Caitlin Moran: “I Thought My Brain Had Broken” Becoming Hopeful After A Life Of Anxiety

25:52It was something that, you know, people in Woody Allen movies had. It sounded quite aspirational. It was like bagel. Unless we also didn't have it in Wolverhampton. Yeah, I know. I've got anxiety. I see what you mean. Yeah, I've got anxiety. I've got to see my shrink. Like, kind of like, oh, wow, if I move to New York, I can get anxiety. So I didn't really know what it meant. But this, and it wasn't what I thought it was. I thought anxiety was, would you be a bit worried about something? When you have your first panic attack, it feels like you're being poisoned. like something washes through you physically your brain starts going faster and faster and faster and faster so the thoughts are tripping up over themselves and the thoughts get darker and darker and more like bulbed wire and something is happening in your guts and your your your heart rate goes up and it feels like your blood your veins are full of this black stuff and you are in a different world like the the world changed halfway down that street and obviously now years later i know what's happening when you have your first panic attack you you are suddenly flooded with cortisol and noradrenaline and adrenaline and those are essentially amphetamines so you are just flooded with speed you are literally overdosing on speed because you think you are in a dangerous situation your body must be ready to run so by the time we got to the end of the street my you know suddenly filled with this kind of amphetamine super fast thought superpower i was like okay we're in danger i will have to get us out of this my first plan was that i would sit at the bottom of the stairs every day the first post would come about 7 30 and the last one would be at 2.30.

27:13I presume the first thing that would happen would be a letter would arrive. So I was like, I'll sit at the bottom of the stairs and then I can intercept the post. That was for about two months. And I was writing about it in my diary, but in code. And then I was like, and then it's funny. Writing it in code in case someone read it. Yeah, because I didn't want to scare anybody else. And then I was like, okay, I actually don't know what I'll do when I open that letter. I need to make money. If I've earned enough money so that by the time they finally get us, I can just go, okay, they're taking the benefits away, but I'm now earning more than benefits.

27:39Like kind of then it'll be okay and no one will be angry with me and I'll solve the problem. So I, and the only way that I could think to earn money was what Jo does in Little Women, which is write. Like if you've got some pen and paper, write. So what I quickly want to get to is how, because you were taken out of school at 11 to be homeschooled. Yeah, yeah. And you're 13 at this point. How did you find, because I know for the first year you were at home, you kind of, you were all a bit feral. Oh, yeah. But you, how did you find Little Women? Oh, so our parents never gave us lessons. They weren't those kind of homeschoolers.

28:13It was literally, it was child-led education. So it was just literally do what you want. So we just watched television and ate a huge amount of cheese. And I don't regret a single bite of it. It was all really good. But the first time I met Courtney Love, I walked into the studio and she went, Caitlin, I used to be as fat as you. The secret is don't eat cheese. I've not been able to take that advice. I cannot give up cheese. I don't regret a single bite of cheese I've ever had. But the one thing our parents would do is they would take us to the library at least once a day because we all read so fast that often we would, I would read, like I would have read that book in that day and then I'd go back in the afternoon and get another one.

28:47So we went to the library every day and I read every book in the library. That was my education. Telly and books. So you're in the library every day. Yeah. And I read everything. This is mega. Yeah. That your parents did that. What a gift. I know. Well, they read too. And like kind of, and often we would have our TVs taken away because we were renting them. We didn't have the money. So that was the only thing that we had was books. and they were readers as well. So yes, I went to the library every day and just read. So I knew from books, the information the books gave me was, and writers are kind of pushers, like writers always want other people to be writers.

29:16So when people are writing books, they're always going, well, you could write one too, sort of subconsciously. So I very much picked up that information from the books that I was reading. So I started to write. My presumption was because I could read a book in a day, I would be able to write a book in a day. That turned out not to be the case. It was a long time to write a book. I really had quite a sore hand by the end of the day. So it took me, I think, two and a half years in the end. And then I started sending it off to publishers. And the third one. At this point you're 15. 15 now, yeah. And the third one I send it to accept it.

29:44We could only afford to print out one copy. So we're having to wait for them to go out and then wait for them to come back. Who made you able to accept a no and go back and try again? Well, my crushing poverty and anxiety at El Divina made me keep going and take notes and go out again. You have no other option, right? So you've been very open. And I think it's so important to talk about you when you talk about your poverty. Yes. And the situation that your family were in and how hard life was. Yeah. But you saw a way out. And there is a really interesting thing. Again, I talked to Michael so much about it, about leaving and how hard it is sometimes to leave your position.

30:30Oh, yes. In society, because there is kind of a guilt. You feel a bit guilty, but you can get shamed by other people. You feel full of shame. Could you just talk me through that journey? So traveling up the class system, you mean? Yes. So it's interesting because then you become, I guess, the nearest equivalence would be kind of like migrants and immigration and stuff or kind of being mixed race. From speaking to friends who are, you know, my husband is that children of immigrants, most of my friends are, in that you're never quite one or the other again. You are, in the end, you realise, OK, I'm both and that's great.

31:07But at the beginning, so one of the questions I would repeatedly get asked when I first started writing and had a public profile was, well, what class are you now? Because, you know, you are working class, like you're below working class, you're underclass. But now you live in North London and you earn money. So are you middle class now? And this would fox me for a while because I'd be like, I do observe differences between people who are born middle class and people who travel through the class system. And so my answer now is to say that I'm culturally working class, but financially middle class.

31:30Yes, that's a great answer. Thank you very much. I came up with it myself. Because the difference is, I mean, it's like being able to talk two languages. One of the things I enjoy most in my columns in The Times, like most readers of The Times tend to be middle class and they're quite wealthy people. and one of the things I really enjoy being able to do is translate what's happening in a working class life or existence and the problems that you face there and being able to explain it to a middle class audience and just there's little things like I remember the first office that I ever went and worked in someone went, someone started a conversation it's a lovely woman, but started the conversation by going where do you ski?

32:02Where? Not do you, where do you ski? Yeah, yeah, yeah Because by this point I got this voice I'd copied this voice from the middle class people but I, you know, as soon as I have two drinks I'm just like right back to Walvo like kind of like I did not have this voice at all But people would take the piss out of me. Or city. The word is city. It's not city. So I adopted this voice on the train basically on the way down. As I went through rugby, it was like, I will have this media voice. So people presumed I was middle class. And then there's other things like I noted. So for instance, if we're all out eating with a bunch of friends, I will automatically presume there is someone secretly sitting around that table who is worried about how much it's going to cost, but they will not say something.

32:36So I will always go, I'm paying for everybody. and that's the thing that you notice from people who are who have traveled through who are culturally working class middle class we're aware of those things and we take people with us we put the family on the payroll you know we are constantly aware that there will be other people who are worried about money at that moment things like worrying about how you smell like if you come from a poor house you'll have the windows closed in winter and your clothes will be on a rack drying so when you cook chips or fry an onion your clothes which will already smell a bit mildewy because it takes a long time for clothes to dry on a rack because you don't have a tumble dryer, will then also smell of food.

33:12So then you like the more powerful perfumes and you're trying to cover it up. I remember all these things, just worrying about smelling. We couldn't afford deodorant, so I would go and steal it from Boots. Sorry, Boots in Wolverhampton. I'd probably owe you about 50 quid.

33:28But now I see it. It's one of those cliches where you go, I see it as a superpower, but to know about... Can I say something? Yeah. It is. Well, I think so. If you're a writer, to understand the two worlds. And I think if you're a human, it's a superpower. But what has been interesting was that I was middle class and then we lost everything. Yes. And I had a roof over my head and I had food on the table. So I was lucky because I know that you sometimes didn't. You weren't sure of that. Yeah, we could sometimes run out of food. We all had, I would say, issues around eating because it could just run out.

34:01So we would, when the benefits came in once a month, we'd buy, My dad had a card that allowed him to pretend that he ran a small business and could go to the wholesale market and buy fruit and veg really cheap because they wanted us to eat well. So we'd get like a crate of oranges and a crate of apples because there were like eight children and two adults. So, you know, we had to buy in bulk. But because we knew that by the end of the month, there wouldn't be any. We were all a bit like gorge. So like, you know, when the food came in, you'd be like, you know, we'd eat even if it was uncomfortable because it was like it's going to run out soon.

34:28It was quite a sort of disordered way of eating, I think. Yeah, there were days where all we had left in the house was like flour and water. But, yeah, we never actually starved, but it was the constant worry that you might. Yes, you might. Yeah. I mean, it's the fear. You know, we were talking about anxiety and it's fear driven, you know, it's. Oh, totally. Yeah. Well, just precariousness. It's like it's quite a flight, isn't it? Like kind of anxiety is a worry that you are in danger and not being able to eat is one of them. So but then it meant that I had written this book and then I got a publishing deal.

35:00And that was when I learned the second big fact about books. First of all, they take more than a day to write. And secondly, you don't get paid from what I thought you would get paid. Oh, yeah, I love this. This is so funny. Because tell everybody how much you thought authors got. A million pounds. Like, if you're famous, if you've moved into media, everybody gets paid a million pounds to do everything. Like, when I wrote a sitcom, I was talking to my mother-in-law's neighbour and he went, how much do you get paid to write a sitcom? It'd be like a million pounds per episode, right? You're like, no.

35:28No one gets paid a million pounds for anything. That's not what happened. So it wasn't a million pounds. It was£1 ,800. And so on that day... How am I going to look after my family with that? It was literally this. What? Yeah, it was literally like it was simultaneously the best day of my life. And then I went, yes. And the second sentence, quite bad. Because it was like, this is three-year plans. Really, really gone wrong now. How am I going to earn the money? But I was really lucky because by the time it was published, I was 16. Because it's still quite rare for a 16-year-old to publish a book.

35:53Valerie Grove from The Times came to interview me. She'd sort of heard about this and was like, oh, a 16-year-old's written a book. And she came to interview me to do a feature when the book came out. And after, as soon as we'd finished doing the interview and stuff and she turned the tape recorder off, I was like, look, you've come down to Wolverhampton. You're a writer. You live in London. How do you earn money being a writer? Like this book thing has not worked out. I should have really researched this. How do I do it? And she went, be a columnist. Then you get paid every week. You write a thing every week and go and work for a newspaper.

36:17So I was like, OK, I will take that advice and run with it. Oh, that is brilliant. So then I entered every competition for being a journalist. I also started sending. So I sent stuff off to Melody Maker, the weekly music press. and they started taking my reviews, which I get paid£28 and£42 per review, like a child at a gig. The first time I went to a gig, the first gig I ever went to, I was being paid to write about, God, I can't remember what they were called. A band? A band. They were in Wolverhampton. It was whatever was happening in Wolverhampton and it was the first time I'd seen a mosh pit.

36:45So I'd got there two hours early with my pen and paper, ready to take notes. I'd written down the venue information. I was like, you know, I'd say it was the Smashing Pumpkins at Birmingham Edwards. Smashing Pumpkins, Birmingham Edwards number eight, Birmingham, Western Midlands, UK, the universe. 7.15, they are still not on stage. 7.45, some people have come on and moved the microphones around and literally writing everything down. Then they finally came on and everybody started going mental, like leaping around and stuff. And I had no idea what this was. I was right down the front, my hat was coming off.

37:13And I presumed it was maybe like, you know, like with the Gap Band, you do Oops Upside Your Head and everybody rose. I thought maybe this song has a special dance to it, like Oops Upside Your Head. And everyone jumps around to this song, but then everything will go back to normal. Then the second song started, everyone was still doing it. I was in my first mosh pit. I had no idea. So this continued. I retreated to the back with my hat, took my notes from the back and that was the first gig I ever went to I was writing about. So it was, and the reviews that I'd sent to Melody Maker, I'd sent two of two cool bands whose records that I'd borrowed from the library, Happy Mondays and Jane's Addiction.

37:42But the third one was a review of the Motion soundtrack to Annie because that was my favourite song. I would like to be a rock journalist, please. And I particularly like Tomorrow from the film Annie. Please let me have a job. They were so shocked that I would say weird they were like, yeah, have a job. Is that your karaoke song? My karaoke song is Edelweiss from The Sound of Music, which I have made people cry for. Oh. In a bad way, Davina. Oh. In a really, really bad way. I can't get most of the names. By the time we get to bloom and grow, I'm way outside my range. It's awful. I just want to talk to you about money and specifically investing, which I know sounds scary.

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39:49Now at ultrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A running.com. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBCLIS? EBCLIS, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.

40:26EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EbGliss. Before starting EbGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Epclus and visit epclus.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. I'm just going to go back to this book for a second. I want to talk about the list.

40:59Yes. I'm going to read you the list. I know you know it. It's your list. You wrote it in the first place, but I'm going to read it to you. You'd be astonished how much you forget about a book. Oh, really? I fucking love this list. Okay, find out a way to wake up without feeling instantly anxious. So you didn't know how to do that when you wrote the list. This was like, this is what I need to do. Yeah, because I would wake up, you know that scene in Pulp Fiction where they have to like stab her in the heart with adrenaline pain because she's overdosed. I woke up every morning like this. Because as soon as I woke up, it was just instant anxiety.

41:31Like literally my stomach would go like that same whoosh that I got 13 years old was happening every morning. How did you start not waking up with that? or was that like, is that the rest of the list? That's the rest of the list. Okay, I'm going to keep on reading then. Eat bloody breakfast instead of having codeine and a banana. Yes. Strong truth. Well done. Thank you. Improve the neighbourhood. Right. Right. Right. I love the way you were talking about picking up rubbish. Talk to me about that. Have you got a litter picker? No, I'm going to get one though. After I heard about that. You get me a mosh pit friendly bra.

42:01Okay. I'll get you a litter picker. So I had spent 10 years going, why won't someone do something about this? Our street is so filthy. People are using my front gardener's bin. Who do I vote for? Why won't someone do something about this? Why won't someone do something about it? And I just woke up one day and went, this was the start of my question, I went, that someone is me. I can see it. It's outside my house. I need to fix it. I am the change that I wish to see. And if you grew up from a generation where you played Pac-Man and you're just going along and you go like gobble things up, picking up litter in the streets is exactly like playing Pac-Man, but for real life.

42:32You walk down the street with your litter picker and you leave behind, in front of you is a filthy street that is disgusting and makes you depressed. and behind you is a perfect serene street that looks like Tokyo. It's like spotless. And it's just, you know, now if I'm in a bad mood, my husband will say, have you been Little Pecan recently? And it sounds quite pass ag, but I'll be like, no, I haven't. He's like, it'll do you good. Go and do it. And I literally ring him 10 minutes later and go, you were right. You said something at the beginning of that that blew my mind, which was I am the change I want to see.

42:59Yes. I've got another quote on my wall that is, I am my own cavalry. I think we often wait. We're like, when are the cavalry coming? When is someone coming to change everything? thing. It's like, no, you are your own cavalry. One of my mottos for a really long time has been when you've complained about something three times, the second time you complained about it, you should have started doing something about it. And it's a really careful line to balance because you don't want to sort of go into that kind of like Thatcherite Norman Tebbitt thing of kind of like, you know, solve all your problems.

43:24There is no such thing as society. But more often than not, it is probably a problem that you could solve and you will feel really good doing it. And the litter was my gateway into changing my life because suddenly instead of feeling powerless and waiting for the government or business or someone great to come and fix things. I was like, no, I could just do this now. That was the start of becoming hopeful. I'm looking forward to getting my letter bigger. Thank you. I'll get you. Have some kind of small adventures. See new things. Be dazzled by the world. Regain faith in it. See wonderful things that humans have done.

43:56But be home in time for tea. Right. Because, again, I think in our age, like if you've been a mother and you've been busy, in your head you've got this thing of my life hasn't started yet yeah like once in a bit i'll have the time like once this bit of motherhood is over once this bit of work is done something will happen in a in a while my proper life will start i'm just trying to clear all this stuff out the way and then i will have my proper life and then you start getting to 50 and you're like i'm still waiting where are my adventures and in my head an adventure would be going on fabulous mini breaks across europe or spending six weeks like kind of like walking through the japanese mountains or something.

44:30And I was like, well, I can't fit those in. But like, what would give me the same feeling of just doing something a bit different? And like, and it came in conjunction with stopping wearing my headphones, which happened by accident. I just lost them. And I realised that if you, we all wear our headphones now. Everybody, it's like an episode of Doctor Who. Everyone's walking around with their headphones on, looking at their phones. When I lost my headphones and I started listening to what was happening again, suddenly you kind of tap back into the neighbourhood gossip. You suddenly, that whole thing of like, you know, people saying, I feel lonely, there is no sense of community anymore.

45:00It's because you've got your headphones on. And also when you start reading, particularly in London, there's so much stuff online going, London is a city on the verge of civil war. Like, you know, people hate each other. Like, it's so violent and scary. It's not. Take your headphones off and everyone's just going, you can have sausages or chicken for tea. They're on the phone to their mums. They're like playing with the baby at the back of the bus and like waving their keys at it. Like, you can really quickly fall back in love with humanity again if you take your headphones off and sit in humanity.

45:25And then similarly, like walking in nature, like the first time I didn't wear my headphones and I sat under a tree when it was raining I was like no one else can hear this like this is a couture moment and like suddenly it turns into like a play no one else is having it oh I love that right because if I'm listening to the Beatles which is what I'd normally be doing obviously they're amazing but millions of people are listening to the Beatles right now and like you can listen to that song whenever you want if you take your headphones off the exact sound of the rain at that moment and hearing people putting up their umbrellas and calling to each other and kind of running with their dogs and the smell It was like, I've been, it feels like the world has really changed in the last 10 or 15 years.

46:02And it has in some ways, but the majority of the change that we feel and that makes us feel sad and isolated and hopeless and anxious is that we've changed the way that we interact with the world. You know, we know what the stats are. Look at your stats on your phone, how many hours you spent on it. We are walking around with our headphones on all the time. We're making eye contact with people. If you go back to living your life as you did 15 years ago, it's amazing how much things feel like they've kind of gone back to normal. you're sort of like oh yeah this is how i remember life being i'm walking down the street and talking to people what's crazy is that for for young kids um they are seeing what life could be like they haven't been they don't remember it they don't remember it they haven't had it they've not experienced it what have you seen absolutely bonkers have you seen the stats though like so many like 69 of people on social media don't post on it and i have lost count of the young people i know now who've just bought brick phones they're like we were told we needed to be on social media we didn't have profiles for our jobs people are going to check out who you are you don't exist if you're not on social media and they've just we gave it 10 years and it hasn't worked you know the jobs are being taken away we're not progressing we're not buying houses i think it might be a lie that i need to be on social media and they're all buying brick phones and suddenly go in i'm going to put on a club night like i'm going to actually go and see my friends like i'm going to do things in the real world like kind of where at no moment will something i've said suddenly go viral and ruin my life yeah or no picture that i've posted online will be haunting me in 10 years time and people I don't know can be talking to me at three o 'clock in the morning.

47:25Like, I just think we're starting to realise that that is not working for us. Like, I think social media, point one, the first iteration is kind of over and there might be a better one in the future. But this one, no one likes it. No. That's the big news. No one likes it. Feel like I'm doing something useful. And then you say noble. Yes. For humanity. Now, why, what? I mean, I kind of, you know, we know what noble means, But what does it mean to you? Well, there's this thing called, I always forget what the word is, but there's this thing called the hierarchy of need. Yes. And so the first one is you need to be safe.

48:00You need like a roof over your head and you need food. So that's the first one. And then it goes up the hierarchy. And so you need to have done something that is inspiring in that day. You need to in some way connect with something bigger, whether that be nature or culture. And the top of it is that you need to make sure that you've done something for other people. and it's amazing how often I talk to someone who feels really bad and like their life is bad and that they don't have enough and they go how can I fix this problem and I go you do have needs and we'll address those as well but have you ever tried doing something for someone else first?

48:30It's amazing how that actually makes you feel better than doing something for yourself sometimes like it's the magic sauce that kind of like because then you seeing someone else's happiness especially if you're having problems with registering happiness yourself if you've got anhedonia where you're not feeling any emotions anymore. What's that? So that's a big thing that people started talking about after lockdown that because anhedonia is where you have no emotions so you're not depressed particularly you're not particularly anxious but you're also not joyful you just have turned off all your emotions usually after a traumatic event and the the rise in people uh being sort of diagnosed with anhedonia really sort of took off after lockdown so being in that emotion estate so sometimes it's really hard to make yourself happy if you shut down all your emotions but the quickest way to feel your own happiness is to see it in the face of someone else that's a short circuit that gets you back in contact with your emotions again so just it's i always never want to sound pious but you know but when you're when you reconnect with those old truths like if you want to make yourself happy make someone else happy is okay so invent a way oh this one this is big for me so invent a way to keep up with news that doesn't shag my mental health and that so with news i think also as well this is a conversation So they're kind of in my social circle, generally, we are all left wing progressive people who believe and will frequently say one of the downsides of living in the modern era is that most people do not know that much about politics and how it works.

49:58And if people were more informed about how politics worked and were more abreast of the news, they would be able to make more informed choices when they vote. It is kind of your moral duty as a liberal left wing person to consume as much news as possible. And that's a very big part of the reason why I was very anxious, because once I started to deep what news is, so news is bad news, generally. Like there was that thing in newsrooms where they go, if it bleeds, it leads. So, for instance, if someone went into a hospital and shot up 10 people and they died, that's worldwide headlines. But of course, in that same hospital the day before, one surgeon might have saved the lives of 30 people and did it the day before and the day before.

50:33But that will never be news headlines because it's slow and good and there's no single image. It's not incident. It's a baseline reality. And there's that saying that you can hear the axe hit the tree, but you can't hear the forest grow. And that's generally what our news coverage is. We don't see the everyday progresses and good things that are happening and everything that's working. We only hear about what doesn't work. And 30 years ago, there was a newsreader called Nicholas Wichel who suggested that we have a certain amount of good news on the broadcasts every day. He was like, people need to have some positive news.

51:04What is working? What legislation has worked? Where have wars stopped? Where have things improved? And all the bad boys of news were like, that's soppy. One of the quotes, which I think was from Jeremy Paxman, was even if it makes our viewers want to open a vein, they need to see that news. But we can see that people's consumption of news has massively dropped because people don't want to watch news that makes them open a vein. And so then they go and search for other news. And what I think is interesting, I think that we used to get and finally, but it was banal rubbish. Yeah, it was a duck on a skateboard.

51:32And actually what I want, I mean, I follow lots of accounts now of like great things that are happening around the world. There are some amazing things to do with the climate, to do with energy, to do with love, to do with like so many beautiful things that we don't hear about that would be great and finally is on the news. Well, not also the fact that the news is then followed by the sport. I can remember Yoko Ono saying 30 years ago, just kind of like, why is it the news and then the sport? Why isn't it then culture? Why are we not knowing if someone has written an incredible poem or a beautiful song?

52:02Why is it always football? Like kind of like questioning what it is that you get and then what the effect is. Did Yoko Ono say that? Yeah. That's fascinating. Good old Yoko. Yeah. So once I finally got over, I was like, am I allowed as a liberal progressive woman who works in the media to stop watching as much news as I do? Can I become less informed? What would happen if I did that, if I forego my ferocious news consumption? and the plan I came up with was that I would only read the papers on Sunday, the weekend papers, because often something that's happening on Monday where everyone's going, why have you not posted about this?

52:30Where's your solution to what's happening in the Sudan? By Wednesday, some governments have talked to each other and by Sunday it's like, oh yeah, they seem to be finding it away. So I was being alerted incorrectly that I need to do something about Sudan on Monday because the governments in the UN have sorted it out by the weekend. And secondly, local news is something like until very recently, all we would ever have really consumed would be local news. what was happening in our village and like two villages away. That's kind of what humans are built to be able to understand. You know, we'd hear every so often if Napoleon was on the march again in Europe.

52:59But generally, by and large, local news is what we're built to understand. And local news isn't just bad news. You know, my local people will have, you know, murders and stabbings and, you know, terrible things that have happened. But it also has good news. It goes, this girl has gone to university. Here's a girl that's cut off all her hair and given it to cancer research. A new bakery has opened. Here is a new cycle lane. And first of all, you get a spread of news, good and bad. You see progress. You see things changing and happening. And secondly, that's the news that affects your actual life.

53:28Like the amount of people that I know that are really drowning in the amount of news that they read in current affairs and are like, everything's terrible. Like, I feel so awful about this. But like without being unfeeling and you must, you know, campaign and send money to charities that are helping people and stuff. But you making yourself genuinely mentally ill, worrying about things that are happening in other countries. Is it actually affecting you? Because for you to now become so ill and so withdrawn from your old life that your friends are concerned about you is really a weird kind of narcissism.

53:55It's empathy that turns into narcissism. Honestly, you talk so much sense. Thank you. It is amazing. It's I love listening to you. Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, it's just, but it's mega. Feel part of something like a community, but without any way being part of a community as this triggers massive social anxiety. Yes. Now, that's quite interesting. Explain what you mean by that. So I don't like being part of a community. I'm one of those slightly misanthropic people who's a bit like, oh, I don't want to be part of a gang or like kind of like corralled into things. Or I think we've all seen community WhatsApp.

54:36It's like enforced. Yes. And also those kind of power plays that happen when you're in kind of one of those community WhatsApps, like on your street or someone who's doing a street party. And it starts off all cheerful and then someone's bitching about someone else and then someone's making a bid to take it over and it all just gets a bit political and stuff. It's not community. Those kind of communities tend to be a bit toxic. Whereas being part of a community by like, you know, with the litter picking, you know, the amount of conversation, you know, I'm making things better. I can do it when I want to.

55:00No one's my boss. No one's critiquing what I'm doing. And I'm having really lovely conversations. And you're not having to toe a party line either. And also a lot of people are really socially anxious. Like one of the bad things about being home educated is you almost, I can tell someone who's been home educated at a party because we're hovering at the edges. Yeah. We're hovering at the edges of a party. We're having to drink quite heavily and quite quickly in order to feel relaxed. and we don't quite know how to make small talk because we never had to make small talk because we just were with our siblings.

55:25So you never learn to kind of go into a room and make small talk in like a school canteen or in the playground because we just spent all our time with people who've essentially got the same face as us. How did you make friends outside of school then? By drinking very heavily and standing at the edges of parties. Well, that was when I became a journalist, the whole idea of interviewing people. I saw that. the PRs for the bands saw it as me spending an hour with Evan Dando from the Lemonheads and then me writing a feature. I saw it as a chance for Evan Dando to find out what a great person I was and then go, shall we be friends?

55:57And I kind of thought that was what an interview was. So I would go back and listen to the first couple of interviews that I did and turn it on and it would just be me. He'd be starting to say something really heartfelt and personal. I'd go, that's really funny you said that because something like that happened to me. Anyway, let me tell you about me for 10 minutes so you get to know how great I am. So yes, those interviews are not very good. Were you friends with Evan Dando? No. We once walked around Kensington Park for about two hours feeding some ducks. And he was very sad. And then he sat down and played his guitar and I sang along with him very badly.

56:26Wait, he sat down and played your guitar? Yeah. That was very sweet. That's quite impressive. I know. Interviews aren't like that now. Although they are sometimes. Like when I went to interview Lady Gaga, the only time ever in my history of thinking that someone would be my friend when I interviewed them happened when it was Lady Gaga, which was the most unexpected one. So at the height of her fame, I went out to interview her and I'd missed my plane. I was horribly late. I thought she'd be furious and would give me five minutes. And instead, 20 minutes into the interview, she went, hey, you're really cool.

56:55What are you doing after this interview? Do you want to go and hang out at a club when I've done my gig? And I was like, I would very much, yes, like to do that, Lady Gaga. So she finished the gig, which was amazing. And then she came up, she was still in her stage gear. So she was in bra, pants, fishnet tights and an Alexander McQueen cape. and we got into a blacked out SUV, drove through the streets of Berlin, went down the street where the doors closed behind us and entered this club that was unlike anything I've ever seen. At this point, I'm 32 and a mother of two and I'm with her British PR who's just this gongy indie boy who's my friend and we look in this club and like, I mean, I don't know what language and images I can give you, but it's a full-on Berlin sex club.

57:32So there's like bathtubs and chains and kind of, like a lot of business going on. The men are having their time and me, I turned to her PR and went, oh my God, you can smoke in here. Everyone's smoking indoors. It's the only thing we noticed. It's like, you can light up in here. Wow, Berlin's so free and easy. Literally brought out the cell cut smoking away and stuff as everyone was kind of like. And you were with the Gaga. And again, if you go out with a famous person, what happens is they go and sit in a VIP booth and their people go and get the drinks and you're kind of VIP booth all night.

58:01Gaga is not like that. Gaga walks up to the bar, turns around to the entire club and goes, what's everyone having? Gets in around for everyone, then reaches into her bra and brings out a fistful of euros and puts them on the table to pay for it and then just spends the whole night getting we just got very drunk we were going twos on a fag at one point she's lying with her head in my lap and i'm sort of putting the cigarette in her mouth which is really hanging and then about two in the morning she goes do you want to come to the toilet with me and i was like well this must be drugs i have not done drugs for 20 years i don't even know what the drugs are now how to take them but i'm here and it's a story and it's gaga i will go to the toilet so we go to the VIP toilet and she closes and locks the door and I'm like oh god what am I gonna do and she goes I noticed you're wearing a jumpsuit with a zip down the back and they're really hard to unzip on your own and I presumed you would need a wee right now so I just thought I'd unzip your jumpsuit for you and I was like that is so lovely that's so thoughtful but also very awkward because then obviously she unzipped me and then I have to like take it down just in a bra do a wee while talking to her eye contact eye contact and then we got to the end and I needed to wipe and I reached around for the toilet paper keeping eye contact and she simply He reached the other side where there was a pile of fluffy towels and handed me one and was like, wipe with this.

59:07And I was like, wow, this is what it's like to be a megastar. You wipe your fanny on a special fluffy towel. Then she sat on the toilet and she just simply hoiked her tights and gusset to one side and we threw them. And then I passed her a towel. I'm like, I've learned the ways of the VIP toilet. And she went, no, no, no, no. Just going to shake my lettuce. She just shook her lettuce. Can I just say something? I love Lady Gaga. I love Lady Gaga. But that has made me adore her. You and her would get on like a house on fire. What a woman. I know. Well done. To keep tabs on my bladder to work out when I needed a wee.

59:43Right. She is everything. Right. She's just played to like 50 ,000 little monsters and then she's also got tabs on my bladder. I love telling my lady to go past the door. What a woman. Okay, last one. Stop dreading winter. This is a really interesting one because I do that. Really? Yes. I am. Please give me some vitamin D. Yes. Sunshine. I need a long day. I can't stand getting dark at three. Well, also, when you're sexist, if you're a woman, like kind of like, you know, we know generally, you know, we are constantly being told it is not safe to go out when it's dark. So you suddenly. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:18Right. Do you know what I did? Go on. When we went through, I mean, a phase, we're always scared of walking in the dark. But I think it was at its peak, basically. And I walked down behind a woman and I was like, I'm just letting you know that I'm a woman and I'm walking behind you and you're safe. She turned around and she looked and she went, thanks so much. Anyway, she wrote me a letter. And she said, I work at a shelter. And I was like, oh, God, I didn't, you know, I didn't know that. But she said, thanks. And I told the girls about that. And we're all going to do that for everyone. And I thought, oh, God, this is what we were talking about.

1:00:57One person. You know, you talking about community. I felt like I'm not picking up Elizabeth. That was something that I felt good about because she told me she appreciated it afterwards. And then she's told other people to go do it. So this is the best thing about humans. Like kind of like, you know, you can't change the world. But everyone could change one tiny thing. Like it's something we've been complaining about. And we come up with a solution to it. And then you tell someone and tell someone and suddenly just one normal person has come up with one little solution to one tiny thing. And then someone else comes up with a solution to another tiny thing.

1:01:29And suddenly, you know, humanity and culture and what we do in society is like a patchwork quilt. We can all sew one tiny little square, come up with one little solution and patch it all together. And just the power of just coming up with one solution and spreading it is like that's the ultimate point of being a human. Find one tiny problem. If you've solved one tiny problem in your life and leave the world fractionally better than when you found it, when you were born. your job is done yeah and when you start you know when people go you know what is the meaning of life why are we here it's that find one thing that you make better in your life and that that's the meaning of life i mean you've helped a lot of people with your books and also with your television um just by being you i think but when you talk about hope and being hopeful this book did it help you in the end?

1:02:14Are you feeling, are you in a better place? Did it work? Well, this is where, again, with my powers of ADHD, having said an hour ago, there were two times in my life where I began again. The first one I was, I was 13 and I had that first burst of anxiety. And that, I call it my best bad friend in the book because it does, if you are anxious, I was proud of my anxiety. I felt superior in my anxiety. I was like, I wake up every morning and I have that, But then I'm full of amphetamines and terror. And that means I can work really fast. I can do anything. I can work. Give me this, you know, nine books in 10 years and a sitcom and a film and like stand up tours and all these things in two columns a week.

1:02:54I believe that was all because I was anxious. So I was like, well, I embraced my anxiety. And also, I think the smart people are anxious because it just makes you get on and do things. And we're hyper vigilant. We're aware of how precarious things are. So we're keeping ourselves and our friends and our family safe with our hyper productivity. and I found a brilliant method for doing this. And then I got to 49 and I'd never known really what anxiety was. So the adrenaline is made in your adrenal gland, which is just above your kidneys. It's a tiny little kind of like triangular gland that looks like a little cap that they would wear in the French Revolution.

1:03:27And I became aware of it because it had clearly burnt out. Like I was just so constantly flooded with adrenaline. I was like my skin was haggard. My guts were, I'm not going to tell you about my toilet troubles, Davina, but they were mighty. If you're constantly flooded with adrenaline, it's not a good news down there. And I was just like, I can't be this scared anymore. Like I am going to have to change. I'm going to have to break up with anxiety. And I went and talked to my husband and my family and I went, look, I think I'm going to become much more stupid now because I believe the anxiety makes me smart.

1:03:56I think I'm going to earn a lot less money because that's what keeps me hyperproductive. So we're going to be a lot poorer, but mummy can't be anxious anymore. I'm going to stop this. So I went and talked to my doctor and told him my problems. He immediately was aghast that I had not come and talk to him years before and been given beta blockers, which will immediately stop you producing adrenaline. So as soon as you wake up and feel that first, you take a beta blocker. You don't feel I was like, it's not going to make me wiggy. It's not like taking a Valium or anything, is it? He was like, no, it just literally stops you producing adrenaline.

1:04:26So I would take one, forget I'd taken it. And then 10 minutes later, be like, oh, I feel calm and normal and safe. I didn't realise how unsafe the anxiety actually made me because if you're constantly producing adrenaline, your body is saying you're in danger. And while you keep letting it do that and you don't address it, you go, yeah, you are in danger. Keep producing that amphetamine. As soon as I stopped it, I felt physically and mentally and emotionally safe. And I am embarrassed to tell you how quickly I stopped being anxious. It took two weeks. And the thing I realised, I realised two things.

1:04:59First of all, that when that anxiety came, it was a good friend to me. I don't think I would have made it out of Wolverhampton and got the job and the life that I've got without it. But that was like my industrial era. Like kind of that's when you're like burning like coal and fuel and oil to get out. When we invented factories, they burnt on dirty fuels. But you can't run on those dirty fuels forever. At some point you need to convert to something cleaner like solar. And taking anxiety out is like removing the dirty fossil fuels and running on something cleaner and lighter. and secondly I became really angry about everything that I was reading around anxiety because if we look at the rates of that diagnosis for anxiety disorders it's gone through the roof and you hear people calling themselves and even professionals referring to people as anxious people and there is no such thing as an anxious person.

1:05:43We're not born anxious. At some point something happens that makes us anxious but it's supposed to be a transitionary state. You're supposed to use the message and the anxiety, learn something from it, change your life and then go back to being normal again. And this is where we're talking about, again, going into a perfect circle back to the beginning, why labels often make me feel really scratchy. I would feel very unhappy if a 13-year-old was told, you are an anxious person and we will now put you on medication and we will not address that, but you're just an anxious person and take this medication forever.

1:06:11instead of saying you're a normal person who's suffering from some anxiety and we're going to get you over to the other side of it. And so I've become quite evangelical about this now. Whenever I do live shows, I'm like, when I start talking about, I think I can recognise other anxious people. I call them cortisol kids. Anybody who at a young age had that first rush of cortisol and they're still hypervigilant 30 years later and I can spot them a mile off. So in a gig I'll go, who's anxious? And they put their hands up and I'm like, okay, I saw you, I knew. And I'm like, I've got some news for you.

1:06:38This doesn't have to be the rest of your life. Like, you know, no one was more anxious than me. Like there were gigs where 30 seconds before I was supposed to be on stage, I was lying face down behind the safety curtain, like hyperventilating, just going. And then the curtain would start to go up and I'd be like, right up on. And no one would know. I was so cheerful and relaxed. I was fine being on stage. But there was just the bit before you go on stage, you're like, what if it goes wrong? What if I say the wrong thing? What if someone hates me? I didn't even know what I was scared of. and having removed the anxiety from my body, I now, everything feels so much easier.

1:07:12I wish I'd done it 30 years earlier. But maybe it wasn't the right time. Maybe you needed to do something in those 30 years that showed. Yeah. I want to talk to you about Peter. Yes. Pete. And how you met, because I love this idea that he, when you were writing a column, wrote you a sort of like fan letter. Oh, this is all so Richard Curtis. Yeah, it is perfectly Richard Curtis. It's really Richard Curtis. And when you wrote the article, tell everybody a mindset. So I was entering lots of writing competitions and I won the Observer's Young Reporter of the Year competition. And they gave me a column for the duration of the summer holidays.

1:07:53And the first column I wrote was, and the purpose was absolutely distinct in my mind. I was like, this is my first piece in the national newspaper. I'm going to write a piece that makes someone fall in love with me. so I'm going to write a piece describing going uptown and sitting on the piece of grass outside St Peter's Cathedral and watching boys going by and I'm going to describe the kind of boys I like and my writing is going to be so brilliant and funny and tender and fabulous that anyone who reads it will fall in love with me but you manifested I manifested I manifested a man I manifested but the man I know I Peter-fested my Pete and so he was going out he was in the death throes of his relationship with his then girlfriend at the time and he read this piece in the Observer and he read it out down the phone to her going, isn't this a brilliant piece of writing?

1:08:35And she said, you're going to go out with her. You're going to break up with me and go out with her. And he was like, well, I've never even met her. I know. Yeah. Well, women are smart, right? They know. I don't think he realised, but she did. But how long was it before you actually met? It was about six months later. And we went to, we both interviewed the same bands. I was interviewing them for The Times and he was interviewing them for Melody Maker. And so we met sort of in the holding bit, waiting to go and interview the bands. and then when I'd finished the interview the interview had really run over and I was still living in Wolverhampton with my parents at the time and I was like I got on the chair, he was like I'll take you to Euston Station and halfway on that tube journey because it was in Hammersmith I realised I was going to miss my train so I just said to him this sounds really weird but like I'm going to miss my train, can I stay at your house?

1:09:20And he went yeah but you just need to know a big secret about me and at that point obviously you're worrying and going is he a murderer? Yeah, I am a murderer. Yeah, I've got bodies under the floorboards but are you okay with that? And at that point I would have said yes because I had no other option. And he went, I really love, and I'm going, putting dead skin on your face, Crowded House. And I went, I love Crowded House too. And that was a secret because at Melody Maker it was only about cool bands and if either of us had ever admitted that at the cool rock mag that we loved Crowded House and were too melodic, it would have been the end.

1:09:56So I was like, I love them too. So then we started singing their songs to each other and we went back and listened to them. And by about two o 'clock in the morning, I was like, why won't this man kiss me? This is so rude. I am here. Why won't he kiss me? And he left the room and I was like, he's going to get himself ready for some sex here. And he said he came back and he'd brought his toothbrush and some toothpaste and his nightwear, which was a Victorian style wee-wee-wee-winky nightgown. And he went, don't laugh at it. My mum bought it me. You wear this. You sleep in my bed. I'm going to sleep on the sofa.

1:10:24And in the morning he'd gone, but he'd gone around the corner and had bought a carton of Tropicana orange juice, the classy kind, not from a concentrate, and a croissant, which I had never seen before. You'd never seen a croissant? How old were you? 17. Amazing. I didn't know pastry technology had made layers. I had no idea you could make it in a semicircular shape. And then we started going out with each other for about three or four months. And then I was offered the opportunity to present a TV show on Channel 4, a late night music show that was the sort of summer replacement to The Word. With Terry?

1:10:54I co-presented it with Johnny Vaughan. Johnny Vaughan, that was it. I was going to say Terry Christian, but it was Johnny Vaughan, wasn't it? Yeah, he was at the word. And Pete came up to me and just sort of went the day before we started filming it. And he went, look, you're 17. You're about to be really famous. I love you. But you're about to go through a huge experience and you shouldn't be going out with someone. You're going to meet loads of people. You should go out there, date, go and have your adventure, go and be famous. And if you still want me, I'll always be your friend. But if you still want me at the end of that, then I'll just be here.

1:11:26Who does that? I know. Who actually does that? And you know, he was so right to do that. Totally this. Totally this. I went on a map. You know, when you first get famous, you do go a bit mad and you just do turn into a bit of an arsehole. I would have been a terrible person to go out with. So I went and dated for two years and went out with some terrible people. And then when I finally broke up with my horrible boyfriend, I just sort of turned back up on his door and went, OK, I've done my dating. I've done my adventuring. Can I come back with you? He was clever because he knew nobody would be as lovely as him.

1:11:54I know. And that's the power of a man who appears to be fluffy and gentle and kind in a beater, but is secretly an alpha in disguise. He was a very, very confident man. He just sat there and waited. So attractive. So attractive. And that's 33 years. Well done. Very good. How long have you been together? 33 years. 33 years. Yeah. And the way you talk about him, it's still... he's the one person I was trying to like, I never think about him. It's usually when I was trying to explain to him, he went, this sounds really bad. I was like, everyone else, I'm trying to figure them out all the time. I have conversations with them in my head.

1:12:32Like I'm trying to figure them out and everything. And I dream about them. And you are the only person I never dream about. And I never think about you because I don't have to work anything out about you. Just when I know you, it's just perfect. You never worry. No, you know. Yeah. You've got the knowing. Well, that's the crowded house lyric that we sang at each other. was it's not the girl you think you are. And it goes, Neil Finn's singing about a man and you're going, he'll be no trouble. And that kind of, and that's, he is no trouble. He is no trouble. He's all calmness and sweetness. I'm just so.

1:13:05And I don't think, for all my feminism, I do not think I would have been able to do what I've done without being with him. This is what I loved about How To Be A Woman, is that you appealed to my sense of feminism in that it's an inclusive thing. It's not exclusive of men. I just want to be given the same opportunities and be paid the same amount of money as you and have a fair go at life, but with you, alongside you. Well, that was the whole thing. When I was trying to work out how I was going to conclude the book, having written all these things about being a woman, I was like, you know, it's all about, even though there are problems with being a woman and problems with being a man, we're all just people.

1:13:45I'm not pro-women particularly or anti-men. just thumbs up for the eight billion piece. Yeah, let's be great people together, all together. I just want to be a great human being and I want men to be as great as us and for us all to have the same opportunities as possible. But I'm very, I was amazed when I sold the book to my publishers and they were like, how to be a woman, we better help a lot of women buy this because no man will ever buy it. And after the first two weeks, I started getting all these stories from them who were like reading it on the tube, but hidden behind like a copy of Exchange and Mart or Auto Trader because they knew that they have people going, how to be a woman, why are you reading that?

1:14:17But they were like, which kind of blew my mind. They were like, we're reading it like a Haynes manual. Yes. You're explaining brilliant to me. Like I don't, like the big one they would always go is the chapter where you go, I've got nothing to wear, where you go, what do women really mean when they say I've got nothing to wear? And he's like, she's got a wardrobe full of clothes. She's got loads to wear. And it's like, no, she's got nothing to wear for who she's got to be today. Today, she's got to go from the school gates to a really powerful meeting and then a party. And we've got to be two or three people in the way that we dress that day.

1:14:43So when she's opening her wardrobe, she's going, I have no one. I have no clothes. I have nothing to wear for the specific person I've got to be today. Whereas men don't really have that problem because they just get up. They wear the same stuff. And they put their trousers on. Yeah. So it's like, so that's, you know. So they were just reading stuff going, now I finally understand what my wife means when she's saying that and the floor is covered with clothes. And they just read it like a manual in the same way that you'd read the manual for a Ford gear, which I found very pleasing. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart just for everything that you've brought all of us.

1:15:18Every book that you've written, every column that you write, for speaking our language, for educating us, for showing us funny things and moving things or putting it in a way that we can digest. I'm really grateful for you. Don't make me cry. No, I really mean it. I just want to say thank you. Caitlin Moran, everybody. Oh, my God, you're going to have to come back for part two. I'm ready for it. We need part two. So just in case you missed this episode here, if you love this episode, I know you're going to love that.

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