Andi Oliver: Grief, Racism, and the 35-Year Journey to Heal from the Loss of My Brother

0:00This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. you were a natural choice for this podcast because of all the times you've picked yourself up you've dusted yourself off and you've started all over again i lost my brother i just remember a voice saying you've got to come to the hospital now and as soon as they walked through i knew then i grabbed him and i could tell he wasn't in there he was cold worst moment of my life do you know what Andy how lovely we're still feeling the hole yeah that Sean left the people we lose are stardust and they live in us grief will never go away but you'll find somewhere to keep it but it did hit you hard the pain of losing Sean turned into me compulsively eating I could not stop someone took me to see a doctor and he said you've got a compulsive eating disorder it.

1:15Were you scared of getting better? Not allowing fear to be the thing that stops you from doing things is very important. Even if it terrifies you, do it. In fact, the more it terrifies you, the more you should do it. This is what I love about you. Hi, I'm so excited about today because I am talking to Andy Oliver. She is a really, really old friend of mine. I've known her for about 40 years and we are going to be talking through her incredible life where she has pivoted and begun again time after time after time she's amazing if you like this episode um if it would be all right can you just click like which is really easy and quick to do and subscribe lots of people think in some way subscribing um especially if you're one of my fans and you're in a midlifer we think subscribing means it's going to cost you money it doesn't cost you any money it's completely free but subscribing just means that you get the latest episode the minute it comes out so subscribing is great for you and it's really great for us i quickly just want to add a little trigger warning because we do discuss um suicide ideation and also eating disorders I feel like um at the beginning of this chat I should do some sort of like government health warning because I'm sure you want because I I know you and so it's going to feel maybe and sound quite familiar to people because I know you but I what I am going to try and do is ask you lots of questions that I might know the answer to but I know that the answer is what people will want to hear um and I am going to try to also be conscious of remembering that people don't know us or everything that we've been through so I might explain things a bit sometimes and I I wonder I don't know if people know that we know each other no I'm not sure that I don't I think sometimes they do I'm not sure they know that we know each other as we do and how long we've known and how deeply and how yes we are so shall we start yes please what are your first memories then of us meeting ah interesting like wag club that's exactly what i said earlier the wag club you being this like teenager essentially i mean i was probably almost a teenager i would imagine i don't even know because i don't think i had dad had makita by then i'm not even sure you had I was very young.

3:53You were very young. I can't, if I had had my keys, you can't have been more than about one or two years old. Right. So I would have been 20, 21, which means you were probably about like in your late teens or something. How old do you know? Late teens, 57. Yes. So you were, and I'm 61. So, you know, you might have been like 18 or 17. I may have been just before I had my keys. I may have been 19 or something. Anyway, you were very young, tiny little skirts, legs. what enthusiasm just this boundless like a sort of mad puppy very excited incredibly happy puppy bounding around in the wag club and I was kind of the same me and Anna were very similar to that I think we all had quite a an energy that matched each other on a really good level in fact and I think there was there were loads of boys and loads of girls obviously but there were some girls that were drawn to each other energetically and you were part of that ball of kind of tumble of energy from the wag that's what I remember first that's exactly what I remember I I said earlier to somebody I said you and nana together I was like worshipping at the altar of cool hotness I was like oh god these girls like I want to I wanted to like absorb you in some way um and then obviously we had the connection via Bruce so I went out with a guy called Bruce Smith for ages and he had been married to Nenna and what was quite funny was it was like all okay for us to all be friends and because I think that there was a real um the way that we all approached life was with no rigidity yes there was no idea there was certainly no kind of um idea that it was nana's ex-husband so we could i mean we weren't children you know it wasn't school i think you know i think we all felt that life came with challenges and changes and family was quite fluid we all came from fairly fluid uh familial structures anyway you know we but in some ways the lost ones you know who came together to make a solid base for each other you know I feel that we were like sort of spiritual nomads a bit like wandering in some kind of desert and and that we all found each other because we needed to create a new town a place yeah a structure within which we could all live and feel like we were connected to something and do you know what I mean and I think that kind of happened that's what it feels in my in my gut when I think about it I feel like we were we were the children of punk and that that the the liberation that punk gave people societally was incredibly important and that liberation was not just about music It was about the idea of humanity and how humanity should look and how families should look and how people should feel in the company of each other and how our children should be and what they should expect and how we should all help and support each other.

7:16And I still believe in all of those tenets, really.

7:24wow do you know andy that is probably the best description of that time for me that i've ever heard i've often tried to explain it to people it's quite hard to explain to people it was such a special time of love and acceptance of everyone and everything in our group it really i know So outside the parameters of that group was the savage world. Yeah, and our world was quite savage too. Our world was also quite savage. It wasn't all sunshine and roses by any means, but I think that there was always somebody there to catch you is what I felt like. And I still feel like that, actually. I feel like I'm lucky enough to live in a world where there's always someone to catch you.

8:09Sometimes I do the catching, sometimes I'm the catcher, sometimes I'm the catchee. you know depending on what week it is and what day of the bloody month we're talking about but um I think that that's how it's kind of like when I was when I was a kid that's kind of what I wanted my world to look like without being able to really articulate that and then as I you know I left home and and you know came to London quite early on etc and then I remember meeting see my house at home my house was always open house we had a very it was a weird house all sorts of quite difficult things going on but there was always an open door policy somewhat like the school band that my brother was in rehearsed in our house you know if anybody needed someone to say they would come and stay with us if someone had a fight with their mum and dad they would come and stay with us my friend sue and louise used to spend most weekends over our house if i wasn't at their house but it kind of happened to us a lot you know we'd have massive sleepovers mum was very like we had a party once I always tell people at this birthday party was the best it made me and my brother kings and queens of school one year this was when we lived in Cyprus actually and uh the birthday party was that my mum basically was I think it was my brother's birthday party so whenever we had a birthday party you were allowed like four friends as well you know so me it was like me and three of my mates and all of my brother's mates and my mum basically split us up into two armies rolled up newspapers blocked off the road to traffic at each end and created these two kid armies and just went go and we battered each other with newspapers it's like absolute carnage in the street the whole street was covered in ripped up paper and then we went upstairs and had a huge picnic out in the back garden and at school we were literally kings and queens of the school because my mum basically she was a teacher so she understood the child spirit and need for chaos and would give it to us every now and again and I and I think that that that chaos and that kind of wild thing that you well I used to crave as a child I crave as an adult as well actually that uh that uh spirit was something I wanted to have as part of my life it was like I knew that you were allowed that and it was okay actually it wasn't something to be scared of to have that kind of wild unfettered passionate engagement in the day or the moment or in your endeavor whatever it is that you chose and that's something I'm always grateful to my mom for you mentioned that this was happening in cyprus yes um you you actually moved there when you were really young because your dad yeah yeah your dad was in the RAF uh-huh that's right so we got posted before that we lived in uh biggin hill in kent i remember biggin hill quite well actually like you know you get like slivers of memory like little photo snaps yeah i remember there's three things I remember one is that I used to go to school in a control tower like an old RAF airplane control house it was completely round and I used to go up these circular steps spiral circuits to get to the school which is in the classroom which is on the top and I loved it up there because you could see all the way around so it was lovely and then I remember walking home from school with the sun dappling through the leaves of a tree and just really like watching the light play against my skin as I walked through it it's still one of my favorite things in the world you know when you drive through it uh in the summertime I love the English summertime countryside I just want to the smell of the grass that verdant deep green and all of it I think and I think it comes from being a kid in in Kent idyllic kind of bucolic idea of British countryside I loved it so much the garden I remember going swimming and having savaloys that's what I remember about Kent it's really weird um and then we went to live in cyprus and i got to cyprus and i loved it there why it was hot for a start i didn't know i liked to be i liked the sunshine i got there i was like what is this that's better this is way better and we went to the beach every weekend and and we used to go to school we used to start school really really really early like 7 a.m so we'd get up at like 5 30 in the morning or something get to school at 6 37 in the morning but you'd finish at 12 in the summer and one in the winter wow so you'd have the whole day you did you I think our holidays were shorter or something um but you'd have the whole day to do stuff so we would do we were very physical there we were outside a lot we were doing things all the time there was a kind of swimming I swam all the time like in the sea in the pool we lived opposite of uh like a rec center a place to go swimming all the time I was obsessed with it and there was just something about running around in the sunshine being outside that kind of living really worked for my for my temperament can I ask you something because obviously the whole premise of this podcast is about beginning again and it's like really moving country at such a young age it's like your first experience of beginning again that transition did it teach you do you do you feel like there are lessons that you learn from moving from kent to cyprus i think the lessons i learned were when i came back right because that was a happy transition and it was easy to cyprus yes coming back from cyprus to the uk was really hard right for a start i didn't really remember it here very much and i kept saying i want to go home meaning cyprus and everybody was going you are home and i was like i don't this I don't understand how old were you when you came back nine okay and it just felt dark and cold yeah people were calling me names I had I experienced racism you'd never experienced it before I don't think so not memorably I did I had a teacher that used to call me you people when I was in Cyprus and I didn't know what she meant and I this weird woman called Miss Scotford and I just used to think what does she mean she kept saying that and I didn't really know what she meant and then I came back to England and people were it was slurs like horrible things that felt violent where did you move to when you came back uh what was it uh Brice Norton we came to and we came to London briefly and then we went to Suffolk all right it's Anglia Bury St Edmunds in the 70s right and that was no joke and you know that parts of the UK back then in that time it was bleak you know I go to Bury Snippins now it's a completely different place there's people from all over the world there I was the only black girl in my school it was really bleak people were calling me names I felt scared I started having nightmares I thought there was something under the bed you know all of those kind of creepy I saw I remember seeing a film of the hunchback of Notre Dame a really old black and white one with Charles Lawton it's a really old one and I watched it scared the bejesus out of me and I started to have nightmare like proper nightmares waking sweating absolutely terrified and every single night I was having these horrible dreams and the light I remember the most was the light it was the darkness yes I found really difficult and that darkness somehow seeped into my very being so that was really the first difficult transition in my life I think we all have them at different points but that was the that was that was a traumatic how did you cope because I know you didn't really tell your parents I didn't tell anyone the racism or I didn't tell anyone because and I I keep thinking about why I didn't tell them because it didn't even occur to me really until quite recently that I haven't even spoken to anyone about it and I think a bit of me wanted to protect them I didn't want them to know it was so hard because I didn't really think there was anything that anybody could do about it it felt like a monster that had been unleashed that nobody could control or do anything about because I think somewhere in me I think I felt I deserved it wait wait yeah I want to unpick that some I feel like I think I felt like they were right you know I know that's the the most insidious thing about racism is that you believe it and so what you're left with is an internal belief that you are inherently wrong that there's something just wrong with your very the very core of who you are and your being and that went in really early and I never I didn't know how to shift that and I think that's why I didn't tell anyone about it because it felt like I would then have to talk about what was wrong with me I know I I I guess I've kind of um I've always understood how hateful judging somebody in any way really is I mean I always say for me because I've messed up so many times like I can't judge anybody about anything right like same way um but I'd never thought of it that calling someone a name or doing that would make them question like them believe that that is what it felt like it felt like the veil had dropped and everybody and I suddenly realized that there was something really wrong with me that I just wasn't what you're meant to be wasn't what you're meant to be who you're meant to be and that anything about me was inherently wrong so I could never talk about it to anyone it's I mean I talked to my friend Sue about it who is still my dear friend and then since I was nine when I started my school Wesley Middle School Sue had been there for maybe two months so she was the new girl as well and then we discovered her birthday was the day before mine oh wow so she's the 25th of May and I'm 26 and we sort of you know when you're little that kind of stuff's really magical and important it's still nice now um so I would talk to Sue about it and I would talk to Louise about it because we just were like three little acorns you know but I didn't really talk to anybody else but I certainly didn't talk to any grown-ups about it wow so how did you manage because it was quite a long time really before you left and went to London how did you manage those years of your life I don't know, Davina.

19:11I just was like a high functioning, terrified person. I was terrified all the time. And like battling with a kind of self disgust all the time. You know, whilst trying to grow up. Yeah. and learn stuff at school and puberty and puberty and all of that stuff you know so in the midst of that there was a constant internal dialogue going on and on and on were you like I'm gonna were you like I am gonna escape I'm out of here yeah I was like I was waiting for my life to start I've said that before it's like I just spent the whole time waiting for other ways that my life could take shape I didn't have to be resigned to staying there yes being called disgusting things all the time you know I was like overtly sexualized by adult men you know at a very young age like really down the road saying weird jungle bunny sex things to me I was like 12 I had but you know I had I matured very early I had boobs and a bum and all of that and I've walked down the road and grown men would be saying propositioning me sexually and I didn't really even understand what they meant but I knew it scared me you know I've been walking home from school like literally going to my mate's dad like just awful terrifying things like now I know if I there was a young girl I knew that was going through that I would be just gather her up and take her to safety but you know my mum didn't know what was happening my dad didn't know something my dad was bipolar anyway and there was all sorts of stuff going on with him my mom was not aware it was going on like I've talked to her about it since and she's like my god I can't believe I didn't know she's like why didn't you tell me I still don't really have an answer for her you know um is it is it that um you are a fiercely independent person and it's like I just gotta it's just happening I just gotta handle it a bit of a bit there's definitely that was definitely a part of it definitely a part of it and my mother taught me to be a fiercely independent person right and to power through things you know so you know she took my mum taught me how to respond physically to protect myself if a man tried to touch me or grab me when I was 11 years old she was like you know she taught me she said let them come closer let them come so you grab them you grab them by the bulls first and then you and when they come down like you grab them by the ears and you pull your knee up and then you run and she taught me that when I was 11 and she herself was taught how to fight back against racists when she was when she first came to this country she was really young she was early 20s and somebody taught her that you run to a house in you know there are loads of little streets then and everybody had milk bottles outside the house you run a house run up the path grab the milk bottles smash them against the door keep your back to the door and then you hold the bottles here and then anybody coming at you you have a weapon and she had to learn that when she was a young girl and she just got to this country so she taught me how to fight she taught me to be a fighter she taught me to verbally know how to protect myself I'm quite dexterous with language you know you are very dexterous and she taught me that very young where was your grandmother at this time because I know you were super you were super close to her no but I well the thing about mama is I only met mama two or three times in my life she was yeah she was in Canada or she was in Antigua we didn't ever have the money to go But she had this thing where she would send me messages from Canada.

22:47She knew, she understood me. Because people in my family were always talking about, I was, you know, fairly lively.

22:57And so she was always getting messages about me and my behaviour. And she would send me messages going, don't listen to them, do what you like, basically. Oh, really? From Toronto and from Antigua. which is send me little dolls and send me messages saying, be true to yourself, be your own guide, listen to your internal voice, live with your heart, follow your heart. How much did that mean to you? Everything. Did you absorb, did you get that? Absolutely, because I also got the same messages from my mother, even though I was always in trouble. She was also always going, listen to your heart, lead with your heart, listen to your internal voice, because you know.

23:37You know. You know. You know what's right and what's wrong. I'm so into that at the moment. Yeah. Ask yourself the question and you will hear the answer. My gut has every single time in my life told me which way to go. Every time I don't listen to it, I end up in the ship. Whether it's a job, whether it's a boyfriend, whether it's a mate, whether it's a party, you know. Every time I go and brush it away, it's absolutely the wrong thing to do. I am I I was I read well first of all I want to say what was lovely about doing this interview was I got notes about you hilarious like I was like I know Andy but no but what was so funny was I was reading the notes I was like what I didn't know that well I guess I I met you you were like late teens early 20s and pre that we just used to talk about what was happening I never really went deep into your past or anything I didn't realize how old you were when you came to London right and it was am I right in saying you were 16 yes 17 17 16 17 which I really like talking about this nowadays because um when you think about I'm never sure what this generation of young people is called zed x y zed whatever young people now um the the idea of leaving home and moving to london at 16 or 17 is so alien and as a parent helicopter parenting you you wouldn't let your kid do that you'd be like there's no way you're going to the big smoke on your own and then i i saw that you'd moved into a squat yeah with some friends everybody was in squat Everybody is in a squat with their friends.

25:27It was a perfectly normal thing to do. What everybody did was my cousins had a squat and I leased into it. Best thing ever. Can you just explain to people what a squat was? Because there's just no such thing. A squat was a house that was free, basically, because you basically took over abandoned properties or empty properties. And London then, there were loads of empty houses all over the place that people weren't living in. So you would move in. People used to sort of, I don't even know how they got the electricity on. you'd kind of get an electricity meter or they'd plumb into some weird thing it just happened and do it there was gas on there was electricity on once you had the gas and electricity on you were good to go basically some of them didn't have the electricity on and were a bit cold they were misery squats we didn't really have a misery squat we had nice squats they were good um so and then you'd have squatters rights and there was all sorts of things and then those actually a lot of those squads became what used to be called co-op houses and they were like small housing co-operations that were put together by um an independent group of people and then you would legally actually take ownership of those houses unfortunately they got turned into housing associations which then the council bought and then they just became part of the council the the um whatever they call it uh government property um stock government housing stock so unfortunately those co-ops kind of didn't last that long but for the period of time it was fantastic because you know how young people now can't afford to leave home we we just left home and found ourselves living independently it was absolutely brilliant how many of you were there how many of you were there in the squat uh one two three four maybe eight in a great big house in like a sort of five floor house in in the back of back of Dalston near Cananbury kind of thing that was the first I've lived in a few we everybody lived in a few you know it was a very free time it was a very that was another transition I suppose well beginning again by moving to London was massive but I literally was chomping at the bit I could not wait and the moment I turned 16 I was like right I'm legally allowed to go now I mean you know you were saying you know parents allowing there was no allowing or not allowing I was just gone I used to climb out the back window and run away all the time.

27:44My poor mother, honestly, I was a knight. I acknowledge that. But can I just say something? Look at you now. I know! And all of that, I think sometimes it's quite nice to say to any parents listening or watching that your kid might be going through a lot of trauma, turmoil now. And seem quite lost. And seem a bit lost. but actually this is what makes someone. Yeah, and sometimes that's happening because they've got a lot to offer. They've got a lot going on and they can't wait to start life. And sometimes Nana always says, not everybody's good at being little. Like she used to say about Makita, she was like, Makita's just not very good at being little.

28:31And Makita was terrible at being little. Makita was like, she was quite wild. Not very good at being little. She, you know, I'm not very good with, like automatic authority has never sat easily with me or particularly well with me I remember being at school you know and my teachers would say because I say so and I think yeah but you're an idiot I have no respect for you so why would I do what you want telling what you're telling me to do it's like my uncle John he met my uncle John I'm sure he met my uncle John he was one of the first was he at your sixth year yes he was and he was one of the first um black headmasters in this country my uncle John he's an extraordinary man and my uncle John would tell me to do something but he would sit me down and explain to me what was going on and why I needed to do something differently and I would always do it and do you know why because he had respect I was just gonna say respect yeah and he was always always treating me like that since I was little he would sit down and ask me how I was what I thought about it and understand what I you know having a conversation and proper exchange with me and I just always needed that I can't I don't respond to someone just barking orders at me and telling me what to do.

29:37I've not been very good at it. I love that idea that some people aren't good at being little. Some people need to be out in the world. And I think if it scares you, I think you just have to make sure they know there's a safe place for them to come and land when they need it, you know. And trying to keep them home, it doesn't help. It doesn't mean that they're not going to go out and do things that scare you or that challenge them, it just means that they're going to get resentful with you. So even if it scares you how your child is, even if it scares you, you still have to let them do the things that they're reaching for.

30:18You know, if they want to go to Paris for a year or they want to do whatever it is, you've got to get on with it. So you don't own them. What did you do when you came to London? Because was that when music was like, OK? Yeah, for a bit, I think. I mean, it wasn't that long before I joined Rit Brigg and Panic, I've got to say, which was the band I was in when I was a teenager. I've just got to say, we've got to just like stop for a moment and discuss Rit Brigg and Panic because it was the coolest band ever. Because it was sort of like, it's talked about like it's a punk band and the ethos and the vibe of it was punk.

30:53But there was also so much groove. Jazz and... Groove, like funk. Funk and everything. They were amazing. You were amazing. It was really like a collective. Yeah. More than just a band. Yeah. It was quite a collective. Yeah. It was like lots of different moving. People would come and go and guest them. And at the heart of it, there was like six of us, I suppose. It was Gareth and Sean, Bruce, me, Nana, Springer. And then there was Flash and all sorts of other people that would come and go basically around that kind of nucleus. And I mean, you were pretty big. yeah like so I mean I don't really you know we never really thought about that stuff which is quite interesting which is probably why we weren't bigger because we didn't really think in music business terms and we didn't really music the music business per se was not really the reason we were doing any of it it was very much a need to express ourselves in a particular way and for me I'm eternally grateful I see it as that Gareth who really was the founder of the band was like my music teacher you know and to have had that musical education at such a young age was brilliant because it taught me you know we would me and nana were like sort of dervishes on the stage really we just used to just i mean gorgeous fly so honestly i just i wish i could like explain to people because both of you bought a little bit of um like kind of african dance moves like vibe and I'd never seen girls like perform yeah I had never I was like this is the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life I was telling somebody about this the other day and I was like well we just used to take up we never used to wear shoes and we used to tuck our dress yeah into your side yeah yeah it was so cool everything into our knickers and just fly about basically I saw these pictures the other day and I was thinking well that's a lot of pennies just like it's just loads of pictures of me and Anna's bum basically amazing um and it for us it felt you know as these two young women you know we were we were like any other young women in that we were trying to work out who we were and parts of us were very confident and fearless and felt really powerful and bits of us were really insecure and freaked out you know what was that like when you met Nanna it was kind kind of like uh two magnets really so Sean had had a car crash Sean and Gareth had had a car crash and Sean was in hospital at the Middlesex hospital I think it was so how old were you when you met uh she was 17 I was 18 about or she was 16 and I was 17 like literally babies and uh she she had Sean had been telling her about me and he'd been telling me about her he kept going you've got to meet this girl I know you're going to love each other you're going to love her you're going to love and I was like whatever sort of yeah yeah you know when someone else is telling you as well you're like whatever shut up and I walked into the hotel I keep calling it the hotel room I walked into the hospital room and um she was she'd go to and read him from this book every day because he had his leg in a uh what did they call it a cast oh oh um yes it was in traction so he couldn't get out of bed for about three months so she used to go and read him every day out this book and talk to him and plait her hair basically and I came down so I probably was 16 17 because I just it was just moving to London I was just moving and I walked in and she was sitting there we kind of looked at her and went hi I was like you know you must be that girl she said she was thinking oh you're the sister and we talked a little bit and then I said do you want a fag I don't I mean I don't even smoke neither does she that I didn't we must have been shorn cigarettes got a cigarette went in the hallway this is how long ago it was went in the hallway of the hospital and just were like oh you're pretty cool you're pretty cool and we came back in and I think Gareth was there as well and we said so we're going to sing together and they were like what and then we said we decided we're going to sing together and we were like arm links arms linked you know like little girl when little girls fall in love with each other me and Sarah yes it's exactly what happened it's exactly what happened I just knew yeah immediately know when you know you know yeah of all very when Harry met Sally and we fell in love with each other on the spot I always say Nana's one of my greatest love affairs in my life really one of your most successful most successful still going easier than any dude yeah right and more consistently you know easy than any man and I think girlfriends and I I'm pretty sure Nana would have done this to you as well sarah's definitely done it to me they can tell you things yes that no one else can tell you because you know they love you yeah and you know that that love is so pure that they can tell you some of the hardest truths nana has definitely been tasked with speaking to me like now listen yeah so and so is pissed off with you they've sent me this is why and i'm like why don't talk to yourself and they're like because she's scared of you and she's like yeah what are we gonna do about it do you know what I mean it's like she's and I've done the same with her because people don't want to tell her anything you know I remember when she'd um first became hugely famous on her own and uh she'd been on tour and I've missed her so much she'd been away because we were like in each other's pockets every day every day right yeah I mean you had an in between your names yeah Andy and Nana.

36:24Yeah. It's true. Right? It's true. We did. And people very rarely said that one name without me. Never. Never. Never. Nana and Andy coming. Exactly. And she'd been away for like three months or something. And she came back and we were in our house. And we were doing something, cooking probably. And she said something. I went, oh, shut up. And she started laughing. And I said, why are you laughing? She went, no one's told me to shut up in three months. Because she'd been with all these like kiss asses. and I was like oh what a little shit shut up and she just said love she went oh god I miss you so much everything's kissing my ass for three months you know and uh so yeah we are you are you are the one who can say you are the one with the so who is safe yeah she's my safe person you know she's my person and that happened really quickly so we fell in love with each other inside we were going to sing together about two months later the slits were playing at a place called the venue so let's just explain the slits the slits coolest band ever so sean's girlfriend tessa played bass in the slits so it's all very family all this all interlinked yeah and nana was singing with the slits and i went to this gig and i was down the front like because i was a massive slits fan before i'd even met any of them they slits played in beres and edmunds when i was really young and punk changed my life the clash and the slits played and I was like that's it I'm living like that so one of the things that brought me to London was the idea of the clash and the slits and so I went to this gig I was like oh I love the slits oh that girl I met singing with the slits I don't know Sean was playing with them that night I can't remember he used to play with them sometimes Bruce may have been playing drums yeah too because Bruce who was the drummer in Ritwick and Panic also played with the slits um and at the end of the gig Nana and Ari reached down and pulled me up onto the stage and I think it was grapevine or whatever it was they were singing and they just like get on the mic and shoved me at the mic and then we all just started dancing and you know it was like I just was like ah this this is right this is what I'm meant to be doing it didn't feel weird it didn't feel like scary I was just like in my shit I was like and I felt like I'd finally landed where I was meant to be did this kind of crazy couple of last songs with them did the encore with them and at the end of the gig Gareth from Ritwig and Panic who was the founder of Ritwig and Panic said do you want to come on tour with us and a month later I was on tour with Nana and the rest of the band and that's how I started singing.

38:55Do you know what I felt from what you just said again it was an era where nowadays I think everything is kind of so calculated everybody's got their band they wouldn't really want to share that with somebody no they would never go get up on the stage yeah no and sometimes I guess it's what I've missed not doing so much live television is when the anarchy can happen yes and you go off script and you run over there and something happens that I do and I think that's punk yes it is punk is you think this is going to happen but we can make not anything can happen it's the moment the frisson the electricity of the moment the energy of the moment is what drives what's happening in front of your eyes whether it's tv or on a stage or in a play or whatever it is you go with what feels right in that second and in that moment and that's a brilliant recipe for life in my opinion that's why I like live tv I love live tv you love it don't you love it lots of people don't like it yeah I love it because they don't like the uncertainty I love that yeah but that's because we're from our era because we're from what we're from yeah so that's and that's how I started singing but what I mean Andy the reason why I would like you were top tier begin again guest is because you've just done it so many times like the singing yeah you know that you that you kind of got dragged onto a stage um and then you're in a band and you're going on tour but the funniest thing for me was hearing that you didn't really think about it in terms of music industry or career or anything like that But it was just a release.

40:33It was more like, I like these people. Yes. I'm going to do this with these people. That was kind of why it was happening. It was like just because we all needed to be together and do this thing together. And had the most incredible time. What a way to spend your young life, basically, with your mates on the road, performing these wild gigs that were different every single night. The first gig I ever played actually was at the venue again. it was in the same place and I wore my mum's bedroom curtain it was a good curtain it was a really good curtain it was like maroon I saw a picture then I thought is that the curtain it was like a dark maroon burgundy and it was like damask so it had sort of gold inlay and it was the fanciest thing I could see I thought I'm gonna wear that and I just wrapped it around myself and tied it and pinned it with a giant pin in the back but I'm telling you I knew you then it would have looked amazing it looked great right it was it looked great it was a lot people like what do you mean a curtain i'm like yeah yeah yeah so that was the first thing i'm nana and i just used to wear bits of fabric wrapped around us all the time i mean that's kind of how we dress like knotted here and there and on our heads and anywhere else basically i mean again punk punk not doing what you're gonna wear that thing up there and pass it to me not conforming yeah Yeah, carrot bag.

41:57I had a carrot bag dress once. That was a good dress. What do you mean carrot bag? It was like a bag that carrots came in. You know those mesh bags? Yes. And I just cut the corners off and put a hole in the neck and it was fabulous. Amazing. You'd have loved it. Quite see-through. Very me. Yes, totally net dress. Amazing. You'd have loved it, babe. Yeah. A little short, just about covered the bum and wore that with like winkle pickers. It was a look. I mean, this is what I love. it's just like always thinking and I think I think that that actually has served as a really strong bedrock for life actually so that in fact when big change happens when things are you know feel like they're perhaps being thrust upon you either it doesn't really I mean there have been times where I've been you know scared and worried and but a lot of the time I'm like hmm so what you do You have to kind of almost take a deep breath and find a calm centre in yourself and work out which way you want to turn.

43:01It can be the moment of opportunity. I don't know if it's in Mandarin. In a Chinese language, crisis and opportunity are the same word. Wow. It's cool, that isn't it? It's very cool. It's very cool. Because the thing that you think is going to be the worst possible thing, the thing that's terrifying you because it means you have to deviate from your plan. can sometimes mean that you let in whole brand new thoughts and ideas and people and situations that you would never normally have considered. And what you can consider is not always enough or the right thing because you don't really know what the possibilities are yet.

43:40So I think being open to that crisis moment is actually being open to exciting, unimaginable change. And that's kind of the change you want is what is unimaginable. That's what excites me about being alive. It's like all the stuff I can't even possibly contemplate yet because I don't even know what it is. That's what I want. I mean, I'm just really looking forward to the next beginning again. Like I, you're like a shapeshifter. It's just so exciting to see what you're going to do next and that you're open to it. I'm excited because I'm going to introduce you to my new show sponsor, Ancient and Brave.

44:30I love a secret weapon. Well, this isn't really a secret because I've been banging on about it for years. It's collagen and more specifically, Ancient and Brave, true collagen. It's been part of my routine for years and it's completely tasteless, odeless and dissolves in anything. Coffee, tea, smoothies, even just water. But this is why I swear by it. Collagen levels naturally decline as we get older. I know, I know, it's so unfair. And that basically affects everything. Skin, hair, joints, muscles, you name it. But true collagen helps keep everything strong, supported and glowing. But what really sets them apart is that they're a B Corp and members of the 1 % for the planet, which means that 1%, actually now 2 % of all their sales goes directly to environmental causes that protect our planet.

45:27So if you fancy giving it a go, here's a little secret for you. get 20 % off your first order at ancientandbrave.earth slash planet using my code begin again all in one word I do want to talk to you very quickly about um obviously Sean's back in your life at this point you're in London yeah and um I want to talk to you about sickle cell because um Sean had sickle cell and if you could just explain what that is so sickle cell is a blood disorder and it means that your now let me get this the right way around I think it's the red blood cells I get I get this mixed up see the red or the white blood cells um it are constantly changing and what happens when you have sickle cell is that instead of them changing shape and just sort of being able to move around each other they sickle and they get locked in in different parts of your body and that can happen in your joints it can happen in your head it can happen in your spleen it can happen anywhere and when it happens it's incredibly like unbearably painful like beyond pain and it's called a crisis and sickle cell happens in people from the african diaspora there's a version of it called phallicemia that happens to people who are of kind of uh greek and turkish i think it's levantine background um heritage and uh sean was a sickle cell sufferer i'm a carrier which means i could pass it on to a child it well i'm not anymore i couldn't because i don't have a wound but when i was of childbearing years a child of mine could have had it if i had a baby with another sickle cell carrier so um I think it's kind of stopped with me actually which is I'm really glad about did did you see Sean having attacks when he was younger all the time how often every couple of months at least what would bring it on exertion overexertion brings it on now overexertion can he was quite lucky because overexertion for some people can mean getting out of bed right so some sickle cell uh people cannot get out of bed because walking across the room brings on a crisis and it's so painful that they have to get back into bed so they have to be in a wheelchair or they can't because they just can't they're pushing their body it's like they just can't so um and then their eyes go very yellow like almost jaundiced and uh it's just painful and sean would get massive nosebleeds i would have to sit with him and hold bucket under his face and it would just be pouring pouring out and I'd hold ice here on the bridge of his nose to try and stem the bleeding he used to be stuck in bed before you had tellies in every room you know he'd be stuck in bed upstairs and I'd be downstairs and he'd bang on the floor so I'd go and see what he wanted or I'd sit with him a bit and read to him a bit but I'd get used to I used to get quite impatient about it as well and almost oddly you know like jealous because he'd get lots of attention um and so we would fight about it as well you know well after he died I felt so awful about all that stuff and then I had to forgive myself because I was just a kid yeah you know it's it's uh it was very tricky and then when he was about so he was 18 months older than me when he was about 12 or 13 we found out that he had a expected lifespan of 30 and we had all these pamphlets about it because you know how we found out he had sickle cell?

49:12So we were in Cyprus and he had a sickle cell crisis and they thought he had appendicitis. I think we were still in Cyprus, yeah. And the doctors thought he had appendicitis so they rushed him in to have an appendectomy. Now, when somebody has sickle cell, you can't give them general anaesthetic because it can kill them because the application of general anaesthetic affects the blood cells and it can bring on such a huge crisis. And they nearly, they were about to give him anaesthetic and the doctor suddenly went, hang on a minute, stop. And luckily the doctor, who was a white doctor, had worked in Africa for years.

49:50And he suddenly went, I'm not sure this is appendicitis. And gave Sean an examination and said, this boy's got sickle cell. So when he was about 11... That's the universe, isn't it? What were the chances of that? Yeah, what were the chances of that? So that's how we found out he had sickle cell. Wow. It's funny, things get a bit jumbled up in my head. I'm like, was that in Cyprus or was it when you came back? Do you get that? I think, yes. Can't play things on that. And then I think, oh. That is normal at our age. Yeah. I think it's okay, we're allowed. Yeah, well, I mean, it is. It is what it is.

50:24I feel like remembering Sean I remember him being the most laid back chilled out relaxed calm and I wonder now you telling me that exertion brought on were the years of knowing that if I get over excited or I do but it made him um completely unique yeah yeah this level of of chill chill was so attractive because to me that overenthusiastic fast brain yeah i mean so smart his brain was really really really fast but he was very chill and also i'm his sister so he was the opposite of me and like physically energetically so i would do all the energy stuff and he would sort of direct me from the sofa he would get me to do the most unbelievable shit right quite like I and we would get and I was always like but what you know I was quite neurotic what if we get in trouble and he'd go yeah but we'll still have done it just I can go and get the thing get the wine nicked dad's wine you know terrible like naughty he was so he was naughty but in a really good way a really unbelievably charismatic way I also just want to say um I don't know if it's possible on um the YouTube channel that we're going to put this on but at this point I would love to put a really beautiful picture of Sean Oliver please so everybody can see the beauty Sean because no really Andy he was breathtakingly beautiful as but like his energy matched his beauty yeah like it was just he was incredible he was incredible I mean I've been difficult I know my face is because I'm just remembering how annoyed I used to get because he used to sleep with everybody.

52:23I just want to let you know, I never had sex with Sean. You were literally one of the only people I know. I did happen to be sleeping with his best friend though, that would have been bad. Yes, I may not have stopped him. Just going to say, just going to say, okay, just going to say. But he did very much love Bree, so it probably would have stopped him. But he was unbelievable. I mean, I would get friends and I'd go, please, can you not? just can you just not and he'd go and he he actually said to me once can't promise that and i was like i hate you and then of course he slept with her sleep with everybody and i could tell when he slept with people oh no because then they'd talk to me they'd go hi and i'd think oh god you shagged him you really pissed me off and also my dad was a terrible philanderer so my dad I was always sleeping with people.

53:14Right. And I was like, oh, my God, I hate you both. You just keep it in your pants. We're fine. Minutes, for God's sake. You have to keep sleeping with everything with a pulse. It was like a thing. Well, it's an addiction of sorts, isn't it? It's feeding a beast. Absolutely. It's feeding a desire. And, you know, with Sean, I just think he wanted to eat up as much life as he possibly could, whether it was with sex, with music, with everything. You know, he just had this. it's interesting because he was as you say incredibly chilled out about everything just didn't have those kind of trigger points that a lot of people do he just didn't have them but he had an urgency about living but was that was he aware of his life expectancy okay from the age of about 12 he knew that wow because that's really going to affect yeah it's massive but in a way also I think that um we couldn't really conceive of what it meant no Because 30 seems so far away.

54:11Yes. When you're 12. 30 is like some far-off land, you know. But we knew that meant it was young. But it was still hard for us to get our heads around. And when he died, he was 27. Can you tell me a bit about that night? Ugh. Worst time of my life, Davina. I was at the Globe which was a sort of dive bar in uh Tavisot no what's what square is it it was the bottom of Powis Terrace which is where I lived and it was a little dive bar place that we all used to run and run around in and it was the first place I ever cooked food and people paid me was in the Globe remember when I used to do yeah I do and uh there was a party in Upstead Carmen Carmen Munro, who is a black English actress, Caribbean English actress, was in there.

55:01And I love Carmen Munro. She was in there. And every time I see her face, it reminds me of that night now. And I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. Remember, nobody had mobiles then. It was 35 years ago. Nobody had mobiles. The phone in the globe rang. And it was somebody calling me from the hospital. I still don't know who it was, actually. I don't know who called me. I can't remember. I just remember a voice saying, you've got to come to the hospital now. Sean's sick. And I got in a cab. I don't know who was with me. I actually, I remember the phone ringing. And from the phone ringing to after Sean's funeral, it's all a very weird, surreal, hard to place, hard to put my finger on thing.

55:50It's this nebulous weird thing. I remember odd bits of it at funny times. And I went to the hospital and Sam was there. Sam Robinson, his girlfriend who they were engaged to be married, he loved her so deeply. Like Sam was the tamer. She was the lion tamer, you know. He just adored her. And Sam was there. I think Hussain was there, who was our friend, dear friend and manager, Sean's manager. I can't remember who else was there. maybe Miranda was there actually as well Sam's sister, Miranda might have been there there were a few people there anyway and he'd had a sort of stroke and we were all out in the waiting area and the doctors came back through and as soon as they walked through I knew and they went to Sam because she was his girlfriend I think and sort of sat down in front of him and said he's just had a what do they call it basically he'd had a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously and it killed him because he was having a sickle cell crisis and the whole thing was just too much of his body the whole thing overloaded and it killed him and I ran past them and he was in the bed no I'd already seen him because I said to him I spoke to him and I said well you'll be home in a couple of days when you get home I'll make you some soup and he was conscious and then he went back out and we went back out again and he was weak, I remember that he was weak because he was like because he didn't want to be there, he hated it there and he was like when can I come home and I was like you'll be home in a couple of days and I'll come and I'll make you some sleep and he was like alright fine and then they came and basically said they told us he'd died and I ran back in and I grabbed him and I could tell he wasn't in there he'd gone, he'd left and he was cold body wasn't it just wasn't it didn't have the vitality it didn't have the soul spark in it anymore and my mum was on the way and she didn't get there in time and I stood in the car park waiting for her to come and I couldn't call her and tell her.

58:17There was no phone, you know, so I just stood in the car while waiting for my mum to come. And she got out of the car and she was just so hopeful. And I said, she's gone, mum. She just crumpled. It was the worst moment of my life. I've got tissues that I've taken all out already. and having to tell her that me had gotten, you know, it was just her face. I'll never forget her face.

58:55and you know it nearly broke us darina it nearly broke you it nearly broke all of us because he was such a And, you know, death does that to people, obviously, but Sean was a special person. And I'm sure everybody feels that about the person in Ospreay. Sean really was a special person. Do you know what, Andy? I've been thinking about him a lot, obviously, because I knew I was going to talk to you today. And I thought, how lovely for Sean that it's 35 years, right? Yeah. 35 years later we're still feeling the hole that Sean left and I was in bed with Bruce the phone rang I picked it up it was Nenna and I put the phone down and I thought I've got to wake you up and tell you and give you the worst news of your life that your best friend since you, I don't know how old.

1:00:00They were teenagers too. Yeah. They were kids. Has gone. And I was like, I don't want to wake you up. To change his life ever. Yeah. It's awful. But the beautiful thing out of that is that he made in his very short... Short life. ...27 years... Yeah. His impact. ...a massive impact. You know, on his gravestone it says, he who burns twice as bright burns half as long. And there's a shooting star on his gravestone. And it's never truer, never a truer word was spoken when it relates to my brother. And I, you know, the further away I get from it, the more grateful I am that I had him at all. Yes. And the further away I get from it, I understand that life is what happens to you when you're here.

1:00:55and what you do with that period of time. Some people are little, they're 95 and don't make any impact at all. There's a sadness to that, a deep sadness. And I think of Sean's funeral. Remember the funeral? There were people that you couldn't get into the crematorium. There were people, it was a sunny day. It was like the royal death that happened on Nabbit Grove. The whole place went still. The hearse came up the road. It was amazing. Lined on the streets. And all around the outside of the crematorium, there's like banks. and they were black people four deep on the banks outside the crematorium and that's a testament to my brother and what he did with the time that he had here and that's a beautiful powerful thing and his children are incredible his grandchildren are extraordinary and I get to have them and be them and I get to be his sister forever you know that's the other thing I'm like so proud that that was my brother and that I got to have that with him that we got to tour the world we got to be in this incredible band together and do all this extraordinary things in this really short space of time you know so I there's a as an older person I have so much gratitude for having him at all and I remember I don't know if I've told you this but I think I might have told you when you and Sarah came to do Staring Up with me and Makita uh Margie Clark yes as an actress she was in that film um years ago something about liver uh letter to gregion if it was called she was the lead and it's a brilliant liverpudian actor just fantastic woman and i met her after shauna died i was with viv goldman walking up port villa road and there was a big bus there and margie was filming and margie brought us onto the bus and viv said oh this is andy and i was you know she was explaining to margie why i was i kept bursting into tears and margie said andy's brother died a few weeks ago and it was literally a couple of weeks later and uh margie sat down and she took my hands and she said i lost my brother 23 years ago and i was like like it was like it was like water to a dying woman i'm hearing these words because i looked at her and i knew she understood and she said you'll it'll never go away but you'll find somewhere to keep it she said people will say lots of things to you and you probably sort of all the fuck off and I said sure and she said this is all I can give you and it was the greatest gift anybody could ever give me and it's turned out to be absolutely true it's never gone away but I find somewhere I found a little quiet place within and that's where it lives the pain of it and every now and again it comes up like just now and it feels very recent and real and all over again i mean we were discussing before we started how mad it is that the last time i saw you because life is just so mad isn't it yeah we have to tell a week i was on your podcast and it was staring it up and it was a year ago to this week and we realized then oh my god it's actually the anniversary of your brother dying this week and we've done it again and we've done it again this week knowing yeah or realizing we just at the date.

1:04:07You didn't realise that at the car. Yeah. Last night, a lady in bed, I went, hang on, what day is it? It's very full. I was like, my God, we've done it again. So this weekend, it will be 35 years since Sean died. Absolutely mad. So that to me, see, I feel like they are stardust. They are stardust. The people we lose are stardust. And they live in us. They live all around us. I believe this really firmly. We've both lost enough people at this point in our lives. You know, I'm not a religious person, but I do have a spiritual sense of the world. that I cling to sometimes like it's a lifeboat you know that sense of that this that which we cannot put our fingers on that which is intangible and that understand that's what again coming back to these things about books and music these are those are the things that books and music help me to connect to is the stuff that we cannot imagine the stuff that's bigger than us that's greater than us that is outside of our control it's nothing to do with what we decide and what we choose it just is you know and after I think any great loss in your life connecting to that is the thing that keeps you alive and keeps you going and keeps you inside your own body because somehow grief makes you leave your own body you kind of float above yourself I you know there was a it took a good couple of years before I re-entered my body after Sean died I was like hovering above for quite a long time I felt when my sister died I felt like the whole world just stopped spinning and I'd go places and I'd think oh the world's still spinning for you like I can't move forwards yeah I'm literally stuck which they're meant to do yeah which everybody's meant to do but it was um it's quite hard to explain that to somebody yeah I always um try to remember to check in yes with people who've lost someone because it is a weird it's after the funeral everybody goes back to getting on with their lives you're fine just sit in there yeah it's a bit like having a baby actually it's the same thing like after the baby comes essentially because it's birth and death so birth and death after the baby comes this monumental thing happens in your life that changes you forever and everybody else is like really interested no lovely or oh poor you that's terrible nightmare and then they have to get on with their own lives that's just normal but then you're sitting there going oh my god now I've got a baby what happens next you know or oh my god I've lost somebody how am I supposed to carry on and you find a way but it did hit you hard it hit me hard and it hit me hard it nearly broke me because it it's it developed into the trauma yeah basically became an eating disorder what happened to be an eating disorder where I could not stop eating and it actually connected to the feelings that we were talking about at the beginning of this when I was talking about uh when racism first hit me and where it lived in me in that I innately felt like I was wrong and disgusting and the pain of losing Sean turned into me compulsively compulsively eating I could not stop like in the dark eating anything not you know making something delicious and sitting down having a snack literally eating anything I could get my hands on and uh crying rocking in the dark wanting to be sick not knowing how to stop I mean it was just the most terrifying downward spiral and also revolting I've revolted myself and I didn't know how to tell anybody what was happening couldn't talk about it because I was so ashamed the shame of it was crippling to be like absolutely awful and so I would do it in the dark because I was even ashamed to see myself let alone let anybody else know what was happening and I mean I don't still to this day like the that's you know we're talking about the things that we cannot control that we don't see the universe absolutely brought the right people to me just when I was going under I really was and I met a girl woman called Sarah who had just come out of rehab for heroin addiction and she was talking to me about her heroin addiction I was thinking sounds really familiar the feelings are the same right yeah yeah she was going on I couldn't stop and I was degrading myself and she'd done terrible things, the shame of it.

1:08:43And I was thinking, I still didn't tell her. I was just sitting there thinking. Didn't you? No, and I still didn't tell her. And I was sitting there thinking, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. And then I said, really quietly, I said, I wish you could do that for food. She said, what do you mean? And I said, well, you know. She said, no, tell me what you mean. And I said, well, I was making me jerk up again. I was like, I don't know how to stop. I'm really, really scared. I was so scared, Mina. And she said, you can. And I said, what? She said, it's a thing. You have an eating disorder. And I'd never heard the words eating disorder.

1:09:25I just thought it was disgusting. So awful. And she took me to see a doctor called Dr. Robert Lefevre. I know. who used to run a clinic called Promise. He said, tell me what's been happening. And I told him and he said, you've got a compulsive eating disorder. And I said, I'm ill. He was like, you're ill. It was like the biggest relief. I just thought I was a disgusting monster, basically. And he said, right, I want you to go to see your doctor. He gave me a letter. I knew today was going to be like this, by the way. So I was going to be a lot of crying. It's Davina. She's going to get it all out of me.

1:10:08I know she is. And he gave me a letter to see my doctor. And I took it to my doctor. And the doctor said, are you anorexic? And I said, no. He said, are you making yourself sick that you're bulimic? I said, no. And he went, we can't. You can't go. And I was terrified again. So he was saying you could go to treatment if you get approval from. If I was anorexic or bulimic. But not from. He said, we're going to put you on a diet. And I'm thinking. That's not going to help. I'm trying to be on a diet. because every day I would wake up and think right I'm not going to eat today yes that was my solution and then obviously I'd crack and then once I'd eaten one thing I bang wouldn't stop so I would spend days locked in the house because I didn't want anyone to see me and I you know I was getting fatter and fatter and bigger and bigger my body felt literally like it belonged to somebody else more and more um and then I went back to Dr Lefevre and I said they said they the NHS can't afford it and he said well I'm going to send you anyway and I said I haven't got the money and he said that you don't have to pay me and he let me go for like two and a half months he sent me into residential care and that man saved my life and I've said it before that he literally saved my life because I think I would have I was definitely having suicidal ideation I was having very dark thoughts because I didn't know I was just How long was this after Sean had died?