Sara Pascoe, comedian and writer

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:46My cast away this week is the comedian and writer Sarah Pascoe. Her comedy is omnivorous, taking her from stints on crowd-pleasing shows like QI, Taskmaster and the Great British Sewing Bee to critically acclaimed stand-up, which often blends the intellectual with the observational. One successful Edinburgh run riffed on Nietzsche and the possibility of her boyfriend cheating on her with her doppelganger. She's also a screenwriter and the author of three books, including her debut novel Weirdo, which last year won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for Fiction. She was born in Dagenham and raised by a single mother, who, she says, delights in telling everyone how unfunny she was as a child.

1:26In fact, she chanced upon stand-up after seeing her then-boyfriend's turn at an open mic night. Of performing, she says, The last thing that goes through my head beforehand is always, Why do I do this? This is such a stupid job. Then, while I'm doing it, I'm not thinking of anything except the next line and manipulating the room. It's like playing an instrument. Sarah Pascoe, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you for having me. So let's start on stage with stand-up then, Sarah. That's a bit of a compulsion for you, I think. Why are you addicted to it? I think because it's something that I will never be good enough at, which is not me admitting I'm very bad at it.

2:06But that's how the compulsion fits in. And actually that's where I don't remember saying that thing about it being like playing an instrument. But I think it is a version of an instrument, but you're playing yourself. I don't mean that in a pretentious way. You're plumbing your own experiences and ideas and thoughts. and trying to communicate them as well as possible. But in this framework of hopefully people will laugh at certain points of this and it never feels like it's done. So you're always trying to get better. You're always trying to improve. But I am interested in that idea of the audience and their part in all of that as well, that idea of kind of manipulating the room, you know, playing the room, feeling that energy.

2:45Tell me about that. Well, the word manipulation I don't think I would use now. I mean, I obviously meant it in a context then, but actually I do think it's about communication. the audience make at least 50 % of the show I played Dublin last weekend and everyone loves going to Dublin and obviously Irish audiences are incredible and electric in their own unpredictability and there was a point where a man went to the bathroom and then we all did a prank on him where I pretended that I'd suddenly gone into something very gratuitous and I was sort of miming making love with the mic stand and the audience were just shouting at me boo, get off, I want my money back and every single one of them did it which wouldn't happen in Basingstoke.

3:24Right. And yeah, so you come out as a comic and I guess you make some offers like this, this, this and you sort of suggest a tone and the audience meet you or they add or they go, no, no, no, we're too polite for that. We want it to be like a play. Don't involve us. And then together you make something and that's how it feels like even if you have a very tightly scripted set, it feels like the audience, it's only that version that they see and that you experience all together in that room. And what's it like for you writing to silence, being in a room on your own without that feedback from the audience?

4:01With stand-up, people who haven't done it always think the worst thing must be a heckle and they always think that that would be the nightmare and you'd burst into tears and go home and be so sad. The way you heckle yourself in your own brain when you are trying to write something is so much worse and it's so loud when there's, as you say, in the silence because every single sentence there is a critic in your brain going, who cares? And this is so bad. And you have to go, yes, but I'm still going to finish it and I'm going to write a bit more and then I'm going to edit it to make it better. Sarah, I think we'd better get to the music.

4:35Quick Smart. Your first disc. Tell us about it. So I've really overthought this whole I'm on a desert island thing and I've tried to create a spectrum for every mood for myself. And there will be songs that I just think, And this is one that will just pierce through whatever mood you are in and make you feel connected to life again. This song, if it was on an advert, would make me buy anything. I love the story in the song, the whole idea of this preacher and the converts. And it feels to me really base sexy, if that makes sense as well. I think Sammy Davis Jr. has such an incredible sexy voice.

5:14Even if I'm really sad on the island and I haven't seen a dolphin today. I would put this on and then suddenly I'm on my feet and everything's going to be okay. I feel like dolphins would come out of the sea and possibly sway. Of course they would. And then I'd go, great, I just put this song on again. That's what the dolphins want. They would love it. So this is The Rhythm of Life by Sammy Davis Jr. Or not by him, but performed by Sammy Davis Jr. Daddy started out in San Francisco Tooting on his trumpet loud and mean Suddenly a voice said, go forth Daddy spread the picture on a wider screen And the voice said, Daddy, there's a million pigeons waiting to be hooked on new religions.

5:52Hit the road, Daddy, leave your common-law wife. Spread the religion of the rhythm of life. And the rhythm of life is a powerful beat. Puts a tingle in your fingers and a tingle in your feet. Rhythm in your bedroom, rhythm in the street. Rhythm of Life, from the soundtrack to Sweet Charity, performed by Sammy Davis Jr. with the film's ensemble. So, Sarah Pascoe, you were born in London in 1981, grew up in Romford, the eldest of three daughters. Tell me about your mum and dad, Gail and Derek. How did they meet? Well, they met in a way that we didn't know was unusual at the time. But my mum had all these scrapbooks in the house with pictures of her sitting outside my dad's house, these Polaroids of her and other girls.

6:30So she'd seen my dad on television, and I think it was Top of the Pops. This band were on Top of the Pops once. It was in a band in the 70s. They genuinely were at school together, and one of their dads became their manager, and they released a couple of songs. My mum saw him on TV and said she absolutely knew in that moment she was going to marry him and have his children. But what is so incredible about my mother is that it didn't then, like, weirdly happen fate. She made it happen. She found it where he lived. This is very practical manifesting. Yeah, practical. Before manifesting was invented, you had to get on a bus to do it.

7:01Yeah, on his lawn. And she sat out there, and so she knew him to say hello to and the other people in the band. And what was his band called? Flintlock. Flintlock, OK. Which is the name of a gun. and at some point after my dad wasn't in the band anymore because it wasn't a sort of a long career, my dad didn't want to be famous. So he was in Flintlock and he was quite young himself. Your mum obviously a teenage fan as well. Yeah, I think my dad was in the band from 17 to 19, so really young. And some version of they went on a date or started dating but essentially they were very young and got pregnant accidentally with me and then they had two more children together.

7:42So your mum was 19 when she had you. What impact did that have on you and your sisters, having a mum who was closer to you in age, lots of energy, but also figuring her life out at the beginning of her life? Yeah, I didn't realise my mum was young until probably I was 16 and she was 36. I had my first baby at 40, whereas I was 20 when my mum was 40. So I had this whole life my mum never got. and because my mum had left school early with not lots of qualifications she did everything the hard way which is with kids my dad, and I say this with love was never going to be able to support us or contribute financially so it was all on my mum Wow, all three of you All three of us they got married after my sister Cheryl and then they were already broken up by the time they had Christina so my mum really was by herself when she had two of us and a baby she did evening courses and she started working in administration in the health service and then she worked her way up.

8:42And now my mum has a PhD, which is astonishing. Not because she's not a very intelligent woman, but because she has had, you know, a little bit like how she insisted on marrying my dad. She has clawed her way to financial stability. Tell me about yourself a little bit. I mean, in your teens, you said you were a feral teenager. Yes. What did that look like? Tell me about it. Cheryl and I just wanted to go out. We wanted to look at boys, talk to boys. We liked dance music in the 90s. So I started going clubbing when I was 14 and Cheryl was 12. And so she was going to clubs with you at 12? In Romford, they did not care how old you are.

9:25And this is so dark to talk about it now. And can I just say we had no trauma from doing this, but yes, we went clubbing and we hitchhiked home sometimes. and my mum obviously had to go to bed because she had to go to work. This is why I say feral. It wasn't like my mum didn't care. She cared a lot. She just couldn't stop us. She tried to lock you in, didn't she? She did lock us in. She would hide the keys. We weren't allowed door keys at this point so there was a point where we would have to wait for her to get home from work, to get in from school because we couldn't be trusted and she locked the windows.

9:52We just broke it. We broke a window really high in the bathroom that she didn't know about and there was a ladder in the back garden and it was behind the shed so my mum didn't know that what we would do to get back in is put the ladder up against the house. And we'd just wait for her to go to sleep. Or we'd sometimes get home and wake her up because we'd have to fall into the bath from this sort of high window. Sometimes she didn't realise, sometimes she was too tired to care, but she definitely did try to stop us. Well, I think we're going to hear some music on that note, Sarah. What's it going to be?

10:20Well, so the other thing that happened to me at 14 was that Cheryl and I were deeply in love with many boy bands, but in particular the boy band Take That. Why take that as your favourite? I think the whole theory about projecting your love and your early sexual feelings onto very safe men that you will never meet is a really lovely part of growing up, actually. You must have met one or two of them by now. No, and actually I think now I can't. Are you studiously avoiding take that? Aisling was in... One of my best friends, Aisling, who's godmother to my children... Is this Aisling B? Aisling B.

10:58She was in the Take That movie that they made a couple of years ago and I queued up for the premiere and I knew that Take That were there and Aisling was on this red carpet with them and then the queue was a bit long and I was just like, no. I just had this instinct of, like, don't meet them. I actually don't want that chapter in the story. I just don't want to say an idiotic thing and see that thing cross their face. I understand. Yeah, where they're just like, oh, that's disappointing, oh, that's annoying, oh, I'm pretending not to be bored by you. But they'll be with you on the island. In a way, yes, forever.

11:27with this song which is Never Forget and I never will take that. Been on this path of life for so long Feel I've walked a thousand miles Sometimes stroll hand in hand with love Everybody's been there With danger on my mind

12:01Take that and never forget. So, Sarah Pascoe, you told me a lot about your mum in the last section and that your mum and dad split when you were still quite young. Tell me a bit more about your dad now. He eventually remarried and moved to Australia. How much do you remember about when he was part of your ordinary family life? We were definitely really glad that my parents broke up. And I think it's really important to say that because when your parents are unhappy and they make a decision to make themselves happier, I think parents really worry about things like what would the effect be on their children?

12:32I remember we were just relieved. We weren't like, where's daddy? We were like, great, those people seem really miserable. Let's hope this is better for them. And I think what we had was very common is that we saw our dad every two weeks at a weekend and we would go bowling or to Canvey Island and play arcade games and things like that. And I think my dad definitely got to do all the fun stuff with us and my mum did all the boring stuff, which was really hard. What did you make of him then? You know, if you're not spending all that much time with him and when you are with him, it's always fun.

13:01That dad can become quite a kind of romantic figure in the imagination, especially if, you know, they're a musician, a sax player like your dad. Well, let me just correct you. I hate the saxophone. I hate the sound of the saxophone. I hate jazz. Listening to someone... You don't like listening to someone noodle away on a saxophone? No, someone practising an alto saxophone, I think is probably the worst sound in the world. I think that might be... No Baker Street on your list today. No, no Baker Street. And actually, if a busker is playing it, I sort of go, I'll get back on the tube. I'm saying all this a little bit retrospectively.

13:36This is child me. I used to have a joke about how jazz reminded me about being neglected. And that is a joke. It was a joke I used to have, but it's also true. My dad, I think he still lived in our house, but the Coke cupboard, he covered it with carpet underlay. To soundproof it. To soundproof it, and then would lock himself in there playing the saxophone. And what were you doing? He was looking after us. So that was... Where were you? I was just in the sort of kitchen making a hot chocolate, you know, watching telly with my sisters. And he was in a cupboard playing the saxophone. For hours and hours and hours, yeah.

14:08OK. I'm saying all of this with love. We all survived, I should say, and everyone's fine. But yeah, I didn't think of my dad as a romantic figure in terms of following his dreams or being a creative. I didn't, but I also didn't think that being a musician was something that was out of reach. And did he give you any advice about following your creative passions? There's something that my mum really hates, but there was a point after. So I tried to get to drama school for two years after my A-levels and didn't get in. And then I went to university. And when I finished university, I told him on the phone in Australia that I was going to do a teacher training thing so that I could do supply teaching.

14:45I just found out that supply teaching at this point was like£145 that you could get for a day of supply teaching. and I couldn't believe it. And I was like, so I could do that. I could do supply teaching and then I could do auditions and I could just not do it if I got an acting job. And he said, don't have a backup. He basically said, make it work or starve to death. Essentially said, you have to make it work if you've got no choice. And what do you think of that advice now? I think it's brilliant advice, unless you are a sensible parent. My mum was so, my mum's advice, which again, I think was pretty great.

15:19She said, fine, do what you like, as long as you're not borrowing money off me. She basically said, you can, but I'm not going to bankroll this. If you can't pay your rent, that's on you. So both of them were pretty hands off. And so I was very liberated. Well, on that note, I think we should get back to the music. So what's next? So my favourite thing my dad has ever done is last year, he released an 18 CD collection, 40 hours long, which is improvised jazz, him on saxophone and his friend Chris Martin, not that one from Coldplay on a piano and it's inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses which is one of my dad's if not my dad's favourite book and with everything going on with AI and technology the fact that my dad did something that was so analogue I just loved it so much yeah so so you know this is your dad noodling away on the sax yes it sounds like maybe you've changed your mind about saxophones I'm this is this is what um I think they call it flooding in therapy if you're They're scared of spiders.

16:17They throw hundreds of spiders at you. This album is my... So Exposure Therapy. Exposure Therapy is out. And now I'm listening to this. And I think I'm going to make a show about this album. Because you remember they did like My Dad Wrote a Porno and it was the funniest podcast ever. I think I'm going to do like My Dad Did a 40-Hour Ulysses improvised jazz album. Who wouldn't want to come and see that? Exactly. I'll buy my tickets now. Yeah. So this is Telemachus by Derek Pascoe and Chris Martin.

16:47Amen.

17:42Telemachus, Derek Paschal and Chris Martin. so Sarah Pascoe by the time you were 12 you decided that you wanted to become an actor and where did that urge come from do you think I've got no idea I know that lots of people have a backstory of like seeing someone else acting really well and going oh wow I want to do that but I remember staying at my dad's house actually with my sister Cheryl and waking her up and going do a play with me I've decided to be an actor so I didn't let her go to sleep I was making her do scenes with me you often did two-handers with Cheryl yeah lots of school assemblies Yes.

18:16We did one that was a two-woman version of Oliver, where I was Fagin and she was the Artful Dodger. Oliver wasn't even in it. Right. Just not interested in Oliver. So really subbed it down. Yes, and we actually put loads of songs from other musicals in it. Because I remember, the bit I remember is singing I Feel Pretty to the audience because we really wanted to say I Feel Pretty So Witty and Gay. So why did we do Oliver if that was the song I wanted to sing? But anyway, so we did stuff like that. So sometimes it was just really, I wouldn't have said this at the time, but like idiotic. and then I did have educational ones where I didn't think they were telling us about climate change.

18:49I didn't think they were talking to us about things like shoplifting. I got caught shoplifting in a body shop and I was like, I need to tell the others. It's illegal. And I started a bully line. So I got volunteers from year 10 and 11 to join me in the sixth form block and we were going to be like vigilantes and we would sing Lean On Me in assembly. And how did that go? Oh, I was very popular. No one ever came to visit us for help because we were the dweebs, Laura and Isda. is the twist. So it was more lining up to bullies, please assemble here. Yes, here's where you'll find us. So what did the other kids make of all of that then?

19:27Definitely, I knew I wasn't popular before. I'm going to say that. I always did have a friend. I wasn't completely lonely. And I think people have much, much worse stories of being bullied at school. But I hated school. I knew I wasn't liked and I didn't know how to make people like me. I didn't know how to be, in inverted commas, cool. But I also just didn't know how to be normal, actually. In what way? Tell me about that. Oh, God, just, I'd just do the thing. I'd just do the annoying thing. It would just be wrong. OK, here's an example, Lauren. Everyone was coming back off holidays saying they'd kissed someone.

20:02I didn't kiss anyone until I was 16, but I lied about it a lot at school. So I would buy, well, a shoplift, a magazine, like Just 17, and I'd fill out the quiz saying that I'd slept with so many people I couldn't remember their names. and then I would leave it out on the table for someone to see. I was a liar. I told them that Mariah Carey was my babysitter and that she was coming over from Miami to look after me and give me singing lessons. I told them there was a jacuzzi bath in my house and Take That's limo had broken down on my road and they had to come in and borrow the bath. And people, when you lie, quite often don't say I don't believe you.

20:34They just don't want to be your friend. It's interesting that, though, that you still have this kind of, you know it sounds like you've got a lot of self-confidence a lot of gumption you want to kind of get out and you're reaching out to people it's not like you're crushed by their rejection this is where I think early life is really important because I've had this theory always that like if you think of like a human being as like the earth you have the crust which is how people have treated you recently you know how people at work feel about you friends loved ones and that can be quite solid and then you've got this sort of really movable magma bit underneath where there are lots and lots of doubts and you have lots of experiences and you can have really bad days.

21:13But your core, if your early life, if you had a parent or parents or other carers who just thought you were the best thing when you walked into a room, that really does set you up for life. So that's what I think. My parents were really young. For the first 18 months, it was just me. They didn't know what they were doing, but I had all of their attention and I really did believe everyone should look at me. And I do just think it gave me this little rock solid core of like an entire room booing and I'd be like I deserve to be here so all the going out is happening then you know when you get to 14 you're kind of going out raving and everything people from drama club so at 14 when my mum was out with one of her boyfriends I'd had a party to try and make people be my friends so all these people who didn't like me came to my house and this is before like Facebook things and when this would be on the news but my house got really trashed and the police got called and then my mum comes home the house is full of smoke and there's bin bags full of like bottles and cans and furniture's broken and it's disgusting my mum I was begging her to hit me I was so sorry I was like please hit me please hit me and she didn't hit me she made me join a drama club in a church hall on Wednesdays and Sundays and my mum said I'll keep you off the streets and I auditioned to be in The Wiz and played Glinda and then then I was really like okay this is my life now the GCSEs don't matter and then oh I was actually like in your face mum should have hit me when you had the chance.

22:32Now I'm going to be a star. I want to find out what happened next, but first I want to hear disc number four, please. Sarah, what's it going to be? This is probably my favourite song. In 2001, I got a job in Italy for three months teaching English as a foreign language and we would get in the car every morning to drive to a school and we must have all been, I think I was 19, 19 or 20, and then we had one tape at the beginning of the tour, which was Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication. And then by the end of the tour, we also had a Beatles, Best of the Beatles. We had two albums, but the best music.

23:08And there was something about just looking out the window, that early morning blue sky sun. And every song off the Californication album makes me feel like a sun is rising in myself. And I really love this song that we're about to listen to, which is Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Scar Tissue that I wish you saw Side captain, Mr. Know-it-all I close your eyes and I'll kiss you Cos with the birds I'll shed With the birds I'll shed it's a lonely view With the birds I'll shed it's a lonely view Push me up against the wall Young Kentucky girl in a push-up brawl I'm falling all over myself Red Hot Chili Peppers and Scar Tissue so Sarah Pascoe your punishment ended up becoming well a life-changing moment for you tell me about that turning point how did things change once you started going to theatre school well I realised that people outside of school wouldn't automatically assume things about me or that they might find things funny or interesting where people at school had thought it was weird and stupid can you give me some examples i'm trying to think in terms of like being loud okay the classic annoying thing about people who are learning musical theater is that they sing in public places you know and they sing and they want to harmonize and if you're on a train with them you think i'm going to move courage um meeting other people who were like that and that's what they did with their energy was really great for me and what about your kind of inner life at this point i mean today i think you've said that you've got the stand-ups mix of like total self-possession in some ways but then a lot of insecurity in others.

24:55Was that what you were like back then? How was the mix as a teenager? I don't know if I was insecure. I definitely thought I was very ugly. And unfortunately, like all teenage girls, hugely fat. So that sounds like insecurity. It is insecurity, isn't it? And also it's so surprising. Like lots of people probably, when I look back at pictures of myself and go, there's this picture of me in a tree. And I remember on this day, like being so upset at my granddad's house that someone had taken a picture of me. Didn't want anyone to take a picture of me. And I'm so skinny. and it's just like it's so awful that teenage girls quite often do have such a dysmorphia that they're not right for the world and that translates into oh it must be my body it must be what I look like so you felt that very strong yes very strongly but I don't think I felt that performing because I didn't mind being looked at in that way okay yeah so that was maybe a place you could control and and kind of guide how how you were being perceived yeah or maybe I just wanted to do it so much I then didn't care or I was then I had an opposite so you've got dysmorphia at one end and then what you have is delusions of grandeur at the other which is maybe I will be the next Christina Aguilera because I think at that age I still could have because my dad had been in a pop band I definitely thought there could be a route to international superstars yes yes being a teen pop sensation well that brings me on to your audition for Michael Barrowmore's amateur talent contest, My Kind of People.

26:14Yes. So again, 14, I met a boy called Darren at this drama club and he was going to go to Whiteley's shopping centre. And it was a lot about people at school. I thought, if I go on this programme, I'm not going to tell anyone at school, they're just going to be watching it on Saturday night with their families. And they'll be like, oh my God, I know her and she's amazing. But I hadn't ever sung with sheet music before. I'd only rehearsed this song over and over again with the tape and it was more than words by Xtreme. And it was too low for me. I couldn't sing it and I didn't know when to come in so I went up on stage I remember Michael Barrymore being hugely tall and I was so shocked that he was wearing make-up which obviously everyone does in TV and he said something to the crowd and then all of a sudden I'm standing there and all these people in the shopping centre they sort of look over the barricades at you I was wearing a red velour top and the piano is playing and playing and I don't know when this song comes in because I only know it when the man sings and then I realised okay this is rubbish and everyone at school is not going to think I'm amazing.

27:13And then I thought, I'll just have a small cry. And then the audience started singing the song at the chorus. So I then joined in with them. And here's the thing about my delusional self-confidence. I walked really quickly. Darren didn't wait for me, understandably, to get the tube back. And I walked really quickly at the shopping centre and three people stopped me to say, well done. And I now know that's because I was a child and they were kind. But at the time, I thought no one had noticed me crying and I smashed it. because what two people told me like well done for getting up there and what they were saying was you know that was it in itself brave keep going yeah and then a woman told me you got a very pretty voice and so I got the train was like oh my god I think it went really well people were like running up to me to say well done um yeah and then just waited to see myself on television and I was cut out but I did learn something about myself which is that I am the kind of person who will get on a tube to a place they haven't been to before and try and if I have any kind of career now it's because I've done that lots of times and you were tenacious I mean after you finished your a-levels you spent years auditioning for drama school you didn't get in no I made a collage of my rejection letters because I felt the rejection was very important because Lauren I thought there would be a stage in my life where I'd reflect on and here's my rejection well here we are here we are but I thought it would be at the Oscars but this is a very good secondary doesn't I'll admit I did terrible auditions that's the thing I then realised that people actually got coached for their speeches read the plays went to see the plays watched all of the versions I never did that I didn't take it very seriously I was sort of lazy because I thought I was so good and so it's really lucky I didn't get in really lucky and actually there was a relief in going oh I'm not very good at it and and failed sideways so brilliantly because I had already been doing stand-up for a few years when I realised, oh, I'm not a very good actor.