we are going to talk about parenting because Makita is not a parent yet, and I am, and Andrea is too. So it's the first time, Billie Eilish wasn't a parent either, and neither was Steve Jones. So the first time that I've had a guest on the show that has got children.

So that would- Oh my goodness. Yeah. Well, I'm honoured. Not only are you Makita's parent, but you've sort of parented me at points in my life. Yeah. Flexi parent. There was some long periods of time that I would spend away from my own home and where you would come home from work to discover me in bed with your daughter watching DVDs till the early hours of the morning. Or you would turn up at work and go, I'm coming home with you.

You do that a couple of times. They were like, there's a girl in there. She says she's your niece. I'm like, who? What are you talking about? She says she's Keith Allen's daughter. I went, what? Lily? You were in the studio. You were like, I'm coming home with you. I was like, all right, let me do this radio show. Be right with your kid. There you go. You know, that's what, that's what people are for. That is what people are for. It takes a village,

etc. Shall we have our first question? Let's just get straight into it. I'm excited about this. Listen, bitch. Hello, Lily. Hello, Andy. My name is Jenny. I'm from Leeds. I absolutely love the podcast. Monday mornings, walking the dog listening to you is one of the highlights of the week. Anyway, I am a mother of three girls and my question to you is all about lying. When the girls are really little, I think it's perfectly acceptable to do little benign lies about the tooth fairy. As the girls get older, I'm really kind of grappling with owning up and dressing up about my misspent youth.

Lots of questions are being asked by my 11 and 13 year old regarding drugs and boyfriends. My question to you is how much and at what stage do you start telling the kids some serious shit? Anyway, I really just know, especially you Lily, having girls similar ages to mine. I love the podcast. Take care. Bye. Interesting. I think I managed to talk around all of that, but I don't think any of you ever believed me. I think, is this the thing? I think I didn't really outwards lie, but I lied by omission. Right. Because it's not your business. None of your beeswax. None of your beeswax. Not all of it. Not all of it is your kids' business. Some of it is a business.

I think anything that's going to traumatize them or scare them, you don't need to share with them. I think that there are salutary tales, though, however, of getting yourself in trouble when you didn't need to get yourself in trouble and things like that, that are possibly helpful to young women to know how easy it is to find yourself on the wrong side of somebody buying you a drink in a pub, you know what I mean? I think it's more difficult if you set yourself up with your children for perfection. I think when they then find out that you're human, that fall from grace can be a very big fall.

So I always tried to express to Makita that I was a mess, so to speak, or just that I was fallible and vulnerable as well as mommy, do you know what I mean? I just thought, always thought it was a really important facet of parenting is to allow children to know that you do things because you're tired. Like, you know, if you shout at your kids and you realize it's because you're knackered and they haven't really done anything, I would always apologize. Because not if she'd been out of order, wouldn't apologize. But if it was because I was knackered,ackered I would then say listen that had nothing to do with you. I'm just knackered

So sorry about that because I think it's you know, it's good for kids to feel like they've been heard as well Absolutely. I had I had a thing with them on the weekend actually where they were both fighting with each other and I sort of you know exploded and screamed at them both. And I was just like, I can't handle this at the moment. I'm going through so much and I need you to behave yourselves and blah, blah, blah. And then they both sort of went off to their rooms and then they both came down and they apologized. And I said, look, it's not, you don't need to apologize. Like, it's not fair that mommy gets to explode and shout and scream. And you don't.

At the same time, me telling you that you're not allowed to express it and scream at each other. You know, we're all going through some difficult stuff at the moment. So, you know, I apologize. I'm sorry. I think that's healthy. Even it's not easy, but it's healthy. And life is like life is sometimes horrible and shit shit and they're going to be there through it.

So you have to be able to find vocabulary or lexicon to be able to talk to your children about the things that are hard as well as the things that are, you know, skipping through the tulips or whatever. Yeah. Otherwise they're going to be unprepared for the world. I think that's answered that question. Should we have another one? Yes. It's Brodie from Southampton. When you said parenting was the theme for next week,

I immediately thought of a story, which I think probably puts my parents' parenting skills in a questionable light, but quite a funny one. I grew up in a hotel, they were hoteliers. When I was teething as a baby, they used to take my dummy out of my mouth and dip it in a brandy glass and then put it back in my mouth because obviously, brandy, great for teething babies. So I started to understand that the brandy glass, like

the bowl-shaped glasses, meant pain relief. So as a tiny toddler, I once went up to a customer in my parents' hotel bar, took my dummy out of my mouth, put it in the brandy glass, swirled it around, took it out, popped it back in my mouth and huddled off. It's one of my mom's probably favorite stories about me as a child, although it does put a little bit of a questionable out on her parenting, as I said, but great parents love them very much, but classic parenting of the 90s, I think. But yeah, I just wanted to ask the question, do you have any memories from your childhood which really highlight maybe the decade in which we were brought up? Hmm. I mean, I remember being left in the car outside the pub. I always used to want that to happen to me.

Yeah, I remember spending long periods of time in the car in the club car park when I was a kid. I don't know why I thought that was glamorous because like my mum and dad never went to a pub. Really? And I really wanted them to go to the pub and leave me in the car with a bag of crisps. I just thought it looked like a really cool way to spend the afternoon and they never would do that. It was really shit. I'm sorry for your loss.

I suppose in terms of the periods of time that you grew up, we used to run a club called The Hot Sty. Have you ever heard us talking about The Hot Sty? No. It was this excellent club. It was just brilliant. And it was in several different places. And the last ever night of the hot style, I could not get a babysitter. Makita was really small. She was still in a Moses basket.

So we took her with us and we put her under the till. Under the till. Rose was sitting on the till taking the money. And Makita was in a Moses basket, under the till. Rose was sitting on the till taking the money. And Mckie was in a Moses basket asleep under the till for the whole night. So I guess that's quite questionable, but she was all right. She turned out all right. She turned out all right.

When I told her that she went, what? She was horrified, but she was fine. I'm quite, I don't know why I love that story so much. My determination to have fun, I suppose. Yes, what was one where mom and dad went on holiday somewhere to, I think maybe like China or something when I was really little. And they'd asked Rose to take care of me

while before the nanny was gonna arrive and they'd left an to take care of me while before the nanny was going to arrive and they'd left an envelope on the mantelpiece in our flattenberry place with a bunch of cash for the nanny to use while they were away and the nanny never turned up. So Rose was just like, okay, I guess I'm looking after Lily for the next couple of weeks. I don't know if there ever was a nanny or not, you know, I imagine. No, there must have been a nanny.

They wouldn't have tricked her. I don't know. You know my mom and dad. They really wanted to go on holiday. But Rose would have always said yes anyway, because she was amazing. Rose was amazing with all you kids actually. She still is, love that woman.

Yeah, so do I. Okay, well that's been a bit of a funny downer. Let's go on to the next question, shall we? Hi Lily and Andy, my name's Karma. I live in Glastonbury in Somerset. I've worked with children and families my whole career. So the theme of parenting was one I felt I had to voice note a question for.

I'm a mum of three boys, 19, 16, and six. I know everyone talks about the challenges of parenting when you have a newborn, a toddler, or a teenager. But very few people talk about parenting of adults, particularly young adults who live at home, which is much more common now. So this question is for Andy. How did you change your approach to parenting once your child turned 18? Well, I mean, it's interesting because when Makeda turned 18, she wasn't living at home anymore. She was already had her own flat because she'd been on TV for several

years already. She'd already been on TV for three years by the time she was 18 and had her own money independently and was able to look after herself. It was quite tricky that time because she was getting wilder by the day and kind of refusing to listen to me to anything I had to say about anything really. So I went into, I mean, I became very dysfunctional to be really honest with you. I used to go to her house every day and clean it from top to bottom because I couldn't control anything else in her life. So I got really stressed by that. And the only way I could deal with it would be to go over there and try and sort the flat out, so tidy up and take some food around or, you know, I just, I did all the kind of extra outside bits. I tried to talk to her a lot. She wasn't really listening. And then she did come down on the

other side of it eventually, but it took a couple of years. But there was a whole period where I just couldn't get her to hear anything that I was saying. And I think that you, it's the worst thing in the world, that feeling as a parent when you can see your kids about to stepping to big piles of steaming trouble, but you cannot stop them because you want to have, you want to make those mistakes for them. You want to kind of get in the way of the trouble that you can see coming, but you can't and you just have to allow them to crash and get up again. It's like when they're learning to walk, you know, and you

allow them to fall down every time as they're walking across the room more and more times and you just have to do that as they're older. And that can be really difficult, especially if they're living at home, I would imagine. Keita wasn't living at home. I wish she had been. It might have made things slightly easier. Yeah, it's funny you talk about that. I mean, Mimikita has spoken a little bit about sort of risk-based childhoods. I think, you know, people in this age of sort of like rolling 24-hour news and this, you know, sort of environment or culture of fear that we live in around our kids and abduction and sexual abuse and

you know drugs and knife crime and blah blah blah so there's this thing of like wanting to protect your kids from everything the whole time because it's so omnipresent in the rhetoric in the press and so you know our instincts as parents is to try and protect our kids from all of that stuff but I don't think that it prepares them for adult life in any way, shape or form. I think that you have to, you know, let your children take risks and make mistakes and, you know, be in not put them into, you know, into harm's way or, you know, dangerous situations or let them stay out too late or, you know what I mean? But there, I think that you do have to give them a certain element of freedom and ability to discover

the world at a healthy pace. Yeah, and for themselves, it can't be through your experience, it can't be through your eyes, it has to be through their own and they have to learn something. So you can tell people as much and you blew in the face. And then it still doesn't, it just doesn't make any difference. You have to experience life for yourself. You just, you just have to make sure they know you're there to catch them when they fall. I think I'm doing that.

Yeah. Let's have a little time out from parenting, shall we? We'll go and sit on the naughty step for a minute. Okay, let's have another question, please. Hi, Lily and Andy. This is Rachel in the sunny Northwest, just out on a dog walk. My question around parenting is, how do you get the balance right between being a supportive parent in the stuff your kids want to do like sports and things and crossing that line to being a pushy parent? I think we kind of err on the edge of supportive but also quite relaxed if they don't

want to do it we're not going to force them to go and do their activities but at the same time are we holding them back by not pushing them to their full potential? I don't know, I think it's a minefield and there's some very scary pushy parents out there and I don't want to be one of them. So yeah, I'm not sure how have you found that balance? Any help? That would be amazing. Love the podcast, love stirring it up as well. So a big fan. Thanks so much. Bye. Mm hmm. Oh, she's perky. Perky. So with my kids, I definitely don't go into the pushy category.

And I actually even really struggle with the supportive category, just because it wasn't something that was provided to me when I was a kid. Nobody ever sat down and did my homework with me No one ever, you know took an interest in what my hobbies were and helped me develop those interests And it's not a language that I talk and as you know, I've spoken before on this podcast about my insecurities around academia, you know, I left school when I was 15 and You know my kids when I was 15 and you know my kids, they don't really come to me for help with their homework and stuff because they know that I'm not really going to be able to help them. I've created a

network of support around them so they have tutors that come and help them with all of their homework and I'll look at it and try and understand it and you know and be involved with them on that level but I can't really say that I'm a source of support for them when it comes to you know those sort of extracurricular activities and their schoolwork. I am obviously a support to them emotionally and I'm always you know present and available to them whenever they need me and we have a really healthy relationship and dialogue. But yeah, it's difficult. I mean, like just last night, Marnie was playing,

you know, clarinet and she was doing her practice and she was doing it on her own in the room that's sort of just off of our kitchen. And, you know, she found it hard to come and ask me for help to come and, you know, sit and listen to her for a bit. And I did, I know I sat there with her for about half an hour and I could see the confidence that it gave her just me sitting down and holding her hand and encouraging her. And she was very self-conscious

about it at the start and towards the end of it she was playing Oyo Komeva. I think you have to ask them questions as well, don't you? It's like, you know, if they just suddenly decide out of the blue, something they've loved, they suddenly decide that I don't want to do it anymore. You have to just ask questions, interrogate a little bit as to why, what it's about. You know, it could be that something horrible's happened at clarinet class, or it could be that something happened at netball or football or whatever it is, and they're having anxiety about it. I think as long as you have an open dialogue with them, then you're not going to be pushing

them into doing things that they don't want to do just for the sake of it. But you're making sure also that they're not just being like slack because they've got a hormonal rush and they can't be bothered to get up or whatever. Do you know what I mean? There's a fine line, isn't there, between pushing kids and supporting them, which is what I guess your listener is saying. But I think the very fact that you're asking that question

probably means that you're all right, actually, my love, because a pushy parent wouldn't really think to ask that question, because they don't really give a shit, they just wanna push. So the fact that you're thinking about it and really concerned about where that line might be probably means you're on the right side of that line.

Yeah, so well done. Thank you for the question. Shall we have another? Hi, Lily and Andy. This is Sarah from Sheffield, currently wrapped up in a blanket, working from home, absolutely freezing. So I used to be a design and technology teacher,

but I currently work with a team called Maker Futures, who promote and provide maker education in primary schools. I have a four-year-old and he loves making things as most four-year-olds do. I often get told, oh, it's because of you and your job and what you do. Both of you are extremely creative people. So my question is, how have you provided awareness or exposure or opportunities in your children's lives for creative practice? Sounds a bit like an interview question. Love the podcast. And I just want to say thank

you, Lily, for all your honesty when it comes to talking about being a parent. It's very refreshing and reassuring, and you should write a book. Thank you. Bye. Gosh, I really don't think I'm in a position to write for parenting. Thank you nonetheless. I mean, you know, generally if my kids take an interest in something, then I try and help them to explore that, you know, and create a space for them to have an opportunity to explore that, you know. They both have like electives at school in terms of, you know, their creativity.

So they do sort of ceramics and painting and patchwork and knitting and all of those things. And they, every semester they can choose a different thing to do and they either gravitate, they either sort of, you know, decide that they like one thing and they carry on doing it or they move on to the next. I think all your children and my daughter and most of the kids around us are lucky enough to be around creativity all the time. I think I always just tried to express to Makita that the things that make you happy can be the work that you do.

So you know, if there's something that you love doing and that generally if you love something, you're creative within it, whether it's being a carpenter or singing a song or writing a book or presenting a TV show, whatever it is, you're creative if it's something that you love because you give it your heart and your soul and your passion. So for me, it was really always about just trying to let Makita know she could do anything she wanted to do in the world. Anything at all. If you decide to do it, then do it.

Work out what you need to get to get there and get on and do it. Just, it's more about, I always think about it more as like living without limit so that you don't put limits on yourself as to what you expect from yourself. It's kind of worked. It kind of hasn't. I think as she's getting older, those ideas seem to have come to the fore again that she can do things that she wants to do and work

in areas that she perhaps was a bit intimidated by before. I always just tell her to remember who the fuck she is. I just like, remember who you are. She's mentioned that before actually. She's mentioned it. I'm like, remember who you are and remember what you've already achieved and just keep heading towards the thing that makes you happy because that will eventually work out. That's just how I've always done it. I will say I do find it quite difficult when they decide to express their emotions through very inventive baking in my kitchen.

Mainly because it creates a lot of mess and it makes absolutely no sense and the end product is almost always disgusting. Inedible. So I do encourage it but it's quite hard for me to do so. It's sort of like cookies with Oreos and marshmallows and graham crackers in the bottom. It's like huge. Just like a weird lump of grossness. Just sugar basically.

Lovely. Shall we have our penultimate question? Hi both. My name is Kate. Lovely. Shall we have our penultimate question? Hi both. My name's Kate, I'm calling from Essex, but I'm originally from a tiny village in Bedfordshire. So my question on parenting is, would you have any tips on single parenting?

I know that maybe Lilly did it for a little while, I'm not sure. But basically, I don't want to have to wait for a man to impregnate me. I like to do it on my own, but that brings with it its own challenges and I'm really not sure if I can frankly fucking cope. Any help would be much appreciated. Oh, she sounded sad. Yeah, oh.

I think you have to be careful. If you're quite fragile, then becoming a parent is not necessarily the best possible decision immediately. I was very young, which really helped because I didn't really have time to, you know, I was 20 when I had Nikita, so I didn't have time for about four years. I didn't have loads of time to establish singular adult life patterns particularly until I had it. And then I had a baby, so she just became

part of growing up, so to speak, I suppose. I just strapped her on and got on with it. But I also, the family we were talking about, Lily, when we were doing Miss Me actually, that that family that we created, me, your mom, Nana, Rose, all of us together, without that huge extended family, even though I've got quite a big blood family, that massive extended family was everything to me. It does take a village. You have to have support.

I think on your own, isolation can be the worst possible thing imaginable. So I would take it gently. Yeah. And it depends of course about, you know, what your financial situation is. You know, obviously two people contributing to household income is, you know, a lot easier than one, especially when you're bringing an extra person into the world. Yeah, and support network.

If you don't have a strong support network around you now, I would really think twice about taking that route. My mom had me when she was, what, 23 and had my sister when she was 17. And I cannot fathom how she managed to create and establish a pretty successful career for herself. Having three children under the age of 24 years old. It's a positive nature. And she will say that she doesn't think that it would be possible in today's world because we don't have the same sense of community that you guys had when it was, you know, the 80s or late 70s. So, you know, people are strapped for cash, people are strapped for time, people are, you know, life is tough at the moment out there. Life is tough and even child care is incredibly expensive.

Life is tough and even childcare is incredibly expensive. When you guys were little, after school clubs cost a pound. And there was a play center that Makita could go to that cost a pound for every day for in half term and stuff, which meant I could still work and still do things. Now it's thousands of pounds and you know, people are working and nearly all their money goes to childcare because those things are no longer available. So I would think long and hard and just be very pragmatic about it. Be really take the emotion out of it. Be pragmatic about it. Is the social structure there for you to support you? Do you have that kind of emotional fortitude to be able to be there when it gets really, really tough? Because it gets really, really tough. It really does.

I'm really happy I had Makita when I did and I wouldn't... I'm happy that I did it how I did it because that's just our life. But I would just be careful, tread carefully, slowly and thoughtfully, would be my answer. Thank you very much for that question. And now we are gonna have our last question. I'm Alice and I live in Stroud and Grostefshire and I am an interior designer there. I have often heard it say that becoming a parent is like having a mirror held up to you

to reflect back all of your trickiest parts. I think for me it's about patience and not losing my shit straight away, which is sometimes hard to do. But my question was having children, what do you think you had reflected back that was sort of the trickiest thing to deal with? And also what was the nicest thing? Okay, thanks. Bye. to deal with and also what was the nicest thing? Okay, thanks, bye. The trickiest thing for me, I think, was trying to create a space where my children can express their emotions freely because that wasn't really something that, you know,

existed in my childhood. I didn't have that language, I didn't have that dialogue to be able to identify my emotions and then be able to articulate them. And I knew that that's something that's really, you know, contributed to a lot of struggle and chaos in my adult life. And so that's something that I never wanted for my kids. And that's been really hard work. And yeah, you know, I want to help and give as much support to my children as possible and give them everything that is available to me and to them, available from me to give to them. And I felt sort of stunted.

It's not something that came naturally to me. But I think we're getting there. They're pretty good. They're pretty good at expressing themselves and expressing their needs and telling me when they're upset and telling me when they're angry and it not just Exploding and coming out in all manner of ways So yeah, I would say, you know talking is is the thing that's been reflected back at me

That's interesting my I think the thing reflected back at me is What an asshole I am. Like the stubborn, like stubborn, like ridiculously, like blinkered, blinkered stubbornness, which I have fallen foul of many times in my life. I've got much better with lots of therapy and lots of help, but Makita has the same trait. She has also got lots better with lots of therapy and lots of help, but there was a moment in the middle where it was definitely very, very tricky. And Garfield was like holding us back from, you know, physically trying to kill each other. And the temper thing, temper, big ass temper, flare up temper, all of that stuff. And I guess the nicest thing about it is, you know, I was talking about this earlier actually, me and Makita just make each other laugh our asses off.

She's very funny Makita and we are very funny. We make each other laugh loads. Like we can spend a whole day on our own and just crack each other up. And that is so nice. Especially at this point in her life. You know, she's 40, I'm 61. It's like, you know, we're two grown women now and we just roar with laughter a lot. And that is just great. Isn't it? Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice though?

It is. It's lovely. I love that. Yeah. I feel like that's the perfect place to wrap this up. It's been really nice. It's been really lovely. Thank you so much for coming in.

You're welcome. And stepping in for your lovely daughter who I spoke to this morning. You're welcome. She's doing really good. She's doing great. And I can't wait to see her. I'm flying to London tonight, so I will see you all this week. Oh, are you? Yeah, I'll see you all this week. Oh, great. Okay. I'm back now. So maybe I'll see you too. That'd be nice.

That would be lovely. Next week's guest is Kael Smith-Bino, who was in Dreamland with me a couple of years ago. Very excited to have him on the show. And Andrea, you're gonna choose the subject matter. Oh yes, and the subject matter that I have chosen is fear. Ah, I wrote a very good song about that once upon a time. Fear. Okay great.

Well yeah, you can send your WhatsApp messages to 080304090. That is 080304090 in voice note form if possible. I will see you guys next week with Kaiel. All right, love you. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Miss Me with Lily Allen and Makita Oliver.

This is a Persephoneka production for BBC Sounds. Sean Diddy Combs has occupied a top spot in the music industry for decades. He earned his stripes during the golden age of hip hop and he's been called Rap Royalty. Now Diddy sat in jail awaiting trial. He denies all the allegations. I'm Anushka Matandodawati and from BBC Sounds, this is Diddy on T. Every week, I'll be examining the latest allegations, interrogating the rumours and answering your questions. Listen on BBC Sounds.