S6 E2: Michelle de Swarte, comedian

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian. A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life. Because even as a restaurant critic, I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa. Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors. Just a quick word, this episode has lots of strong language and discussions that would not be suitable for kids.

0:56Hello, friends. You have caught me sitting at my mirror. I am doing the most important prep before a comfort eating guest comes round. I am taming the uncontrollable gorse bush that is my barnet. I'm readying myself for another episode of comfort eating. Good God, today's guest is Michelle Deswaut. She is a woman who has squeezed three lifetimes into one so far. I'm telling you, I am so looking forward to meeting her. Gotta get this hair looking its best. It's all about the front. If you get the front right, no one notices the back. So people ask all the time how I get the volume. Trade secret.

1:44Okay, I'll tell you. I do back home, but if I'm honest, it's very rarely washed. Only wash it, I say, when you can feel the birds nesting. Oh, got the start of one now. It's a little egg. Once I've teased it into place, that is an ozone layer of maximum hold hairspray. Anything less, just a waste of time. Now, Lewis Schomborne, Michelle Deswort, knows a thing or two about beauty. Before moving to comedy, she was a successful model. She's posed for legendary photographer Mario Testino and walked the catwalks for the likes of Dolce and Gabbana and Versace. Michelle was famous for her incredible gorgeousness, but also for once toppling over while walking down a Gucci catwalk, which was swathed in improbably thick sheepskin.

2:43As a stand-up, she's been named the Queen of Comedy by the Sunday Times. Her humour draws on her youth in London and her coming of age in America, where she lived for years. Since moving back to the UK, she has made her acting debut in series for Netflix and for Sky. But what I'm desperate to find out is what you eat before a photo shoot in downtown Manhattan or after a sellout comedy show at the Hammersmith Apollo or just when you're back in your Uggs on home territory in South London? I suppose I'm going to find out.

3:28Michelle Deswatt, welcome to Comfort Eating. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Grace. Look, I think it's fair to say that even though you were an incredibly funny lady, the video of you online which could be getting the most hits is if you've fallen over twice you're in very high heels you walk in the gucci catwalk yeah if i was going to fall over in public i'd like to do it for gucci i mean you can't really top it every now and again i'll see someone trip over or someone will be like oh god that was so embarrassing and i'm like yeah you'll be all right do you know i mean my fall was played on the news but i knew i was gonna fall i'd only just started modeling a few months before i was like pulling pints in a pub so i definitely was not qualified to be walking on shag pile carpet right this is it in your absolute defense and i mean you don't need to be defended but that was a shag pile carpet you can't do 120 millimeter stilettos on a shag pile carpet it can't be done i'll be honest with you i i can't even really walk in any hill do you know what i mean do you not wear heels at all now no not a fan of heels and now i just accept that i walk like a geezer i don't have much grace with it and they also hurt i think part of it as well is i'm tall like my mum loves hills but she's shorter and she loves the extra few inches it gives her yes you know that's what she's into but i don't have that you can just straight out the house.

5:01I really, when you have a proper look at me, I have the proportions of a small Shetland pony. It's all arse. And the thighs, they just like, they start. This is where you argue with me. No, I refuse. I'm like, go on, continue coating yourself. I'm in your house. I wouldn't dream of trying to convince you otherwise.

5:31Every week, my guest brings me the cheeky little morsel that they love to pop in their gob for a shot of solace on a cloudy day. Now, I have a tray in front of me. I have no idea what is under here. Please unveil your snack. You look so happy.

5:53I feel quite emotional. Explain your snack. It is a jacket potato with cheese and tuna. it's a proper jacket potato as well that that is not microwaved no that is not microwaved you know we were sold a lie with microwaves they were like i'll just do one in 10 minutes oh my god and then you've got this papery skinned thing just spitting at you i was brought up with on microwave jacket potatoes and my mum like because it was that time wasn't it where like we were one of the first people on the estate to have a microwave where like people will come and knock and just like with a whole frozen chicken and like 50p for the electric meter and they're like sort me out now and like my mum put everything in the microwave into this day she'll be like do you want a jacket potato and you're just like no it's going to come out the size of a tic tac do you know what i mean it's always got that 10 pence piece size of kind of really really really hard skin on the bottom and it's all been microwaved and you think oh this is nice it's just like a crisp start trying to eat it yeah then it gets welded around your teeth has to be taken off by the nhs yeah it's like what am i doing but you it's a lovely crisp buttery skin you've taken the tuna you've mixed cheese in with it have you yes now the cheese on the top is merely a garnish all right because what you've got to do is cheese first right cheese first then tuna tuna's cold then a tiny little bit of cheese on the top just for the beauty of it honestly so my friend who's very posh went to a very very good private school he calls them Jackie Peas he's a twat in here Matt I hope you heard that yeah Matt sort it out you're a grown man Jackie Peas Jackie Peas do you know this is some niche porn isn't it it's so confident you know when something feels so good you sort of contemplate whether you could shove it in your fanny just like I can't do you for it I mean did it in public if you did it at Walthamstow Town Hall they're going to have some issues I'll be honest with you Walthamstow Town Hall no everyone would just carry on with their day and go bloody hell she's had a long weekend didn't she they'd be like that's impressive she's not even taking her pants on Right.

8:20I'd lay it like an egg. Do you remember Bulk when she was on the red carpet in that swan dress? That'd be me. Jacket potato landing. Oh my God. I feel like I should talk. Right. Look, jacket potatoes. Tell me the kind of ideal time that you would find yourself eating that. If I've been traveling or if I'm feeling a little bit just wanting something like reassuring, that's what I would get because it doesn't take much chewing. you know what you're getting and it's lovely and I feel like tuna mayo especially is my baseline I never don't enjoy tuna mayo honestly I need to ask all the questions but I could just keep on going because it's like you know people are sniffy about tuna on a pizza but if you put tuna on a pizza and then put a load of cheese on you've just got the same thing again it's absolutely delicious you know what I'm saying but and there's all kinds of you know as I've gone up in the world so has my taste in tuna.

9:15Like little pole line caught tuna from Pratt. Ooh, I remember the first time I had that, I was like mind blown. Wow, who knew tuna could be like this? I still feel the same about those baguettes though in Pratt. I'm nothing without Pratt. I realised that in lockdown. I was like, you know what, Michelle, you're fucked without this shop. I know. Like what are you going to eat? Where are you getting your five a day from? I might as well call it mummy. Yeah, bop, bop. It's just like... oh yeah we just come in and have some porridge although let's talk about the feelings they're being a bit tight with this cozy living thing but whatever taking the piss they're taking it is it is a sadistic relationship i'm in that i go in there and i'm like 13 pounds 20 for like for a yogurt and half a sandwich thank you very much i'll be back in 25 minutes exactly it's like yeah you want you want to kick off but you know me and you both know that i'm your bitch so i'll be back But like, I love the salmon sandwich as well.

10:13And like, they pack it up at the front and I'm like, then I open it up and I'm like, Pret, you cunts. Do you know what I mean? What you're known for is corner to corner. Every bite should be consistent. And now look at you. I'll be back tomorrow to have this conversation again. There's my 40 pound. Thanks for the green juice. Ta-ta.

10:42something happened to you that i used to dream of happening when i was a kid with my uh shetland pony proportions i used to lurk by the escalator in top shop and go to clothes shows and fashion shows hoping to be scouted never happened to me it did happen to you yeah you were scouted yeah so what i want to do is live vicariously through that moment what happened The first time my friends had gone to a modelling agency and they said no. And then my mum took my picture in and then they called me up. And then I got scouted at a pub I worked in. I got scouted a few times. It just kind of decides for you.

11:26And my first run with modelling, I didn't make any money and I got dropped by my agency. So I kind of thought that was it. And then when I started again, I didn't make any money in this country. I was still bartending. So I didn't think anything was going to come off it. It's not until a New York agency came to storm, a model agency, and then they flew me out to New York that I actually was like, oh, I could make a living doing this. I was only meant to go for two weeks. And then in the second week, I got booked for this job. And yeah, it was like loads of money. And I swiftly went out and got a Discman.

12:00It's a CD or some shit, I don't know. See, I'm fascinated by what people do when they first get that check. Things like modelling. Yeah, suddenly it's like a few thousand quid. It's a few thousand dollars. Yeah, and I think when you're that age as well, my aspirations weren't that big. You know, I was like, I'd love to be able to buy my little brother some trainers and like get my mum some bits and, you know, maybe take us all on holiday. And I wouldn't mind being able to get any CD I wanted. How did life change eating-wise? Actually, I remember like one of the first things was taking my mum and my brother and we went to pizza hut I just remember thinking that was proper fancy like just a salad bar what?

12:47the ice cream factory there's little bacon bites and croutons I remember my first crouton that was a big deal what is this stale bread that they're remarketing as fancy, I'm in but then you must have made a leap to restaurants that you didn't feel particularly comfy in at first when you walked in I always think that if you've come from not a lot of money restaurants are just intimidating places like so you there's nothing to stop you going and you've got the cash in your account but yeah did you feel like that I felt inadequate not because I was like um i'm not really used to this it was i just didn't know what things were like calamari first time i saw it i thought it was an onion ring do you know what i mean and like i remember all doing steak tartare and it turning up and being like what the ross is this what are you lot as a raw egg on mince raw egg on raw mince i never and they're like oh this is lovely and i was like no I didn't did I just order this and then a guy in a little jacket comes and mashes it up by you for you I said you can take that back and cook it mate and bring it back in 20 minutes what is this I can remember like some key things ordering a a salad nicosi yeah my lovely mate from from Hull who'd been like modelling for a little bit longer than me she was like no Michelle that's you know it's a salad nicois but you have to say things out loud to make that mistake to know because nobody in my remit when I was 17 ever said salad nissoir yeah I did it's just I still don't know how to pronounce things I'm dyslexic and but I know that I can ask the waiter and just say I don't how do you sorry I want this but I don't know how to say it but I want that one and he'll tell you or she'll tell you or they'll tell you they love it they don't mind they want to tell you yes and it's okay you know there's such strength in vulnerability and being curious you're 19 2001 when you moved to new york you're young you're far from home living with a handful of other model friends so i'm thinking you've had quite a lot of eye-opening experiences when you were there yeah many i'm really interested in that whole scene though because i've seen it in london i can only imagine it's worse in new york so there's the scene there's the models and then there's the guys that hang around the models yeah and some of the models are dating those guys and some of them are just kind of using them to go on holidays but the guys want the beautiful girls around and it's this kind of weird slightly alarming industry yeah and the thing is is that when you're young you're not seeing it from that point of view you don't understand the currency of like youth you don't get it yet i think about when i was in my mid-teens i dated a guy who was way older than me and they all tell you the same bullshit like oh you're an old soul yeah you seem wise i can talk to you better than i can talk to anyone else and you're so fucking young and dumb and stupid that you're like oh i'm an old soul you're not looking at your amazing perky tits being like this is actually why you're here yeah you're like actually i'm quite mature for my age man that's a really good point and then you are the age of the person that you date and you look back and you think what the actual fuck and then every man you meet when you're that age his wife doesn't understand him yeah she's just like she's like trapped him absolutely trapped him and like he will leave her eventually he's just waiting for the kids to grow up and you know why because he's such a nice sky i've heard you talk about jeffrey epstein now he's the wealthy financier charged with creating a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit he died in prison you met him yeah I was taken to his house my agency at the time had really close ties with him another man who's been connected to that case called Jean-Luc he was the owner of my agency who also allegedly committed suicide in prison so he used to run my agency and when September the 11th happened he was like oh a friend of the agency's got private jets and can fly you girls out of New York and we were like yes and so we were taken obviously I didn't know who it was at the time But as soon as we walked into the house, I was like, oh, every instinctively, everything was just firing off in my body going, this does not feel safe.

17:42And he was there and he was being creepy and, you know, but that was very much the norm at the time. So I didn't know the danger we were potentially in. And you've got all these adults around you saying, no, this is normal. So, yeah, he was like, oh, do you want to come on the jet? and I was like, I'm going to stay in New York with possibly like another terror attack happening. I'm going to stay here. I feel safer. Yeah. Just nine months after you moved to New York, 9-11 happens when two planes flown by members of Al-Qaeda crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. 2 ,600 people lost their lives that day.

18:26It must have been so weird to be there. what do you remember about being in manhattan at that time i'll be honest with you because i'd grown up in brixton and sort of like i'd grown up for a few riots as well so i'd say like the riots in the early 90s were probably more traumatic for me personally yeah living in brixton than being in new york in september the 11th because i don't have any family out there and i was like wow this is surreal and i think as well at that point in my life i was so emotionally detached yes from how I felt it was quite surreal it felt like I was watching it through a tv and I was like watching harrowingly people jump out of buildings and I was just like man wow I said I didn't realize I was there do you know what I mean I didn't I didn't realize I was there and uh yeah I think that's part of like you've got all these coping mechanisms so you know you can survive what was Manhattan like at that point in time anyway regardless to 9-11 fun fucking wicked yeah it's i've had a disgusting amount of fun an illegal amount of fun grace i could stay in now every night for the next five years and be fine i've done it yeah i've got a whistling nostril i've just about got like i've got a couple of bags that hopefully will be back in fashion any day now and uh half memories of great nights we're talking about 2000 to 2010 yeah i'd say if there was like a score for that time of my life it would go it's britney bitch

20:11oh yeah do you remember just like yeah everything was low slum your cubes were poking out the top of your miss 60 jeans you had like you know your little your little Chloe bag and three vests layered on top of each other massive belt loads of necklaces some terrible hat and there you just thought it was the shit what time do you get up I mean how dare you fucking ask get up when I'm fucking ready well I'll get up if there was a normal day back then would have been let's say I had four castings and the first one was at one I would get up at 11 I would go to the deli I would get a bacon egg and cheese I would get a coffee and I would sit on my doorstep in the east village I'd eat that and then I'd have about three cigarettes then I'd go upstairs try and squeeze out shit get in the shower sort out my hair you always have to have a pre-casting shit to put you in the in the mood for the day yeah i'd put my high heels in my bag and then i'd ride to the castings it sounds like you were eating though you were eating we were yeah i was eating yeah this is spoiling all of my pre-planned thoughts that basically you were just eating like you know a stock cube in a cup with some water yeah like cotton wool balls everyone I was like I've never seen anyone do that have you never eaten a cotton wool ball no and a toilet paper no this is very disappointing sorry mate I mean do you know what me and my friends would do because we would we would get called into like um like your agents would sit you down and and have chats with you about weight but I think I was lucky that I grew up in in Brixton where at the time predominantly black area and I think in Jamaican culture which is my dad's from Jamaica and that's half my family from there curves are celebrated I was very self-conscious about being skinny and that sort of never really left me so I didn't have that like oh my god I really want to be really skinny even though I'd started working in the fashion industry where that's celebrated I had grown up being really self-conscious about being skinny I want to know uh where are you partying at the end of this night when you've uh you've been to your castings i'm going to the meatpacking district to lotus there was this club called lotus we were just swanning we would go in there with sit in the vip section you're not waiting with all the normal ugly people as if as if ta-ta see you later bye yeah cellulite wouldn't even wouldn't even look at them grace just go right to the front the doorman would see us all us little baby giraffes clonking up in our hills and our terrible hats and they would just open up the rope and we would go in and then the VIP would welcome us over and we would drink loads of free vodka.

23:10Yeah. Absolute bitches. I know.

23:26Can I take you back to childhood? Yeah. Modelling completely transformed your life. You become this wealthy woman living in Manhattan. A dickhead. A proper dickhead. You become a massive dickhead. Yeah. An insufferable bellend. This is a huge journey from a little girl in South London on an estate. You leave school very early. Let's go back to childhood. Paint me a picture of the place you grew up. Who's in the flat? do you eat together do you eat around the same table tell me about that well it was just me and my mum until I was 10 years old because I've got two older sisters but I didn't meet them until later in life so it's just me and my mum we moved a lot you're moving around south London yeah we lived in like Lewisham Borough Wandsworth and then Streatham and then as I hit my teens then we lived in Brixton so just you and her though just me and her and then she had my brother when I was 10 so then it was the three of us but I come from a long line of women that can't be arsed with cooking so we had a kitchen table but I feel like it was mostly for like smoking fags and drinking tea but my mum was never fussed about she just weren't fussed about cooking and I I'm the same and even my gran she's the same my gran's um got her wife and they've been together for my whole life and even my grand's wife does most of the cooking but it'd be stuff like that like a jacket potato or like they'll just get a roasted chicken from the shop and have that with salad like well do you and your mum eat then no one's cooking no one's no one's cooking no one's like my mum she would cook does the oven ever get put on maybe like for a roast once every few months or something but she would cooking seemed like a massive burden and an inconvenience and a big resentment and i understand i just think at the time it was like a different it was a different time wasn't it and i it did just waste women's fucking time cooking yeah i remember at one point she was just in us eating off paper plates she was like i'm not washing up this is bullshit that's so radical isn't it i didn't understand at the time defiance yeah one one christmas imagine one christmas everything was on paper plate she was like i'm not fucking doing this with paper plates and it's all going in the bin and we're done but I'd come in and I'd go mum what's for dinner she'd go oh I don't know what you're making as a joke right and then I'd go well what are you gonna make and it would always be this little battle and she'd be like oh all right then and she'd turn the kettle on and I'd like we're having smash and she could make me a dinner in the time it took to make a cup of tea she'd turn the kettle on and I'm like and I'd hear her get a can and it would be like frankfurters smash and some bistro gravy and a vegetable so i'm sorry like as you were saying that i was thinking that sounds delicious though there's something quite frankfurters i don't know i don't care what's in them i don't want to know mash of salt that's in it yeah do you know what i mean so it just you'd hear like dinner time in my house would be like click, bing, doors opening, plastic being pierced.

26:45Yeah. Were you skinned when you were? Yeah. At times, like, it's funny how you think of, at the time, I didn't know that we were because we went on holiday, like we left the country. And my mum, being a white woman, loved to tan. So we would go on holidays like, you know, once a year we'd go to Israel. My mum would just sit on the beach turning like a rotisserie chicken. Getting me to like fetch her drinks and stuff. You were to Elat. And yeah, we would go to Elat. We'd go to Tel Aviv, Haifa now and again. But my mum was just, she was resourceful. So you were going to Israel. Were you religious?

27:31No, not at all. Was your mother religious? Not at all. Were her family religious? No. Okay. cultural jews i would say so before you went off to israel was there any rules on eating were you going to be we'd go to the caf and my mom would go get all the bacon and sausage in you now and for the next month do not fucking mention it all right yeah and that's it we would just have were like a massive like pork meat sweat fest we're just like get it in and um even my brother lived in israel for for a while and every time he had come back i'd just make him bangers and mash just be like oh yeah i really missed it see we just eat a lot of pork before we went i say eat it all and say sorry after it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission right

28:32Tell me about your dad. He's from Jamaica. Yes, he is. My dad moved to the UK when he was 13. My gran came over first and they lived in Islington. Did you know him when you were little? Yeah. We had a close relationship as in like he would, he taught me how to swim, taught me how to ride a bike. He would come and, you know, take me out every week. and he would take me to the like markets and he would show me about like about fruit and like how to get a mango you know important things about diet and stuff like that he was quite into on the weekends I'd always go to my grand's house on Essex Road and his other daughter my sister would be there my cousins would be there and it was like a really nice family experience and one that was surrounded by food which I didn't have with my mum's side of the family so yes you know I mean this was like everyone comes together and everyone eats and it was like you know curry chicken rice and peas dumplings like although we didn't talk much about our emotions or wasn't we all ate together there was something quite amazing about that whereas my mum's side of the family were all very transparent about the way we feel all the time and quite frankly it's fucking exhausting do you know what I mean there's something quite nice to be said for like let's just eat food together and that's it oh god I love that yeah like everybody's everybody airing their feelings and their emotions all the time yeah and then you go into the Jamaican side of the family and they're just like bring a box fill it up exactly yeah my mum loved it she'd be like go because then my grandma would always give me loads of food to take back to my mum's as soon as I'd walk through the door my mum would like wrestle me down to the ground give me the containers give me the containers the absolute cheek of the woman and she's not cooking and then she's like taking it out of your hands it's not a normal whatever normal is father and daughter relationship takes a fair bit of like navigating my dad suffers with mental illness and he's schizophrenic and i think part of that is largely down to the migrant experience you know i'll sort of say it's like an invitation by the Queen without a seat at the table.

30:53Did you ever live with him? No. No, but I've definitely, I've always known that he loves me and he's always been quite, I think when he'd have some real moments of clarity would be really like, I love you. And when I was younger, I used to think, what the fuck is this? It feels a bit heavy. Do you know what I mean? Be sat on a bus and he would like grab my leg and be like, I really love you. And I'm like, fuck it, all right, mate. Calm down. Just on our way to Croydon, relax. And now when I look back on it, it makes more sense why he would really want to make sure that I knew. Because then he would have moments of being quite deep in psychosis.

31:41Tell me a little bit about school. I went to school with a chip on my shoulder. When I started secondary school, we were living in women's aid, like a women's refuge. And I think I was really worried that people would know about it. So I was really like, I sort of went in embarrassed and feeling quite self-conscious. And that just turned me into a right-faced bitch. How did you end up there? Well, because it's a shelter for women that have experienced domestic violence. That's how we ended up there, me, my mum and my brother as a family. and so starting secondary school I just I remember just feeling really not sure of who I was which I think you do anyway when you start secondary school and then on top of that I just felt really exposed because you didn't have a house bricks and mortar yeah school yes and so I think me me my mum and my brother lived in one room in this big house with other women that have come from violent situations living in one room so it was like a big house with like 10 families all squished into a room each were you avoiding a boyfriend of hers or yeah it's a safe house basically do you know what I mean where you're you know can't be found right I just felt bamboozled I was completely overwhelmed by the whole experience and I just felt like um just sad I think I was like quite sad yeah so at the age of 14 you just stopped going to skill yeah I left in year nine and went back in year 10 for a couple of months and then I was like I just want to work and make money also I was dyslexic well I still am dyslexic I couldn't handle how embarrassed I felt about being in the bottom set for so many things.

33:34I think I hadn't learned that for me being dyslexic, it comes with a lot of gifts. But I didn't know that at the time, there's a lot of things you can do, your brain just works in a different way. And so I was doing this like rigid school system. And I didn't yet know that there were all these other things that I'd be able to do because of it. And I was very like, Oh my god, I can't, I can't spell, I can't read that well. I don't know. When I started secondary school, I didn't even know how to spell my last name. I was really like in a panic about it. And so I didn't know yet what's going to come with, like now I'm in the middle of editing a TV show that I've written and executive produced and starred in.

34:18And I know that I have a visual brain that creatively in certain situations can excel. But I didn't know that then.

34:30then there's a gap where you're like i've left school i'm not going back what do you do then uh my mom was like right you're not gonna go to school you have to work you can't just sit on your ass all day and like you know watch daytime telly you gotta work so i think my first job's out of school i worked in depford market selling cakes for a little while and then i went and worked in a that bagel shop bagel king bagel king on war of road shout out i worked there and then after that i worked in like shoe express shelly shoe shop then i worked at the trocadero i would be terrified to buy shoes off you because i think you'd be very honest babes good luck buying shoes off me i'd go to the back and i'd never return i'd go what size oh you wanna you wanna She's in a seventh, please, in black.

35:21Yeah, I'll go, don't you worry, you sit there. And I'd go up to the stock room and just smoke fags out the window. Mugs. She's been gone quite a long time. Yeah, I'm not coming back. I'm like, don't worry, what do you want? Cool. You sit your ass down and have a think. Okay, we'll go back to your career. So it's had this very dramatic pivot. You go from being a model to being a comedian. Very basic question. how'd you get into stand-up um stupidly thinking I was funnier than I was oh I thought I was the life and soul of the party I'm like I'm so funny it's like yeah with a bunch of you know models that probably English isn't their first language and everyone's starving do you know what I mean and you crack a little joke and everyone's like I was like I'm I'm gas no no darling you must have No, you were funny when you were 12.

36:16Yeah, I always like to try and like make people laugh, especially if there was just tense situations. I always like to try and lighten the mood. I think that was my thing when I was younger, to try and like break the tension with cracking jokes. Do you first walk on stage in New York or in London? In New York. And you walk on and it's an open mic? Yes. I'd invited a bunch of people which was again that's completely insane stupid and I thought I thought it went well I have since heard no it did not go well but I was like well it wasn't terrible it was a lot of polite laughter do you anticipate bombing right and it going badly and when that doesn't happen you think well I can do this and then as time rolls on you do bomb and And then you go, well, that wasn't the worst.

37:10What's the difference between backstage at Gucci and backstage at Backdoor Comedy Club? I'll be honest with you, not much. Why not? Because it's just a bunch of people that have been thrown together. And models don't take themselves as seriously as you would think. They're actually, I've got to meet a bunch of young women from all different backgrounds. and I can't imagine how I would have met them in any other industry. And comedy is kind of like that as well. You meet people from all different backgrounds, different race, gender, just like class, religion. And I can't think of how I would have met them otherwise.

37:53And there's a certain thing of like, we do this unusual job that no one else does.

38:04you have had a wild ride michelle modeling stand-up comedian presenter looking into your crystal ball what do you see for the future what other careers might you blaze into i think moving forward I should probably be doing stuff that is like a bit more charitable because uh you know what I'm saying yeah you're leaving is that it no no honestly I know I know I think I think um yeah so yeah maybe doing something that is sort of less about me I have been on a big old me fuck fest it's got to end soon do you know what I mean I talk about myself I'm doing this we're talking about me I've just written a show loosely based on me I'm going to do a gig tonight at the Pleasance Theatre guess what the topic is?

38:54Me like it's just it's got to stop it's got to stop and finally what would you say to your younger self who dropped out of school and was selling cakes at Deptford Market to make money? what would I say? it's going to be alright and my 15 year old self would go fuck off you nonce stop trying to chat to me you fucking weirdo

39:31michelle de swart thank you for comfort eating with me you're so welcome grace thanks for having me thank you

39:40this episode of comfort eating was produced by ruth abrahams The executive producer is Lucy Greenwell. The music was written by Axel Cacoutier. Visuals by Sophie Harrow. Mixing and sound design by Solomon King. If you love this podcast, then you'll love my book, Comfort Eating. It's a slice of joy sprinkled with nostalgia about my family, stories of the making of this podcast, and recipes which will leave you, well, frankly bewildered. Finally, go on, leave us a review and you can follow or subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

40:28This is The Guardian.