Katie Piper: From Surviving an Acid Attack to Finding Faith & Love

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0:27so much time money and expertise was spent on saving my life how dare i not live it you are the ultimate person to have on this podcast i was and then a few days later i had acid thrown into my face i i went to hospital and it was like all those simple things in life you take for granted were so hard people would follow me around pointing at me i was like contagious or had some kind of disease. So I found Christianity in my 20s. If you find something bigger than you, it's very comforting. I know other people who've been through terrible experiences who just can't get past it. But for you, love came out of something really difficult.

1:05How did you get back onto the dating scene? I realise it's a sort of like connection and an energy. Yes, looks are so unimportant. We're even lying to young people that 20s are your heyday. In your 40s most people are the most secure most wise most confident katie forget everything else this is why i love you thank god for that chapter here's the new chapter here's the new me you guys are in for such a treat katie piper i've always known her and respected her but recently i got to visit her on her tv show that she does on a sunday morning and I looked at her and I was like oh wow you're actually a brilliant brilliant broadcaster and then I thought wow what a begin again your life and where you've come from I would love to talk to her then I found out she was writing a book and I thought oh I must get that book so I got this.

2:05You have to read this. This is so good. But she is so, she's a brilliant communicator. After everything that she's been through, she's so level-headed and she is so wise. So listen up and enjoy. Oh, and by the way, we are really nearly 100 ,000 subscribers. and if you've never done it before and you think I'm all right, please will you just click on subscribe and like while you're at it. I mean, it's literally like that and then that. So if you could do that, that'd be great.

2:49I've known you for a long time. Yeah. And we've seen each other on telly and everything. And obviously now I've just been to your new show that's out every Sunday on telly for like forever. That's how it feels, doesn't it? Me and Michael, they're forever. I'm actually at home in bed. Michael, my partner, worked with you on that show and I came down to visit you. And I thought I knew Katie Piper. You know, I thought I knew who you were from seeing you on Loose Women and things. Yeah. But I saw you interviewing people, champions, in their local community. And I thought, oh, wow. you are really good at interviewing people and empathetic and sensitive and you're a very good listener and then I thought wow that must be because you've everything you've been through in your life has made you who you are today and I started really kind of thinking about who you were me and Michael discussed you a lot okay and then I thought about everything that you've been through and you are the ultimate person to have on this um podcast oh but then we feel like I feel I feel privilege to be here and it means a lot coming from you because I grew up with you you know so it's quite surreal in that way.

4:04It's an honor for me to have you here but it's it's been super sized by reading your book. I'm going to hold this up Kashi, still beautiful, out now. This blew my mind

4:27because I think I didn't know you at all and the depth to you and the way that you think and the way that you can express yourself and the way that you've used single pages. You know, a moment to pause. Here it says, which part of your story do you find it difficult to make peace with? how could you rewrite the ending so it's something you're proud of there are so many nuggets golden nuggets in this book but from a life that has been so crazy and difficult but you are not a victim I love this yeah it's weird isn't it because to some I'm young and to others I'm old but what I've lived is like you say a bit of a crazy life because I suppose what has happened to me won't happen in some people's lifetime and in others it may but it will be two friends like this in their 80s reflecting on it you know at 41 it's a lot to to have gone through not necessarily negative but it's just unusual for somebody in their 40s to have contended with those uh emotional and physical things but it's my life that I was given and because I have a faith I know it was meant for me can you tell me how you came to find your faith yeah it's interesting because you know if we were having this chat 10-15 years ago I would have been like really reserved and it would have held this quite close to my chest because you know I was raised my parents are fairly sort of conservative in that you know I was born in the 80s grew up in the 90s you didn't talk about politics you didn't talk about religion unless someone really offered it up you definitely didn't ask them so much so I remember when my mum and dad would go and vote and do their ballot in the local church at the end of our road they wouldn't tell each other who they were voting for like political parties whereas if now people have it in their bios on Instagram they main grid it they story me all about it um so i found uh christianity in my 20s which is is quite late i didn't grow up in a religious household and i really didn't talk about it because that was the early 2000s and you know i'm the founder of a charity and when you are running a not-for-profit you don't want to politically align or religiously align because you're applying for grants you're applying for trusts and it's important to be neutral because we uh we fund treatment right so everyone that approaches us right regardless of their beliefs and backgrounds will get funding um so i've never really talked about it and then here comes instagram here comes tiktok and here comes gen z that are so so proud of their political alignment so proud of their religion which in one way is brilliant which then is in another way is like we've never been in such a divisive time like culturally and politically yeah and it's like if i say one thing about politics or religion on Twitter I sit in the left forever or I sit in the right forever and in some ways that makes me sad because it's like you can have different views that fall on both sides and you can have friends that have completely opposing opinions and sides and they can still be your best mate yeah right and that's how we grew up but it's very very different now so I was very kind of quiet and considered about talking about being a Christian and also like I'm what I would call a bad Christian I don't go to church.

7:56I use an app to pray. I use an app to worship. I'm not christened. My kids aren't christened because it's up to them. And I don't live by the Ten Commandments. So I'm my kind of Christian. I would like to also say, I think in life, in any kind of spirituality, there's no such thing as a bad version of no one is bad. I would like to say whatever you follow, you have to make something work for you. faith yeah I love that word faith yeah I have faith yeah it's very broad it's very broad yeah um but I know if I put that online people would be like oh are you homophobic then and it's like absolutely not but I can understand how bits get pulled and misinterpreted it's a shame that isn't it it is but I think like anything in life if you're curious and want to explore it you should pass no judgment and you should read into it and you should live it yeah I would like to talk to you a bit about how you came to the attention of the public and how you became the Katie Piper that we now all know and love and it's actually been via a very painful pathway did you have faith then already was or was faith something that happened after no it happened during when I was an inpatient um and I had a nurse that kind of mentored me she was Jehovah's Witness actually not not Christian but she kind of mentored me and that and that's how I found it um and I think it's it's like you search for something bigger than you and that that's kind of like a quest for a meaning uh because if we always think we're the biggest thing like it's kind of like a level of narcissism right if you find something bigger than you it's very comforting and it's also someone you can ask for help if it's just you then yeah I don't want it to yeah I don't help me yeah yeah no it is comforting and reassuring for sure yeah um because I'm kind of a bit of a solo I fly solo in a sense right don't we all maybe I don't know I don't know if I'm just a weirdo I don't know but I am like I can I just say one thing Katie Piper I've read your book I know you a little bit I've seen your work love what you do you're not a weirdo everyone's somebody's weirdo aren't they well I would say I would say actually in all honesty you make the most sense almost of anybody I've ever spoken to like everything you say makes complete and utter sense to me but I think this idea of we are all alone in the world die alone leave alone born alone die alone and I'm okay with I kind of like that because I I guess now my level of self-esteem is that I can rely on me and I trust me.

10:51So it's comforting. But it all started really in 2008. That's right. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit? Yeah. What happened to you then? It's so unique because it's so unique to my colleagues because the people I work with now, they could be other TV presenters, actresses, models, singers, dancers, men and women in production. who've all gone to stage school, university, maybe they've had parents in the industry and now they're here in the industry with really tangible, recognised achievements or talents. But the way that I came known to the public was as a news story. You know, I was attacked in 2008.

11:36I was raped, I was beaten, I was held. And then a few days later, I had sulfuric acid thrown into my face. And it was really as the victim of that attack, the public knew my name. And then, and funny, actually, you know, you say 2008, that's when that happened. But when you are the victim of a sexual crime, you have the right to be anonymous. And I reserved that right for a year, which some people don't realize. And the reason was I was in quite a lengthy trial that went on for over a year. And I didn't want to jeopardize any evidence or any outcome. So I was girl A in the media at first. And because I wasn't famous, girl A was like a few lines in a paper.

12:22You probably would have missed it. And then when I revealed my identity, I'd also been filming a documentary, not as a presenter, but I was the subject, you know, I was the contributor. and it was an observational documentary and um it was a female crew it was uh one director a camera woman and then one uh sound woman so just two of them and uh I had agoraphobia I didn't leave the house so they would just come to my home and film with me every day and as you how did that even happen did a production company come and ask you after the um no it was the only people I really had kind of communication with were um legal teams the met and medical teams um mum and dad and every time i'd meet different people in those circles um because you know what sadly acid attacks are something now i think we all are familiar with and we've probably heard of other um survivors of acid attacks but back then you were talking like 17 years ago i don't think that's something we'd heard of happening on the street in the UK uh so when people would meet me they'd always you know they they were there to treat me or represent me legally they'd always think it had been a car accident or a house fire and I'd have to brief them on the story for the context of what they were doing and they'd be like sorry what you know it was always complete disbelief compassion kindness empathy and they were like it it's like a movie but not in a good way um and people were like this story needs to be told on your own terms so I think at first people were talking about you should write the story and my own therapist said you should write kind of privately because there's all these things that you need to unburden from your your subconscious that you don't want to frighten family members with so I did write I wrote for a long time not very well I don't have very I don't have any um higher education I stopped at GCSE and I didn't even do great at that um and then as I met people and as I wrote uh people started talking to me about talking about it on camera filming it and to be honest that filled me with dread at first because I was a very different person to who's sat here today um And I just started to self-shoot.

14:46And this was before camera phones. I think I had a Nokia back then. I don't even think the Blackberry had had its time. Instagram didn't exist. It was MySpace. And I started to self-shoot on like an Argos Handycam that had, you know, remember that pull out arm? yeah a little like screen and I just started to self-shoot um more it's it's really strange like my sort of naked body it was really personal and my burns are like down my front because obviously it was thrown at me so I started to shoot my body in a sort of subjective way like my body was very purple and and very like shiny and I just started um shooting the changes of my body and then I would like play it back and only watch it on the small screen um and then reshoot and reshoot and then mum um my mum's a retired school teacher mum would start helping me document it on like Microsoft and we'd make little brochures for nobody like we document it for us um and just see it and then I met somebody through my surgeon a it's like a BBC freelance journalist a man and he was such a great man he was like this is more than a news piece this is a program and I'm not interested in monetizing this or taking anything from you here's my black book go and explore it and stay in touch and he didn't ask for anything from me he never has since he's he's stayed in touch you know and then it went to like Trevor MacDonald tonight it went to channel four and then I chose to go with cutting edge in channel four can I ask you about a little bit about who you were before who were you in your very early 20s what were you like and what was happening in your life yeah it's hindsight isn't it when we think about who we were um well I was I was kind of a tomboy in some ways it was very different because like when we look at young people now they're they're like brilliant at makeup they've got all these YouTube tutorials they look fab right and when we were like the kind of shave your eyebrows of a bit razor crew pierce your own ears with a nappy pin and an ice cube uh if you were raving and partying you had one dress because we didn't document partying so no one knew you only had one dress and we were fine with that you know we used the night bus we walked home uh it was a great time actually you know and I think I was kind of um bold and resilient and ambitious and chaotic and crazy um and selfish like I was I was 20 and I lived my life for me um and I was a thrill seeker I yeah I seeked excitement not routine what kind of thrills um I came from a small town I came from a small town outside two hours outside of London uh it didn't have a lot going on no big industries kind of rural compared to the city and I was excited by what else is there out there what what is there for me because I want to find it you know I was optimistic and kind of can do but naive and young were you naive because you lived in the country do you think it's like I grew up in the country and when I moved to London I was 13 I was just I knew nothing I was so country girl you know like you said there's just nowhere to access all of this stuff nowadays you know what it's like living in a city because you can see it all yeah yeah I was um I was from a nice family so I was really trusting I was like people are good people are lovely and I was 20 um and was I a young 20 I don't know what does that mean like I I'd all I'd been working since like 15 and I loved working um and I'd moved out of home at 17 and paid rent paid bills um but I romanticized relationships and life and I was very trusting and I loved being in love and I loved people socializing, connecting, knowing people, meeting them, partying.

19:16You know, I was a lover of life, but maybe sometimes to my detriment. In what way? I just think I was I don't want to say I was excessive because I sit here now and I'm I'm a mom and I'm the breadwinner and my life is is serious and irresponsible so when I let back on her I'm like you go girl get it like I'm so glad totally yeah live your life I don't you know I see some people that that you know it's not a criticism but a lot of that part of their life was spent in education and being responsible and because of what happened to me I'm like thank god I went and got it because I don't I don't long for it because I really I really exhausted it and you I mean you you talk about being ambitious um I always think it's quite interesting for women to voice that I've always been ambitious I unashamedly so I wanted to do well and it's very interesting I think some sometimes that it's seen as a bit of a dirty word when connected to women yeah I think it's women like you talking about it that's paved the way for people like me because I do think previously it's been seen as like greedy and is it like capitalist and um who are you to want that and you're a mom stay there you know so I think the more um women like you have those conversations people like me are like yeah me too I guess it's okay then yeah yeah I mean I felt like you were really getting somewhere in a place where if you've got no nepotism and there's nobody giving you leg up, it's a very difficult area to get into.

20:58But you just signed to an agency. And you know how much I love talking to you about that, because obviously I worked at Models One for all of those years. So that was amazing. Yeah. And you were doing bits of telly. Yeah. I mean, look, it's funny. when I see my story first reported in 2008 in like red top tabloid it's like former model former tv presenter I'm five foot four so it wasn't Claudia Schiffer um and in terms of tv presenter um you know Holly Willoughby wasn't feeling threatened by my career at that stage so you know I was on I was do you know what I was doing I was living in north London in a rented bedroom with five friends who were all going to auditions dancers singers actresses and we were making like 800 quid a month which was loads to us because our room rent was 200 and then we were raving barely eating and wearing one dress to every party so it was fine and I would do random stuff like you know I'd be working on the jewellery channel these were the days of like no social media So it was all like shopping channels, satellite telly, the casino channel, the DIY channel, selling solar panelled lights.

22:08I remember I was living in Golders Green and I had an interview for a shopping channel based in Manchester. This is like, this sounds nuts, but I feel like you'll get it. I drove up, I had a Fiesta 1.1. I drove up to Manchester for the audition and I slept in my car because I couldn't afford to sleep in the Premier Inn. I sat to my car and then I went into the premier inn just to wash my face and like do all my hair in like the toilet and it was the day of the tom-tom sat nav that you stuck on the screen yeah and it left the circle on the windscreen so I put my sat nav in the glove box and when I came back out after I'd freshened up someone had smashed the passenger window and stolen the tom-tom because I'd left the sticky mark on the thing so instead of like ringing the police or going to Halfords and getting some tape to board up the window I drove up the motorway to the audition with all the air and all the glass because I was like no I've come here for this audition and I got the job but Katie like this is forget everything else this is why I love you this is where I think it's a bit unhinged no it's not it's it's how much do you want the job yeah like how much this is something um I feel is such a great lesson for anybody watching or any parent to say this is normal do the really difficult thing and I feel like before anything terrible happened to you um you were the person you were resilient yeah I think yeah I know what you mean Do you know what I mean?

23:49Because whatever level you're at, whether you're aspiring or you're established, it's full of rejection. All the time. And you don't understand that till you're in it. And actually, rejection is no bad thing. It makes you really robust. It's a blessing. Yeah, it is. You know, the more you get rejected. I used to say that a no is a yes that hasn't happened yet. Yeah. Unless it is in the bedroom. And then a no is a no. Yeah. But like, if you're like, no, you're not right for this job. You just think, oh, we'll see. You don't know me yet. Like, you don't really mean that. I'll come back next week and I'll annoy you again.

24:35Yeah. Because, and I feel that in you. Yeah. A tenacity. And do you know how that served me so well? It's not through work. It was when I tried to date again, facially disfigured, it was littered with rejection. And I was like, fine, because we're all rejected for all different reasons and they can be surface reasons. Can I ask you something very quickly before we deep dive into this I want to ask you how soon so I I mean you had literally hundreds of operations um post the acid attack yeah um how long were you in hospital how long did you have to recover for like give me a little bit of a setup before you were ready yeah to to look at being with someone again so mum and dad moved in to Chelsea and Westminster NHS hospital and they slept moved in yeah I mean they slept on those plastic chairs there's this thing called the patient's hotel for like critical patients and your mum and dad can go and live in the patient's hotel so they can come down to ICU because obviously for me at the beginning it wasn't about reconstruction it was about survival yeah you know I had all my police interviews filmed so that if I didn't they could still go to trial and and actually like we have such the police have such a bad rap right now and so do men in general these were all men and they were like we're going to get you the justice you deserve and if you if you're not here and you don't survive we will take these tapes and you will stand trial on these videos and we will get you that justice so so that that was three months solid that was I know it's it's it's sort of like great and awful isn't it yeah but great men yes but it's really thank you thank you that's hard to enter what you went through and see that I'm grateful though yeah I can see that and that was that was a proper three months solid um just living there three months yeah how many operations did you have during that time I mean it depends what you think an operation is in terms of like is it sedation is it general it just endless procedures yeah because it's it's not everything you can see in terms of like so if you have a facial burn it's so functional because of like respiratory gastro eyes ears and then i have body burns and then i have internal with esophagus the stomach you know it's just how did how did you get the internal burns because it's it was thrown at you but i yeah how did that happen so you can have it through um just splashes because corrosive you know sulfuric acid in in that volume and that strength just the fumes can burn your esophagus and stomach it could be droplets but it can also be um emergency incubation so you think you don't you arrive to hospital as a blue light right and you're incubated you know you're you're on opioids in the ambulance being stripped being whatever and then you eat you're incubate like these people are amazing i mean you know these people are amazing when they incubate you they might they might split the esophagus because it's just keeping you breathing Alive, yeah.

28:09Yeah. And then I was in a coma, so I was incubated for a long time. So that can damage the esophagus. So I don't really know what to attribute it to, but it kept me alive. So your esophagus was damaged? Yeah, in three places. Yeah. Yeah. And that meant you had to be tube fed? Tube fed, which is such a funny thing because a 90s teenager grew up like, you know, slim fast, watching your parents do grapevine and all this stuff. And you're like, if only I could be thinner. fuck now I can't swallow you know it's like ironic did you did you have those thoughts of um gosh I here I am and I've taken for granted all of this time or was it just you're just surviving at this point yeah I think those thoughts would come like later when you could reflect but I think that so much so many drugs so much trauma I don't you don't even you actually don't know what's happened really yeah it's too it's too great um you weren't thinking am I going to make it or not because you weren't even sure what was going on yeah I think there's so many opioids and so much ketamine sounds like a great party but you don't you don't know where you are you you think like for me my hallucinations were that I was on a film set so it it's so far from your reality reality right and they want I mean good yeah maybe in a way maybe yeah but the answer is I was in hospital for all of my 20s like when you get discharged you you're given a leave so they're like we're going to allow you to go home but come back four days a week and then you become an inpatient for surgeries recovery then you get infected then you get hospitalized so it's just like people are getting mortgages getting pregnant the date it they're going on tinder and you're like learning to swallow and it's just like it's such a weird like my 20s were just like just it's just very different very different one of the things that um touched me so much when I was reading you your book that I hadn't really thought about in in terms of when this happened to you and what you might have gone through I was the loneliness yeah and how isolating it is can you talk me a bit through those feelings yeah it was shit yeah I mean it was like people didn't turn their back on me but my circle kind of shrunk because I had a lot of party friends like acquaintances party friends and that was what we had in common and also in people's defense you know because social wasn't around no one knew where I'd gone no one knew what had happened right I just wasn't there like my flatmates knew what had happened and they stuck by me and they visited me but they couldn't visit at first no one was allowed in I had like police guards on the door of course yeah I was in a coma you know what it wasn't it's not like visiting someone after a hip replacement you know and people don't know what to say and and the loneliness like you know I think we understand I'm learning this better now.

31:19It's not about not having physical bodies around you. It's about not relating to something. And this wasn't a bad thing, but like mum was my best friend, you know, and I related more to older people and life was just full of appointments, whether they were legal, medical, whatever, you know, and I didn't have capacity for anything else. Do you think you related to older people because you'd had to grow up at like such breakneck speed? Yeah. When you're young, like the currency is like beauty, youth and you can like flip through. I mean look I had a pretty privilege right I was like white blonde fun and you could sort of flip through life as you want with that privilege and then it's like what women usually experience is gradually aging out of the male gaze right people don't give you the seat on the tube you can't apologize and get the parking ticket written off and I was removed from the male gaze in like 30 seconds age 24 it's so unusual um and then my body was disabled so it's like all those things a woman would feel at 82 I felt at 24 and so many um after my doc went out so many trans men and trans women wrote to me because it was like you're in a body that doesn't represent how you feel on the inside and I you know this is before the trans movement that has become yeah and I I'd never really thought much about uh trans back back then and I read the letters and I was like hmm they're right they're really really right it's like presenting to somebody and they see this and I'm like no I'm I'm this and and I there was like a sad time in the beginning where um I I went to France for to stay in this medical facility and this is so sad I used to carry a picture of my old self and I used to show it to people that were treating me and I used to be like oh I'm this age and this is who I am because also I was age less not not like young or old like it's hard to age a burn survivor and I was bald and like I didn't have my nails and and I used to like that was my ref point wow that's really amazing that you want to show someone a picture that's so interesting because this is this is me what you're seeing here the idea even that nails or I mean hands are so indicative of someone's age right yeah hands eyes hair um and you had none of that nothing to tell people who you were because how you look and how you dress and how you walk and how you present yourself tells people about who you are before you've said one single word yeah it's not vanity it's yeah it's identity yes it's necessity and that picture was it was like frustration and desperation because when I wrote the book you know like when you write a book on aging write a book on beauty I was like I'm not I'm not writing a book that tells people to buy a bath bomb and have a bubble bath and I'm not writing a book that tells people you're beautiful on the inside that's all that matters that's not true and if we tell young women that that's that's what people will judge you on that's a lie and we do judge people and how they look we do make those first few seconds that assumption and I suppose I was like shy and quiet but screaming inside like here she is she's not here anymore but here she is

35:24it's embarrassing now to say it it's weird because it's weird to think of me carrying this picture um why is that embarrassing because i just think it was the only way i could communicate because the way everyone else communicates is with their face and their presentation and mine was in a mask and it had been taken away yes and i could only communicate like that I feel like that's not embarrassing. That's so heartfelt. It's like it is a scream. I can hear it. You know what I mean? I don't think that's embarrassing. That is a desperate way of communicating. Yeah. Like I really want you to know who I am.

36:05It was important to me. Yes. Yeah. So that's not embarrassing. That's a beautiful thing. Just like culturally to some people it's really important that you know where they're from yes right it was like my roots yeah I get I I don't think that's embarrassing at all I really 100 ,000 percent understand you that was this the place in France where your mum went a couple of times with you and then she had to let you go yeah alone she came on like a recce and and so did my nhs surgeon bless him he like obviously nhs surgeons have no time so on like bank holidays he came out to do a recce to hand over notes to the staff uh mum came like the first time and then i went on my own um ideally i would have been there longer um tell me what it was what does it do for you it's a it's a rehab center so like when we think of rehab we think of say like the priory drugs and alcohol this is like burn rehab scar management so it's all about physical treatment so it's physiotherapy occupational therapy and if you understand the functionality of being burnt you have a graft and the grafted skin shrinks and shrinks so if my if my burn is here my it shrinks so much my arm is fused to my body you know if my face shrinks my mouth is open I can't eat my eyes are pulled down I lose my sight wow my nose closes like a wound I can't breathe so all the rehab is to um make the skin pliable malleable and stretch it and get extra movement extra inches so you are functional it's all functional rehab um and then the French patients would also have psychological um but didn't that was that e in GCSE French so I had I had an NHS therapist and oh so they're all French speaking sorry that's absolutely ridiculous of me I hadn't even factored that in you went on your own yeah to an entirely French speaking yeah it was it was very rural because you know obviously it wasn't like tourist France you know it was like rural out in like you fly to Montpellier uh obviously I had no money back then so then you'd get like a coach for like three hours from Montpellier to this place called L 'Amalou-le-Ban, which is like rural in the hills.

38:34Everyone's French. So it was like, that was lonely. It was a privilege, but it was lonely because at the weekends family would visit the French people. Yes. Or they'd go home. Did anybody sort of adopt you? At all. A little bit. People would, the trouble is people had had life-changing accidents. Of course. Yeah. And they're all dealing with their own shit, right? And it's like they had accessibility problems. They would go home at the weekends. I was really the only domestic violence victim. It was more like car crashes, that kind of thing. And it had a Lidl. So that's what I would do at the weekend.

39:10I would walk around Lidl. God bless Lidl. God bless Lidl. Great. So I would walk around Lidl. But my rehab was interrupted because obviously with my trial, I didn't take my attackers to trial. The CPS take them and I'm a witness. So I was called back by the crown to the trial. And then I had gastro-NHS surgery that I had to come back for those dates, the stomach surgery. So my rehab was always interrupted with either gastro-surgery or being called to the stand. So you didn't get to stay there for as long as you probably would have liked? Well, I could have benefited more. But you know what? Some people don't get any of that.

39:47So it was fantastic. It was a part of my recovery. And I'm super grateful for it. it's funny isn't it when there's one person or one therapist or one physiotherapist or one OT who says something and you go ting oh I heard somebody yeah I read straight away when you say that I'm like yeah Marie Marie I love it that's so great Marie wore like really dark like red wine lip like a French woman would right and she was the the best English speaker and she would take pictures of me like animated profile with her digital camera and she would print them for me to send to mum and dad to show um because animation is really important to show like stretch and reach so my goal when I when I was there was like I really want to be able to um bite an apple and I couldn't get enough reach to like what how do you mean reach because I couldn't vertically open my mouth at that yeah because my scars had binded and it was like affecting speech and it was affecting bite so I was like I really want to get bite for the circumference of an apple so like Marie would measure me with like this thing called a therabyte so you put the therabyte in the mouth and you wind it open and then you measure the reach every week so we would do that together and she would talk to me in English about my story uh they even nicknamed me because I would show them the picture the picture I used to show them was like bright pink lipstick and like big curly hair extensions and they called me burnt barbie which sounds so crude but isn't it funny these things it was a pet name yeah but it's it's it's so weird in the darkest of times yeah sometimes you can find something to to laugh about yeah and it's such a relief and it's such a different culture like we would have meals a bit like being at school we'd have like a communal dining room and it's it's obviously like a medical center but they would serve like wine with the meal.

41:41French. French, right? And then a lot of the patients were older generation because obviously that's when people decline and have medical problems and they would all nickname me roast beef and have a go at me about the French Revolution. I just want to let you know that roast beef is like calling a French person a frog. Yeah, yeah. So we all get called roast beef. Yeah. It's hilarious, isn't it? Yeah. So funny. And it was nice to have a laugh. Yeah. Like it was a dark time. I wanted to have a laugh, you know. I mean what's interesting now is that we're talking about the physical aspects of trying to come to terms with scars and how to keep your face malleable and all the surgeries and for me I think the idea that you were you were raped and then a few days later somebody threw acid at you these are two enormous life experiences that on their own would take an enormous amount to mentally process to integrate into your life where you can make it part of you it's never going to go anywhere it's going to be part of your life forever but you you can somehow live with it in your daily life I when I read your book I was struggling to understand how you process those two things mentally I mean you're talking about France and dealing with all of that physically and the others get sort of psychiatric help or they get to speak to a counsellor but you didn't how on earth do you start to integrate this experience I had good access to a therapist in the NHS you know when I was in the UK in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital I had a brilliant CBT therapist Lisa and that was like because I was an inpatient she was coming to the bedside when I was unconscious she was she was chatting to mum and dad and helping them wow so that was like two days a week as an inpatient and then I go back weekly when I was in the UK um it was difficult and it's it's really like encouraging and I don't want to keep talking about social but you know I follow like a lot of feminist accounts and I follow probably more women really you know of all ages actually and to see this kind of like anti-Andrea Tate movement adolescence coming out me too time's up even now I'm like wow go you go you you call that out because I I'm not from that generation you know and I I never really like to talk about my first attack I'm from the generation of like when I did publicity for my documentary, male journalists were like, well, why did you go to the hotel with that guy?

44:35And to be fair to those journalists, I'm not even like having a go at them. No, that's that era. Yes, I see what you're saying. Yeah, and it's actually not a criticism of those people. You are younger than me, quite a lot younger than me. I can't tell you how many women of my generation were attacked in some way or another and never said anything about it for that reason precisely. I hate to say it, but it's quite common and normal. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, all the feelings that come with something so terrifying happening, how do you, I'm not, when I'm talking about processing it and integrating it, I'm not even talking about bringing that person to justice.

45:18I'm talking about you and all the feelings and emotions. I mean what did happen to you did you did you get anxiety were you yeah I think the biggest mental health issue I had was post-traumatic stress which manifested as like agoraphobia where I couldn't leave the house because I was like if I was safe space yeah and I was like if I leave the house I'm gonna get attacked and and that was quite real um and I mean you were attacked in the street yeah so it makes the streets everywhere i know and it was 5 p.m daylight and it was it was rush hour so i think it's like when i think about um all my like stay safe education if you're raped it was like stranger drags you down an alleyway in a bush you know it wasn't like someone you know does this to you and like obviously when we look at stats child abuse and and domestic violence is actually someone we know you know and that's not what i thought um but I think what I did and I'm really proud of myself actually when I look back on that is I I've removed myself from society so I didn't have an email I didn't have a phone and I stayed at home with mum and dad and I didn't see that as a failure and I didn't be like oh I'm agoraphobic I want to be inspirational and brave and push myself and go out I actually just declined and I went into myself and that was good that I needed that I wasn't brave no but this is really interesting I feel like that is brave I mean I think there is society I think yeah but I think there's a big pressure on people when they go through something it's like you just said to be strong and face the you know face the thing and go and that's a it's it will be quite comforting I think for people to say it's okay the way that I healed myself was in fact a hideaway feel safe yeah in like therapize myself in a funny kind of way I mean what how did you do that why was it good because it was no outside noise I had this thing like now I always feel um like a weirdo for it but I have this big like blank in popular culture so like if you if you really look into this right like any kind of like like top 10 singles and like top movies often contain like sex or violence especially like songs are always about love sex romance fast love whatever and I didn't I couldn't tolerate sex or violence i'm a big michael jackson fan right and a lot of michael jackson songs are about environment climate family like they're the only real pop star that wasn't centered on like sex and love um so in all of my 20s wow yeah it's quite rare to find it right it's really fascinating so all of my 20s i didn't watch any films television uh or listen to music so i watched like box sets of like alan partridge because i love alan partridge oh my god yeah like if i'm on the radio now i'm conscious that i'm not being um so it was like nothing so like now if like i'm with somebody who's my age they're like oh my god remember that movie oh that song oh so you lost and i'm like a decade yeah i'm not i've no idea what they're talking about and i'm like i'm sorry but and i never say it i just like don't just don't contribute um but i only really know like Elvis Michael Jackson no the Spice Girls but there's like a big blank of like so what was interesting that is I mean this is what I mean by it a bit lonely like you just said I won't have seen it but I'll never say it because you're alone in this experience it's a cultural yeah like do you remember now they have like Spotify and they stream but we knew the songs because we were in the club and then the DJ played the song and then we that was how and then we bought the CD so I didn't do that for like eight years I didn't go to our price wow it's weird isn't it how those things can like those references like because then you're like a nut what am I I'm like a millennial 2000s baby you know um but it's fine I'm okay with that because like for all my losses I've gained so much.

49:49I am. I've just thought about something around the time when you were recovering. And you were talking about your mum and your mum went with you to France. And she actually gave us some diary. excerpts from that time when she was talking about you and how she was feeling. Do you mind if I... Her diary? Yeah. Oh, God. My mum is so private. Do you mind if I read a couple?

50:26I really... I'm not going to put my glasses on. My mum's saying I'm private and shy. I think as a mum, and you're a mum now, and we've both got daughters, and reading this now, it's so powerful seeing as a mum the things you have to go through about how much you love your daughter. Yeah. So this one is from Thursday the 26th of June. What year? 2008. Oh, okay. It was very early then. Um, Kate feeling down today. I'm finding it hard to know what to do with her. Lots of tears today. The psychologist has said we must let her cry. She needs to release her emotions. But as a mum I just want to comfort her.

51:19She's my child. I just want to make her better but I can't. I have to learn to stand back. She has to feel able to express her anger, hurt and pain in any way she wants. Thought we'd go to Marwell Zoo, but got there too late, so went for a walk by River and Winchester. Kate's still nervous and unhappy at being out. The thing I got from that was letting you feel and holding space for you. But how hard that must have been for her as a mum.

52:02she'd try and get me out and we'd go to like pound shops charity shops the zoo Marwell Zoo was the old school trip so it was like a familiar place and then she'd like pack a cool bag of like medication sandwiches liquidized food for me and I'd get there and refuse to go in and it or in worse days we'd go in the pound shop and we'd be asked to leave and it would like things would just be a shit show because of how you yeah I mean my appearance was so different I had like a shaved head a plastic face mask purple face and I sometimes think um people thought I was like contagious or had some kind of disease or and people would follow me around the shop pointing at me and then of course like a whole scene and like just just things would it would just it would always be like the intention to just you know like with your mum you just mooch around don't you looking at things and it was like all those simple things in life you take for granted was so hard to do but mum kept trying because in like a really practical way I needed to leave home again but the offer was there to stay there forever but they didn't want me to stay there forever but I did want to stay there forever at first I think because I was sort of like not really it's so funny when people talk about me right it's like oh you're so inspirational you're doing all these busy things and it's like yeah but I wasn't that's that's not what recovery is it was small times small goals it wasn't setting up businesses setting up charities I wanted to stay at home forever for a long long time but how long at one point like it felt like forever you know um but I think things change you know and and people always look like when they narrate a story they look for like this big moment and I don't think life's like that I think it's small moments small things repetition you know recovery isn't a movie with a nice wrapped up end scene it's sort of like doing things and it being terrible and then doing it again and it's not so terrible you know it was it was like consistency and repetition

54:31um we've got another one here um and this one is july 2008 um sometimes dealing with her is like treading on eggshells you can't say anything right you get accused of being patronizing or not caring enough sometimes there's no answer and really kate doesn't want an answer she just wants to let off steam. Totally get that. And we are the first in the firing line. We have to be very strong and recognize that it's not personal. She's attacking the situation, not us. Letting out her frustrations and anger. I try not to let it affect me, but it does. I need to stay calm. It's so hard seeing her in so much turmoil.

55:17There's so much going on, so many appointments to organize in so many places. Kate tries so hard to be positive, so we have to do our part and not let her see if we get upset. It is unfair. She is the one suffering the most. We have to let her rant and rave, be happy or sad, stay in her PJs all day if she wants to. Sometimes I'm glad that she feels safe enough to let us, to let it all out on us. I know that no matter what, we will never desert her, or stop loving her. And when we come out of all of this, we will be stronger than ever. She should come on here. Well, you know what? That's quite weird you said that.

56:05As I was reading that, that is exactly what I thought as a parent to... She also went on her own journey, right? I think a big learning curve is holding space for someone you really fucking love. Yeah. To feel the feelings and not try and take them away, no matter how uncomfortable they make you feel. You're right, because when people are going through stuff, the people that are supporting them ask you for advice. And it's like, it's not about you. Stop trying to fix people. Stop. You can't take it away. And that's why it's so traumatic. And I think what she said there about me. Like we've got so much better about talking about mental health, but there's still only like surface level acceptable mental health, which is like sad, anxious, but real mental health is like being aggressive and psychotic and violent.

57:00And like what my mum's talking about is I was really aggressive and like vocal and shouty and angry. And that's not really like the nice mental health we see on those squares. That's still quite shameful. but what I what I rather liked about what she said is that she had an absolute understanding and I think as a parent I think you you'll get this that you were she sorry she was a safe place for you to be angry like if you'd have been with somebody else a friend of hers you might not have felt free enough to feel fucking furious. But because it was your mother and you knew she loved you, she was a safe enough place to really fucking feel it.

57:49Would that be fair? I could even guess what happened that day that she wrote that entry because I smashed up my childhood bedroom and they let me so I could hide it from the world. And they never said anything. and they used to do this thing for me called face care it was part of my treatment like when I came back from France you have to have face care so face care is like when you're doing it from home with what you've got it's just like a tub of E45 and you just lay on the bed and you hang your head and your neck off the bed to stretch your burn and you massage it and mum would do face care and then I would feel like all uh like wet and I was like and obviously I'm blind in one eye right so I'd be like and then I realised mum was crying on my face silently so mum and it was in mum's room that had an ensuite bathroom so mum would swap with dad and be like I need a wee and then the ensuite bathroom had a fan and she'd pull the fan it should be gone ages for a wee and then dad would take over and then I'd be feeling like the same wet and I'd be like what is happening then dad would go in the bathroom the fan would stay on then mum would come back and they would do like shifts like that and we used to play audio books I had like a ghetto blaster yeah CDs in a ghetto blaster we used to play like Deepak Chopra this was even before people like Mel Robbins it was like Rhonda Brine like The Secret you know like the really early day and we used to play all that and I'd come out and be like oh you've missed CDA you were in there for ages I'm on CDB almost not realising because I was you know yes and no like the day I gave birth to my first child and I was a mum, I rang my mum and I was like, sorry because now I'm a mum and now I understand and yeah, I understand more now I'm a parent but yeah I knew some of it but it was like because I had a lot of post-traumatic stress I was always in like fight or flight so it was difficult How did you deal with that?

1:00:07slowly each day taking it one day at a time and a deep deep belief for um there is more beyond this and like there is life and I've lived for a reason and you know I was like very hopeful and optimistic um and I did feel bigger than what tried to hurt me very early on um I was how did you how did you understand that had that that hang on a minute I am bigger than what's happened to me and you when you said early on how early on was that I think it's a bit like a bereavement where it's not like you don't you don't meet up with someone and go oh you know are you over it now like because you know like a bereavement is like you learn to live a bit right and and you have radical self-acceptance and it's like let's put that to rest now because that's gone and I think I went through all those stages of grief that we we know and understand about uh with that safe place of like anger being one and many other things um and I knew I knew I wasn't going to be the same again and I think it was having such a full life when I was young I was like I really did that to death like thank god for that chapter here's the new chapter here's the new me and I was like curious I suppose curious to see what lay ahead I knew it wasn't going to be the same thing as what I was used to but I was curious to see what God had in store but you said quite early on I thought okay I have potential for something else when did that start well there were like big things thrust upon me like you know uh big surgeries big trials what was your biggest surgery I think they were all equally big and and demanding and and physical um and big things like going into crowded even like the beginning of this this world right where they're like oh you you're cosmopolitan's inspirational women come to the barbican and you're like oh that's really nice and everything but it's it's also full of like um people that i can't relate to it and it's like noisy and it's like all these things so like everything was always a first and like it was like really putting myself out there um but I I kind of knew that I was born to be alone and do those things and I could and it was like that self-belief of like well come on now people do die from these injuries and you didn't and I think it's almost like a gratitude of like you've experienced it in the medical world where these people whether it's private whether it's NHS whatever it is they don't have a lunch break they don't they don't their holidays are determined around the list right and they they fast and they go into theater and then it and then it takes longer than they thought and then they have to ring colleagues and they do radical things and then they're just on to the next and have a prep like a sandwich you know and it's like so much time money and expertise was spent on saving my life how dare I not live it you know it's it's almost rude right and that gave me a confidence because like so many people bothered and believed in me they must be onto something it's fascinating because I'm I'm always I just always fascinated by how is somebody positive like is it I'm not is it genetic is it something we're born with is it something that I feel like you are a very naturally positive person but you have talked about your mum and said she's a very positive person perhaps it's genetic or is it because you went through this experience and it's done something to you that's made but I know other people who've been through terrible experiences who just can't get past it so what's your take on that and your positivity yeah it's an interesting question because I suppose you can only talk about your own experience and you don't know what it's like to grow up differently to an experience that you had and my my mum and my dad were both optimistic people and the advantage I've had over other people is I grew up with stability and I grew up feeling wanted and I grew up feeling loved and I always had somewhere to return to if I fucked up and not everyone has that right and you can't underestimate like there's a solid foundation and if things got shaky in adulthood like they did I still had that foundation and and that's a privilege right you meet other people now and they tell you about their foundation or lack of it and you realize that wasn't everyone's experience so I don't want to say being positive is a choice because not everyone had the same toolkit um but I just think like for me I mean this is why I started the book because I was 39 and every time I was being interviewed, actually primarily by female journalists, they were like, do you mind if we print your real age?

1:05:10Do you mind if we talk about the big birthday that's coming up at the end of the year? Oh my God. Yeah. Do you know, Katie, what is people's obsession with age? They never do that to men. It's women's, it's also weird. Ever. It's internalised misogyny for women. Yeah. It's not male journalists. And it's like the same time people were saying that to me, Baobabe was dying. she was my age with kids my age Debra James yeah um would you just explain for anybody that's watching that may not be British or have known who Debra James was how you came across her and why she made such a massive impact on all of us really she was an amazing woman that was going through stage four bowel cancer she was a lover of life owned loads of sequin clothing had young children she was a school teacher she was a people person and she decided to document her her medical fight and um you know i will i would never want to say i understand what she went through because i've never been sentenced with a terminal illness right but what i saw in deborah was she has what i called um a hospital mum which is her mum my heather and i have a hospital mum and what hospital mums do is they lose their social circle they don't go to the pub quiz anymore they they get compassionately from work or they lose their job and um they eat from the vending machine for a year and they sleep on the plastic chair at the bedside and then they sit in the recovery suite playing sudoku whilst they wait for you to come out of recovery and i saw uh deborah's hospital mom and i saw and she even looks like my mom deborah's mom she's the same like blow dry and I just got obsessed with the story because I was like and she was really honest you know sometimes with terminal illness people make peace with their death and that that's their journey and Deborah was like no I want to live really want to live really do and I remember thinking I remember that wanting to live and and feeling like this is unfair you know and she really inspired me uh to like grow some balls you know and like okay I look different and I'm not going to be everyone's cup of tea but she would give anything to still be here whether it meant looking different whatever it meant she just wanted to be there for the kids and and like be there while they grow up she wouldn't care she wouldn't have cared being burnt or whatever you know and it really really inspired me and so when people were asking me about this birthday I was just like this is wild like do you understand the alternative of not being 40 it's it's it's having what's happened to deborah you know i am so proud of living and all this internalized misogyny is because um i've been through this i've had round one now it's round two round one was 24 and no longer being pretty because beauty is the most powerful currency a woman can have okay 17 years later you're now placing this value on youth because youth is another powerful currency that women can have right when you talk like this it is mad it's mad right so now i'm not beautiful and I'm not young so now you're like do I want to tell everyone or shall I say I'm 37 forever and I'm just like do you know what I am now in my peer group one of the most powerful and beautiful women in the peer group not by western beauty standards not by symmetry standards and everyone told me that like a facial disfigured person couldn't be that I am that because I ignored society and I made my own way and I rejected beauty standards I rejected conforming to that um and and it kind of like it makes me so angry because we're lying to young i mean we're even lying to young people that 20s are your heyday like in your 40s most people are the most financially stable and secure they've been most boundaried most wise most confident but we can't we dress up that they are the 20s are the best and then we actually diminish in our currency and our value that we're washed up that we're somehow rejects but it's not true do you know like there was a moment there where i wanted to go escape day yes yeah i thought no just let her finish watching this thing but i'm so like with you and also um i i really remember getting older and going through perimenopause and slightly grieving the way that I had become a bit invisible.

1:09:38I was like, oh, I've kind of disappeared. And going through a phase of like, oh, this is what I have to part with. Then I realized you can wear outlandish clothes. Yeah. And you can wear brightly colored lipstick. You can Irene Apfel this shit. Yeah. um you know what I mean like dressing out londishly yeah and they might not look at you for the same reasons but it's like I'm still here yeah um and that's gradual right you're aging out of the male gaze gradually yeah mine was like 30 seconds well this is another term that you used that I was like oh wow you disappeared yeah from the male gaze the male get I've never heard that before and I was like oh like that is so kind of weird hard to get your head around because it took ages for me but it was I was grieving for ages and rightly so like I understand it like 30 seconds before people were clamoring to like get my myspace address and chat to me and then post everything happening I was like in places and no one spoke to me and I was like we feel in poundland are asking you to leave yeah I can't I can't just but that's why when I started to age I really wanted to say to people this is okay and actually you are super powerful yeah you have so much to offer and like this is something that's happened to you gradually and and also you know actually I don't want to make this into an anti-man thing because the people that rebuilt my life were all men my surgeon the lawyers that met police like my father like strong male role models and we can't um have um equality and privilege and a great life as women without men they are our allies and we have to do we can't we're more we divide each other more when we when we go against right so we need to we need to do it together but like what is the male gaze like why are we so why is because i was there where external gratification and attention was my goal it was my focus got kind of half an idea about what I think it's about and it's in your 20s and it's important yeah and then you kind of get used to it and it's still happening a little bit in your 30s and then less so in your 40s and for me it's biology right fertility it's fertility yeah it's mating it's um it's about carrying on the human race I want to look attractive so that you will inseminate me and we can make children to keep the human race going I think it's that biological but but what happens is we start to kind of slightly enjoy it not just for having babies but just because oh like hang on a minute I feel a bit like sexy or good here and and then when it starts going you're like oh it's going and so are my eggs and so everything else but for you it wasn't that it was like it's gone it's gone yeah and who am i without that and and and this is

1:12:46but i didn't want it to be one of those like um go gray don't use botox don't wear because that's not who that's not true if i go gray i will be dying it right and i hold my hands up and say look i'm not perfect and i've always been glam and i love being glam and i've got what do you mean by perfect what do you see society's version of well I think it's a twisted thing of like oh well if you're a feminist you shouldn't dress revealing you know if if you're happy with who you are why are you dyeing your hair or why are you having Botox you know these things and it's like because I love expressing myself and communicating and I love feeling fabulous and it's part of who I am and I'll be that woman in a leopard print legging at 80 you know and i don't i don't feel weak because of that i don't feel ashamed because of that well i think actually that's quite strong yeah listen if another man had never fancied me ever again i would have had children through a sperm clinic right i would have carried on with this career i would have had fulfillment i would have it wouldn't have been my choice but i would have forged away and found happiness you know I'd like to talk to you about getting back onto the dating scene actually you were talking about like finding another man to fancy me and and you talking in here about your experience of dating was so well I mean I'll let you tell the the first few stories of you kind of on dating apps so what like how how soon after um your operations and you going through were you still living at home when you started dating no it was um so basically I lived at mum and dad's and then I moved out uh probably like a year or so maybe like I suppose it was 2008 it happened I think I moved out in like just after around the end of 2010 and I moved to West London I got like a one-bed flat um and it's funny because like when people ask me about dating as a burn survivor it was it was shocking it was difficult there were little barriers but we always look at things like we've romanticized it and it's always rose tinted spectacles my dating history was shocking when I was hot it was always shocking and it's like not to blame the men like maybe I was always the problem but and when I talk to friends now that are super intelligent successful gorgeous and they're single and dating is a nightmare now and all the apps and like like really to be honest whoever I speak to dating is challenging and it doesn't matter what they look like um but yeah it was difficult and I want to be honest to people because I know a lot of people follow me with facial disfigurement and I don't want to be really honest like it is a barrier for some people and it is a problem for some people and I think that's okay I don't think we should pretend that everyone should fancy everyone because that's not really real life no and you're allowed to not fancy tall people that's that's you and actually what can happen sometimes is you then might work with someone really tall and get to really know them and actually then be like I really fancy you but you might not have approached them in a bar.