Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Sara Pascoe

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

Emily takes her Shih-Tzu Raymond out for a stroll with comic Sara Pascoe. They talk about growing up in Essex and dreaming of running away with Take That, her thoughts on love and family and her friendship with Katherine Ryan who named a cat in her honour. She also chats about going on the road for her upcoming 2018 tour LadsLadsLads.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does he like being carried or no? Oh yeah, he loves being carried. He loves ladies. Does he not like men? He likes men, but he's a bit wary of them. Yeah, I think it's right to be wary of them. 88% of murderers, mate. Obviously not all men, but be careful.

This week on Walking the Dog, I took out the hugely successful comedian Sarah Pascoe, and our doggy companion was my shih Tzu, Raymond. Sarah is a passionate animal lover, so I knew Ray would be all over her like a piece of bone marrow. I'd actually met Sarah briefly before through our mutual friend, Catherine Ryan. And I'd always been a fan of her comedy and her really brilliant writing.

But she's the kind of woman you just wish you'd had in your life as a teenager. She's just very smart and funny and so wise. And she's even had a cat named after her. She's that much of an icon, which you can find out all about on this podcast. I'm really looking forward to seeing her show this year, which is called Lads, Ladd's Lads. And it tours around the country from September the 16th,

and runs till November the 28th. And you can find out about tickets and dates on sarah pascoe. I really hope you enjoy our chat. Please rate, review and subscribe on iTunes if you do. That's it from me. Here's Sarah. Sarah, do you want to take Ray or shall I take Ray? Can I take Ray?

Ray, come on. Ray. She'll have to listen to me. It feels bad going, no, stop sniffing. And that's the exact reason that we're here. It's due to enjoy yourself. I know. It's like stopping a boyfriend, checking out of the women.

If they're so obvious that you see them doing it then they deserve to be stopped Oh wow look at that dog he's fast Very fast Oh it's because she's got a really good throwy stick Yeah I should introduce the podcast I feel so relaxed with Sarah Pasco

I just felt like I'm with a friend And I'm just watching to podcast I like it when I hear some preamble Because I feel like I'm getting a little He is fast Sorry we've just encountered the Usain Bolt of Dogs Yeah, so this is walking the dog and I'm with the very wonderful Sarah Pascoe and I'm really excited about this one because I know she's an animal lover.

Yeah. A huge animal lover. So I won't have that thing of taking the dog along and being embarrassed if you misbehaved. Yeah. Because I sort of feel instinctively you'll be all right with it. I will be. Although I always forget that if you have a dog, you have to pick up their poop. Yeah, this is true.

It's a taxi plane. It's a great leveller, even people who have amazing lives with lots of dogs still, have to crash down. I know. Well, this is partly why I think it's really good. It's the Gandhi thing, isn't it, cleaning the toilet? Yeah. Yeah. You don't have a dog, you should say.

No, I don't. I always love dogs. At the university, my sister, I've got a very younger sister and she was very sick, and my mum, every time she was in hospital, would get her another pet. And the pets got bigger and bigger and there was one stage where when she moved on to dogs, she had a king child. Spaniel, she couldn't look after it. So he came to live with me at university. And my mom got her another King Charles Spaniel. She came to live with me at university. So there was a period where I did have dogs. And what was it like having dogs at university is quite interesting because that would have been really special. It was the best because also I went to university in Brighton

so you've got the sea. So it's a really lovely base to university. You've got the downs to walk. And also actually like everyone who has a dog, that thing where it gets you out of the house and you get to experience all different times of day, all different kinds of weather. And you go, What I needed was a walk. What I needed was to look at the sky a bit or see some birds and that's what I think having a dog friend does for you. We walked into a lot of pigeons. Some crows, I love all the crows around here. This part of Finsbury Park, there's hundreds and hundreds of them. Yeah, true. And they're very big and healthy and hoppy.

I actually really like this clothes. Yeah. A couple of months ago they all had their white feathers still. They were still little babies. Yeah. So they're seen as sort of sinister symbols on it. Oh yeah, well all birds are really because they thought they could go to hell and come back. So yeah, there were lots of things, especially like blackbirds. And I like all the birds superstitions. There was ones about swan feathers, about if you wanted someone to love you,

you had to put swan feathers under their pillow. There's loads of birds superstitions. Peacock feathers are very unlucky. Like people who, I still have this thing. You know, once you know a superstition, I'll see someone with peacock feather earrings. I want to go, mate, no. You don't understand what that's doing. And Carriad's mom, when I lived with them...

This is Carriad Lloyd. My best friend, she had a supposition about avocado pits. If you touch an avocado stone with your hands, you'll bear hands, then you won't have any money. And I still can't touch an avocado stone. And also, I've become quite successful since I live with them. And I think it's all like... And I would say to someone, like,

it's not actually anything to do with working hard. It's you don't touch avocado. Eat them, but do not do it with a knife. You flick it out. It's very dangerous. You flick it out with a knife. Don't pick it up. It falls on the floor.

Leave it there. So when you were in Essex, there weren't any pets? So my mum always had pets. We just didn't know how to look after them. So I think part of my loving animals as an adult is guilt. So Christina... That's your sister. So you had two sisters.

Cheryl's 18 months younger than me. So we're very close in age. Christina's seven years younger than me. She became diabetic when she was 12, but she's also insulin resistance. So she had a horrible, horrible teenager. Yeah. And my mum just wanted to make her happy. Christina loves animals so much. So she started up with like rats and rabbits and terrapins. But Christina- You kept rats?

Christina did, yeah. Then it got to cats and my mum didn't realize she had to keep cats in for a bit before you let them out. So they just always left. I remember her once getting out of the car with two cats who ran in opposite directions and we never saw them again. So you go over here, which way? So we probably went through 10 cats and then she moved on to dogs and so Christina had two King Charles Spaniels and then she got a Dalmatian and then that's when it was like- Yeah, so these are the dogs that you got took to Sussex.

Yeah, the King Charles Spaniels. And now Christina just has, what does she have? Now she has two cats and two children. So it's much more reasonable. And your mum, I read your book, Animal, which I want to talk about as well, because I loved it so much. And it was one of those books. I thought, I felt, I loved it, but I felt really sad that it wasn't around when I was younger. Because I thought, God, if I'd have read this, it just would have made so much sense of everything to me.

But I got a really vivid sense of your childhood and your mum is called Gail. And did she, she was a single parent, wasn't she? And she was very young as well. So I think the other thing with my mum is, so she had me at 19. So when my mum was 25, she had three children by herself. And it was only when I got to those ages

that I really realised, oh, I had huge expectations for someone who was a child herself. Yeah. And your mum's backstory, I am fascinated by because your dad was a musician, wasn't it? Yeah, so he was in a pop band. So he was a singer of a band called Flintlock and my mum was 14 and I think at a stage of her life. So she's still got all these scrapbooks so it was something we were really aware of growing up.

I didn't really know that wasn't how everyone's parents had met. But when she was 14 she moved out of home and part of the fun thing that she liked to do when she had money, her and her and her friends would go and sit outside my dad's house or they'd go and see a recording of their TV show and they'd wait outside and There's all these polarites of my mum looking very unhappy, 15 with a big bowl haircut, next to my dad, who was 18 or 19. And by the way, I'm following you? Oh, are you? So let's go, let's walk around, and then we'll go around the pond.

Okay. And so your mom was essentially a, I mean, she was a fan? She was a fan. Yeah. And then, but my dad, I think, oh, there's lots of versions of the story, some of them more glib than others, but essentially my dad left the band. My dad was very unhappy. And again, very, very young to have had kind of a bit of a taste of face.

and realised it definitely wasn't for him. And basically they went out on a date. He, she loved him, like loved him forever and ever and ever. And he maybe felt sorry for her or maybe saw something special. But anyway, they got pregnant very quickly, accidentally, with a child, which was me, which my dad definitely didn't want, which was also a very fun part of our family narrative. Because as a child, I found that very upsetting, that detail,

that I'd come along and ruined my parents' lives. And were they quite open about that, they would say... Yes. But my mum in general is, and it wasn't that she wanted me to hate my dad, she wanted me to understand how loved I was now. And so her story, the story with my dad was, and he didn't want you, but the second he held you, I've never seen him look so happy. That was the story, but as a child I held onto, I wasn't wanted. Of course.

These teenagers who brought me to existence, yeah. The review, the person on Twitter that says, I didn't used to be a fan of yours, but I like this show. Of course, all you all remember is they're not a fan of mine. I know. Well, I've looked into, well, so this is very interesting. In terms of evolution, we have no need to learn from positivity. It's not dangerous.

We don't need to learn from good things. We do need to learn from bad things. And so the fact is, if you go to an area of the woods and coconuts fall off the tree into your head, you need to remember that pain. And it needs to be visceral, not only in terms of you remember it forever. And I think we have things like that psychologically as well as physically. where we need everyone to like us, otherwise socially we're not safe. So someone's saying, and also it can be so mild, can't it?

We're also ever sensitive. It doesn't even need to be, I didn't used to like you. It can be the bit I liked was, and all you hear is, so you didn't like the rest, all of those kind of things. And store it away for several years. Yeah, I mean, everyone can quote their worst reviews. Like word for word, seared, seared into your brain. Do you think some people that you come across in the industry in comedy, do you think some people are more Teflon about it and some are more sensitive?

Or do you think it's just a general? I think it's exactly the same as the world at large and that people have very, very different coping mechanisms and we reinforce different things. I think there are people who really do enjoy not being liked or being divisive and it's genuine. They're not faking it. Like it feeds them. So like a Katie Hopkins.

Oh yeah, so contrary people. I was thinking about, I had to do a guardian interview this morning. They said, what person do you despise the most? And I actually couldn't think of anyone. I thought I should say something like Jeremy Hunt or Katie Hopkins. And then I started thinking about Katie Hopkins going, you just, whatever's happening, you just stand in the opposite direction and face it and say the opposite. And it's so it's an algorithm.

It's not even genuine. It's as disingenuous as someone who just does like, what's that, virtue signaling. Yeah, yeah. It's just the opposite of it. So you go, she doesn't mean a single thing. And sometimes it must be so boring to just go, okay, you're all doing me too, so I'm going to say. I love it if she was secretly a real philanthropist and quite left wing. Well, she's probably, I bet you she's fascinating at dinner parties, or at least I hope so.

Because just occasionally you go, wow, actually I hadn't thought of it that way, you're right. But why did I get into that? Oh, no. So I'm just talking about your parents, actually. Oh, yes, yeah. About your dad. Yes. How is it about you not being wanting?

Yeah. It's possibly the most insensitive thing I've ever said. Oh, no, it's not insensitive. but no, there was a sense of them. So my parents were very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very very, very very grateful now. But there was a times in my childhood where I wished I had been, I didn't want to know stuff. It's like, oh, stop talking to me, like, I understand your divorce, I'm seven, like, kind of that kind of stuff. My mum didn't have friends.

So from 14 she was kind of chasing my dad round and living with her dad And then she just started working as soon as she had me She just worked and worked and worked So she's never had social she didn't have people to talk to is the thing So she had her children to talk to Yeah, so I think that's a big part of it When you were at school and things Were you, I've read what you said about this

And it's interesting that you've, the picture I get as if someone You were quite an activist and quite Yeah, I think there's something about the morality the unwavering morality of a 13 to 17 year old girl that I think they should run for the world. I now am so middle ground equivocating. There's probably another side to it. Whereas I wasn't then.

I was like, bang, I know this is wrong. And it should stop. And yeah, like a vigilante. So what sort of things did you do? I mean, were you reading? So some of it was feminism. Like I can imagine you doing the Germain Greer at sort of 12 or something.

Yeah. My mum had been bought, Germain, my mum had been bought our bodies ourselves by a boyfriend. And I'd read that, but there, Germain Greer, female eunuch I read at a 13. And I definitely, definitely didn't understand huge swathes of it, but a lot of it did speak to me. And then what I had, which I actually probably, I think, still have on some level is that thing where you're trying to repeat what someone else has said, that you really believe that you don't have the language, so you just kind of cry with rage, that kind of thing. And I remember the other day, like fighting a boy, I used to fight. a lot of school and then fighting a boy who in drama had called me a prostitute.

And it's interesting because my book I'm writing now is about sex work. And I had so many levels that I was angry with him using that word and part of it was about, I knew it was a term of denigration towards me, but also I was very angry with him to use that term. Yeah. Because that then is saying that that's a bad thing to be in general. It's a little stigma attached to that word. Because I think that's quite unusual at that age. I couldn't verbalise any of those things.

I knew he was being, I knew it was an act of aggression towards me and women in general was the thing. But then it just ended up with like, yeah, peanutting a boy. Because there was a thing at school where boys couldn't hit girls. Oh, bless you, it's hot, isn't it? Very hot. I don't know. Does he like being carried or no? Oh yeah, he loves being carried, he loves ladies.

Do you not like men? He likes men, but he's a bit wary of them. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's right to be wary of them. 88% of murderers mate. Be careful. I'm not, and I'm obviously not all men,

but be careful. Yeah, so, and did you see your dad throughout this period? Was he sort of, an erratic presence? It all has such a happy ending because... Oh, this is nice as there, isn't a bit shengy. Oh, this is very cool.

Should we go here? Yeah. You can sit here. So now, when my sister started having children, so Cheryl had Rosa maybe seven or eight years ago. Yeah. My parents made up.

and not just like made up as in that civil, but the first time they were in the same room, all of us, me and my sisters, it was the, it was the strangest thing because you actually want to go back to, it's about 13 or 14 and go,

don't worry, it's going to be fine. It's just all of these things take a long time to heal. Now that they were together, Christina got married last year, my mum gave her away. She didn't want my dad to give her away, but my dad came over and was such an important part of the day with his wife,

and it's just so amazing. So they've resolved, so that's all... Yes, yeah. So it's a real happy ending, but yes, there was a long period. This is what I would say is like, anyone's heartbreak is really, really hard. I can't imagine heartbreak and children and divorce.

And my dad, my dad didn't help matters. Number one, he's a jazz musician, so he's travelled all over the world and he needed to dedicate for himself and his sanity. He needs to dedicate himself to his music. But, like, he never, ever helped my mum at all. Like, he never ever gave child. maintenance and my mom everything was so solidly on my mom and so there was a period of time

where we would see my dad if he was in England we'd see him periodically but even that was quite hard because we felt very very guilty when we saw our dad's and we definitely yeah to our mom yes to our mom and we absolutely knew where our alliance our allegiance was supposed to be and my mom would quite often say she didn't it's hard because he would do fun things with us and she would say but that's what's unfair is that I do all of the boring stuff and I clothe you and I do these things and I do these things and then your dad gets to take you bowling. I'm kind of with her. Yeah, no, no, she's absolutely right, and we knew she was right.

And actually, I think, it's so interesting, I follow Fathers for Justice on Twitter. And so some of what they do is really problematic. I think there should be spaces where, aside from parents and what's going on with them, I think it's so easy for parents to use children as cruelty. And I think in the majority of cases, children need access to both of their parents.

I wish there was a better way of supporting that. So that dads and mothers who do not speak to each other at all, they still know the children are looked after there and they're in an environment with other. And there's fun things to do. And I don't know how you, just a big bowling alley that's kind of funded and. It's difficult that, isn't it? It's really difficult. It does fall. Yeah, it's a good, bad cop thing, I suppose.

But it does sound like you've got a healthy relationship. You don't sound like you have any residual. resentment towards your dad for leaving, which is something that I think you really do need to resolve for your relationships and your happiness. I think also I think for adulthood, I think when I look at people who are still very upset about parental things, even from mid-20s, I thought, oh, you have this arrested development unless you see your parents as people. And that's what the forgiveness process is, is going, oh, I see you made that decision

for that. Or my parents didn't love each other anymore. or my mum loved my dad and my dad didn't love my mother and that's nothing to do with loving me. Went after university, so I was about 24, I went to stay with him in Australia for three months and that was our process of becoming friends, which is what we are now, yeah.

And actually the other thing is I'm a comedian and it's my job and I know that I wouldn't be that unless I had seen my dad and how my dad... I knew that it was a possibility. You didn't have to be rich to do something that you liked. My dad's not rich, but he plays... saxophone every day and that's the thing that made him happy and having that as an example in a parent if my dad had quit to work in a fast food restaurant or a supermarket to make sure that he gave

money to my mom i wouldn't have had that message i'd have had a message of going you do the responsible and the right thing i was going to ask you about that so you had the sense of um you didn't you didn't think at a young age i'm going to be a performer and was that because of your dad or did you know you were there you were slightly an outwe I think I knew from really young, but same with Cheryl, that we just wanted everyone in a room to look at us. And so when I was really young, I was much more of a show-off. I wasn't shy. When I was very young, I wanted to be a model, which is very embarrassing, because in all of the family photos, I'm standing like legs of stride with my head back and my hair flowing.

And I was blissfully just, and I tried to dress really creatively, lots of skirts and trousers at the same time. I did tie-dying my own clothes with bleach, with toilet bleach. And my mum, I thought that I used to customise all these clothes. My poor mother, and my mum would say that the washing machine had eaten them. My mum would tell me that if you disintegrated something slightly by cutting holes in it or putting bleach on it, then the machine just, it dissolved as only as an adult. She was throwing these clothes away because her thing was,

I'm a single parent with three children, and everyone thinks, oh, they're going to be badly behaved and badly turned out. And I was cutting my clothes up and covering them with bleach, and she just couldn't bear it. And so Cheryl and I used to do assemblies at school. And Cheryl's a teacher now and she says it's really funny because I see pupils that are like us and I really like them. As in because they really, they want to be involved and they're very interested and it's actually a relief as a teacher. But we were just like, sorry, Miss, we're going to do a version of Oliver next week.

So can you put like, oh, and sometimes I used to did didactic assemblies about, yeah, about war. It's very anti-war as a child, very anti-war. Trying to make sure everyone else at my school knew my feelings. war and theft. You imagine they're probably not all... They hated me. But I didn't care. I didn't care because I was just like,

as long as they're looking this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess I had some... So I think everyone's confidence. This is what I think about childhood as well. I think as long as the very, very beginning bit, you feel very secure and very loved. Yeah.

Then I think you have an inner core that's very resilient. And on top of that, you have layers and layers of because of peers and adulthood and adolescence and heartbreak. But that's all on top of something. I think if your very centre bit is strong, you can kind of weather anything. Going to university, that was a bit later, wasn't it?

Yes. You left home when you were 18. I had to. My mum, the rule was you had to leave when you were 18. Did you have a conversation about that? Or did you, was it just unspoken? We heard it throughout our childhood until you're 18. Until you're 18.

And then you're gone. Also, when I was 18, she moved. She moved from Rompford to the countryside. So Cheryl stayed for two years and then she moved at 18 as well. I knew I couldn't live there. She moved to somewhere called Tip Tree. They make jam there. And where did you go then?

You were 18. How did you have money? Oh, the Millennium Dome. Yes. So I worked at the Millennium Dome. So I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky. Basically.

You know what I love about that? You'll never be able to lie about your age. Not that you've seen the type that would when you get older because it's so places you. Yes. Absolutely. Aides me. There's a guy called Andy Day.

He's now a C. Beebe's presenter. So he does like these programs of dinosaurs. and he's this really, but he was one of my best friends from college. I was working in a bar and one night, I was like sweeping the floor. He knocked the thing and go to Manpower tomorrow, the Millennium Doma hiring. And is Manpower like a Tempe? Yeah, a Tempe agency. So I went to Manpower, I did an interview to go and work at the Millennium Dome in ticketing.

And when I was on ticketing in the first month, I saw people were coming through and asking about where the auditions were and I realised that there were auditions for actors to be character work in the zones. So what did you do with the Millennium? So what happened? And it probably is the best job I'll ever have. He must have paid something like whatever equity minimum was, which to me was a huge amount of money.

Let's say it's £280 off before tax. Like it was a huge amount of money. Five days a week, but it's an hour, one hour off. So you only ever worked four hours a day, but you were there for eight hours. And you put on a costume and you just improvised. So there were lots of cues. And you might be an alien or like a school girl

running through an orchard, showing people what to look at. Or there was a referee played on the biggest ever football, what's table football thing? And you had a whistle and you timed it and you were just to do stuff. And then there was a money man who wasn't really a character, but you just had to stand next to a million pounds

and everyone had different money men. So it's interesting that a lot of people would have, that's their idea of hell. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yes. And that you obviously, it sounds like you enjoyed it.

Well, I was very scared about lots of things. I was very scared about interacting with the public. But then I would get this, I guess it's physiological rewards, I would get this hit of, this is what I'm supposed to be doing and I'm onto something. And I had just started smoking when I was 18. I remember having these like B&Hs, looking at the Thames going, it's all going to be all right, Pasco. Like I had this real sense of being where I belonged. That was my first, it was adulthood.

So I lived in a house with 11 people in Leighton Stone. We had mice and rats and it was very cheap. You were used to that with your sister's pets. Yes, yes. That's it. I do really like mice actually. Sorry, they're not the worst. Some people can't bear them.

But they would keep you up at night, like if they got stuck in a bin or something. The kind of place, I couldn't live now, but it was lovely then. And so were you think, was there a plan? Were you thinking, you know how you secretly, sometimes you don't admit those things to other people, do you? You just think, I would like to do this, but I'm too embarrassed, admit that I want to do it.

Was there a sense? Did you think I want to be a comic or an actress? Never ever comic, it was always actress. A comedy, up until 2007, when I started doing it, I despised. I thought it was such a, I guess, also I hadn't seen very much of it. Actually, I didn't despise it. I'd seen the stand-up that I'd liked, I liked Harry Hill, who I saw my 18th birthday. I was taken, and I'd never heard of him.

I liked him, and I had seen, like, Billy Connolly on television, I thought he was improvising, and Jack D. He kind of existed as, I think he was probably, the most famous comic in my childhood. But I thought they were all improvising. But comedy in general, actually I would have said it's very, very, it's hateful. I'd have said it's very sexist. It's very horrible to old people.

It's very homophobic. Everything I'd seen of comedy, which wasn't a lot, I judged it as like, oh, it's for children. It's for children at the back of the bus, but they're old men now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I desperately wanted to be an actor. and I really had this drive of like one day everyone will see so I guess that's what I had at a millennium German all of those times was that that sense of being in the right place

I was like okay you're working towards something I get the sense of you being slightly yeah a bit of an outlier at school as well yes I think what had happened was that qualities that I had in primary school that teachers used to say oh did you get dressed in the dark There were all these jokes around me, but when I went to secondary school, I was called weird, and it's, I'm much softer now looking back on myself because I can see how that child became me,

and I feel fine about it, but there was a period of time where that was the worst thing, and I hated it, and also I didn't know what I was doing that was considered weird. I thought I was being completely typical and didn't understand why these reactions, whereas now I look back, or I'll describe something, like, oh, even to Carriad, a lot of our friendship was me going,

and then I did this, and then I'd be like, No wonder everyone hated you. But I just didn't have a different, I didn't know how to do it differently. And also it sounds to you very, in very good stead in terms of being a stand-up and having something, or being an individual even as an adult, isn't it?

And it's such a cliche. You know the thing when you talk to anyone who's still at school or college, going, oh, popular people, they're not interesting adults. It's just, it's really sad. I'm sorry if you're popular, but it's just, you're so dull.

Everything that you think is, a negative thing about you, such a strength later, yeah, but it's, and it's so hard because it doesn't take away any of your misery when you go through the school gates. My school, my secondary school gains, I asked them if they wanted me to come back. And I was doing a project where I had to do like outreach things and it's for the London Word Festival. One of them, I wrote back to my school and said, oh, hey, I was very unhappy at school, but now I'm really happy and I'd really love to come in and do a workshop with the year 11, just some drama workshops. Was there an element of you wanting to sort of

as a sort of cleansing exercise in a way. Yes. I wanted to be able to say to the literal children who were me, yeah, but no one tells you not to worry, to reassure you, this isn't life. They want you to think this is life, it's not. And there's this future and the school said, no, thank you. It sounds very disruptive. They didn't want any more assemblies from Pasco. Actually, I'm a television person now, and I'd love to.

to come in and Dane and you know they're like nope no thank you I love that I hope you said well you know disruptive you probably don't understand the way that was used now and it's actually very positive but you see I see you when you talk about not being popular and all that sort of stuff and one of those conventional girls if you like at school but I think you is very conventionally sort of beautiful and I think was that So it's a nice thing to say, I think this is the other thing about being a teenage girl. I have no idea what it's like to be a teenage boy. So it isn't me saying that men don't have these same things, just they can go through them.

Yeah. It's that thing that lots of women must have, whenever you look at pictures of old you, and you go, I was so young and I was so thin. And you just spend your life getting older and fatter, wishing you'd been happy before. And there's a thing, like, I absolutely, absolutely felt so disgustingly ugly. And I wasn't particularly, it's not like my parents called me ugly. My mom would have said that I was beautiful. She definitely tried to tell me I was beautiful, but at school, I was called names, but I think all girls are, and all girls call each other names.

And actually, it's not me saying even that I was, that I didn't do that to other people, because I bet I did. You know how to hurt people's feelings. Yeah. I felt very, very fat and very, like, I made my own skin crawl with how disgusting I thought I was. I didn't have, like, makeup or I cut my own hair and things like that, but also, like, I bleached my eyebrows when I was 14. because I started bleaching my hair and it was that awful orangey colour that you get out of a box

when you bleach your own hair and it was all like dry like straw and also I'd miss patches like I'd just done it very badly and then my friend Haley said that I should use Jolene on my eyebrows because it looked really weird

that I had... Can I just say? Haley? Haley, yeah. And so I bleached them and then they're completely white and you couldn't see them and then everyone called me eyebrows

or say everyone, like some people called me eyebrows and I felt so ashamed and then I got roots on my eyebrows as they grew back in. And it was things like that. I used to shave my face and my arms, which now... I've got a very downy face, facial hair, like I'm covered in, and I'm like a peach, which is fine.

And I now know that that's one of the variants of women, but at the time I hated it so much. I would shave all my side burns off, and then they would grow back and be stubbly. I remember my uncle Trevor, one of my aunt's husband, very kindly just kind of stroking my face and saying, stop doing it. They're dancing. It's just the nicest thing.

What was it called? We should explain, Sarah. You explain what's going on. Well, there's a group of children. It doesn't seem to be very educational. And it is a school day, so I'm going to complain to the council. I'd go so fast to call that disruptive. They're having some kind of PE lesson,

but I don't know what that cool dance is called off the internet. Is it like it's the cellar take, the weaving one? Yeah. And they go in and out. And now they're doing press-ups. And this is a very, very multicultural class, which also I love. It's like Benetan would love to have this as an advert for them. It's incredible.

It's such a lovely site. We should actually say, I don't know if I even said where we were. So we're in Finsbury Park. We're in Finsbury Park, which is really lovely. Listen, you can hear them singing now. You sound like you sort of, you blossomed suddenly, didn't you? Because you had this weird period where things could have very much gone one way. Well, I think is, so I was very, very lucky that, even though I hated school, I was very unhappy at school,

I went to a sixth form college, which was lots and lots of schools of favouring. And suddenly, I was just in a group of 100 people who loved. loved drama and loved as in not just emotional drama like plays and musicals and there were so many of us and that's where I made so many friends and suddenly being weird was this incredible currency like the coolest girl at my college wore a tiara and my thing was that I wore children's clothes yeah we all had these little tiny things and and suddenly they were you were appreciated for them yeah and so while I didn't flourish I then did realize okay this is adulthood yeah and

and school once it's done and you never have to go back. Is that Robbie Williams thing true, by the way, about it? Yeah. Because I thought my destiny was to do what my mum had done, which is like stalk a pop star down and marry him. So we, yeah, we're at 14 when he left, take that. Cheryl and I ran away to meet him at the big breakfast. And again, that's very confident. And also now I see it 14 ago, we were so young,

but we thought we could live by a canal in Stratford. You're just like, yeah, we'll just do this now. I love it. And then when I worked with his dad in 2001... This is Robbie Williams' dad, yeah. Pete Conway. And I thought, when I did this audition and they said, we're actually, we're looking for singers for two.

One of the hotels used to be Noel Edmund's house party location. I remember getting tingles. Oh, Crinkly Bottom. Yeah, I'm so close. I'm so close to Stardom. The house, the house that was in Noel Edwin's House party. It was so easily. Yeah, I was.

I said, and then they said, and the other one is doing a backing singer for Robbie Williams's dad, Pete Conway. And I was like, that one. So you were, well, you were the backing singer for Robbie Williams' dad? And I remember it was in Haven't, the audition, and I was waiting for a bus. It's before mobile phones or I definitely didn't have a phone. And I just remember being, like, I was buzzing. I was just like, it was like I was coming up on this thing,

but I couldn't tell anyone yet. Like, you don't understand, I've got this job. I'm going to pay £100 a week to sing with Robbie Williams' dad. And then when I got to the hotel, they were like Robbie Williams came in a helicopter once a news. Even though, like, rumours go round. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's met him? And I really thought, this is it.

I'm glad you abandoned that plan and picturing yourself to a pop star. You think of abandoned that plan? This is called a long game. This is called a long game. I'm going to marry all five of them. I had this thing. I think they'd be more grateful now. No, they wouldn't.

This is how Carriads and I used to talk. I remember when I very first started doing stand-up, I'd started watching The Mighty Bush, and I hadn't really watched any comedy ever, but to see something which I thought was so clever, and I just didn't realise really that adults could have fun and be silly. Yeah, so you thought they had to be, and also it's that sense of, I know it means, especially when I was a girl, because I'm a generation older and it's, I saw comedy of sort of Bob Monkhouse in a dinner suit, that it was an after-dinner speaker thing. Yeah, yeah, that's it, moaning about your mother-in-law and then to be

And I just, I thought, I thought Mighty Boosh was so incredible. And I'd always just to say to Carriott, when we would watch them, I'm not meeting them as a fan, I'm meeting them as an equal. I don't want to meet them until. And then I remember doing something, must be like, never mind the buzzcocks with Noll, and meeting him in makeup, but it being so disappointing that he wasn't like, hello, my equal, let's be best friends. Yes, it's that sense that, well, I've thought about you for so long.

Well, that's it. And Carriad did QI with Noll, and it's the same thing. we both kind of go, we actually both ignore him because we can't ever say you don't understand what you represent to us. And part of me inside is still screaming, going, let's freak out about this. It's like being mad, like you made a thing happen. But we used to walk around Camden in certain outfits

waiting for fielding to around the corner and go, they're my people. My birthday's the day after him. And I remember thinking, we'll have joint parties. We'll have joint parties, won't we? You know when you watch people on talent shows going, I've always known I wanted to be this, or I always wanted this.

when it actually happens, when there's situations like, when I left university, Carrie Ed and I went to watch QI being filmed because we had no money. It was very cheap thing to do. And we watched Stephen Frye and who was on there, one of the Reeves and Mortimer, Vic Reeves was on it. And I remember really clearly them doing the pickups and Stephen Fry having to correct facts and be thinking, well, he doesn't just know it all. There's something in his ear.

And then when you sit on that show, it's like you've gone mad. It's like you've got this dissonance. We go, I've wished something so much I made it happen. I'm inside the television. and must be an award somewhere, talking to the wall, going, well, Stephen, here's a thing I know about, because, and then you go, then it gives you this thing of like, oh, you start saying to me, if you believe something enough, you can make it happen, which I don't think is true,

but it feels that way if it did happen. Does that make sense? I agree with you, I don't think it's true, but it's interesting, because I was chatting to Robbrien the other day, and he talks about, you know, he's a lot of luck, Emily, a lot of luck. Yeah. And then when you look at his story, you realize, well, there was a, you know, oh well if Steve Coogan got this tape.

I said a tape that you'd made and spent money on and carried around every day in your bag with you and had the guts to hand it over. Do you know what I mean? Also I think so part of the luck is who you are. So my sister Cheryl's much more talented than me and I say that generously now and I couldn't have told you that for 10 years ago

it still hurt too much. But we did drama together all the time. Cheryl's the naturally talented one and my auntie Juliet at once thought she was being very kind and she said to me, Sarah, it's a really difficult industry and you just cry too much. You cry all the time. And because the thing was that Cheryl was confident and brave and I was too fragile.

But actually the truth of our characters is, is I could take rejection. I was never a golden child. I expected to be told no. And I was like, then I'll come back harder and I'll work. So that attitude is the lucky thing. Carrez and I went to see Rob Biden. He was doing a chat show where he interviewed couples. Ray's going into the children's playground.

No. You're not a child. You're a dog. And I asked a question. It was to Eureka Johnson and her husband at the time. And Rob Brydon came up and he said, what's your name? And I said, what's your surname? And I didn't want to say.

And he said, you're on the run from the tax man. And I still remember it now. And I've never told him that. I went to see a recording of his show. And now I get to like hang around with him. Would I like to you? I know. What's down here?

It's definitely, I'm a movie theatre. It's a picnic and player. I think we should go here. Lovely. Going into comedy, did you have that sort of, you know, we've established that you thought, you know, you liked attention, I suppose. Yeah, so I think lots and lots of things I did in my life, like working at Lennium Dome or doing tour guiding and things that I didn't know at the time, but they were feeding into, they were giving me a skill set that would help.

But the other thing that is fortunate is I didn't want to be a comedian, I wanted to be an actor. Comedy was like a way of stopping me atrophy. Well, I'm mostly comedy. I don't really ever have time for acting. And also, I've got that thing because I do it so rarely when I do, I'm like, oh, this is shockingly bad. Oh, no. You can't think that. Do you feel like you're lying?

When you're in W1A, you must be really proud of that. No, no, because I only ever go in for a day and then just get paranoia. That's what happens. Actors paranoia because they go, okay, moving on to the next scene. And you go, stop! But that was absolutely shocking and every single take. We can't move on. After you graduated, Sarah, did you just think, was that when you decided to do comedy?

No, so there's a show called News Review in Little Venice, and I was doing that as an acting job. And so what it is is you do four shows a week, but you kind of write and rehearse it, and it's satirical, and you change about a quarter of the show every day. When I first saw it, I thought it was the best thing I had ever seen. I couldn't believe it. They changed the words of songs to make them about current events. And I just thought it was absolutely genius.

And you do multi, you all wear black, and then you kind of do multi- Hello, I'm Tony Blair. And then there's just all of that kind of stuff. and I thought it was amazing. And then I auditioned for that, and I knew the director, and that's why I got it. And in my cast, there was a stand-up comedian who I fell very in love with.

And I fell very in love with him. He did stand-up, and I used to go and watch his gigs, and he... I'd never... I just never seen live comedy. I think maybe I once went to jonglers and saw a ventriloquist with my mum, but these were just...

It was just guys with pads in their hands, sort of making jokes about the fact their jokes weren't very good. And I was like, oh, I can do that. do that is absolutely rubbish and so when I broke up with that boy I had that really like white hot energy you get when your heart broken where actually you could do sorry Ray's just I'm so sorry right he's just sorry about he thinks that's a Chris Picnic or for him so yes so the heartbreak thing yeah and you suddenly think and I think it's a bit like you've got some cut isn't it's like right

I'll show you and also I think you get to that point where you can if you do write you do write lots and lots and or if you play guitar your heart broken you end up playing guitar 12 hours a day and and so for me I found this thing that you can just do like compared to acting stand up you just call a number in time out what used to be and then you just say can I have five minutes and they would say I think we've come to this is a dead end I think we should go back to this way well can we get through that way oh here go I found it okay she's found it I thought it was shut off it would have been quite fun to go now we just live here A strip of the park.

And so I did stand up for years before I ever thought it was my proper job. Which was good because then I didn't ever get too hung up on. And I tried lots of things. I was very experimental early on, which I think is really good. For years I was doing an Nol Fielding impression. I desperately wanted to be a female Null Fielding. And then someone said, oh, you really sound like Null Fielding. I thought that was a huge compliment.

I now realised they were trying to go, it's really clear what you're doing. I remember seeing you at Edinburgh I think it would have been your your history one it was 2014 I think because I was up there doing the radio show with Frank Skinner used to do it up there

you were I think you were nominated for the foster set year or there was this huge bars and I've got something really embarrassing to tell you and I think it probably shows me in a really bad light and how old-fashioned and entrenched my views were

that I remember seeing posters of you in Edinburgh. I remember people talking about you a lot and David Badeal, I think, was a fan of yours and was talking about you. I met David and Frank at the same time. What's crazy about comedy is you meet your heroes really early. If you're in your first few weeks of stand-up, you don't get to support the Rolling Stones, but stand-up sometimes you do.

You're on the same feel or you're the open spot or just you're talking in Edinburgh. So I remember chatting to both of them and wanting to pinch myself going, like, they're normal people who ask questions back. But it was weird because I can remember looking, at these posters and it's just so cringe and embarrassing that I thought this, I thought, why is she a stand-up? She's so beautiful. She could be a model of an actress. Isn't that awful?

So that I thought, you're too beautiful. And it was like it shocked me. Yeah. And I'm very ashamed of that now. And I think it's useful to acknowledge that I didn't think it for long. I think it was a brief thing. And it was almost that idea that, but I can't believe she's bothered to develop all this brilliance as well. when she just had a free pass and could have, you know. It's so strange because I, once someone said to me, it was like a director guy, and he said, you, who used to do stand-up as well,

and he said, you couldn't do stand-up because you have to have a thing that you say when you go on, that you have to be able to go like, oh, I'm so fat this, or I'm so old this, or I've got a big hooked nose, this. And I remember thinking, as he said it, but I can just go, like, oh, God, I'm so disgusting. Actually, when you're a woman,

I've seen lots of women who are new, you do have this urge at the beginning to go, like, oh, how dare I? Well, you know, it's interesting because I can remember, I check myself because of women of your generation, which is really important, I think, because I'm much more conscious of that now. So, yeah, so then it just sort of felt like, I mean, to me, to the outsider, it was like, right, your career just was hugely successful. And it was all quite quick that comedy thing, but maybe it didn't feel like.

I think it's very, very quick. Now, there's one of the things is that in terms of representation in comedy, the time I started, which is just over 10 years ago, maybe 11 years, There was absolutely a boom in terms of channels and radio shows, and basically they realised that comedy was really cheap television or cheap to produce, and that they needed to have women on there. So I'm one of quite a small band of people, but still a band,

let's say there's eight of us who had, there was lots and lots of work, which is really great in one sense, because you go, oh, suddenly there are more women than there were. But the other sense of that is that that also then filled the quota, so it needs to continue happening. It can't be the same women doing these things, and then them going, we can go to that pool of eight or ten and people get annoyed, so they go,

why are you on everything? And he go, well, yeah, because comedy is actually not very good at introducing young people or believing in them. Do you see kind of panel shows and stuff like that, though? Do you see that as a sort of necessary evil to promote your... Well, no, so I really enjoy them. I really enjoy them.

I know some people don't. And I know that some people don't like watching them, which is also fine. Like, I don't think... Dylan Moran says some stuff the other day, and it's like, yeah, I don't think they're made for you. I don't think they're... I don't think Bill Hicks was alive.

He'd be going, just get me that booking on Wood I to you. Like, but actually when you're there. Which is a great show by the way. Yeah, it was a great hit. And you told a brilliant story on that about you're going to. Costa Rica. Yeah. And people are, whenever they go to Costa Rica or Spain, I get a little tweet from me.

We should say what you did. You basically had, I call it your heartbreak holiday. Well, that's it. So I was, I was filming something for two days. And on one of the breaks, we were filming in Lewisham and I was living in a travel lodge. And I just moved out of, I basically, I bought a house of Mike's boyfriend. and moved out of it. Basically, everything was there.

And it was Christmas was coming up. And then I just thought, I'm just going to go somewhere and do one of those lovely spiritual retreat. And I went on this yoga website. And when I saw Costa Rica, I just thought, oh yeah, Costa Rica in Spain. Like Costa Brava, Costa Rica. Like, I just, in my head.

And so I was just crying on an iPhone in a half hour break with like a catering plate. And that's like, that's it. I'm going to go for 10 days. Costa Rica, it'll be a bit warmer than this. I'll just be away. I didn't think anything of it. until I got onto a plane and they said that it was 14 and a half hour flight.

And I just remember thinking that's too long to get to Spain. And then looking at this little aeroplane going, was it going to America? Has the plane going to America? So yeah, so I, your book, Animal, I absolutely loved. And I was saying to you earlier, I think I loved it so much because I just felt, I wish I'd had a book that made sense of things, sort of the physiology. And there's a brain chemistry behind things. because you talk a lot in it about things like jealousy.

You say that you are jealous or you suffered from jealousy. And you explain why that is. And all of that and just that need to bond with men. One of my favourite bits in your book is there's a bit when you admit to your then boyfriend. You say something like, you know, it's all going well. Yeah. And then you say something to him and you're sort of curled off in bed and you say, please don't ever leave me.

Promise you never leave me. Yeah. And he responds like a reasonable person. Not rationally. He was, he was such a rationalable boy. And it also wasn't that he didn't, what he was trying to say. And exactly actually the kind of thing my dad would say is that he said that's not the kind of thing you can promise someone. And it's that thing that's like, I guess I'd show him so much insecurity at that moment.

Sometimes you just want a salve, you just want, that's why, that's when you get married. Because you're promising a thing that people can't promise each other. You don't know, I don't think you can promise that stuff. But in there, there are moments where you go, I feel so much, I'm so unsafe. safe. Yeah, yeah. Please just calm me for a second or let's just believe that for a second. But I related very strongly to that.

Yeah. And I've found in relationships I've often been, like I've had one ex-boy who's said quite, he used to laugh and said, oh, poker face laying a card's on the table all the time. Like I'd say, what do you like about me? Yeah. And you think actually, I always trace that back to my, an absent father and all that sort of stuff. Yes.

But reading that book, even sort of recently, I should say, say, I found that really helpful. Yeah. Because it's sort of like, well, this is, there's actually a physical reason behind this. I think what's helpful is sometimes going, because the way the human mind works is if you feel something, you're attached narrative. So it's like if you're in therapy, you go, I feel like this. And then you can spend, well, why is that?

And this is from my past or this is the way that person looked at me or spoke to me and all those kind of things. Well, sometimes it's just, well, rejection socially makes you get cortisol in your system. When you've got cortical in the system, you don't feel very safe. It's a stress hormone. and you're looking around for predators all the time, and I find that calms me down to go, stop thinking it's a big story.

You're a mammal with a limbic system. Certain stuff makes you like people. It's how you say chunk fendron. You're like, I've just spoke out with my partner. It's your limbic system. Calm down. Let Sarah come around and give you one of her limbic system chat. Gather by the fireside.

Yeah. But no, I genuinely would like you to give me one of your limbic system chat. But it doesn't calm everything down. I think especially maybe, for lots of people, the hardest thing we go through is grief of losing someone, and sometimes that's losing someone who hasn't died, but they don't want us in their lives anymore, or we can't have them in our lives.

And it's such a physiological pain for such a long period of time. I think the only, the best medicine for it to keep telling herself very positive things because we live in a culture where the story is, I've been watching sex in the city, which I never watched as a child, like a teenager, so I'm watching it now. And it's so strange, the things that they keep telling you about the one, or maybe you get two ones, there's a lot of reinforcement of especially heterosexual gender stereotypes that are really, really unhealthy.

And there's so many things that we all absorbed from friends and sex in the city, and we don't realise that they make us unhappy. Because no one said, monogamy is really tricky. And if your parents couldn't do it, why the hell would you be able to? And actually, you're right, because that was, if you think about sex and city, I know there's been a lot of discussions about that right now, people defending it and saying, no, it taught me a lot. But I do think you have to look at the end. is fascinating. Yeah. She did basically, a man who jilted her at the altar, gave her, made

up for her closet in her shoes. Yeah. And you sort of think, well, no, we do absorb that. Yeah. Well, that's why I really loved all of the, um, Mark Kermode stuff about, it's about capitalism, not love. I think he's so bang on the money is that is what it was about, that there's a couple of things in there about with men who don't have as much money as women, which I've noticed. And there's one episode, I'm writing about my book, where a man leaves money for Carrie after sex. And when you actually extrapolate it, I do think there's a lot to learn in it

because they do quite often, the girls come at something from a different angle. It doesn't tell you one version. It tells you four versions often. But the actual take-home is Samantha saying, men give women, receive its biological destiny. That's a really huge thing to say. And I think they were saying it to women

and they were saying it to men. And that's what I've been thinking a lot about with the in-cells. For every Cinderella story, which infantilised women and say, wait for a man to save you, men were being told you have to behave a certain way or you're not a man. And so to everyone there's this real, because that isn't the world, and it is more complicated.

And we just ate, all of us communally ate or drank at some very poisoned wells. Well, I never even questioned it. Hello. There's a doggy, isn't there? Say hello. Go ahead and say hello. He's got a lovely little. He's very soft and very gentle.

What's your name? Yeah. We've got a smile. We've got a smile. Bye bye. See you, Sarah. You always make them leave with a smile. I've been having therapy for about eight months

and I've never ever made her laugh until two sessions ago. It was the first time. That's why I noticed, oh, I've never made her laugh before. I didn't know what her laugh was like. So I don't think she believes I'm a comedian. I think she thinks the therapy is to do with my delusion that that's my job. Because the first time I said something about one of my friends is dating,

she's 39. And I said, so she does have to ask on the date, do they want children? and if they don't she doesn't have time for dessert which is a true thing that she had said and I wasn't being flippant about it and then she laughed but that's interesting because Russell Howard

who I did this with he said to me he'd had therapy and he said I just felt I was kind of trying to get laughed I could see that a bit some comics have that yeah how do you find it do you think it's helpful

I think it's really I think even just the fact you talk about yourself for an hour and also I always always go in, I don't know how you find it. I was going in going, I don't know what I'm going to talk about this week, as in I've got nothing. And there's something she says at the beginning and we'll end up having a session on something. Quite often,

she's not very excavatory. It's quite often, it's coping mechanisms. But all week I have this voice in my head who's much more sensible, so I'll come out and go, I don't think that's helped. And then all week I'll go, there's this thing stopping me going to far down a route or just also I'm going to have to tell her about it. So I think there's all these things around it that are

really, really useful. We need to talk about your tour as well, because that's You're so busy at the moment. So you're writing this new book. And when's that out? Is that out next year? Next spring, yeah. And then the tour, this is Lads, Lads, Lads,

which is one of my favourite tour names. So basically I broke up with his boyfriend and he's quite, no, he's not annoyed, he's absolutely fine. You both did shows about your breakup. Well, he did a show about our breakup and our relationship. I didn't really, but it was a much neater thing. You know when sometimes something gets in the press in a certain way, Edinburgh is such a bubble anyway.

My show was about, it started with me going to Costa Rica. He's a real baby. He's a real baby. You can't promote your tour on my podcast. He should have turned up here today. Move on. He lives in the park. He's a real loser.

We are, we are. Yeah, so his show is about a relationship. Mine was about being single the first time in 15 years because I'd been overlapping relationships. So I was a serial monogamous who had kept meeting boys and then that was the catalyst to break up with the one before.

And all of a sudden I'd done, from therapy, and he had two sessions and I knew to break up with him. She just said, oh, you don't seem very happy in your relationship. You know when someone who isn't one of your friends, you go, oh, God, now that a stranger has told me, how can I possibly come back in and say, oh, I'm going to continue with this thing.

Of course I'm not happy. So the show was more about learning to be happy by myself and doing things by myself. And that's what it is. So, like, I've been, now, if my instinct is, oh, I don't like that kind of thing, I make myself do it. So I went to see a horror film, and I went to a football match and lots of things.

And that's what the show is. The show it is about and continues to be about is adventures and fun things. But Las, Lads, Ladd's is something John used to say all the time and he was in the pub by himself. And he was like, you've just named your show after a phrase. And so, you know, but I like that you've called it that as well. Because there was something brilliant which I saw about it, which was saying that we'll have to put a disclaimer

so that there are no stack parties. Yes. But I always put that on my flyers anyway, because you'd be just so surprised when people go, I will just go to some comment days. Like, not mine. Please don't come to me. And do you look forward to that, sort of going on the road?

I really, really love touring. Yeah. And I think it's really, I mean, obviously that's a comedian's job. And it's a point you're trying to get to that people will come and see you. And it's just the loveliest thing. Because compared to Edinburgh, Edinburgh is like people are running through a gallery. They're trying to see as much as possible and say they've seen it, and you all blur into one and you feel very undervalued when you've spent a year creating something.

Yeah. And you feel compared to your peers, whereas you're a painting all by yourself when you're on tour. what is exactly what I wanted when I was a child was to walk out and go, everyone's looking at me I'm the best girl and that's what it feels like when you clap when people come on. When you say, I tell you what I love the best, when you say your own name and people woo

and you go like, oh yes, they're wooing me. I've not even done anything and you do, you come out and you feel like a nine-year-old like, yes, I'm here. Everybody loves me. Does it feel like that every time? Is it such a powerful feeling that? Every time you go on stage, does it lesson? No, no, it's actually a lot about your mental health

because for a long time, I used to think, I only used to think about the men who'd been dragged by wives who hated me. So I would be backstage going, oh, God, how am I going to convince these middle-aged men that I'm good when they just assume women aren't or they don't want to listen to me and they just think I'm going to talk about my period and I am actually for an hour. Like I would have this real negative thing.

And it's such a negative, you can do that. You can focus on who do I have to persuade or who doesn't want to be here rather than that. And it's so much nicer to do instead go, no, actually. They're really lucky I'm here. Every time you think a certain thought, you're reinforcing it. So like phobias, every time you avoid something, you negatively reinforce it. So it gets hardened and hard and hardened over time. And the same thing happens with positive things.

Is that true? Yeah. So lots of our thoughts, we get into these hardened roots. And that's why CBT and certain therapy is so useful. So what do you say about things like heartbreak? Yeah. You know, if you're trying to get over someone or you think you need a bit of distance, isn't that a case? Isn't that a case where actually you should avoid the pain source?

Or do you think maybe that's a bad thing? Because that turns into... I've just wondering about that. I think that would be such a dependent on the situation. One of the things that's really hard when you're in that state and you just want to distraction from it is like... Caradry says like, oh, this is another emotion. Like happiness, this is another emotion and actually...

So you have to allow yourself to feel it rather than trying to necessitize it? And have as long as you need to have it. like, you know, they have all these rules, like, oh, it's half the relationship length to get over them. All these things that aren't true. I think I think carry it back on life. Yeah, I think it was one of those things. But actually, I think my first relationship at 16, took me 16 years to get over, actually, in terms of, so I remember thinking when I was 32 and I met John. And so it felt this.

That's your ex. Yeah. So that for me was the cycle of when, oh, it's taken me 16 years to get to the point. I was so excited about someone again. I thought, I thought that I was only going to happen once when I was 16. And then I was like, oh, you get it every 16 years. That's the rule. Because you want to create meaning out of chaos.

Well, actually, I just think that in itself should be celebrated as a phase that doesn't need to be hurried. It's better than going, no, you just need to get back on the horse. People say that, don't they? They do. And I just, I don't agree with that. I think, because other people's pain is quite hard to bear. People say, and I think. Oh, and also I've noticed this, who is it was saying?

This stuff about breakup body. The idea that anyone's going to love you again with a smaller bum is that he doesn't love. you she doesn't love you I'm so sorry I'm so sorry they don't love you there's no way you just look more desperate if you look revenge board yeah revenge board that's what it is yeah all they do is go isn't that sad you're not even eating and of course they tell you you look nice because they feel sorry for you because you're clearly not eating that's why I think you're when people when women are open about it and I get that sense very much with you and Catherine Ryan's which is

how I met you actually I should say I met by a party And then we were at Catherine Ryan's daughter's Violet Spotty and I had Ray with me and you were so sweet with him. And yeah, she talks about me. Because I noticed the minute he came in, my friend was just like, oh my God, there's a dog here. Look at this dog. So I was like inching my way towards you. And then Rochene had Raymond in her lap. And I was like, oh God, she knows the dog.

Rochine knows the dog. Rochin was straight in there. Yeah. But no, it was interesting that because I was obviously aware of you and I've been a big, I've been a big fan of yours. Well, I had been, so Rochin was a person who a couple of years ago mentioned you. As in she'd either gone out for a dream with you or had a break. breakfast with you in Crouch, and something where she'd end up with you all day. And she's like, do you not know Emily?

Do you not have a funny? Oh, you'd really get on. And I had this like friend jett. Let's see. Like, who is this woman who my friend really likes? Yeah, when your girl comes on the scene. Who's this person? And then Carriad. You did Carriad's podcast as well.

And I listened to it. And then I listened to it. Because I had friend jealousies like, okay, let's say if she gets on this Emily Dean, who's going around being friends with all my friends. And she said the same thing. Like, oh, no, you really like her. You're really good. I was like, okay, okay, yeah.

I'll be the judge of that actually. But Catherine, I feel I say your name all the time because Catherine Ryan lives in me. And Catherine, we should say, if anyone isn't aware, I can't remember if I mention this, but Raymond, my dog is the half-brother of Catherine Ryan's dog, Megan. And... Of Megan, the really tiny one? Yeah. Oh, I thought it was a bigger one.

Oh, she's tiny. Well, Raymond and Megan's mother, she's got a couple of baby daddy's and I like that. Oh, has she? Yeah. It's very modern. There's a cat as well. Catherine has a cat called Sarah Pasco. Which I love.

Is it a boy that cat? Yeah, it's a boy cat. Well, I think, so, it's so nice. You know, like, in the Northern Lights trilogy that everyone has these demons, this animal who lives outside of you, and I just, I remember really loving that I did when I read the books, just thinking,

how wonderful it is, and if you can just think of yourself that part of you is a squirrel or a swan or something, when Violet named that cat, Sarah Pascoe, it was so great for me. There's a part of me always that is a boy cat that's jumping around with these luscious fur. And it's so nice that it's the,

the full name as well, although his middle name is panda, which isn't my middle name, but it's still the same initials. I just love him, yeah. But I like the idea as well. What I like about naming it after a frame, I named Raymond, my dog is called Ray, my sister's called Rachel, and I thought how nice to remember her, but every day I sort of say her nicknames, I say Ray, yeah. And I think that's really nice with Catherine and Violet that they obviously really love you and your name is in their house. We've just been to the Melbourne Comedy Festival. So Violet and I had spent a lot of time together. The other day I went around there,

oh Violet came to meet my mum's kittens and when I opened the door, she opened the door to me, she went, Sarah Pasco's here, person, not the cat. I kind of just shouted it from her house to Catherine. That is a great tour, that's your next door. Sarah Pasco is here, the person, not the cat. Well, yeah, when Sarah Pascoe, the cat went missing, Catherine, because she's just, she's consistently funny.

There are some comics who are very funny on stage, like incredible, but it's like they've worked so much and their stage persona, there's something lacking in real life. Catherine is the real deal 24-7. When Sarah Pasco, the cat went missing, she just put up posters all around Crouchon saying, have you seen Sarah Pasco? Which is near where I live,

and there wasn't a picture of a cat on there, and people were tweeted me going, Catherine's looking for you. No, and then Alex Lederman, her boyfriend, when Sarah Pasco came back, went, oh great, Sarah Pascoe came back, and people just going on to her, going, what? What happened? Where did she go?

And then you're sort of on the daily mail. Yes, yeah, that's all year. Yeah, Sarah Pasco found in a shed. There's a free dog! There's a free dog! Run, run, run. What's that doggy? Hello, you're trying to squeeze through to say hello.

Oh, look, you're so cute. You are very cute. You two would be great friends. They look really sweet together. What is that kind of dog? I don't know, it's a small brown, happy dog. How lovely. This is a real swipe right moment or left or whatever it is, the young people do.

Oh, he's trying to get out. It's so desperate. Oh, very. A little Romeo and Juliet thing going on. Ray's very chill about it. Yeah, yeah, it happens all the time. Like, we should leave you now. I've had such a lovely time with you, sir.

I've felt I've learned so much as well. You're such an amazing woman. Have you enjoyed meeting Ray? Yeah. Hello, Barbara. Have a lovely day. Remember when you met that little brown dog that you loved? You were a bit chill, weren't you?

He loved you. I really hope you enjoyed listening to that. And do remember to rate review and subscribe on iTunes.