Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Cathy Newman (Part One)

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Take a stroll with Emily, Raymond and the fabulous Cathy Newman in South London’s Brockwell Park. Cathy is a journalist, writer and one of the presenters of Channel 4 News - and she is also an absolute delight! Cathy tells about how she doesn’t look back fondly at her school years, how her life has been changed by the arrival of her new kitten Cher and what happened when she met the Dalai Lama. Cathy also chats all about her brilliant new book The Ladder - a book of life lessons from women who have scaled the heights of their respective fields, which features conversations with women such as Clare Balding, Joan Bakewell and Tanni Grey-Thompson. The Ladder is available now! You can get your copy here.Part Two of this chat is available here!Listen to Emily and Raymond’s walk with Tom Holland from March 2024Listen to Emily and Raymond’s walk with Clare Balding from December 2023Follow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Look, he's very slow. Come on, Raymond. Come on, we've got things to discuss. And there he is loitering by a bin. This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I went for a South London stroll with Channel 4 News presenter, Times Radio presenter, author and journalist Kathy Newman.

Kathy is very much a cat person, but she's also, it turns out, very much a Raymond person. And that makes her fabulous in my book. We had such a nice walk. I'm not going to call it. a leisurely stroll, because Kathy gets a bit of a pace on. I was hoping some of her dynamism and zest might rub off on Ray. But yeah, I'm not going to lie, he basically insisted on being carried instead.

We chatted about so many interesting aspects of Kathy's life, her childhood growing up in Surrey, her incredible work ethic that's seen her rise to the top of her profession in news, and we even discussed a rather hilarious encounter she had with the Dalai Lama. We also chatted about Kathy's book, The Lad, inspired by her Times radio show where she chats to high-profile women about the life lessons they've learned on their journey and it's a very inspiring, fascinating read

so I really recommend you get stuck in. I'm going to stop talking now and hand over to the woman herself. Here's Cathy and Ray Wray. I'm not sure Raymond will like the pouring rain. It's not great for his hair. I can imagine. What about my hair?

Raymond and I appease in a pod when it comes to hair although he hasn't got much of a curl, has he? I think he really likes you, Kathy. Oh, Raymond. Can you not smell cat on me? Come on. Follow Kathy. Come on, Raymond.

Right. So do I get to walk Raymond then? Yeah. Is Raymond, am I in charge of Raymond? That's quite, could be dangerous. Quite a big responsibility. Yeah, exactly. In terms of the responsibilities you generally have,

it's not the biggest. Look at him, Kathy, running. He might get a bit tired. This is my worry. He's got short legs. I've got short legs, but he's got shorter legs. Do you know, I was determined to get a dog that didn't have longer legs than you because I'm rather small. One of my best friends has a whipet, and I'm quite whip it like in my mentality.

Lots of very, very fast, vigorous exercise, and then, you know, have a bit of a flop, and then some more fast vigorous exercise. Yes, I can see you've got something with a sighthound about it. Yeah. Probably, is a sighthound and a whipet the same thing? I think so. I'm just making it up. I pretend to sound knowledgeable and there'll probably be people listen and going, what is she talking about? Do you mind which way we go? I'm in your hands, Cathy Newman, because this is

your manor. Right, yeah. Well, this is Brockwell Park, which I once tried to get some rubbish removed from Brockwell Park by writing to the local MP and ended my letter. I'm sure you'll agree. Borkle Park is one of South London's finest green spaces, which is true. What do you think of Brockwell Park, Raymond? It gets quite hilly up here, but that's all right. You should be all right. Raymond can do a hill. Well, let me introduce you, Cathy.

I'm with the wonderful Cathy Newman. I'm a huge fan of this woman's. And I've just read your brilliant book, The Ladder, which we're going to discuss. And we're in, as I say, Brockwell Park, or as you say, we're in South London. You haven't turned up with a dog today, but that's all right. I still think you're fabulous. I'd love a dog. Would you?

Well, I would, but I think in London and doing what I do, the dog would end up walking itself, which isn't really the idea, is it? I mean, look, poor old Raymond's been abandoned behind us. You've got quite a pace on. Sorry, I'll slow down. I know, I know, I'll slow down. It's terrible. I'm a very impatient person, so I flew back from Belfast yesterday.

I felt like doing some filming. And there was this woman right in front of me, and I was like really like coming really close up to her because I was in such a rush to get through security. So I'm very impatient. So Raymond would chill me out. Look. Look, he's very slow.

Come on, Raymond. Come on, we've got things to discuss. And there he is loitering by a bin. Do you know, I'm getting such an insight into you after only five minutes. I know. Come on, Raymond. But you know what? I see it as dynamism.

He ran towards me initially and now he's like, oh God, this is a bit exhausting, isn't it? Do we need to give him a biscuit to get him up the hill? No, he will follow. So tell me, do you like dogs? Have you ever had any sort of good, bad experiences with them? Well, I always wanted a dog. I nagged my parents for years and years for a dog. But half the family was completely allergic.

It was a non-starter and I ended up with a goldfish I won at the fair. But then we did have quite, I was quite scared of dogs as well. So I don't know why. I always nagged my parents for a dog, but actually I was scared of them. I can't put this umbrella down now, can't I? I think so. And we live next to a pub, which was a bit of a rough pub. And my sister then got bitten by the Alsatian who lived next door. I mean, to be fair, she was taking a shortcut through the pub car park.

Should we go this way? Yeah. It's quite sort of scenic and countryish. So we always used to take her short cut through the pub car park and one time she got bitten. So that was a bit scary. So I was always a bit scared of big Boundy Dogs. I'm small and so big bounded dogs were scary when I was a kid.

But something like Raymond, well, you see, look, he's got a big dog sniffing his butt. Do you know what I love is he always retains a very quiet dignity when that happened? He looks a bit like this. He's like, do what you must and then leave. Which the big Boundy Dog did. So it was okay, wasn't it, Raymond? So we're in South London, as we say. And you grew up, Kathy, just to go back to your childhood. I'm seeing you, the goldfish. Yeah. And your parents. And your parents were, they were both teachers. They were both teachers. Well, my mum had given up work when my sister was. born but she was a chemistry teacher my dad was a chemistry teacher and remained a chemistry

teacher throughout my childhood I think there was a bit well they didn't ever say they were disappointed but I didn't let's say that I didn't pursue science I in fact did one science GCSE which was biology which I found really interesting but chemistry and physics I dropped and it's terrible really because now there's all this talk of stem being the thing but yeah I never I never despite my parents being science teachers I just never got it really. I'm going to pick him up Kathy. What? That's surely cheating. Raymond. The thing is because we've just got a cat. So finally after all these years I've realised my childhood ambition of getting a pet. So we got the lovely Cher who is

who is a Russian blue. But we don't want to let it outside because it's a big scary world out there and so we're just wrestling with that and then some people put their cats on Leeds and I just can't quite get my head around that. So she's shown no interest in going outside. She looks at the neighbouring cat through the window and gets a bit excited and then that's it. Then she's back to rampaging up the stairs and down again. Russian blues are beautiful. Yeah, we're all completely in love with her.

She's a total third baby, really. Oh, we're about to get run over. She is just like a third baby. and I do baby her and she brings me her her toys to play with and it's very sweet growing up this was in Surrey wasn't it? Yeah yeah grew up in

suburbia very very boring not near enough London to be exciting not in the country enough to be sort of I don't know wild and Wuthering Heights-esque so what are we talking sort of Harry Potter semi or? Yeah yeah

middle class semi semi but next to this pub that went through some quite interesting times and you know the police had to use our house to do a drugs bust and that kind of stuff so I don't know I had a friend at school whose parents said so I went to I went to like the local school initially and then I went to an all-girls private school which I hated and one of my friends there her parents said that we lived the wrong side of the tracks which was probably true in that kind of bit of Surrey there was quite a it was a little bit judgy you never forget comments like that do you I quite like to live in the wrong side of the tracks actually because it gave me that kind of

perspective I suppose that I was thoroughly middle class I could see the posh bits of Surrey the mega posh you know detached houses and leafy you know cul-de-sacs and that wasn't that wasn't us but I could also see the wrong side of the tracks of my posh friends parents put it. So it gave you a sense of all life I suppose. I think I need a bit more Raymond though. Do you? I need to just be killed. I mean in a way that's why share our little kitten because she's not so kitteny anymore and she is very relaxing when we sit in front of the telly at night she comes and crawls on to her lap very very it's good therapy. Yeah she's I think what pets are good for particularly pets like Raymond who is let's face it essentially a cat

They're good for taming what I believe Buddhists call your monkey mind, you know, the monkey mind jumping from branch to branch. Oh, my monkey mind is very, it's running rampant the whole time. Oh, yeah. But then I think having a monkey mind enables me to do my job and, you know, write books and be a mom and you've got to, you know, it's about juggling, isn't it? I think I'd be a useless Buddhist. I mean, I can't get meditation at all.

like that's such a waste of time. You know, I watch telly though. I suppose that's my equivalent of meditation. Did you meet the Dalai Lama once? Yeah, I did meet the Dalai Lama. Let's face it, we were on slightly different wavelengths me and the Dalai Lama. But at the end of the interview, it was very fun.

Because I had this cameraman called Graham, who sadly died not that many years afterwards. It was very sad. But he was a little bit rotund, I'm sure. he wouldn't mind me saying. And at the end of the interview, the Dalai Lama pointed at him and said, you're fat, you need to go on a diet. And yeah, exactly.

He was open-mouthed in astonishment at this rudeness from the Dalai Lama. I thought it was hilarious. So he was giving us diet tips by the end. Oh dear. So we were just talking earlier about your sort of work ethic, I suppose, when you were growing up? Were you very much, were you quite studious? self-disciplined and self-motivated.

Yeah, quite enough, because, you know, there's this whole kind of debate about pushy parents and, you know, that sort of raged when we were becoming parents for the first time, me and my husband. But when I was growing up, my parents weren't remotely pushy, but I pushed myself enormously. So I suppose I could see that they were aspirational and they were, there was a work ethic just in the, you know, in the bricks and mortar of that. house it was just there right but they didn't have to I just did it myself I was just very so I was because I thought I wanted to be a violinist I used to get up really early like 5.30 in the morning do all my homework in the morning so I could then practice at night practice the violin so yeah I didn't get that much sleep

but I didn't really that's the monkey mind again I didn't actually need that much sleep I was just so wired that's incredible though Kathy I think it annoyed my mum quite a lot. Really? Because my sister and I were only 18 months apart and I think my sister, yeah, I didn't sleep at night and she didn't sleep during the during the day, so that was difficult. I basically got a student kind of, that student thing of going to bed at, you know, two in the morning and waking up at midday, that's my perfect body clock. Yeah. I can't do that now, obviously. presumably it was the kind of household where

sort of ideas were being discussed and it was as I say with sort of academics living there I think it was more it was funny because there wasn't a lot of there wasn't a lot of news in the household because we didn't have a telly until I was 16ish so that's kind of strange to think about

so there wasn't sort of political debate in that way it was very bookish There was a lot of books of all sorts. And my mum read a book, I think it was called The Children Who Live on the Hill. And it was a kind of progressive educational treaties, I suppose, about how to bring up kids to be, you know, to excel in the things they're interested in.

She read this book and that was why she got us on to music because we showed a little bit of an interest in music and the whole ethos of this book was pursue, help your children pursue whatever they're passionate about. And so we looked a little bit passionate about music. And so she gave us the tools to pursue that. And that was a huge part of our childhood. So, yeah, it was sort of intellectual.

Yeah. Without being, you know, there wasn't a great debate about politics. I remember, you know, the radio was always on in the morning. I do remember, I remember the Falklands being discussed on the radio. I'm getting this idea of very studious, Kathy. Very driven. I was very driven. Really? Yeah, I was just, I think, because I was a real perfectionist, I still am,

I just, which is not always a good thing, but I wanted to get a clean sweep of A's, and, you know, I thought if I went to the best university, then I'd get the best job. And, you know, so I was very much had that mentality from quite early in childhood. And I think there was a part, the other aspect to that is my parents had these friends who were also teachers, who were these two old ladies who lived together. And I always remember one of them, they're called Francis and Dodo. And Francis, I remember going into a shop once, and the person behind the counter said, oh, Mrs Eastwood. And she said, no, no, no, it's not Mrs.

Because all the men were killed in the war. And it was like one of those things that's burned into my brain, and I thought, wow. Imagine that and growing up in that, you know, that environment and that being a thing. So I think I hadn't really thought about the water until she said that as a child. So that was, anyway, Francis and Dodo. I remember I said to Francis, I want to be a violin teacher and that's what I want to do. And Francis said to me, oh, you don't want to be a violin teacher, that's a terrible life. And again, I remember that was the first time that I questioned, why do I want to be a violin teacher?

What would that mean? What kind of life would that be? And it wasn't long after that, I think, that we got a telly, and I saw KAD on the tele, standing up reporting on the first Iraq war. And that was when I thought, right, I want to be a journalist. And I want to be a war reporter. But I never managed to become a war reporter because I got too interested in politics and, you know, started covering Westminster. And that was a digression that has lasted. Why did your parents just have interest? Why did they not have a telly? Was it just kind of because?

I think they thought that telly was a bit the root of all evil. And also they were very, very frugal. And they just thought it was a sort of unnecessary expense. So we actually inherited a TV from my great aunt, which was like a black and white. You practically had to wind it up. You had to put a coat hanger in the, you know, instead of an aerial. Probably one of those things that's worth a fortune aid in some trendy Hoxton bar.

Yeah. It was interesting. Tom Holland, the historian who has been on this podcast, he didn't have it. He came to a telly lay. And I sometimes wonder, the risk of sounding like an old fogy, that I wonder if that did force you as a younger person into books and music and other areas a bit. No, definitely. And I think we have this debate with our own kids about, you know, iPhones and is that a different. terrible distraction. And I think you do have to give your mind space to pursue other things that

maybe are a bit different from what other people are pursuing. And, you know, that then sparks a sort of interesting exploration in your mind, doesn't it? So I think there is, there is something to that. I mean, it didn't make for an easy school life because everything the other kids were discussing, you know, which had been on the telly, I had absolutely no knowledge of and my husband still thinks it's quite funny that there's whole sort of pop cultural references that I literally just don't get because there was yeah it was a whole aspect of my life that was sort of blank in my childhood hello doggy there's lots of big doggies Raymond seems entirely unbothered do you prefer little doggies like Raymond I do like Raymond he's

very sweet I would like but the thing is I want him to walk a bit faster I know I mean having to carry a dog is a bit of pathetic cop out really isn't it let's just be honest yeah I think I'll whip it a whip it is for me really also you can put them in your bed and they use them as a hot water bottle can you're very you're very with it like Raymond is really quite slow for me I know but you see I think Raymond maybe Raymond is good for you Raymond is is basically a cat isn't it let's be honest were you popular Kathy when you know not at all not at all and I think that did I think that did forge my personality a bit because I think now with all the sort of online abuse and everything, I sort of care much less what people think of me than maybe your average person because I wasn't popular at school and I think you just could get used to that and, you know, it wasn't a happy school life though. It definitely wasn't.

But then I think I probably would have been unhappy whatever school I went to because I don't think I'm really. really sort of very good at being part of a sort of establishment. And that's why I suppose Channel 4 News suits me because... Yeah. The whole point of being on Channel 4 News is to be a little bit different and think a bit differently and stand up for people who don't have a voice and, you know, be outside the mainstream. And I like that. But yeah, being at school, I just never really fit into any school I went to.

Come on, Ray Ray. He'll sleep very well tonight. Oh, he really will. but those people who I suppose aren't front and centre and right in the throng of it and aren't the Rizzoes

do know what I mean those people do tend to go on I find sometimes and they just quietly get on with it and then a few years later you think oh they're going to do really well aren't they I suppose so

I think some people I was thinking about not the Rizzo's because I think I had Ritz but I just like feel like I didn't want to be part of a sort of thing, you know. And I think school is, school is challenging for a lot of people.

I just want to do my work, you know, find my friends wherever I found my friends, and then go and get a really good job. I was just very single-minded. I didn't really, I didn't really, couldn't really get on with all the kind of agro about who was, you know, friends with whom. It seemed all sort of a little bit of a forgotten boredom, as Philip Lark in my way. said about childhood. So I feel I always say this to people when I go in and do talk, well I don't say the bit about not liking school when I go into schools and do talks, because obviously that would not be very on message. But I do say to people, you know, I feel life just

gets better and better really. And childhood is hard because you're having to learn all this stuff and learn how to navigate the world. And then you're worried about what you're going to do in the world and what the future is. And I think, yeah, being your 20s, your 30s, your 40s and soon to be 50s. I don't know, it just, I like having that free will of being an adult. As a child, you don't have any free will, do you? You're sort of constantly a square peg forced into a round hole. You don't have the option not to fit in.

Exactly, because you're just weird then, aren't you? Yeah. Whereas being weird as an adult or, you know, being different is kind of interesting, isn't it? And it's so difficult because I spend my life trying to say that, you know, to kids now, you're struggling at school and feeling different and don't have friends or whatever. And you say, no, I promise, just hang on, just hang on in there. Yeah, exactly. Hang on in there is a very good message. You notice all the kids that, the ones that fitted in the most, quite frankly, never amounted to as much as the ones people would have called weirdos, you know.

Yeah. I get quite sad thinking back to school and... Yeah, because I'm not nostalgic for it at all. But yeah, the really popular kids are constantly wanting to go back and have reunions. I never turn up to. Funny that. As I was as if you're presenting Channel 4 News and writing bestselling books. And you went to university. Quite a good one.

Not bad. I loved university, actually. I loved it. Did you? And it was Oxford that you went to. Yeah. Went to Oxford. I did English.

loved all the reading, met some lifelong friends there, brilliant people. And actually, I think, because I went to LMH, which was one of the, it was one of the colleges that used to be in all women's college. Is that Lady Margaret Hall? Lady Margaret Hall, yeah. And actually now they've trialled this, you know, they've been the first college to trial this foundation year, which to get more people from diverse backgrounds into Oxford.

So they've been quite groundbreaking on that. And even when I was there, it just felt like a less sort of, you know, stuffy, traditional public school-dominated college than a lot of them. So I loved the people I met there. I had a fantastic time, did lots of music, you know, lots of reading. I feel that sort of life began at university, really. When you graduated, did you go straight? Well, Raymond's walking again, Claxton.

Raymond, well done, Ray. Maybe I'm not being encouraging enough. Maybe if I just sound a little bit more excited, he might just walk a little bit faster. I'll tell you who got him moving. Claire Baldi. Life's an assault course, Raymond. Claire Balding got him. She's brilliant with animals, though, isn't she?

She was great. She would just speak to him in a certain way. Come along, Raymond. She's got a quiet authority. She's obviously in my book. And what I love about Claire is everybody thinks she's sort of, Britain's sort of favourite head girl, isn't she? She's a national treasure, but she's also very sort of, she's just brilliant. But actually she was very open about talking about how the sort of failures in life that then she overcame. So she got suspended from school for shoplifting. And, you know, she overcame sort of difficult times in her life to triumph and climb the ladder and be successful. And there's a lot of women in the book who said that. So, oh no. I knew I felt something.

Oh, have you got stung? Little net. They're fine. Dock leaf? Oh, I think there is a dock leaf. Is there? No, it might not be. It might be wild garlic.

Oh, there's a dock leaf. Do you want a little bit of dock leaf on your stinging nettle? You have to really bruise it on there. Do you? It's my country law. Come on, Raymond. So, I'm channeling my inner Claire balding. Come on, Raymond.

When you left university, you decided to go straight into just. journalism? Was that what you wanted to do? Because you always know that? Well, I thought about doing a journalism course, but hilariously now, you know, now that when you think of the student debts that kids now have accrued, I was worried about the fact that I had a student loan to pay back and it was tiny compared to what kids now have to pay back. So I didn't want to pay whatever it was, £2,000 or something at the time maybe to do a journalism course. So I thought I'll try and get a job. And I did, I had a summer of doing sort of bits of work experience. And then I got a job on the independent as a researcher, which was before the minimum wage officially came in.

But I was being paid below what the minimum wage became shortly afterwards. So it was a, it was being paid a pittance. But, oh, look, there's a whipet. I feel like you'd rather be with a whipet on this wall. Well, see how, see how vigour. that Whippert is walking. Come on, Raymond. Ignored.

Ignored me completely. Oh yeah, so I applied for a job. Got a job on the Independent as a researcher. And it was really, really... It was hard because my boss at the time was very, very demanding. And I had to... I was a researcher on the news analysis page. And, as extraordinary as it sounds now,

there wasn't any internet to research. I had to come up with the top ten. of whatever was the topic of the news analysis. So say it was like the top 10 tourist sites in the UK. And without the internet, you can imagine how hard that was. I'd have to ring round lots of different bodies, rigorously fact check. And it would take me all day to come up with just a top 10 list,

something that can be done now in just a nanosecond. So it was brilliant experience because, you know, that whole business of researching and fact checking, you know, charming, contacts. It was a great grounding but it was a hard six months and it also I could see that if I stayed there I wasn't going to get trained as a reporter so I took a bit of a gamble and went to a trade magazine as a reporter and sort of got trained up in how to sort of work a patch and have a whole load of contacts on media week. I started to really understand what it was to be a

journalist at that point and then got poached back by the independent to be a media business correspondent. So yeah, I think that was quite a turning point. You ended up on the Financial Times and... Raymond's a little speck in the distance waddling up the hill. Come on Raymond, come on, you can do it, yes. And so you ended up going to the Financial Times and I read something in your brilliant book The Ladder, which is not long been out and I absolutely loved it, Cathy. Thank you. It's so brilliant.

There's a bit you mention in the book about just how you were treated sometimes because you were female and young and kind of looked young. Yeah, it was just, it was a very male-dominated environment. And I loved my time on the FT and it was. again brilliant sort of preparation for what I did next and it was and is a paper of such integrity and has such a phenomenal reputation I learnt so much there but it was a very male when I was there not anymore because the editor's female and very very different place now but when I was there initially it was very male dominated and I did get asked

to do the photocopying and you know make the tea just because people assume that I, because I was a woman, I was the kind of office administrator and you know I found out for example that I was getting paid 10 grand less than a guy who I'd actually suggested they hire to fill a job I'd justicated because I'd been promoted and yeah he was going to pay 10 grand more than me even though I was in more senior job so I challenged the editor about that and got the pay rise. But that tells me a lot that you challenged the editor. Yeah, it was one of those moments where I didn't really think of the consequences of, you know, because I think a lot of people would think, oh God, if I,

if I challenge them, will I end up, you know, getting a black mark against my name and I'll be sort of, that will be the end of my career trajectory up the ladder at that particular organisation. So I, you know, I suppose I didn't really think about that. I just sort of did it. And it worked because I got the pay rise overnight and looking back again that was a bit of a turning point for me just thinking if you think you're being treated unfairly or unequally and you've got good grounds to think that I think it's you know it's important to challenge to stand up for yourself have the confidence to do that that shows that you had a lot of inner self-belief I suppose yeah I don't at the time I wouldn't have said I did but I think I was quite stealing

I was determined. I think what I lacked in self-confidence I made up for in determination, really. And I always had, you know, it was that sort of drive that I kind of thought, well, hang on a sec, I'm going to get that pay rise. It wasn't necessarily that I believed I was worth it at that point.

Some would say that's a sign of good parenting, that actually that's the most important thing you can instill in your kids is a sense of self-belief. Yeah, I think I was really lucky. You know, my parents were very, very supportive. And even though I've joked that, you know, I didn't follow science as they had and I, you know, had no interest in being a teacher because I'm far too impatient. You know, they supported me in whatever I wanted to do. It was, the message was very much, yeah, whatever you want to do it, go for it. If you're passionate about it, do it. And I think that is a brilliant message. So many of the women I interview on the ladder have had such a difficult start. art in life and it's so hard to overcome that. I mean they do and it's that's one of the reasons why I find it so inspiring hearing from them is just hearing about you know the extraordinary difficulties people like Angela Rainer overcome or you know Tanny Gray Thompson who's a Paralympic athlete and that you know the stoicism and the determination she showed to overcome her

disabilities when she was growing up you know she dragged herself upstairs on her bum because her dad wouldn't install a stair lift. She had to be in a world that was geared towards people who didn't have her disabilities. Yeah. And we should say this is your brilliant book, The Ladder, and it's kind of inspired by a section that you have regularly on your Times Radio show. Yeah, every week on Friday I do Times Radio. I present the Times Radio Drive show. And it was, it was brilliant because I was given sort of carte blanche what I wanted to, how I wanted to structure the show and one of the things I pitched was a half hour hearing from an amazing woman who's reached the top of their field whatever that might be and it's it's one of my favorite bits of

the show and you know the listeners too from from the feedback we get it's women telling their life stories and there's a sort of smattering of advice as well so there's a bit of a handbook aspect to it like you know this is how this amazing woman overcame the odds to scale the heights and this is how she dodged the snakes and this is how you can too that's the idea of it and one other thing you know because obviously the thing about journalism is loving brilliant stories and so every woman has a brilliant story to tell quite apart from what tips they might have about how to emulate them you interview as you say really interesting women and you kind of elaborate and expand on those chats in this book and you have people as you know it goes from mel see which

was fascinating just talking about just that idea of success and how. Yeah. What is success? Yeah, you think it's going to be, you know, you think it's the whole thing about the climb, isn't it? That you think, oh, I'm at the mountain and you're like, oh, it's not really what I thought it was going to be like. Yeah, I found that really interesting. Because looking at her when she was in Spice Girls, they were hugely successful. They were doing these world tours.

They had these incredibly, you know, chart-topping singles. And yet she was miserable and she was suffering from an eating disorder. her and she talks about that very interestingly about how she had to sort of rediscover what success was and success isn't always getting that job or getting that pay rise or you know reaching the top of your field and I think particularly in midlife you know you have to sort of reassess what do you want out of life you know how do you get that balance and I'm not very good at getting a balance a lot of the time but you know how do you make sure you're there for your family, you're there for your elderly parents and you're present and thriving at work.

It's very hard to get all those things in balance. But I think hearing from someone like Mel C about what success was for her is very interesting. Also, I think a lot of the women I spoke to said, I think this is very true that don't really think about climbing the ladder. For a start, the ladder is not a straightforward route up, one run after the other. it's very often very circuitous. Just think about whether you're enjoying what you're doing now and if you're not, have the courage to make a change.

But again, going back to my parents' message, really, just do something you're passionate about. It's difficult because everybody needs to pay the rent and the rent is very high, you know, wherever you live these days. So I think there's a lot of young people, I go and speak at a lot of schools, a lot of young people are desperately worried, understandably, about how are they going to find a job that enables them to live and live in it decently,

you know, rather than just as a sort of subsistence level. And I think that is hard to marry that up with your passion for something, plus getting a job that pays the rent. So I'm not denying the challenge of that, but I think first and foremost, life is long, your career is long. You've got to be interested in what you're doing. That's what I think. People say life is short.

I say, oh, no, life is long. It's long. You've got to fill it in an interesting way. But yeah, it's interesting because a lot of the women obviously talk about the importance of female networks. And I think that's really true. And certainly when I started out, there just weren't that many women at the top of journalism. And those that were, were there sort of, you know, they'd scrape their way up. And there was a sense that they weren't really going to, as the saying goes, send the elevator back down. But now it's completely different. and there are so many women supporting other women.

So that's really important. But male allies are really important too. And I've benefited from that in my career, the people who are going to give you advice dispassionately, who are going to help, you know, ensure fair play. That's really crucial. I really hope you love part one of this week's Walking the Dog. If you want to hear the second part of our chat,

it'll be out on Thursday. So whatever you do, don't miss it. And remember to subscribe so you can join us on our walks every week.