Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 74: Olga Fitzroy

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

Olga Fitzroy is a studio engineer who I really enjoyed working with in my own studio sessions.Since then she’s had a little boy called Lucas and our chat centred on what it’s like as a freelancer when you become pregnant, take maternity leave and then try to come back to work in an industry where women are few and far between, recording session hours are long, and people make assumptions about your working priorities having changed now that you’re a mum. Olga won Recording Engineer of the Year at the MPG Awards in 2016 which was such an accolade. She has also campaigned for shared parental leave for self-employed people, and is passionate about employment rights in a society that she observes still sees parenting as a problem for women to deal with. To find out more, go to www.parentalpayequality.org.ukSince our chat Olga has been elected a councillor in Lambeth so she is truly spinning plates now, being a councillor alongside her day job in music studios, alongside being a mum!Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis Bextor, it is produced by Claire Jones and post-production is by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hey there, I am speaking to you from a little part of London, on the outskirts of London

really, called St Margaret's. I've brought one of my kids here for a medical thing and it's funny for me because I grew up around here. So the first, I think we moved here when my mum and dad were still together, so I must have been about three. And then my dad didn't leave the area till I was in my 20s, but my mum moved when I was 11 to the house she's in now. So I'm doing a bit of a memory lane thing. I don't think I've been around here for about 20 years, basically. And so I've been walking around. I just went past the front door of the house that my mum and dad used to live in, and then my dad and my step-mum. It's just really weird, isn't it, when you go past the front door that used to mean so much, and now it just looks like quite a normal, very sweet sweet but everything obviously looks a little bit

smaller than i remember it probably because you know when i was four i was quite a bit shorter than i am now and i'm now walking down a side road oh i've just come to the road where my grandparents used to live my grandma and grandpa oh that's so. Neither of them are alive now, but I remember very well. I might actually have to walk past their front door. Oh, sorry. Noisy van. Yeah, it's just really funny. It's like my feet are guiding me places.

This should be a really quiet road. I don't think anybody comes up and down this road very often. Oh, it's really cute. The little houses are really cute. Anyway, that's me. How are you? Where I am, it's all damp. Just had a little bit of rain. It's Friday morning and this week's been quite nice actually. Last week was a little bit hectic. I didn't really have much time to breathe. So it's been really nice this week having a little bit more quiet time i've managed

to do some really important stuff like starting watching the new series of married at first sight uk as well as doing actual work don't worry i have got some really cool podcast guests coming up for you very exciting stuff some people have wanted to to speak to for a blimmin' ages. So that's good, isn't it? And today I'm back to fly to Jersey for our official last festival of the season. I forgot we're on a flight path here. Sorry, Richard, editing. He'll be like, why have you gone to such a noisy place? Yeah, so I'm off to Jersey today, home tomorrow.

That's the last festival of the year, actually. And then we're into the kind of autumnal stuff. What else is going on? Kids all back at school. I've been mixing my album, the one I've done with Ed. Ed's hardcore. It's sounding really fab. I'm really happy with it we were mixing a track

yesterday to me it was sounding a little bit like the knowing me knowing you era of abba i'm not comparing myself to abba don't worry but it just was reminiscent of a feel it's exciting and oh just where my grandparents house was now super cute and yes so anyway go on to the main thing we need to talk about this week's guest so this week's guest actually does tighten what I was just talking about my albums with Ed Harcourt because the first album I did with Ed was an album called Wanderlust. We did way back in... Oh, golly, it must have been 2013, I think, but came out 2014. And we had a brilliant engineer in the studio called Olga Fitzroy.

And Olga has gone from strength to strength with her engineering. And so what she does effectively is set up everything in the studio so that we can oh this is going to be so blooming noisy rich is going to kill me i forgot about the flight path in sunny saint margaret's sorry darling actually oh funnily enough we recorded wanderlust not far from here just in richmond just down the road oh now there's drilling the fates are against me

excuse me stop drilling i'm doing a podcast intro very important stuff um i'm gonna run past that house they're having some work done probably an extension everybody extends things around here um and then all the houses look the same again don't they sorry that is a horrible noise if If you've got headphones on, I do apologise. That is nasty. It's nasty in real life too. Look at this, we're walking around St Margaret's together, you and I, enjoying the sights and the sounds. Yes, so what Olga was doing for me in the studio for Wanderlust

is setting everything up. So if you're recording drums, if you're recording strings, you're recording vocals, she'd make sure that everything was plugged in and proper so we had the right mics, everything was doing what it should do to get the right sound so it's a really crucial job in the studio when you're making an album and you kind of become like the producer's right hand person and Olga was absolutely brilliant and went on to win awards for her brilliance but she also ended up becoming counsellor in Lambeth so she's been brilliant

because basically she saw things that she thought were unjust particularly when it comes to being a working mother. Blimey can they just stop flying planes for a minute please and experienced these things personally and thought right I'm going to do something about it and followed her political instincts and actually when you think about it not all of us do that do we when we see something that's not right just actually literally walking past cars that's dancing is you know what this is reminding me of a little bit you know that book um five minutes it was a cool five minutes piece with the bear that's trying to go to sleep and everywhere he moves to something new starts to make a noise that is basically my experience with St Margaret.

Good job I don't live here anymore. It'd be a nightmare for my podcasting. Anyway, I actually recorded this conversation with Olga quite a while back, back in, I think it must've been the spring. I'm up with one thing and another and summer holidays and all that. It's just coming to light now.

So we do talk about her standing to be counsellor in Lambeth, which she did in May and she was successful. So it's brilliant. She's very hardworking. She's a very fair person. Someone, yes, saw an injustice, experienced it herself and went to go and try and put it right, which is something I think we can all take note from, really.

And so I'm very chuffed for her with her success in her counsellor Lambeth application. That's brilliant. And I will leave you in her capable hands because you're probably a bit sick of hearing so many noise infants and margarets. Look, more noise coming our way now. Anyway, apart from that, see you in a minute. Bye.

It's really nice to see you. I can't remember, how long have we not seen each other? It's years, I know that much. Yeah, five years maybe, something like that. Yeah, maybe. So we did Wanderlust together, which was a really happy album to make. I loved that. That was a lovely studio called State of the Arc. Yeah, I. So we did Wanderlust together, which was a really happy album to make. I loved that. That was a lovely studio called State of the Arc.

Yeah, I loved that studio. Loved that studio. And it was just a really happy experience as well. It's probably like my sort of most happy version of making an album. I think I just felt very peaceful when I was doing that for a couple of weeks. And for folk listening, how would you describe what you do? I'm a recording engineer and mixer. so I guess I work in studios, I put up the microphones, I kind of have an input on how records sound along with artists and the producers. Yeah, so you're sort of covering all bases really, aren't you?

You're sort of the thing, as you say, like the third bit of the wheels. You've got the musicians, the producer and then the engineer. And actually it's a really important alchemy that forms from that relationship I think you know when you're in recording studio you want to feel really good about the team around you so you're like a really integral part of the recording process um and actually often as well someone that maybe like is sort of getting on with things quite quietly and not necessarily, you know, the producer and the artist are often having big chats and, you know, you're sometimes just sort of getting on with just facilitating

and trying to pre-empt what they might need next. Yeah, that's supporting them and, I guess, interpreting their creative choices into what we might do technically in the studio to make that happen. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. And so what are you up to at the moment, Olga? What's happening in your world? Doing a lot of film and TV music.

So I've just finished recording and mixing the score for a film called Mr Malcolm's List with Amelia Warner as the composer. So that was really fun to work on. Did about three or four days of recording at Rack Studios. Oh, lovely. So is that quite orchestral or is it? Yeah, so we had like a small wind ensemble and we had a string quartet

and then they went over to Europe to do a bigger orchestra and then I went and mixed it at my home studio. So that was really fun. Oh, wow. And so have you been working quite nicely for the last couple of years or has it been quite tricky or? When lockdown happened and everywhere shut down,

there's three months where I had absolutely no work at all and all the studios closed down because just nobody knew what to do and what was going to happen. And in that time, I was doing a lot of work for the Music Producers Guild. I sit on their board. So I was trying to be on calls with the government, trying to get them to allow studios to open or to give us guidance on how to work safely.

So I had some really quite bizarre Zoom calls in that time. Yeah, because I imagine as well you were having a lot of people turning to you and being quite scared, because actually a lot of people that I knew that worked in music were just quite frightened, actually. Yeah, absolutely, and nobody knew what to do. There wasn't any guidance from the government. So in the

end a bunch of music organizations including music producers guild and the musicians union we actually ended up writing our own guidance based on what the government was kind of doing generically but making it really specific for studios and then getting it signed off by the government oh wow so you were actually really kind of the epicenter of how it was all going to be for a little while yeah and i think one of the sort of most important things we managed to do was get them to allow singers and brass and wind instruments to continue working in studios. Because there's a point where, you know, communal singing was banned and everything was banned. Yeah. And we had to sort of make the case for professional singing in a professional environment that as long as you had a bunch of precautions, you could still do it. in a professional environment that as long as you had a bunch of precautions you could still do it because again I think a lot of people don't realize how many people depend on making music

for a living that it is a job for a lot of people not just a hobby yeah oh god yeah and I think um you know it was a strange time because I felt like in the government they were sort of talking to musicians as if we were doing things that's a bit of fun and you've had a nice time doing that haven't you but maybe now that things are a bit serious you've got to go and find something else you can do yeah which is actually nonsensical because not only is it something that people there's a huge place for it but also it's actually a pretty big part of the economy as well I would imagine yeah I mean in normal times I think it's about five billion there you go huge amount of money and then also when we were all in

lockdown everybody was still enjoying everything that all the creatives made I mean you obviously did your bit with your kitchen discos like all the musicians work was being enjoyed by everybody when they're in lockdown yeah it's really important for all of us I think it is really important and um and actually you're right so my experience of going to a recording studio as a singer because obviously as you say like brass and wind that it's all the sort of breathing yeah the breathing ones um they sort of did things where you had to wait for the air to circulate a certain amount of time and you have to kind of leave gaps in between sessions for different musicians so is that something you uh had a part of organizing yeah so we were on those calls. The Musicians' Union, actually,

again, they were super flexible. They said, oh, we can add an extra 15 minutes of extra time just to give people slightly longer breaks. Or if there's any remote tech that kind of needs a bit of setting up and takes a bit longer, you know, we'll give you 15 minutes, which is actually really good, given that the Musicians' Union are normally really strict about their time. So they actually had a lot of flexibility just in order for sessions to be able to work. Now that is good that is good well well done you did a brilliant job making things keeping those wheels in motion and we can now enjoy the fruits of the labour given that there's so much new music around now which is wonderful and music kept being made throughout lockdown actually. So if we sort of rewind a little bit what was going on in your life when you had your

first baby so when I had my son I took a bit of maternity leave so this is Lucas and he's six now yep sweet I have one of those it's a lovely age really sweet yeah they're good fun um at that time before I had him I they just brought in shared parental leave and I was quite excited because I thought me and my husband could share that leave and sort of do a bit of time at work, a bit of time at home with the baby. Until I got to filling out the forms and applying for this and realising that because I was self-employed, I didn't qualify for this. And the only option was for me to take a full-on career break.

My husband got his two weeks and that was it really. Wow. So what line of work is your husband in? So he's a technical director at a recording studio as well. So we're in the same industry, but he is employed and I'm self-employed. So he works for the same place all the time, and you're flexible and can go where you want in different projects. Exactly, yeah. So I didn't realise, so completely,

I mean, I suppose I've always sort of assumed it with what I do, but mainly because when you're filling in boxes and stuff, I quite often don't find Singer as one of the little things that comes down in the drop-down box. No. But for sort of any self-employed person then, so basically when you have a baby, it's completely up to you, but it is completely on you.

Yeah, it's completely on the mum. You stop earning because you're having a baby and that's that, and then you go back because you need to earn money or because you want to, but there's nothing that's going to be there in that gap. You get maternity allowance you get a whole 150 pounds a week so it'll buy you a few nappies but basically there's no option self-employed dads get zero paternity leave so then in most families if they're artists or sound engineers or any anything creative there's so many self-employed people and then because of how the rules are it's generally the woman that takes a massive career

hit even if she would like to work in that first year it's kind of impossible financially because the dads don't get any support to stay at home yeah so it means you know because it's always a big deal when you have a baby anyway but this means you're really taking into account lots and lots of things that are very pressing and serious about about how to keep roof over your head and keep things moving so it's not it's not as simple as just you know a personal thing you've got all these bigger issues to think of so when did that sort of translate from just something where you thought that doesn't sound right to something you're actually feeling a bit more active in so it was probably about 2017 I was just doing a little

bit of research on it because I was just going this must be some mistake I'll just email someone and they'll go we're really sorry we'll change it um so I was on holiday actually and I just emailed a few people I did a bit of googling did a bit of research and I found the woman who was the minister responsible for that policy when they brought it in. It's a lady called Jo Swinson, who you might remember was the leader of the Liberal Democrats for a while. So I found her email address, emailed her. She got back to me. We had a phone call. And she just basically said, yeah, we wanted to bring it in for everybody, but we just didn't have the time to do it at the time.

So you should absolutely campaign on this. OK, so she was supportive. So I'm trying to think so 2017 so your little boy would have been two is that right yeah um so at that point you were back at work and doing your own thing so why was it still something that was sort of in your mind if you were doing it for things were kind of chugging along well I just realized how hard it had been how lucky I was to be able to get back to work so I spent 10 years as an assistant engineer in a studio and so you're working really long hours you're making a lot of tea and you're

learning a lot and then after that I got to being an engineer I went freelance and did the kind of part of the job that really interests me that I'm passionate about so it's a really long journey and I worked really hard to get where I was and I had to work really hard after maternity leave to get back to that point so it was probably that's interesting so you didn't feel like you couldn't just sort of go back to where you were no I think it took about 18 months to two years to get back to earning the same amount of money as I was before I went on mat leave so how long did you take off your maternity leave I probably took about about nine months it So why was it something, why did it work like that? I think there's a number of things there. I think one thing is that clients make

assumptions about your priorities if you're a woman and you've had a baby. Oh wow. So I definitely found myself, I would be going into the studio and I only did this once or twice and brought my son in to hand over to his dad while I did a session or maybe to meet someone for lunch and the amount of people that would say to me oh how's maternity leave given I had a kind of three-year-old child with me um they were still assuming that because I'd had a child I had now chosen to step back from work and spend all my time at home yeah I know I remember finding that made me feel really um I felt like I'd lost a bit of me, actually. Because when I had my baby, I had quite a long time where I didn't work

insofar as I wasn't doing the glam sides of my job. But I was writing and trying to make a new album and I'd go along to things and people would just assume that I just sort of stopped, really, and that I was just going to spend all my time with my son. And obviously, I loved being a mum, but I really love the bit of me that's my work too. It's a passion.

So when you say you worked a really long time to get to the point you were, when did you start engineering or the process towards engineering? So it was 10 years of being an assistant before I went on to then engineering. Okay. 10 years?

Yeah. Wow. So when you say you're an assistant, do you actually have to, do you sort of follow an engineer that you work with or is it much more fluid than that? So because I was based at a big studio, so I would do,

initially I was just a runner and literally just made tea and then I was an assistant engineer where it's more technical. You're plugging things in, you're running Pro Tools and you work with a number of engineers. You're just based at that facility. So you'll get the in-house guys and guys from outside.

It's in London, yeah. And it was always guys. I don't think I ever worked for a woman engineer while I was an assistant. You see, I was going to ask you about that as well. I mean, I think from my experience, it is very unusual to see women on that side of things very only I mean it's quite unusual for me to see women when I'm in the studio

full stop actually and it's not something I think about hugely now because I'm used to it and a lot of people I work with are people like people I'm married to um and so I you know you've got relationship with people so you're still working with working with friends. But I know when I was young, I was quite intimidated by it. And I remember, you know, when I was first in studios, I was like 17, 18, 19. And just that weird feeling of finding where the girls' loos are and thinking, I think I'm the only person that's using this. Yeah.

It's just a weird feeling, isn't it? Definitely. And then some studios that you go to, it's a mixed toilet. It's fine. It's a little studio, but there's no tampon bin. Exactly. Exactly. All of that stuff. And it's funny. It's just one of those things where you're like, that's the bit where I would always be like, just think, you know. I didn't grow up around boys as well. So for me, working in a male environment was something I always found. I had to get used to it, I think. Yeah.

What about you? Is that something that you found came naturally to you? I think so. I mean as a child I was a bit of a tomboy and then I guess I started working in studios when I was 21, something like that. And again I didn't know any difference so I just got used to it and I worked with some brilliant men and boys in the studio.

So again I didn't really question it. I was kind of aware of it but I didn't think it was really terrible for me personally I got on with everyone I still enjoyed the company of most of my colleagues and I had really supportive female managers as well I think that probably helped that definitely helps and I think all those people around you that are supportive it's great but I wonder as well if sometimes it's almost puts a bit of a fire in you you're like well you might underestimate me but actually I really I really know what I'm doing here.

I'm actually going to pull my weight as well. Yeah, definitely there's a bit of that. And I think I've also found certain clients have actually wanted to have a woman in the control room just to add a different dynamic. Yeah, I can imagine that. But how did you even know about it as a job? What made you head towards sound in the first place um it was a bit bit of an accident really when I was 16 I did work experience in a theater and sort of got to hang out with the sound and lighting technicians and that's when I kind of

learned that that was even a job that you could do and that kind of sparked my interest what is it that you love like what's your where's your sort of real job satisfaction I guess it's being creative but without the responsibility of creating something from scratch like what you do I just get to sort of make good things better and polish them and you know think of creative solutions to I guess technical problems um but I don't have the whole responsibility of creating a hit from nothing and just to ask a sort of slightly abstract, but how important is it that you like the actual tracks that you're recording? I think it helps,

but I think probably with most things you can find something that you love about it, even if it's maybe not a genre that you would normally listen to. You can appreciate a brilliant performance or a great lyric or a really good beat or something. You can find something that you can get into. I wonder as well if sometimes you're sometimes witnessing things as well and people you're almost like a fly on the wall kind of thing of watching how people work and because people

don't you know they you can't keep up and act when you're in the studio you can pretty much see what people are really like and how they deal with pressure yeah how they deal with stress how focused they are all these things these sort of all those personality traits come out yeah absolutely I think a massive part of my job and any producer's job as well is just kind of making people feel comfortable and making sure that you know trying to ease any tensions and pressures where you can knowing when to say something knowing when to pipe down knowing when you might might suggest let's do something different, let's have a little break.

I think a lot of it is people skills. And naming no names. Have you ever seen any singers that have quite unusual techniques for how they do what they do? I mean, I remember, this was not a secret thing, but it was always talked about that Daniel Bedingfield used to sing in his underwear. That was a true thing.

He used to always wear just boxer shorts. I think it was boxer. It might have been completely nude, but in my head it was boxer shorts. Maybe I've done that self-sensitivity. I don't know. I feel like I've heard that. I've worked with Dan, but not doing vocals,

so I didn't experience that. Fair enough. No, I don't think anyone does anything too weird. I mean, sometimes people like a bit of privacy, so if they're recording with a whole band or there's lots of producers and label people they all get kicked out when people do vocals and that kind of thing um or some people like to sing in the evening I don't know it's just that kind of thing I don't think I've come across anything too kind of out there oh that's a shame I was hoping for some some wackiness out there I mean I think yeah I suppose

when I'm doing I quite like it when I can't see I don't really want to be able to see into the people see me so I quite like hiding behind the pop shield just like a little bit and I often turn the lights down and yeah I quite like a low low level of light just because you kind of want to be able to slightly get lost in it yeah give a bit of a performance so that I don't know I think whenever I record I always imagine I try and think right I've just pressed play on the track what do I want my voice to sound like what am I hoping to hear back to myself and then I try and kind of perform it yeah that makes sense I don't know I don't really get the chance to see many other singers do what they do so it's it's like a dark art I've kind of only been party

to a few times when someone's been recording their vocals and I've been there. And so I feel like you've almost got two strands to what you're doing, because you've obviously got your sound recording, but then there's also the fact that you didn't just sort of sit back and think, oh, that doesn't seem quite right. But you've also got your sort of political thing, which is obviously something you developed more and more as you've gone further into motherhood and all that but going sort of back to when you were younger did you grow up in a house that was quite active in those ways in a way my dad my dad's an economist he's an academic so he was always interested in current affairs um and politics I don't think we were ever like active politically

as in going door knocking and stuff but it was definitely something that was talked about around the dinner table and dad's very very opinionated still on these things so it was definitely kind of part of my background and whereabouts did you grow up so I grew up in Berlin for a bit until I was eight so I got to witness the fall of the Berlin wall which is pretty amazing um mum took me my brother down to go and stand on the wall on the 10th of November 1989. Wow that's amazing. So that was yeah. What was the atmosphere like? Just amazing really. So we lived in West Berlin but we had friends in the East so we knew the enormity of what it meant for our friends you know even at that age and I remember going into school the next day and the teachers we didn't do any work the teachers just talked to us about what it all meant. It was a really special moment.

God, that's incredible. And do you have memories of the time before that then when the wall was there? Yeah. Yeah, so we had some really close family friends that we would go and visit every Christmas time. And I remember the year before the wall came down, the dad said to my mum, oh, maybe next year we can visit you. And they were actually able to, because obviously before that, they weren't allowed to leave East Berlin to come to the West.

Which is extraordinary, really. I mean, that's an amazing bit of history. It must have been not long after you'd, the 10th of November, I went with my dad on a trip to Berlin. And he took me because the wall had just come down so I kind of got to go there and I got a little bit of wall that he brought back with me and I think he just wanted he just knew this was like a really significant time in history and when he's he'd studied history so he just really wanted me to have that experience but it's nothing like

living there and seeing that and having the teacher speak about it at school and yeah and we're you know we're only like seven or something at the time, quite young, but old enough to have an idea of what it meant. Yeah, that's amazing. Presumably your childhood is very different to the one that your little boy has experienced, or maybe it's not, maybe they're similar themes. I think they're quite similar. I was in Berlin until I was eight, so I grew up the first part of my life in a big city, which Lucas is now in London as well. And I think I've always been a

city person at heart. And then the rest of my childhood was in a small town in St. Andrews up in Scotland, which is very different, I think, from what Lucas is experiencing now. So when did you move there? Straight from Berlin? Straight from Berlin. So yeah, quite a change. Wow. And what did you think of that? What's it like moving country like that when you're that age? I guess it's a bit challenging, but I was lucky because my dad's Scottish, my mum's German,

so I grew up bilingual, so at least I didn't have to learn a new language from scratch. And I think over that summer holiday... That's pretty huge, isn't it? Yeah, and I made sure that I could read in English, because I didn't used to read in English when I was a little girl. But I made sure that before I started school, I used to read books with my dad and made sure I was kind of ready for it. So I think the transition was not as hard as it might have been

if I'd not had the language. And where does it make you think of as home or is it both places? I mean, to be honest, London's home now. I've lived here for so long. That's nice. And did you have family in Scotland as well then? Yeah, so my grandparents were up in Aberdeenshire as well so that's part of the reason for our move as well amazing do you have brothers and sisters too did you say yeah I've got a younger brother but he's down here now as well cool um well I think that in itself is really I'm always fascinated

by people who've had experiences of different cities like that yeah even though I've been lucky enough to travel I've only ever lived in one city. And my mum lives like 10 minutes from me now. So I sort of haven't really, haven't been quite as bold as I thought I might have been. But I think that's an amazing thing. And it probably kind of, I suppose you had to make all new friends.

You've got to leave behind your whole, that whole school life as well. That's quite a big deal, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. But it sounds like it's lots of positive association in your head when you think of it. Yeah, and I loved it. It was a real privilege growing up in St Andrews as well. I grew up by the sea.

Obviously, when you're a teenager, you don't appreciate those things, but now it's a lovely place for me and my little boy to go back to and see the grandparents. Yeah, that's really lovely. So fast-forwarding again again so you get through school and you're starting your sort of trajectory towards engineering and when you're in the studio um how significant is it to be the female in that company was that people that did you ever feel like it was something that was you know challenging or I think it was okay I think there's one or two comments but really there's so few and far between I don't think they really shaped my experience that's

good um and I think the woman who's still the manager there now she was super supportive um very strong woman and I think kind of instilled a culture that all everyone should be treated the same yes and definitely would encourage us not to take any crap from anyone either. Yes, I think there's got to be just a sort of way about you of saying that's actually not okay. And it doesn't need to be a big, bold thing, but it's just, yeah, well, that's good you had her there

to kind of give you that support, that backup. And what's it look like now in terms of women in that side of the industry? There's definitely much more than when I was first starting out so as I said I didn't have any women engineers that I worked with when I was an assistant and when I started engineering there were a handful of women assistants a lot of them are now producing and engineering themselves and I think most studios now that you go to the commercial studios will have at least one woman engineer or assistant or runner.

They'll have someone on the engineering staff who's female. And that's a big change. That is, that's good. And it's nice to see that it seems to be increasing. Yeah. And you also ended up like winning awards for your engineering, which is absolutely fantastic. So this is the MPGs, which I haven't gone along,

but Rich has been a few times. So when was that? When did you win that? That was 2016. So that was really lovely, actually, because it was for work that I'd done before I'd had a baby, but it was nice to have something after I'd had a baby that I could celebrate and go,

look, I'm still here, I'm still working. Oh, yes, I didn't think about the timing of that. So Lucas would have only been one at the time. Yeah, he was quite young, actually, because he was born in November and the awards were like February so I think that was what it was one of my first nights out and I mean I look ridiculous in my dress because my boobs are full of milk and it's just hilarious but it was my first night out and I got this award and it felt really special so what did you get that for what have you been working on so that was for engineer of the year i'm trying to remember what what records it was um that been things like coldplay because you spent a lot of

time working with coldplay yeah so i'm trying to remember whether it's coldplay was the year before whether it's that year i honestly can't remember but um yeah so i worked on ghost stories album for coldplay um and i also worked on the soundtrack for a tv series called indian summers uh for a composer called Stephen Warbeck. And that was a really cool thing to work on because we recorded loads of traditional Indian instruments. Oh, wow. I mean, a lot of them I had to kind of Google

and figure out like, what is this instrument that I've never heard of and how do you record it? I was going to say, when you've presented with something you've never sort of worked with before, yeah, you have to kind of do your... But it must be nice because it's kind of like a new... Yeah, you're learning something. And often the best thing is just to like ask the musician go like what do

you think is the best way of recording this and you obviously listen to it but yeah it's always nice to have new challenges like that it is and when you're a new mum like that did you ever I mean sometimes winning those awards like obviously it's you know it's not the be all and end all but especially at that time in your life when you're a new mum yeah that must have been did that kind of help you get yourself back into the right mindset of like actually yeah I'm I'm good at what I'm doing yeah definitely and even just going to that event and seeing all the people that I'd worked with because you know when you first have a baby you're a bit of a recluse you don't leave the house for a bit you certainly don't see any work people for a bit so that was really nice and also gave me a bit of a kick up the arse to actually

get back out there and just you know keep on working that's true so when you go back to work and your baby's nine months and you're kind of it's starting a little bit of a lower rung you said than you were before I mean I don't know if it was a lower rung but there's just less work definitely less calls coming in and so when you're in the studio and you have got a young baby, how are you working with the hours? Because your hours are sometimes... I mean, what's a typical day for you? I mean, it can really depend,

but a 12-hour day is... 10 or 12-hour day is standard, plus then you have an hour commuting either side normally, depending on where you go into work. That is long. So it's long, yeah. I mean, when Lucas was very young, when I was taking my first sort of tentative steps back into work,

maybe a one or two day session, my husband would bring him in and I'd feed him in the lunch break. And other times, I mean, it's hilarious. Again, we did this mixed session, again, working with Amelia Warner. We recorded her film score. She had a really young baby. I had a really young baby. And we were both sort of going into the side room and expressing milk or breast feeding and the male director was just like my god I'm surrounded by oestrogen what's going on

and I think on sessions like that when you've got someone else's in the same situation that's really helpful and you kind of give each other confidence yeah that oh god yeah that's immeasurable and also there's things you don't need to talk about don't need to say yeah which is really handy but but I think sometimes as well particularly when it's your first baby which I think is a big you know what's it like when you're working on the sessions when there isn't someone working with you that has a baby do people kind of talk did they ask you about your do people ask you much about your you know personal life yeah they do and I think it depends I think if it's people that you know really well that have brought up their families whether they're men or

women then you can have those conversations but I think when you're working with a young band especially like a young band with a bunch of guys you just don't go there yeah it's quite a foreign idea isn't it yeah like oh I don't know what you're talking about you're like babies stop it yeah definitely and again you don't want to sort of feed those assumptions that you're now as a mum you're not capable, you're not interested in your job so I think when I was working with younger people, particularly men

I wouldn't really talk about it whereas with the ones that had seen it all, had their own families I could be a bit more open about it Yeah that's true but I suppose sometimes that thing of not speaking about it so much did you ever feel like you were kind of packing it away a little bit because I think sometimes especially with when I had my first one I think aspects of motherhood I found quite isolating in that way. Yeah definitely but I think

having had conversations with clients or conversations that my management fed back to me where clients would make assumptions about my commitment to my work and my ability to do long sessions I sort of made the choice to not really talk about motherhood or having a kid in front of certain clients. And how did you find that? Did you ever feel like you'd put yourself under some pressure there? I mean I felt a bit sad that I had to do it but I felt it was necessary for that point in my career where I really wanted to get back to where I was and where I knew I had to just work really hard and try and counter those assumptions. Yeah and did you ever think of maybe not going back to it? Was that never a question for you?

Wasn't really a question no because I just I've worked so hard for it and I love the job so much it didn't seem like I would be being myself if I quit and are you able to kind of shape your weeks a little bit so can you say I'm gonna I work five days and I have my weekends free and that kind of thing yeah exactly I mean generally I try and avoid working weekends obviously sometimes if it's a particular project that's got a certain schedule, I'll be flexible. But yeah, I try not to these days. I'm really fortunate that I don't have to kill myself by doing every single thing that comes in. I can pick and choose a little bit and try and keep some sort of a balance. So talking a bit more about the political side of things. So you'd written the email to the MP and she said, yeah, you should get behind this.

So what happened after that? So then I took my sort of idea for a campaign to the Music Producers Guild. I wasn't really involved with them before, but I just emailed one of the directors and said, look, this is happening. It must affect a bunch of your members. And he then took it to a meeting with, I think, some people in the Labour Party, and they were really, really interested. And I ended up getting some meetings with Tom Watson's office, who was the deputy leader of the party at the time. And then they had an election.

And we managed to get our idea for shared parental leave for self-employed people into the Labour manifesto at the last election. Amazing. Or at the 2017 election, not the last election. There's been so many of them haven't actually i forgot about the one that happened during lockdown yeah but um so we did that and then after that election i ended up working with an mp called tracy brabin who used to be an actress um and i told her kind of what had led to me doing this campaign and she

completely got it because she brought up her daughters whilst being a self-employed actress so completely got where I was coming from and she did a thing it's called a 10-minute rule bill where like any backbench MP can bring in their own law I mean it won't always pass but it's an opportunity to present something that they think should become law so she did this bill we called it the selfie leave bill which was to give shared parental leave to self-employed people and she read out a speech read out a speech in parliament and we had a big demo outside parliament got loads of mps from all parties to support it and that was kind of like the pinnacle of our campaign got loads of attention um and we got the government to actually consult on parental leave. They haven't changed the law,

because obviously quite a lot of stuff has happened since then, but they did do a consultation, which we're still waiting on them to publish. Yeah, I mean, if they haven't changed the law yet, presumably, as you said, you mentioned theatre, what kind of industries are affected by what you're talking about? So in music, about 70% of people are self-employed. I'm not sure of the numbers for acting,

but Equity, the actors' union, were really behind it as well. And then there's a lot of contractors in IT and lots of industries like that that you might not necessarily associate with self-employment, but they're all really affected by it as well. Yeah, and do you work alongside Pregnant and Screwed? Yeah, so I met them actually through this campaign

and I've been working with them and I sit on their kind of policy board where we kind of discuss ideas for campaigns. And during the pandemic, obviously, again, self-employed women were shortchanged a bit by the support that was available. So when the SAIS grant came out for self-employed people, it was based on three years earnings,

which kind of seems fair enough. But if you've been on mat leave in one of those three years, then you get less. So I got a third less than my male colleagues that were earning the same amount just because I'd had mat leave in one of those years. Oh, blimey. And, you know, for us, luckily, we're fortunate positioned that it wasn blimey and you know for us luckily we're a fortunate

position that it wasn't the end of the world for us but there's a lot of people where it made a huge difference yeah and I think also it's just about fairness really exactly and the fact that someone's taking time off on much lower pay to look after a baby doesn't mean that they should then be penalized three years down the line say you're sort of penalised sort of twice the bit where you didn't earn then and again. Yeah, exactly. So we actually managed to get legal support and some funding from some trade unions to take the government to court about this. Okay, amazing. So we had a judicial review and we also had a claimant, a woman who'd been really affected by this, very brave woman who came forward, who stood alongside the charity that were kind of co-claimants in this court case.

And they actually ruled that the government had discriminated. But because it was a pandemic, it was kind of justified, was basically the ruling, which is really annoying, but it sets an important precedent. It means that when there's not a pandemic, the government can't get away with making decisions like this. So I think it was really important to do that court case, even though we didn't get quite the outcome we wanted. We didn't get any money for the women that were affected, but we did get a really important ruling about discrimination.

And I suppose, as you say, the pandemic has kind of taken quite a chunk of time, but any momentum is good momentum and keep moving things forward and I think so am I right in thinking that you actually ended up getting more and more into politics yeah yeah and party politics this is Labour Party right that's right yeah so what happened with that so um so I applied for this program called the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme, which is their kind of feminist leadership training programme in the Labour Party. I applied for that, managed to get into it somehow. And that was really interesting.

I met lots of very inspiring women. And then obviously in 2019, there was a snap election. So I applied to be the candidate for Croydon South, which is a constituency really near where I live. And yeah, I stood for parliament in 2019. That's amazing. And what was that experience like? Were there things about that process that surprised you?

Yeah, I mean, I'd never done it before. So it was all a big learning curve. I was, it was interesting because I got to work on two campaigns I worked on the neighbouring one which is a marginal Labour seat so I supported the MP there and I worked in my own seat and it's just the mechanics of campaigning I guess how it all works getting activists to go out you know even designing leaflets and things like that just the basics yeah so much yeah and how what when i hope now we find ourselves in 2022 what what role is in your life now so i'm still really active in politics and i'm standing to be a councillor this may in lambeth amazing so how are you tallying that with your day job that's a lot

of spinning plates if you and i quoting the title of the podcast yeah it's a bit of juggling and i think sort of if i get elected in May, then I'll probably need to sort of reassess, see what things I can maybe cut back on. Yeah, it's just juggling, I think. I'm really lucky that my husband's really supportive and he generally works set hours. So at least we can kind of plan around that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you need that support, don't you? Yeah. And I suppose suppose I don't know I'm trying to picture how you make it work though if you're doing sort of like 14 hour days yeah I mean like being a counsellor isn't a full-time job they generally say it's about one day a week okay um and in terms of my work work some weeks I might be working five days some weeks I might be working three days so it kind of depends I think I feel like it's doable but um ask me again in a year's time I know but what's I mean do you have

a sort of goal of what you'd love to achieve if you could if you know sort of magic situation of um I'd love women to be paid the same as men and have the same opportunities and for men and women to have the same involvement in family life and parenting. Yeah, I mean, it's quite astonishing in a way that, you know, I'd say 2022, and that's still a conversation. Because when I started doing this podcast, and I thought I'm speaking to working mothers, and then I thought, well, is that still a thing? Is that still a thing?

Maybe that's just what I think it's a thing. And then actually, I'm like, no, it's definitely a thing. I mean, do you have statistics for where things are at at the moment? Yeah. So for example, 54,000 women a year get fired from their job for getting pregnant. Wow. That's astonishing. Yeah. And that's, I think, that's a 2015 stat, but they haven't done a study since then. I thought that was illegal. It is.

Yeah. But access to justice is really difficult. I was going to say, that's the next step, isn't it? Yeah, it's like taking something to a tribunal can be very traumatic. It can be hard to have the evidence. Often it's he said, she said. Yeah, and you can hide those decisions behind other things, can't you? Exactly.

Not renewing a contract, for example, rather than sort of dealing head-on with the reasons why exactly and you currently have a three-month time limit to bring a tribunal so if you're pregnant wow three months and you get discriminated against you might actually be in labor the at the point at which you need to bring a tribunal it's insane wow that doesn't seem like it's weighted in the right way okay so, so that's 54,000 women. Yeah. And what about the gender pay gap? Where are we up to with that?

Well, I went to the Women in Music Awards a couple of months ago, and I was really horrified because actually the gender pay gaps with the big record labels had got worse. Oh, wow. And I still don't understand why this happened, but Warner Music got awarded a diversity award, yet their gender pay gap has gone up to being over 30%. 30%?

And they're the worst out of the three majors, so they're not even the best of a bad bunch, and they haven't shown the greatest improvement. They've just got a terrible gender pay gap, but for some reason they got a diversity prize. Wow. Okay, and I presume as well we're looking at the fact that women would have been on the whole more affected by lockdown in terms of their earning potential and their work exactly because they generally took up most of the home schooling

and all of that stuff so that would have affected their performance at work their opportunities some of them might have chosen to go on furlough which again affected what they're being paid affected promotion opportunities all of that stuff you see the thing is if you've got a situation where in the household the father is not got as much paternity leave and is earning more yeah then the woman's already got like the hand on her forehead when she's trying to run fast kind of thing exactly and you'll think well okay my work will take a back seat and it kind of becomes a sort of it feeds itself exactly it's such a vicious cycle and I think it's the same with the self-employed thing as well because by the time the mum has then taken a year out of her

career it's that much harder to get back in and then if you're having to pay for child care and stuff for a lot of families just the numbers just don't add up yeah I mean is this something you had already experienced firsthand in your line of work or is this stuff you started to learn about when you were so the thing about um needing to sort of take longer after you've taken that career break that's definitely firsthand experience and I think it's something that any self-employed people would tell you because you know what it's like. You have those relationships, those personal relationships with clients. And if you're off the scene for a year,

your client's going to need to keep on working and they might end up working with other people. So some of that is first-hand. And the stats on gender pay gap, on maternity discrimination, a lot of that, like the maternity discrimination one of 54,000, that was from an EHRC report. So there's a lot of work that's been done in this area that's out there. But in terms of where your line of work with your engineering, does it feel like you've been a victim of the gender pay gap with that? Or is that kind of hard to assess, I suppose you kind of it's hard to go on your own experiences yeah I think I I don't believe that I have apart

from that obviously you know taking a bit longer to come back after mat leave yeah I don't know exactly what my peers are getting paid but I don't feel that I'm being paid less than them for the same types of jobs I mean yeah as a freelancerancer, I tend to have my day rate negotiated by my management and it slightly varies from job to job. So there isn't just like one rate. I would say it is similar between the men and women that are on the same management agency. I don't feel that for the similar type of project that there's a pay differential. Yeah. And are you raised by a working mum? Did your mum work when you were a kid? She did, but she only went back to work when we were kind of at school so she didn't work when we were really young so is this something you've

spoken about with her too yeah well it's interesting actually because she she's a teacher by profession but she actually always wanted to be a translator and interpreter and I think she didn't really love teaching so I think that's part of the reason she stayed at home and then she retrained when we were a little bit older and that's why I think my mum and dad were always super supportive of my career choices. They didn't go, oh, well, that's not a proper job and that's not suitable because I think mum had that experience of sort of being steered a little bit in what she should do and she never wanted her kids to do that.

She just wanted us to follow our passions. Yeah, and I think, I mean, that's brilliant and you really need that. And I think there's a big it's brilliant and you really need that and I think there's a big difference as well between someone doing a job where they're not engaged and hopping at bed in the morning and then if you have a kid that's self-motivated working hard you know keeping that momentum going like that's like you can know yourself now you're as a mum like that's that's amazing yeah as long as they're happy and excited by what they're doing you're not thinking oh but I don't want it to be

that job you're just thinking wow great they're engaged and passionate exactly that passion is such a big deal actually and has it sort of surprised you this whole new leg of your life with the politics yeah does it feel like, oh, yeah, I kind of was always headed towards that? It's a bit of a surprise, I guess, how involved I've got. I mean, I was always, you know, a little bit interested in current affairs and politics and stuff, but sort of going full on into it,

I mean, maybe it's a bit of a midlife crisis, I don't know. I don't think so. I think it's cool, and I think you get to a point in your life where you've got the experiences and you've had lots of conversations and you're getting the information and the politicians around you are not those like grown-ups

when you feel like the kid they're peers you feel like you can come to them and have proper conversations we're backed up by knowledge and experience it's like I think it's probably quite normal at time in your life to kind of think okay now a bit of that as well please yeah I think so and I also think I love my job but ultimately I'm doing the same thing all the time I'm not you know I might be

learning how to record a new instrument or a new technique but ultimately for the next however many years I'm going to basically be making music sound a bit nicer and, you know, working with some interesting people. And in the politics side of things, I feel I can just do something extra, make some changes. Well, making changes when you see things that aren't right is really exciting. And every once in a while, people talk, you know, I've had the odd comment from blokes saying,

what about working dads and everything? And of course, I appreciate there are single fathers out there. There are fathers that have taken time out. Some of the women I've spoken to have had their partners have done the leave. And I see all that scope. But until we give women what they need

to do their work in the way they want to do it and it's remunerated appropriately it's that that's benefiting the guys too it's all hand in hand because if for as long as women are not earning as much the guys are going to be the ones that need to keep doing that thing exactly so it's actually beneficial to everybody to lift up women and support them isn't it yeah absolutely um it's exciting i think it's wonderful i really i mean i'm so impressed with you for not just seeing those things but actually sort of putting your you know money where your mouth is so to speak and actually going for it

because i think there's a lot of things i get very excited about and passionate about but they generally don't go beyond a you know a rant that i'm sort of you know honing honing day by day um but i think actually actively going right now is the time i want to get engaged yeah and what to what extent is your little boy aware of all this have you spoken i suppose he's very little i don't know i haven't had many political discussions with my six-year-old yeah we're quite he's kind of he gets at a certain level. He understands that Boris has made some bad choices. Even a child can see. And I got him to do some leaflets for Sadiq in the mayoral elections.

And he understands about mayors because they have mayors in Paw Patrol. Oh, yes, of course they do. That's brilliant. Politics in Paw Patrol. I never thought you could learn something from Paw Patrol. Introduction to local government from Paul Patrol. That is unexpected. And I suppose also what you're really doing is just keeping a conversation. And I think for kids to... I remember years ago when my eldest was just turning a teenager

and we were coming home from a doctor's appointment or something and on the front cover of the paper, was a thing about Greta Thunberg. Actually, it wasn't on the front cover. It was sort of buried, actually. So this was going back quite a while now, and I said to Sonny, oh, look at this. There's this girl,

and she's been really active about climate issues, to the extent where she was elective mute for a long time, and then her parents, her mum was an opera know elected mute for a long time and then her parents her mum was an opera singer and she stopped traveling and they really focused on her and and you know she's now trying to campaign and Sonny said something like well that won't make any difference and now I'm like really satisfied to see that no she's she's made a lot of noise for someone of her age and I've just I don't want my kids to be cynical like that. I want them to realise that there's always scope for getting involved and being part of the conversation,

pushing things forward and raising awareness. And I just, I suppose I'm a bit frustrated, really. Actually, you know, I learnt another fact, to add to your armoury, that in Britain, we have the worst pay gap between uh medical investment of uh male orientated illnesses and female orientated this is a huge divide in terms of that as well yeah oh no it's the worst in europe that's wow worst in europe it doesn't surprise me but still oh my gosh but it's a bit we think we're so kind of hip sometimes in the UK,

but then you go to other places and you just think, do you think it's helped that you've got the perspective of, you know, life in Scotland and life in Germany? Yeah, I think so. I think there's definitely things that the two countries do differently. Yeah. But I mean, Germany aren't brilliant, you know. I think they're not where the Nordic countries are. Their care is a bit better it's a bit better supported by the

government um but yeah i think they've also still got quite a long way to go i wonder what do you know i've had this sort of divide with women in politics i don't know how that works out um i think i don't know the exact numbers i know know the Labour Party, for the first time ever, has got over 50% women MPs. Oh, really? For the first time ever? Well, yeah, but we also lost quite a lot in 2019. Ah.

So it's probably easier to get to 50% if you've got a smaller number, I don't know. Well, yeah, it still counts for something. Yeah, so the Parliamentary Labour Party is 50-50 or thereabouts. I think in Parliament it's about a third woman, something like that roughly. So there's still a bit of work to be done. And if anyone has been listening to our chat

is interested in getting involved with these issues, what can they do? So my own website for the shared parental leave for self-employed people is www.parentalpayequality.org.uk and you can find out about our campaigns it's not just shared parental leave it's also paternity leave and adoption leave and neonatal leave for self-employed people oh amazing i didn't even think about things like adoption because there's so many different ways to be doing this isn't there and you just don't want to fall in the gaps exactly and it just feels like the self-employed families have been forgotten

and they're never high enough up the priority list for the government and politics has been crazy for the past five years as well it has yeah it has i think there must be so many things that have just been sort of slightly just slightly you know outside of the main focus of what's been going on yeah massively tons of things but now's the time to get back on it right absolutely oh that's really exciting I wish you all the best for May thank you exciting times and Paw Patrol has got some unexpected benefits who knew is Lucas interested in sound is it something he I suppose he's little, but you know. Oh yeah, he loves music.

So the other day he made me open up Logic because he wanted to write a song. Oh, cool. But it was like being in the most stressful writing session with the most demanding artist with the least amount of patience I've ever been in. That's really funny. He's like, why aren't you doing it already?

Can't you hear what's in my head? Get it down there. Yeah, that's exactly how it went. To be honest, I get a bit like that when I'm working with Richard. I just get like, I behave much worse than I do with other people. It's really bad. Sometimes there's people you're just too close to. You should put them in with someone else. That's amazing. Did you get it done? The track? We've got a basic demo down, yeah. Well done. So impressive. Needs a bit of work. Don't they all? See, isn't Ogger great? And like I said maybe we can all take note from someone who decides to do something about their instincts it's easier said than done

isn't it and I'm still walking around St Margot's I'm now on the road where I went to school my primary school and it's also the road where my mum first rented a flat when she and my dad broke up so it's the flat where my dad, sorry my mum and I lived on our own for a couple of years actually so it's the flat where my dad sorry my mum and I lived on our own for a couple of years actually so it's the place where I had a little bunk bed and such amazing incidents happened as at the time that I bit down on do you know those glow sticks where you crack them and then they light up my mum used to use them when she was doing her parachute jump training that she did for Blue Peter and one night I bit one of them my mum had to phone the poisons unit at the local hospital to check I wasn't going to die it's also the place where a few of my hamsters died

sorry Wilfred sorry Gloria and what else happened there oh we had a dog for a short while we had some cats one of my cats got run over on this road uh from that litter I remember there was cross patch because he had a little funny cross on his forehead cat that is not friend so yes he was part of our lives so many memories along this road I think I'm going to walk and have a little look at school and I'm going to get out of your ears now because there's another plane and probably in a minute someone will start playing bagpipes or there'll be a foghorn or something like that anyway thank you to Olga for her amazing time and her wise words thank you to Claire my producer who does such a good job with

podcasts of actually making her bits and professionals you can probably tell she's not involved with the intro and outro thank you to Richard for piecing it all together thank you to you for your ears your time and your influence there's been some amazing suggestions coming my way of people to talk to. I've been following them up, so thanks so much for that. And in the meantime, have a lovely, lovely day,

and I will see you soon. And take care. And there's another car and another plane. I'm blinded this place is noisy. I don't live anymore. It'd be a nightmare for where I found myself in life. I mean, listen. Silly St. Margaret's. All right, let's love. See you soon. Bye. I don't live anymore be a nightmare for where I found myself in life

Silly some more great. All right, that's not easy break On each step with Peloton, We'll see you next time. Peloton Tread has workouts you can work in. Or bring your classes with you for outdoor runs, walks, and hikes led by expert instructors on the Peloton app. Call yourself a runner. Peloton All Access Membership Separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running.