Kirsty Young - ‘The great benefit of age? You give less of a f**k.’

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0:55Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that treats all failure as data acquisition. Before we get to our guest, I wanted to mention our subscriber podcast, Failing With Friends, where my guest and I answer your questions and we offer advice on some of your failures too. Here's a bit of Kirsty Young. Things will happen. They have their natural momentum. And actually stepping back is not doing a disservice. It's actually accepting the reality of life. Do join in by following the link in the podcast notes. And you can send me an email or look out for my call outs once a month on Instagram for quickfire questions.

1:30Thank you so, so much.

1:37Okay, deep breath. I'm about to interview one of the greatest interviewers of our time and a personal heroine. So here goes. Kirstie Young was nicknamed Old Man River at Stirling High School for her deep voice. Little could she have known back then that this voice would become the making of her. She skipped university and took on various jobs, including au pair and barmaid. It was while she was putting pints one night that she got chatting to a customer who worked as a TV sports cameraman and needed a runner. From there, she became a continuity announcer on BBC Radio Scotland, beating 700 other applicants to the role.

2:20By 1996, she had joined Channel 5 as the presenter of its flagship news programme, famously becoming the first to perch on a desk rather than sit behind it. But she will be best known to many of you as the presenter of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs between 2006 and 2018, during which she elicited intimate confessions and memorable stories from the likes of Tom Hanks, Yoko Ono and war surgeon David Knott. As an interviewer, she represents everything I aspire to, an empathic, listening curiosity that remains free of judgment and full of humour and understanding. She's stepped down from Desert Island Discs for health reasons, but those same peerless qualities can be enjoyed in abundance on her podcast series, Young Again.

3:14After interviewing so many interesting people, she says one of her main takeaways is that success comes out of complexity. Kirsty Young, welcome to How to Fail. I know I am speechless. That is such a generous and lovely introduction. Thank you very much. You are so welcome. Well, I was telling you before we started recording that you are my hero. I know you get that a lot but I really mean it okay I really mean it when I started how to fail I thought what is the best radio program I know and it was desert island discs presented by you this entire format is inspired by your introductions and the structure of that program and my entire interview style I promise it's I aspire to to to be just a filament of Kirstie Young well I have to yeah Well, thank you.

4:06And that is typically incredibly generous. Although I have to say we all should thank Roy Plumlee because the format is king of Desert Island Discs. That is the thing. And that's why people are subsequently able to take it on. And it hasn't had very many presenters because nobody really wants to let go of it once they have the job, understandably. It is a superb format. And one of the great helpful things about the format is, of course, the music. And I described it once, I can't remember, I was talking to somebody about it, and I said it's as though the castaway brings in their own furniture or their own favourite pair of shoes with them.

4:40So there's a kind of comfort in being surrounded by things that they love or things that are important to them. So I think the format is the real genius of the whole thing. I mean, that's a typically generous thing for you to say, but I agree, it is an incredible format. But I think you had something to do with the popularity of those shows when you were presenting. Thank you. But I was very interested in that quote that you actually gave on another podcast, Success Comes Out of Complexity. And we're going to come on to your complexity in a moment. But I wonder what success means to you now. You're in your 50s.

5:14Has your notion of success changed? My version of success at 25 is very different from my version of success at 55. partly that's because you know I was I was in a career and in an environment where I made enough money I mean not fortunes but enough money to comfortably think about the other things I think if you spend your whole life having to think about paying the gas bill and putting food on the table then you don't have the indulgence about thinking about other things or being able to give up a job in order to engage with the things that I'm engaged with now But yeah, I feel very, my idea of success now is very different from when I was 25.

5:54But I don't regret doing the things in my working life that I did. So what does success represent for you now? What is it? It's not prioritising the future over the present. That's it, really. That's what it all boils down to. Whether that is making an omelette or talking to my student daughter about her first week at university. It's actually here. You're now here. This is what you have. This is the moment you have. Don't ruminate. I'm quite a ruminator. And try not to plan too much. I mean, you definitely get shit done if you're a planner, that's for sure. But the problem is it can be quite difficult for you to be in the thing that you're doing at that moment.

6:35There was a period of time where I became a bit unwell and I had to take time away. And actually, I said to my sister, I was always just kind of passing through my home. I was doing the things I had to do with my children. I hope I was doing all that fine-ish, but I was always on my way somewhere. And now I spend time where I'm just there. One of the things that I had the joy of doing when I was preparing for this interview was re-listen to many of your interviews. And you said this thing once about the interview being a three-way process. There's you, there's the guests, but there's the audience.

7:09Yes. And actually, I think what is so noticeable about you is your remarkable attunement to the audience, whether it's asking the question that we want asked when you're presenting Young Again or Desert Island Discs, or whether it's summing up the nation's feeding when Queen Elizabeth died and you broadcast across her funeral. where do you think this attunement might come from have you always felt a connection with what other people or what the community around you might be thinking or feeling I was brought up with my mother saying to me you can talk to anyone I had the great privilege of being given confidence by my mother sort of social confidence which was not really about being gobby or pushy but it was about feeling that you belonged anywhere that you might turn up.

8:04So that was good. That was the kind of thing that was given to me by a great mum, who I'm very close to. But I think that idea of tuning in to people, I probably learned that over the years of talking to people. I think I probably was not that great at it when I started out and actually became better at it the more I did the job. as I thought more about what's an interviewer for, why are you talking to this person? And I certainly would say that over the course of the period that I did Desert Islandist, which was a very concentrated, you know, in that programme when I was doing it, I think it was 42 programmes a year.

8:43That's a lot of people you're talking to. And when I would read the notes, and I was lucky enough to have an amazing researcher that I worked with, and I got beautiful notes before an interview. So I would really enjoy learning about them so that by the time you meet them, I'd thought about the plan, I'd thought about the questions, I'd written the introduction, and then you kind of see where it goes. And I suppose I had enough time to think, who is this for? Well, it's not for the person you're interviewing, and it's not for you. It's not a self-aggrandising thing. You know, here I am with Tom Hanks.

9:21It's really about, I have the privilege of sitting with this person that so many people love. The people who are listening don't, so what do they want from this? So I would always make a plan and then I would say to my producer, in the end, I didn't need to say it, but in the beginning, I'm going to go. I know I've said these are the questions, but actually I'm going to go somewhere else. And those are usually the sort of often the best bits in an interview. And I think there's something like Queen Elizabeth II's funeral. I think of the point at which, you know, a lot of the times when we make a reasonably good job of something, it's because we meet it at the right time.

9:56You know, it's a lot to do with timing and the good fortune of good timing. And I think I was very glad that I was given the, and I genuinely did think of it as a privilege. And I don't mean that to sound saccharine, but I definitely did. Nerve wracking, but also a privilege of anchoring the funeral coverage. it was the right time for me to be able to have the confidence to just call it and to say, I call this situation like this. This is what I think it is. You can think whatever you think about it, but they've asked me here to do it and I'm going to call it and I'm going to say, this is how I define, probably professionally, how I define this moment that we have all gone through as a nation.

10:38That sounds grander than I mean it to, but I kind of think, well, if they're trusting me with that job, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to trust what I think about it. And I'm going to say it. And I probably, if I'd done the job 20 years earlier, I wouldn't have had the confidence to do that. Your podcast, Young Again, is all about what advice you would give your younger self. That's what you ask guests. And you've been asked that yourself. And you have said that you would give the advice to be less of a good girl. I was kind of joking when I said, my mum was horrified that I said that. Yeah, but I think I was quite a good girl.

11:14So let me ask you what the naughtiest thing is you've ever done. Oh my God, well, it's not running through the cornfields, I can tell you that much. That's the thing I always think of. I mean, it's probably, you know, what is the naughtiest thing I've ever done? I can say outrageous things to make people laugh and I like to transgress boundaries for humour. I think that's entirely acceptable. My husband is wonderfully unconcerned with the rules. I really admire that in him I'm not the joke in our family is that I've been caught for speeding you know it's like and I was doing 34 in a 30 do you know what I mean so I am relatively well behaved that sounds terrible I wish I wasn't I wish I said I went to Guatemala when I was 16 and married a tribesman and we went but I didn't and that's not me that'll be the social clip no context No context.

12:08Yeah, exactly. Please use that. But I'm not that person. Before we get onto your failures, your husband, Nick Jones, founder of Soho House, a mildly successful individual. Just a little bit, yes. But is it true that you fell in love at first sight? That there was something? We fell for each other. I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but I would definitely say I fell for him the first day I met him, which is not like me, was not like me. Well, apparently it is like me, but it wasn't up until that point like me. I don't know if it was first sight, but it was first day. I thought, oh, there we are.

12:49There we are. Goodness me. Fancy that. I'm a little bit self-conscious even saying it because the world is not hearts and roses and flowers and everybody's relationship depends on so many factors, many of which are outside their control. So it's not like we have this sugar-coated relationship at all, but it was definitely the easiest decision I ever made. Your failures. Your first one is phenomenal. It is, in your words, failing in exciting the interest of my birth father enough for him to stick around beyond a few weeks. I mean, not one we've ever had before. Good. I'm glad. And I salute you for it.

13:34Tell me, first of all, why you phrased it in this particular way? Well, you would know this, obviously, as a brilliant writer and broadcaster. That's important. Because I was thinking, OK, what are my failures? And obviously, there's such a long list to choose from. And I thought, what's my earliest? Because babies are designed for us not to throw them in the bin. You know, that's what they're designed. They're crying. the fact that they are entirely dependent on the people who've brought them into the world to take care of them or they'll die. You know, their huge blinking beautiful eyes, their smooth skin, everything is designed to make us want to be magnetically attached to this thing.

14:13Apparently not. So apparently not. And I think that I didn't realise for a long time, because I've always been very deeply cared for and deeply loved by my mother, and then cared for very well by my stepdad. It took me a long time to realise the imprint of that thing that had happened and the imprint of that. Essentially, I mean, it's very uncomfortable to use the word rejection, but of course that's what it is, that sense in which this guy is sort of looking in the cot and like, nah. You know, that's sort of what it feels like, really. And it took me a long time to work out that that feeling was woven into other behaviours.

14:54for me. So it took me a long time, took my story to myself for a long time. And obviously families have their own stories and one absorbs the culture of that is, oh, I got under the wire because I was too young. So it's fine. I don't even really think about it, which of course is a complete nonsense, partly through having my own family, but also through just thinking about these things more, being more mature, understanding everything has an implication is the idea that somebody else's choices, and of course they are choices, are not made necessarily with the intent of giving you a direct hit that's injurious to you.

15:40You are simply collateral damage in that person's self-obsessed decision or journey, but the impact of it is not lessened by the fact that you are just collateral damage in somebody else's messy choices. So there's a lot in it and it's also a little bit funny. I mean, it's a little bit funny, but it is a failure because I didn't do the baby job. There's the transgressive humour. And also I imagine when you became a mother, I know that you're also a stepmother. Yeah. But when you became a biological mother. Yes. How did that make you feel? Because my mother was always really spectacular. And I mean that word absolutely at making us feel wanted and valued and precious.

16:33But that's only half the story. She could only do as much as she could do. We carry with us other messages. however much that person might try to blank out the other messages they are still there and I had never really thought about it properly you know I was always I was in sort of forward propulsion motion you know when you're young you're just busy doing and then I had my first daughter when I was in my very early 30s and I was in the bath and I think Freya was probably about three weeks old and it was genuinely the first time I had ever shed a tear about the situation and thought your biological mother went when you were a few weeks old.

17:11And I was crying for my mother. I was thinking about what she went through. And it really struck me what she went through. It would probably be another 15 years before I started to think about the impact that had had upon me. But at that point, I was thinking about the vulnerability of the mother, because you are very dependent on the the structure around you that's supporting you. I want to come back to the impact on you, but I wonder if you mind my asking what happened? Why did he leave? I mean, I know you were only a few weeks old, but from what you can piece together since then, he was in the police, wasn't he?

17:49My mother was in an extremely difficult marriage where she was treated very, very poorly and ended up on her own with two children. because she couldn't put up with my biological father's behaviour and he didn't appear to want to be engaged in his two tiny children's lives. I'm going to leave it at the hat. Have you ever seen him since or spoken to him? Once. Yes, once when I was 16. It was a brief meeting and a brief conversation. Your mother remarried John Young. She did. Your father. Yes. Would I describe your childhood as happy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely would describe it as happy. I have a brother who was born out of that second marriage of my mother's.

18:40We were brought up very much as a unit of three children. I took on my stepdad's, but I call him my dad's name. And we were brought up as a united family. And I felt very loved, close to both of my siblings. I certainly felt the security of love. There was a lot of love. Yeah. So out of the three of you, you're the one of your siblings who has this public profile. Yes. And has this forward-facing, outward-facing career in many ways. So when you were talking about the imprint that this story left on you. Yes. Can you see where I'm going? Can you see the COD psychology a mile off? You just serve it up and I'll take it.

19:24I've done enough of that in my time. Is there a line to be drawn between what happened to you and your biological father leaving and wanting to make him aware and the world aware that you were important enough to take notice of? I can only think that there absolutely must be. And at the same time, I am deeply uncomfortable with that as a notion because it is so obvious and so binary. But I think that, you know, there are many, there are many very interesting jobs in broadcasting. You know, you can be a brilliant producer, you can be a director, you can write, you can do all the amazing things that people do.

20:12and I chose something that was in front of the camera or on mic. And why did I choose that? Partly because that's where my capabilities lay, but also I think because I like people to like me. Do you like me? Do you like me now? Am I nice? Is this good enough? It doesn't feel like that. That's not the thing at the front of one's head. It surely is in the mix. I wouldn't say it's simply that, because I think I did, you know, I did have the ability to turn a good script and I have a voice that translates well and all of those things that were part of my character. But there's definitely a bit of, do you see me?

20:54Do you like me? Do you like me now? Do you still have that need for people to like you? No. Oh, when does it stop? Tell me. I mean, I want the people I like to like me but I don't care if anyone else likes me if somebody says oh she was shit during the queen's funeral well that's okay that's all right it's just your opinion is fine I did the job I as as well as I could I did it to limit my capabilities I gave it my all and you're totally entitled to your opinion and that's fine and you can't please everybody and I think it probably comes with a degree of relaxedness as we get older and I was watching some I think it was Jodie Foster she was talking about being, she's now in her 60s, but she was talking about being in her 50s.

21:36And she was saying, you know, in your 50s, you're still relating to the younger, you're still trying to get back to that person who was 35 year old you. She said, in your 60s, you know, that game's up. That's what you've disconnected from that 35 year old, you're not looking back anymore. And you're in a different space. And I thought that's, I thought it was wise and interesting. And I think the idea of getting freer as you get older is the great benefit of age. You give less of a fuck. Yes. Have you forgiven your biological father? I think dysfunction, poor behaviour, not stepping up in any of its forms comes from whatever that person is dealing with.

22:21And I don't know him and I don't know his story because I don't have a relationship with him. It's not something I harbour or feel that there's a score to be settled. It's just what happened. Does that make sense? It makes total sense. It's almost as if to be the one forgiving implies that there's still emotion that is resonant and active in your life. Yes, exactly. My emotion is about the people who took care of me. Yes. Step-parents get a bad press in culture, don't they? I'm a stepmother and I just think it's so unfair. The wicked stepmother in fairy tales. I know. You are a stepmother, but I'm interested in how you feel about that term because obviously you've also experienced the wonder of being raised by John, technically your stepfather, but you refer to him as your father.

23:14And so what do you think of step-parenting? Well, I had a complete misunderstanding of step-parenting when I started doing it. So I met my husband when he was taking care full time of a three-year-old and a five-year-old. So that was, I met the three of them, like literally three days after I met Nick, he introduced me to his children because he's like, so this is it. He didn't introduce me to them as his girlfriend. And at that point, actually, I wasn't his girlfriend, but that was really smart of him because he's like, this is real. These two things are real. So, I mean, by the time we got married, which was a year later, I thought, well, I've got this.

23:57I've got this because I was step-parented, so why don't I have to do that? But of course, it was a totally different situation with all its own variables. I think it takes a lot of time to build that relationship. The children who are in that situation are, of course, the ones who haven't chosen it. So I think it has to be led by them. And I think you have to be very standy-backy whilst doing all the crap stuff that nobody gets any credit for. Such good advice. I consider myself to be incredibly close to my stepchildren. And I have a deep connection with them and a deep love for them both. It's been one of the greatest areas of growth in my life.

24:38And it is definitely a cornerstone of my happiness is my relationship with my stepchildren. but it took time. I think there's a thread here between what you were talking about in terms of a feeling of liberation from your past as it pertains to your first failure and that sense of time and growth and building up the hours doing something. And I wonder if you feel that also with your professional life, even though I might still feel nervous and get imposter-like thoughts in my head and lacking confidence. Do you still? Yes. But at least now I know that I've done the 10 ,000 hours. So I can look back at that evidence base and think, well, I've done all of these interviews and they've gone okay, most of them.

25:26So at least I have that. Did you feel that the more hours you accumulated? Yes. Yes. It took a lot longer than I would think. Now when I get asked to do something, you know, if I got asked to make a programme, I sort of feel that I've earned my place. And I think also because I didn't have any connection. I didn't know anybody who was a broadcaster. I'd never met anyone who was a broadcaster. Nobody came to speak at our school who'd done that sort of thing. My parents weren't in that world. They didn't know anybody who was. It was an absolute sort of satellite thing. I mean, actually, what's interesting is at the beginning of my career, the closer I got to the jobs I wanted or started, I thought, yeah, okay, I don't think there's a hidden secret to this.

26:09I don't think it's a club I'm not a member of. I seem to be able to do it. I think it took me a very long time though.

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