Woman's Hour - Winning women - Edna O'Brien, Sinead Burke & Khadijah Mellah

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

This year saw an unprecedented number of women winning major awards and prizes. What does being a winner feel like, and is it always good to win? Jenni Murray hears from the writer Edna O'Brien who won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. The award celebrates a writer who has broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond, and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing. She also hears from Khadijah Mellah who won the Magnolia Cup at Goodwood, and is the Sunday Times Young Sportswoman of the Year; Natasha Benjamin who won the Lorraine Inspirational Woman of the Year Award for her work supporting children affected by domestic violence; the educator and disability activist Sinead Burke who has achondroplasia and is on the BBC 100 Women list as one of most inspiring and influential women in the world; and Laura Smith who won this year’s Funny Women Stage Award.Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Dianne McGregor

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Good morning. Now for you, Boxing Day probably means Leftover Day, as you try to find an imaginative way of using up whatever remains from yesterday. But for us here on Woman's Hour, it's Winner's Day. 2019 saw an unprecedented number of women winning major awards and prizes across the spectrum. Dina Asher-Smith and Katerina Johnson-Thompson both won gold medals at the World Athletics Championship in Doha. The Booker Prize for Fiction was shared by two women, Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, and of course Olivia Colman took the Oscar for her role as Queen Anne in The Favourite. Well today we'll talk with Khadija Mella, who won the Magnolia Cup at Goodwood

and is the Sunday Times Young Sportswoman of the Year, Natasha Benjamin, who won the Lorraine Inspirational Woman of the Year Award, Sinead Burke, who's been named as one of the most inspiring and influential women in the world, and Laura Smith, who won this year's Funny Women on Stage Award. And you can, of course, get in touch with us on Instagram or Twitter at BBC Women's Hour. We begin with the woman whose earliest work you've been able to hear as the serial across the past year here on Radio 4. First, The Country Girls, then The Lonely Girl, and then Girls in Their Married Bliss, the three novels which launched Edna O'Brien in the 1960s. This year, as she approached her 89th birthday, she won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. It celebrates a writer who has

broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond, and has moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing. She was also awarded the Prix Femina in honour of her entire body of work, and she became the first ever recipient who isn't French. Then in September, of course, she published her most recent work, Girl Was Inspired by the Nigerian School Girls Who Were Abducted by Boko Haram. Edna, what did it mean to you to be awarded the David Cohen Prize for your entire body of work? Well, first of all, it meant delight. And then it meant secrecy. It was so funny. The girl who wrote to me, Claire, she said, you must not tell anyone. And I thought, I'm bound to tell

someone. But that's the sort of trivial part of what it meant to me is this. I love writing. I don't always love the act of writing, but I love literature, reading it or attempting to write it. I have, in various moments of, shall we call it, soul-searching, wondered why so few prizes came my way in 89 years. I look at the back of many people's books in my favourite bookshop. Everyone seems to have won prizes. In short, I felt it had come from heaven. So how much do prizes really matter? They matter a lot. And one of the reasons is very simple.

There are so many books in the world, there are so many authors and their publishers and their publicists at all, trying to get the attention is the lure. The Booker Prize, for which I was not either long-listed, short-listed or any other listed, does draw an enormous amount of attention because of the money spent on it and the bookies, you know, have bets on hooties. They've made it very, I won't use the word popular, but they've made it certainly very well known about. What it means to the author personally, and what it means to the author in the public sense overlap. I feel that it wasn't nepotism. I didn't know anyone in the David Cohen organization. I felt that the seven judges whose appraisals was given to me and their deliberations had not only read Girl, but had written a good few books, over 20, 25 I think by now.

And they had read very carefully. And, of course, I'm delighted they were on my side with their deliberation, as I call it, and the depth to which they went to really see what was within those books that would maybe allow them to stand the test of time. Because a book sometimes that's very popular, the month it comes out, or even the year it comes out, doesn't stand the test of time. Because a book sometimes that's very popular, the month it comes out, or even the year it comes out, doesn't stand the test of time. What it meant publicly was surprising to me, the number of people, eminent and otherwise, who wrote to me, which suggested to me, how prizes influence a reader. They influence it because, I suppose,

it's like a horse that wins lots of times, or even one time. So I'm delighted to have got it, and I'm also, I feel, vindicated. It's said to be a precursor to the Nobel. How hopeful are you that it is? To tell you the truth, I wouldn't embark on that conversation. It would be unwise, it would be precipitate,

and it wouldn't get anyone anywhere. They make their own decisions. It is true that several people whom David Cohen Prize has been awarded to, Harold Pinter, Vidya Naipaul, Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, and I think I'm forgetting one, did go on to win the Nobel Prize. But some other people who were given it did not. However, it's better to have something positive said or hopeful

than to have something insulting said. Now, when we look back, and as I said, we have heard those very early books on Radio 4 in the last year, and they are still every bit as popular as they were when I first read them quite a long time ago. But how conscious were you when you were writing those early books about Kate and Bubba? How conscious were you of breaking down social and sexual barriers? I wasn't at all conscious. It would have freaked me because I wouldn't have been able to do it then. I didn't know that it would cause such furore. I knew that as a woman, and a young woman in her twenties in Ireland, that I was treading danger water by writing a book at all, even if it was a book about,

I don't know, gardening, because there were no women writers. There was Kate O'Brien, and she emigrated to Spain wisely. There was no tradition of women writers. There was no room for women writers. And above all, there was no tradition of women writers. There was no room for women writers. And above all, there was no respect for women writers. But if I had really known the brouhaha that would happen, then that would have definitely throttled me. I wouldn't have

been free. To write a book, you have to feel it's for everybody and nobody. You have to keep with it in your own skull and be true to it as far as you can. Any other opinion or possible opinion is not only a waste of time, it just stops you. So I was lucky by being ignorant. But the other day on my little radio, I don't listen to all the versions because sometimes I think, God, did I write that? And they've done a wonderful adaptation. It came up on the screen beside the top of the radio,

wild and subversive. I don't know who said wild and subversive. I didn't say it, but it was some comment. And if I had read those two words while writing those books, I probably might have thought twice about it. It's a long time ago. I mean, it's nearly 60 years ago. It is 60 years.

Since Country Girls was banned, burned in your hometown and described, if I remember rightly, as filth. How did you cope with that reaction it's interesting how you cope with fear and shame both of which applied because I felt ashamed even though I didn't think I had done anything to be ashamed about you do it it's a bit like sleepwalking it's a bit like people in shock of a kind, in that you get through it, but without... You're hurt by it, but you just get through it like somebody driven. It's a kind of instinct.

And I got through it, but privately I felt very wounded. The people in my village were ashamed. My bishops, archbishops, politicians, friends, nuns, family. My poor mother was the most ashamed of all. And that hurt me. But I suppose, principally, I should say, to be positive, now that we're all winners on this program, I got through it through my own determination.

I am a frightened person. I am fearful of many things. But I do have a strong will. And I had a will to write from the moment almost that I was born. My youngest experience of what words were, were in a cloth book. I had a cloth book that was lovely and soft, soft cloth. And there were a few words written on it. It may have been the words of a fairy tale. I do not know.

But I remember thinking that these words were, forgive the word, it sounds highfalutin, that these words were luminous and magic. They were words that were there forever. In this instance, on a piece of cloth, and later on, on a piece of paper. The way in early days, people wrote on the barks of trees, and long before that, some wrote on caves, mainly paintings, but also language. How do you regard Ireland now, and the position of women there now? They're flying high. I think they don't feel at all as cowed or as frightened

or as beholden, a very relevant word, as I did, and not only I, but the women around me. I once wrote a story, A Scandalous Woman, and it ended with saying, ours was indeed a land of sacrificial women. It is not the case now. It is more braver. It's also more brazen.

It's more modern. By it, you know, it's a generalization, because there are still some quite lonely people living in lonely places that might listen to this and think well I haven't seen a human being for a long time but Ireland has it has changed for the better in many ways

it's not as critical, things are not banned, etc where I think, like the whole world, it has changed, maybe not in a better way, is the actual love of and immersion in literature. That is true of the whole world. People read books now, I don't think, with the same utter immersion, concentration and gravity that I know I did when I was young.

What are you working on now, Edna? I have a seed of an idea, but I would be, well, I not only won't say it, I would be reluctant to because books, they're like babies. They just have to start in that most unknown way and make it clear. The gestation is long, but when it comes, it comes. Like I had written slightly a version of Girl

in a short story called Plunder of a girl who was plundered by men and followed into the wilderness to find some of her own kind who would recognize her by the poppies of blood, as she calls it, on her apron dress. So that theme was in my mind

12 years when I wrote Plunder before I actually, the book appeared. It's the same with this book, so I would like, as they used to say in the country where I grew up, I'd like to be spared in order to write that book. Edna O'Brien, thank you so much for being with us today. And so around the studio table are the rest of our winners, ranging in age from 19 to the late 30s,

and in activities including horse racing, comedy, activism in the field of disability, and supporting children who've experienced domestic violence. Now, let's have each of you introduce yourself and give us an idea of what it is you've achieved this year. Khadija, Mella, let's start with you. I'm 19. I started riding at Ebony Horse Club aged 12 but then I was given the offer to ride the Magnolia Cup and thankfully I won the Magnolia Cup and I was the first female Muslim to ride and win a race in Britain. And wearing your hijab. Wearing my hijab indeed. Sinead Burke. I have been interested and invested in the world of fashion since I was 16 years old,

primarily because I have always felt excluded. I have dwarfism, a chondroplasia, the most common form of that condition. And I've always wanted to be part of it. My background is in education but from blogging to giving a TED talk really this year was the most extraordinary year for me from raising the issue of disability advocacy at the World Economic Forum in Davos to going to the Met Gala and to being the first ever little person on the cover of Annie Vogue magazine which happened this year with the September issue which was curated by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex. Natasha Benjamin. I'm the founder of a childhood domestic violence and trauma support service

called Free Your Mind CIC. And I grew up around domestic violence as a child and it's the reason why I started this service. And this year I was awarded ITV's Lorraine's Inspirational Woman of the Year award and it was just an incredible honour and it's changed my world and for the children too. Laura Smith. I am the one in her late 30s. Don't apologise, that's alright, that's still very very young. And I'm a teacher, I'm a mother of three and I'm a comedian as of the start of this year and starting early this year. And then by September, I'd won the Funny Women Stage Awards 2019.

And you're now a teacher and a comedian. I'm a teacher and a comedian and fairly tired with it. Well, let's look at what it was like to actually get your wins on the day when you got them. Khadija, let's start with you. How did you handle the actual race? Because you had done some riding at your local riding stables, but you had not ridden a thoroughbred racehorse. How did you do it? I was fairly nervous on the day for obvious reasons,

mainly because I'd only ridden a racehorse for about seven weeks prior to the race and I'd only galloped a horse twice before the race. Thankfully, I had loads of confidence in my horse as I'd ridden him multiple times and I was pretty comfortable in racing on him so I was I felt really reassured that for the race I'd be safe it was just the whole atmosphere that really shook me and the amount of people I was talking to and the amount of advice people were throwing at me on the day to try and sort of help me win essentially it was a

very busy and crazy day how surprised were you to actually win I was very surprised I have to say normally I walk into most situations and have an outlook that you know I'm there for first place because I'm naturally quite competitive for that race I was I did a lot of research and my horse was rated 66 and some of the other horses were rated much higher. In my mind, I thought the best I could do and the best my horse can do is sit sort of fourth or fifth. So my realistic aim was to come fourth or fifth. So I was very, very surprised when I won. It is, of course, the rider, not the horse, who makes it happen.

Now, Sinead, on the cover of Vogue, as you said, chosen by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and on the BBC's list of inspiring women, what was it like for you to go through that whole thing of being photographed for the leading fashion magazine i got this email in april of this year and the subject headline was can we give you a call and it was vogue and they said they had an idea and i replied instantaneously thinking sure of course absolutely and i was standing in the middle of a very busy street in Dublin and the phone rang and I said, hi.

And they told me what they were thinking about for the September issue, that it was going to be for the first time ever guest edited. And it was going to include 15 women who they believed were changing the world. And would I be one of them? And I kind of laughed. I kind of thought I was being punked or, you know, but I have grown up wanting to see myself and someone who looks like me in all of the different institutions of culture. Not because I think fashion is the most important subject in the world. But when you realize that your dream is possible, everything else makes sense. And then going to London and doing the shoot and the incredible photographer Peter Lindbergh who's no longer with us shot all of those portraits and being alongside the Prime

Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, Greta who just weren't one Times Person of the Year, Laverne Cox who's the first ever trans person to be on a cover of Vogue and to sit alongside them obviously personally has great value and feels very surreal but actually the most incredible part of it was afterwards being sent photographs of babies with dwarfism holding this magazine cover and their parents saying we're keeping it for them until they're a little bit older and have some understanding of this themselves and I would have done anything for that when I was 16 and now it's interesting for me because what happens what do those young children now believe is possible for

them but the idea of getting all dolled up and having to stare down the lens of Peter Lindbergh's camera whilst Adwa Aboa the extraordinary supermodel is on before you is nothing short of daunting but I did my best. Of course you did. Now Natasha what was your experience of hearing you'd won the Lorraine Kelly Inspirational Award? So a normal day as you know Sinead mentioned for herself and I was sitting at home waiting to fix a dent in my window and my buzzer went I answered and said hello it's delivery and I said yes come up and said no can you come and sign for it and said yep you can come up I went no you need to come down for this I was like oh fine so I went downstairs opened the door there was a big

camera in my face and a presenter going Natasha Benjamin you've been nominated for inspirational woman of the year what how do you feel I was like um I don't know and um yeah just this barrage of questions and things followed and then from there I was invited down to ITV to have a makeover we you know we all got dressed up it was really nice got to meet Lorraine, film on the show. And then it was announced that it was going to a public vote, which for me was that just sent my nerves going everywhere because I just thought, you know, it's out of my hands, you know. And so for the whole weekend, it was like this big campaign, you know, for me and the other two girls and we went to the women of the year awards ceremony for lunch and that my heart was just in my throat the whole time and we were you know trying to trying to just act normal like it was fine you know eat the lunch and then Lorraine went on stage and announced that I was the winner and I was floored because throughout the day I'd convinced myself it was one of the other two and I was prepared I was like yep and I was floored because throughout the day I'd convinced myself

it was one of the other two and I was prepared I was like yep it's one of you two it's fine it's gonna be fine so then when I heard Natasha Benjamin apparently it looked like I wasn't going to get out of my seat to go and accept the award because I was so shocked but I eventually got there and it's been amazing and overwhelming. laura an english teacher in a girls school what did you have to do to enter funny women well the funny women awards and some other awards they are video entries so the video entry deadline for funny women was the 30th of april and i did a comedy course because i was going back to work in April following my third child and maternity leave, and I thought, I just had this panic button of,

oh, hang on, I'm going back to work for 30 years. And as much as I love teaching, I just always, always had thought about comedy and always wanted to do it, and I kind of, my husband had been really funny for a couple of years. He said, oh, yeah, Laura's a teacher and she's a comedian, he'd say. She's a comedian. I said, stop saying that. I'm not a comedian. He'd really promote me.

And he'd bought me this sort of day's writing course just after we were married, which was really sweet. And I never thought about it again. And then I just said, right, I've booked a course of five Sundays of this comedy course. And then what happens at the end of that course, which was 28th of April, you did a showcase. And that was filmed. And so the 28th of april you did a showcase so and that was

filmed and so the 28th of april i did that showcase and on the 30th of april was the deadline so a couple of girls on the call said oh yeah let's all enter our sort of videos and a couple of us got to the heat so i did the final heat in london and the best thing about comedy is which is probably why i do it is you know if you've done well because there's lots of laughter so I did well in the heat so and that was really exciting then I got through to the semi-final and I was so nervous I mean that was really nerve-wracking it was a huge room it's the biggest room I'd played to and then the final so then there was lots of press and excitement you know just like pre sort of interviews and things like that and I think I felt like because you'd get a laurel for being a finalist I thought at this stage I was so early and I'd only been working the open mic circuit so I thought

I just felt really relaxed about the final certainly relaxed and my set just went so well it couldn't have gone better you know it was like a wall of sound it was really exciting and then as the you know runner-up and the two runners runners-up were sort of announced the you know Charlie George was third runner-up, who's just such a great comic, and then Sian Davis. And I thought, well, no one's better than Sian Davis. You know, I thought, well, you know. But you were.

On that night, on that night. So then when my name was announced, I think there was a little bit of me, like the English teacher in me, that felt that this narrative would be just too lovely. I don't think I've been brought here to be a runner-up. There was just a little bit of, mate, this would be a really nice story, actually, if I won.

And blow me down, I did. Just give me a little example of your set. I'll give you about three and a half seconds of what's broadcastable. No, of course not. A lot of it's just about kind of being a parent and things like that. So I might say, well, I've just had, you know, this is really exciting and I've just had a couple of weeks away. I'd call it a holiday, but I took my children, you know.

You know, they stress you out, kids, they do. They stress you out and they can wear you down. And I'm trying, I am trying to be more relaxed around them because you've got to be. And I've heard of this thing called mindfulness everyone heard of this yeah yeah my big brother was telling me about it because he runs his own business and you know when things get too much for him as a rich white man he says you've got to stop and say the things you know to be true he goes you what you do law you just stop I say I'm just a man in a room trying my best.

Oh, I'll give this a go. So I found a little quiet spot indoors. I'm just a woman in a cupboard hiding from her kids. I'm just a woman in a cupboard hiding from her kids. And they all found me in the end bless them and you got the laugh that you deserved absolutely what's interesting is what's most satisfying to you all the the work you do or actually winning the prize khadija what was it for you was it the training the people who were helping you?

Or was it that moment when you went, oh my goodness, have one? It's a combination of things, because obviously winning awards and winning the race itself was amazing. But being at these events and hearing the stories of other women, for me, really brought everything together. It really uplifted me. And also hearing the feedback from the documentary that was made about me called Riding a Dream.

So many young girls have been contacting me. And not only young girls, just young people in general, telling me about their inspiration, their now motivation to sort of getting involved in racing and horse riding and sports in general. That was it for me, I think. What about you, Sinead? I know you're the eldest of five and the only one with the condition that you have.

Where did your confidence come from to put yourself out there? I think if I'm in any way a success, it's genuinely and firmly because I'm a loved child. So whilst I'm the eldest of five and none of my siblings are little people, my dad is. And I grew up with this very visible representation that everything was going to be okay because my dad survived and thrived. And, you know, my background's in primary school teaching

and I decided that I wanted to be a primary school teacher on my very first day of school. And I came home and I told my parents that I'm going to be a teacher. And straight away the only thing they said was, great. I don't have any kids now, but I came home and I told my parents I'm going to be a teacher and straight away the only thing they said was great I don't have any kids now but I look back and I think it took such bravery of my parents not because perhaps they didn't think I'd be a good teacher but there aren't many teachers who look like me and undoubtedly they had questions about whether or not the world would let me and their constant belief in me and now it's the same you know if I'm going off to do something either in fashion or in design or in education or in advocacy and if I'm

overwhelmed by it you know it sounds very facetious but I was the first ever little person to go to the Met Gala it's this enormous fundraiser for the costume exhibit in the Met in New York I was so nervous I was vomiting my head was in a toilet bowl it had been such a dream of mine to go that I didn't think I could go and I called my dad and I said Dad, I don't think I can do it the world is going to be watching as narcissistic as that sounds and my dad said, Sinead, you'll be fine

it's a party in a museum you'll go and you'll enjoy it and you'll have a great time and send me some photos and I actually think that support system has been fundamental to everything I've been able to do. And when I was seven, my parents created Little People of Ireland, the only organisation for little people at home in Ireland. And they voluntarily run that organisation even now. And they have built a community for people to see themselves.

And that's been incredible. So your parents were supportive of you training as a primary school teacher, but how difficult was it to take some people's doubts as to whether you actually could do the job? I think it's my everyday, quotidian experience to be faced with people's biases and assumptions over what it is I can do. People look at me, they look at my size, and they assume they know who I am. Or even worse, they don't even look at me as a person,

and I'm objectified and experienced kind of harm or abuse or criticism in the streets. But actually, what people don't realize is what they see as my weakness is what makes me a great teacher. And yes, of course, there are questions. You know, people used to ask me, the kids are going to be bigger than you. How are you going to control them? What a terrible way to talk about children. Whereas I would go into my classroom, and yes, when I was teaching junior infants

who were four years old in Ireland, the first question they would have is, why are you so small? And I'd say, well, why are you so big? And they'd go, I don't know, I was born like this. And I'd say, well, so was I. And they're like, great, what page are we on? And I actually think if we as adults had that greater understanding,

you know, I'm reminded most simply of the fact that I'm different when I'm in the supermarket, right? Because I'll be looking at avocado in an aisle and a child will be in a trolley and being pushed by a parent or an adult and the child will make a fuss look there's a little woman and the adult does a couple of things right they go no no that's a croissant on the shelf and the child is like no no look there's a little woman and the adult will shush

them or will physically remove them from the space for a couple of reasons right they don't think they have the language by which to facilitate that conversation. They think it's the first time it's ever happened to me and they cannot believe that their child, who they raised with empathy, did this. What should they do? There's such an easy solution. Humanise it. Why don't they say to that child, yeah, that is a little woman.

Why don't you say hello? And the child's like, hi, I'm Jane. I'm like, hi, I'm Sinead. The child's like, oh, you're boring. I'm like, hi, I'm Sinead. The child's like, oh, you're boring. I thought you'd be interesting. I thought you'd speak differently or maybe dance. And actually, we are so fearful of what it is we don't know. And instead of deliberately positioning ourselves in this place of vulnerability,

because what happens by not explicating any of that is that there is no moment in our lives ever again where there is an opportunity to entertain that curiosity. So that child, without the intention of the parents doing so, all they learn is that I'm not somebody to talk to, nor am I somebody to look at. And actually, out of our own fear, we are cultivating that society. Now, Natasha, your work is with children.

And as a child, you grew up with an awareness of domestic abuse what impact did that have on you at the time and then later on as you got older? At the time I knew it was wrong but it also became what was normal for me to deal with this day in day out you know it made me a very insular child, very anxious child. I was constantly worried about my mum and what was going on at home. It would be hard to concentrate at school. It was very hard for me to be academic and I wasn't, you know, I didn't really achieve very much at school because of that worry. But it affected my lens on what the

world looked like, what relationships look like, how humans interact with each other. I would say it affected every aspect that you could think of. So having that with me as I grew up, it was just a bit of a dark cloud the whole time. And it took many, many, many years in my adult life to uncover that and to look at how it had affected my life in so many ways. But at the time, I wasn't aware of the effects. I just knew it felt wrong and I was having my reactions to it, but it wasn't something that I knew how to articulate well. So you founded Free Your Mind in 2013 to support children who witness what you had witnessed.

How do you help them to find their own way through what you had such difficulty finding your way through? I mean, firstly, I have my own experience you know which is a wealth of experience to draw on and then my recovery from the experience I have documented what I did to get myself to to this point and that is something I still work on every day but with the children there is no one size fits all because each child comes from very different circumstances and so I treat them as such sometimes we think we have to over complicate what we must do but it is in the simple things these children just want to feel safe heard understood and I provide that for them and we might do things like mindfulness cognitive behavioural therapy where we sort of look at their thoughts

and their thought processes and then look at how we can change that but then we might do a tapping therapy which helps to soothe and regulate the nervous system which is a massive benefit to trauma and then we may do it through arts and painting we have so many things in our space now to ensure that the child has a choice and that's another part of ensuring that the child gets a say in their treatment and how they're looked after but what sort of choice do they really have if they have to go back to a violent atmosphere yeah that's true and that you know that can be disheartening because i mean for the most part most of the children that come to me are out of the situation but for the children that are it is

hard and so you have to provide them with tools that they can use when things get hard some of the tools that I show them are tools they take away and use themselves the tapping is one of them also an understanding of it's not their fault. So even though they're dealing with these things, they know that these two adults, the issues between them and not them, you know, it's not nice for them to deal with, but that understanding helps them to kind of create a better world for themselves, even if that's going on at the same time. Laura how do your pupils cope with the fact that you're a comic? It's really nice listening to both

of you because they say relate both things you said have related to my experience of teaching in the sense of it doesn't matter who you are how tall you are or what's going on whatever's going on students want to test whether they're in a safe place they want to say oh can we push your buttons and you say no and then you're resilient and you can stand strong and kind of deal with the situation so i have a great rapport with a lot of students and they're just brilliant and really formidable characters it's a girls school and yeah some year 11 girls have found out i'm quite daft in class as well i use humor a lot in class so i think i don't think it was a surprise to them and that and how they did it was really funny a few girls said oh you know

oh miss you're really funny you should be a comedian miss and I thought oh they're saying something here so and then they've forgotten about it again because they're not that bothered do you have to put up with their jokes though I mean do they try to be funnier than you are oh no they just try and get away with whatever they can get away with no the thing about students they don't really care that much about you. You know, a friend, it's a joke, but a family friend, her dad was a primary school teacher

and he was once stopped in town. And this sums up kids' attitudes to their teachers. He went, Hello, sir. I didn't know you had a coat. Because he was like, he just thought he existed in the classroom. And that's it.

We live there. Yeah, we live there. We live there. Yeah, we live there. We live there. So there was a slight interest for about 30 seconds and now they just moan if I set them homework. They genuinely don't care. My own children find it quite amusing. Like if I've got flowers delivered for my birthday,

my four-year-old said, you won something again. Which is really cute so i know joe brand is your mentor yes what's she been able to offer you she's become the matron not the patron of funny women so we we took a while to get a date a first date in the diary to me i've just grown up with her face and her voice and everything and her jokes and so lovely that I kept forgetting, oh, this is Jo Brand. She was really good about resilience. She was really good advising about how to deal with things.

Being a woman on the circuit, having children, she was really practical about when she had children, you know, Edinburgh and how to balance that and balancing it with her home life. And that was really interesting. And also that sort of sense of just keep going, you know Edinburgh and how to balance that and balancing it with her home life and that was really interesting and and also that sort of sense of just keep going and you know and I'll say sort of from the open mic circuit which probably has you know it's still more men than women but then you start realising once you get into the start dipping my toe in the pro circuit you go oh okay I'm the woman on the bill you know now everybody was nodding on that to keep going line

so Khadija who's helping you now to keep going I know you have fantastic training to get you through your winning race what about now it's weird because I actually struggle to find a trainer because I now live in Brighton but now I've started training with Sheena West. I've kept in contact with Hayley Turner, who is an amazing jockey. And she is making amazing progress for women in the racing industry. But also, I've recently met Holly Doyle. And she has just broken the female record for the most races won in a year. So women in the jockey world are progressing loads

and that has been encouraging me. Is this what you want, to be a professional jockey? It's a good question. People have asked me this. Because it's been introduced to me so recently, I haven't really thought about it that much. I didn't expect to win as I said when I did win and I loved the experience to me it was like my my main focus was still to get my degree and carry on um my my main dream was to become an engineer but now I'm having to sort of think about

perhaps doing both because I'd love to like I really want my degree but I'd also really want to carry on with my racing because I enjoyed it so much so at the moment I'm training and doing my degree and hopefully at some point we'll get back into racing and doing more races and you know I know you've been campaigning for change in the fashion industry how are you trying to change it what are you going to get them to do to change everything? For me, and the way in which I look at it, I think the whole system needs to change from the inside out and the outside in. I'm teetering constantly on this boundary of wanting change immediately because I want to be able to go in and experience a more equitable fashion industry, even if it's going into a retailer. But also realising that that kind of overnight change is only actually appealing to publicity

or to a climate where we all need to be woke, which is necessary. But actually the longer term change requires patience, but ensuring that you're not being complacent within that. At the beginning of this year, I had the great privilege of collaborating with the National Museums of Scotland. They did an amazing exhibition on diversity in fashion. And they sent me an email and said, can we borrow some of your

clothes to put on exhibition? I'm not sure. I said, how are you going to display them? And they said, we're going to hang them from the ceiling. I was like, oh, how are you displaying everything else? They said, well, you know, we'll put them on mannequins. I said, OK. So how do we make a mannequin? Now, you should be really careful when you ask a question like that, because when you do, the result might be coming to London on four occasions and having your physical body cast. And I remember seeing the physical cast of my body for the first time, and I looked at the rear of it,

and I said to the two lovely gentlemen who had cast me, the person obviously puts on 10 pounds, right? And they were like, no, that's what you look like. I was like, oh, how kind. But actually, I'm being glib, but that's the first ever mannequin that has ever been made. And it's now available for retailers, which actually creates a catalyst within the system, right? Because if you talk to designers and you ask them about making clothes specifically for people like me, designers will say that they can't make them because retailers won't buy them.

Retailers say that they won't buy them because there's no way in which to display them. Mannequin companies will say that they won't invest in the creation of that mannequin if nobody's going to buy them. So now what's the excuse, right? And actually, that is very customer-facing in terms of a change. The work that I'm doing at the moment is working with the creative directors and the CEOs of some of the biggest fashion brands in the world to ask questions like, how do you hire people? And a lot of the challenges and a lot of the issues that we have seen raised, particularly this year in the fashion industry, has really come from a lack of diversity in the rooms in which decisions are made. Because we have built

a world, not just in fashion fashion but in so many different organizations where everybody looks and thinks the same and perhaps went to the same school but actually it's not enough to just say we are open now to diversity and we want to be inclusive how do people going back to your point about students want to feel safe how do people feel that this is an environment in which they will actually be welcomed and their skill set will be embellished. If you go to an interview, are people asking, do you have any accessibility requirements? Would you like a sign language interpreter? Those are not questions that we are comfortable with asking.

We place the responsibility of that on people who are already marginalized because we think it's their expectation by which to do so so the work that i'm doing is changing the culture and changing the strategy and changing the policies internal hopefully we'll see change in the next few years while it's also working in schools while it's going into schools four times a month and speaking with children saying if you could do anything do you want to be an engineer do you want to be a jockey do you want to work in fashion do you want to be a teacher you can Do you want to work in fashion? Do you want to be a teacher? You can do all of those things at once. You'll be exhausted, but you can. But actually giving people permission to dream what it is they want to do. So my work is

top down and bottom up. We are now heading for a new year. You've all done incredibly well in 2019. I expect from all of you even greater things in 2020. And thank you all, Sinead

Burke, Natasha Benjamin, Laura Smith and Khadija Mella for joining us this morning. And I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas. It's still continuing. Enjoy the rest of your Booking Day. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner,

host of You're Dead to Me, the funny history podcast for people who don't like history. And if you enjoyed Series 1, boy, do I have a special festive treat for you. Yes, me and Santa's elves have been bashing away

in the workshop, and we've loaded his sleigh with a brand new episode all about, well, you can probably guess. So join me, the hilarious Russell Kane, and our clever historian

Dr Fern Bridell as we crack cracker gags and get to grips with how the Victorians did Christmas. You can find it now and all the other episodes under your tree or on BBC Sound. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.