S18, Ep2 Sara Pascoe on fertility, fear and what success really means

0:00It's Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better with Jonathan Van Ness. It's easy to feel hopeless, but we don't have to stay there. I'm all about finding places where we can turn that energy into hope and into action. One of those places is Americans United for separation of church and state. Americans United, or AU, is this quiet but mighty force, working every day to preserve freedom without favor and equality without exception. I am so obsessed with that tagline. And let me tell you something, honey. That wall between church and state, paper thin. It's got a leak, honey. It's one of the last safeguards protecting so many of our rights.

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1:16Hello, and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Sarah Pascoe is a critically acclaimed comedian, writer and actor. She's the star of the BBC stand-up special Lads, Lads, Lads, the writer and lead of sitcom Out of Her Mind, the presenter of The Great British Sewing Bee and the Sunday Times best-selling author of two works of non-fiction, Animal and Sex Power Money.

2:09She's currently midway through her latest tour called, aptly enough for this podcast, Success. She grew up in Essex and East London, one of three sisters raised by a single mother. Initially, she had aspirations to be an actor before realising stand-up was more her thing. But she's never been one to limit herself to a single talent. Her debut novel, Weirdo, is out tomorrow and is a dark, funny, stream of consciousness, narrative ride through the internal machinations of Sophie, an anxious, sometimes obsessive, often unhappy woman trying to feel less lost. I gobbled it up. Pascoe was once asked the best piece of advice anyone ever gave her and replied with something her dad had said when she was toying with the idea of a teacher training course as a backup plan.

3:04Make it work or starve to death. He essentially said if you have a backup plan it's far less likely that you'll get to do what you want to do pasco recalled my mum hated it sarah pasco welcome to how to fail thank you so much for having me thank you so much for having me my mum hated that advice because my dad's a jazz musician who lives in australia who doesn't have any money which is fine so i wouldn't be the he wouldn't be the one like lending me money for rent when instead of me starving to death it was such it was such jazz musician advice like what's the point of being alive yeah unless you're doing what you love but the best piece of advice that anyone ever gave you still so do you think yeah well because there was a sense of it wasn't building me up it wasn't you are special or the world needs you it was nothing like that it's like what do you want well then get that then yeah and there was something very refreshing about that neither of my parents are very I want to say interested but what I mean is involved and there's a real freedom to that I think you can have much more supportive parents where you feel responsible for their disappointment in your career or feel too viewed or their opinions ways there was something really lovely about my mum go my mum's saying I just don't know how to lend you any money and my dad's saying we'll do it then does it make it easier when you are a confessional comic to have a family that's less interventionist it became more difficult when I was on tv it was fine when no one knew what I was saying about them and then the minute it became actually radio first and then tv it then became oh of course I think that's why I'm obsessed with personal narratives because stand-up is your version of events and you think it's the truth and then other people hear it and they're so like what that's how you saw me in that role or that's how you felt that and so then there's then it's become a little bit more difficult to traverse both of my parents so you can say whatever you like and then I'm upset when I say things and what about your sisters because so often with siblings they have a completely different experience of your family yes my sisters I only on stage ever talk about one sister so they both have deniability I'm planning to do the same with my children because why you're having a second child it's exactly why also so that I also think having siblings do you have siblings yes I've got one older sister yeah no one else will ever really believe how mad your parents are it does need to be someone else who was there yeah you describe it to someone else and they go this sounds nice okay I think there's that's not why everyone should have I know I'm not saying this to prescribe families but I felt it's really great to have someone who just has shorthand yeah is into your family past but yeah deniability on stage my sisters both have quite professional jobs one of them's a she teaches GCSE English and one of them is a dental nurse so they do not want me talking about what they did at school GCSE English wow I imagine her students think it's very cool that you're her sister I think all of her students.

5:57I think she's much, much cooler than me. And she's quite sort of like beautiful. I think that they think she's the cool one. Also, the thing with comedy is, you know, and this happens with most comedians. You'd be like, oh, so-and-so in my family. And then what you get is lots of people going, I watched her YouTube, not funny. And then they tell you that helpfully. Let's talk about Weirdo because I loved it. Thank you. And thank you for reading it. Oh my gosh, it was a pleasure. And it's always so refreshing and also a relief to discover that a person very talented in one area can also write. They're not just like knocking out a book because they've got a book deal because they're famous.

6:39There's a thing with stand-ups. Myself and Mark Watson sometimes picture about comics who have books as merch. Because when you love books and you respect books, it's books because of books. That's the main thing. It's not just, oh, and then I've got something to sign after shows or something like that. I had this very precocious career plan that involved 40s novelists. And then I got to my 40s and then I had to actually work out if I could write a book. and I knew I could write a length of the books I'd written non-fiction but I had no idea I told myself it would be just be like writing a story at school and you write a little bit and then you write a little bit and then the characters start doing things for themselves in that mad way you know when you go I didn't plan this but apparently that's what this scene is doing and I also because I've written before at least I knew that the editing process you can write as long as you get something finished you can make it so much better later but it was a bit like what am I going to do for this decade then if I discover, because also novelists, the only people I get starstruck about, I mean, spending time in someone's mind or the world that they've created, it's really huge.

7:47And I think if it had been rubbish, if I'd got to the end, then I'd have gone, what a lovely experiment. Thank you, Faber. Obviously we won't show anyone. I mean, you've nailed it. And I think I've already said to you, I can't wait to see what you write next, having read this. And I was interested by the publishers blur because they went big on the fact that it's funny and it is funny and obviously you're very funny but I think it's there's a darkness to it that I found so resonated and was so immersive because you really do plummet into Sophie's mind and it's not always a comfortable place to be because she's actually struggling with past trauma a sense of alienation and what I think you do brilliantly is the structure I wanted to know how much you did actually plan it because it's fragmentary in nature so you're sort of headlong in her being in a pub and her long-term crush walks in and then suddenly you get a flash of something that's happened in the past and you weave it together so well it is like a mind works I suppose that's what I'm getting at yeah so I started from a really pretentious place when I first started to write I used to do like play writing courses after university and they always said you're trying so hard to be clever that you know your work is unreadable it was always that I remember I've got I mean awful awful plays still in my you know computer which are sort of I guess motifs of the vagina the whole thing happens in a cupboard and it's so Freudian and all of the characters are parts of one person's in super like that was the kind of thing I was working at with this I knew I'm obsessed with unreliable narrators yes who am I I'm obsessed with them I think they make you feel engaged and clever and like a detective and and that's how it feels actually meeting other people isn't it sort of you're telling me this but I'm also picking up this and that's why gossip is so fantastic because that's essentially what you're doing is unpicking so I knew I wanted to write an unreliable narrator I wanted her to think things about her life that the reader knew weren't true and I knew I wanted to put things in there where the reader goes well did that happen or not because this other character is saying that it didn't and I knew from stand-up that there's nothing more and I mean from watching stand-up from stand-up that I love there's nothing more satisfying than a callback like just to the human mind to like you talked about this earlier and now I'm getting a bit more information about it so I did have to keep a few strands working but now I didn't have a proper plan I never write with a proper plan either and I love it when I meet other writers who refuse the post-it note I was reading someone and essentially they were saying you plan oh i'll tell you who it is patricia highsmith has written a book a very short book about plotting thrillers and she says she always knows the first third and by the middle section she probably knows the end i love that yes one of my idols and also everyone would say she's a perfect plotter yes you would say but that ending how did you not know and she says because it sort of becomes clear or you have different options and And yeah, it's very calming to go, you don't have to do a proper 100 pages and then they go over there.

10:50And the consequences of that. And I feel like a realistic plot is informed by character and you can only really get to know your characters by writing them. There are a couple more things that I want to ask you about Weirdo specifically. One is the number of jobs that Sophie has had that are very funny in and of their own right. So she is a London bus tour guide, but she was a scarer at what is effectively the London Nodgins. Is that a job that exists and that you've had? It's worse, the one I had. It wasn't one of the scarers because I was too scared. I have auditioned to be a scarer. Oh my God, that audition scene.

11:29I have auditioned to be a scarer at Madame Tussauds and I didn't get it. I didn't get it and it was really disappointing and it was a time where I had spent all of my money on the travel card to get there. so I didn't know what I was going to do having not and I knew in the room I hadn't got the job and the scarer just quickly is someone employed literally to scare the crowd zombie is what springs to mind but yeah a bit of face makeup you know and it's all actors or I guess actor adjacent it's an actor adjacent job I think it pays pretty well like I'm trying to think now it would have been maybe 11 pounds an hour at the time maybe now it's 15 so in terms of an actor's part-time job you know it's double minimum wage and you get paid for your breaks rather than working in an office there are people who would much prefer and some people love it but I find it scary so the job I worked at I worked at a place called the London Bridge Experience so they discovered in the old London Bridge which is right underneath where the current London Bridge is that there were these pits and then they had skulls in them and stuff because you know they used to put skulls on the top of the bridges and so they were going to open a restaurant but they couldn't get planning permission because it was you know it's full of skulls yeah it's a graveyard yeah and so instead they opened an experience which is about the history of london bridge and there were scarers at the end because otherwise why would tourists want to go but i worked in the history bit where we told them about buddhika yeah yeah but it meant i spent time around scarers and they're a fascinating fascinating breed of people i mean you have really used what you've learned there in the novel the other character who i'm obsessed with is the character of Ian in the novel, who is Sophie's long-term boyfriend.

13:09Now, he is someone, he's a type that I believe I really recognise, where on the surface, he seems enlightened, soft, feminist, likes to read existential philosophy. But beneath the surface, quite close to the surface, there's this cauldron of seething intellectual pretension and male rage. Well, I don't know if you're finding this with men in general, and I think it's happening as well with white people who are doing this to black people especially since black lives matter there's an insidious where you've learned the veneer yeah and it's almost like we're accidentally gaslighting people because i don't think it's necessarily intentionally malevolent but it's the same comedy i'm seeing some much more dangerous people passing because they have the language and you want your monsters to look like monsters yes and actually i think there are scarier monsters who have been given by us.

14:05Yeah. It's like, this is what you say and this is what you do and this is what you don't do. And when you first meet them, they're getting away with it. And I think for the opposite, for women who are around men like that, let's say, all of our spidey senses go off. But what is it that you're really picking up on? The insidiousness of it, I find really fascinating because I think it's terrifying. And they do slip up. And when they do, you go, I knew it. Yeah. I knew you didn't actually empathise with women. Yeah. Does that kind of man exist a lot in comedy? I think what happened... Comedy is where I live.

14:38So I don't think comedy is worse than any other place where there are men. I think sometimes we like to think that they're attracted to certain jobs, but I think they're the same in Sainsbury's or other supermarkets. Not that Sainsbury's is particularly bad for predators. But stand-up's where I live. And what I've seen is that there was onstage and offstage what we would all be very familiar with from the 80s and 90s, which is men who saw dating or sex or sexual acts as all a kind of gaming system. Women try and withhold it, men try and get it, and they would talk about that on stage and they would behave like that in their social life.

15:14When I started stand-up, people were still doing stand-up about getting women drunk to get them into bed. And we now would be like... But then what I saw is how that has... Those same people or similar kind of people, there's been a mutation but how they feel about women the men who see them as gatekeepers for sex that you have to manipulate or press buttons to get what you want that hasn't changed but the language the honesty about it has changed how do you feel now that you're raising a son it's interesting I actually feel really relieved because I don't feel scared about him for the world which is really sexist because actually men are more likely to be assaulted on a night out Men are more likely to crimes.

15:58Teenage boys, risk-taking. There are lots and lots of reasons you should feel worried about the world. And actually what you're supposed to feel is, I want to make sure my son doesn't become one of the people that I feared as a teenager. But I guess I haven't gone down that route yet. My first thing was relief. I'm never going to have a teenage girl screaming at me. Yeah. Because we were a family of all girls. And my sisters both had had girls. I just thought I was going to have a girl. and replicate our childhood, which was too many women. Too much of a noxious estrogen clad. Yeah, women just can be such bitches.

16:33Yeah. Women can be so cruel, I guess. And I guess I just don't know about men. That's how I feel about it. And I'm having another boy and I know nothing about brothers. And so it all feels like I'm not repeating any toxicity from my family. It's all fresh. I'll just find out about new toxicities. Yeah. And Steve, your husband, has sisters as well, isn't he? So it will be an exploratory adventure for both of us. But he has been a man. So I feel like he's at least got some insight there. Maybe that's why I don't worry so much is I feel like that's his dad's job. You can make sure he's not a rapist.

17:05You'll have more insight into, yeah. You have written and worked so much and so brilliantly in the area of gender. and I read this really fascinating quote that I think you must have given around the time that every single woman in comedy was being asked about being a woman in comedy and isn't it astonishing that women are funny do you remember that era when it's like bridesmaids and everyone discovered that women could be funny yeah and then they wanted you to sort of explain how and why yes how long would it last and also like well you're an anomaly you seem to be making money from jokes but you said this thing that you didn't really identify as a woman that strongly until I started doing stand-up and people kept telling me I was a woman tell us more about that because I found it so interesting the moment that sticks in my mind was a charity gig which obviously you do for no money and the woman when I arrived and it was a woman who said it to me and she said she was thanking me she said thank you so much for being here it's so important to me that we have a woman and we didn't have any women on the bill and I thought it was such an odd thing to say because she wanted me to be grateful that she'd booked me for an unpaid gig that I was doing as a favour to her so I really thought I was there as a favour but she saw she was doing quite a gracious thing because she had noticed there was no woman and the woman as signifier was really alien until I started stand-up and it kept being there's a woman on the bill there's no women on the bill there's two women on the bill tonight every time he walked into a room they noticed that the promoters the other comedians I started at a time where it was just sort of becoming there should be a woman on every bill which meant that it was a they have or the woman's pulled out or so-and-so can't do the gig can you replace her and women when I started would never gig together we all knew each other we all had a network of sort of replacing each other at gigs or talking about things but we didn't get to gig together because we were so spread out because then that's how you would have one on every gig and if there was two of us then a gig was missing its woman and I didn't feel like being a woman was a type of person until stand-up I hadn't realized it was so visible and I guess that's a sign of privilege actually that I had felt at school and at university I'd felt that opportunities were open to me probably because of the kind of things that I wanted to do I hadn't felt that the world was restrictive because of my gender until stand-up when it did become such a thing and then especially then when reviewers talk about it and these are educated people who are supposedly know the most about my industry when they would then say there's more women in edinburgh this year and talk about that in your review you think but we're talking about such different things we are so different from each other but we were treated like a type like a flavor of comedy and then what was very frustrating is when you know you do a routine about being on the bus or in Sainsbury's and they would talk about women's comedy because when I was in Sainsbury's I was a woman and when I was on the bus I was a woman and I was called a feminist and actually I wasn't actually doing anything feminist apart from being on stage as a woman we were all called feminists and worse we were called like tolerable feminists I remember there was once I won't name the reviewer because he's actually you know a supportive person and sometimes this is where you see people's blind spots it was a charity gig me and Catherine Ryan were on everyone's doing five minutes and he said if this is the face of feminism now like how lucky we are basically meaning they're not shoving it down our throats anymore because we hadn't done any feminism we had just been there talking about our own lives and it was non-threatening because we were being funny then you have people who are more actively agitatingly feminist like bridget christie or deborah francis white and it became much more exciting because they were actually being feminist rather than women in Sainsbury's.

20:50I mean there is this like overwhelming cultural conditioning to see the default as the dominant so that whole Simone de Beauvoir thing about the othering nature of being seen as the object of the sentence rather than ever the subject yeah and it's always a white man will always it feels like be the default and therefore simply by being different from that you represent something and actually you just want to be a person I want to ask you about success your tool but also what success means to you in well success I thought about it so much going through IVF because they kept using the word success and success rates and I had only thought about success in terms of work and in the way I thought about success with work I was that's why I became fascinated with sort of dopamine and neurotransmitters just how fleeting it is with acting when you get an acting job you get a phone call it would be a phone call if you've got the job and it is such a rush of because it's competitive it's not just like oh you've got a thing you've got it against other people against the gods quite often you definitely think you haven't you haven't heard from them for a while and by the next day it's disappeared and it's almost the job is almost tarnished because you got it it's so odd the the peaks and troughs and my husband is an actor I'm watching someone else go through it it's a really cruel industry in how it treats people and how they can't enjoy their downtime because technically they feel unemployed and like they'll never be employed and watching someone else go through that cycle now and so I'd really really been trying with stand-up to rather than having the peaks and troughs when I got my dog I bought a flat it's not a massive flat but I bought a flat I got a mortgage which I never ever thought I'd have and the first thing I did before I got any furniture was get a dog and that for me was I never ever ever thought and I got this from jokes I got this from telling jokes I've got a mortgage and now because I've for the first time I'm not renting I can have the pets that I've always wanted and I kept reminding myself so this is success this is it it's not whether have I got news for you want you on next year there are all these things around all of our work actually that can make you feel replaceable like you failed like you're just not good enough like you're too old now like you're not very edgy there are all these ways that our changeable industry isn't very loyal, but there are things that I can do.

23:10I mean, which doesn't sound funny. That's not really what the show's about. But it's because they kept talking in IVF about success. And I thought, why do you get to decide?

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23:56I feel such a kinship with you and have done for a really long time because I've had a parasocial relationship with you on social media where I have witnessed you go through fertility challenge and we're going to go on and speak about it because you've been generous enough to use it as one of your failures and there's so much more to say and I suppose I just wanted to thank you for being willing to say it and also to say now and to preface our whole conversation by saying how sorry I am for what you've been through there's no question attached to that but we'll come on to it at the end but thank you to you because i'm coming here to someone who talks about it yeah yeah don't we're going to cry i can tell already i don't even have the excuse of being honestly i gave myself such a pep talk before i left the house of like i can talk about this but i'm so hormonal like i cry at everything yeah yeah don't worry i cry at everything anyway so it's fine we'll have a lovely cleansing session it's warm let's get on to your first failure Okay, great.

24:59Which is acting. I keep nudging your plant. Oh, the plant's liking it. Okay. Acting. Yes. I really hope, in my head, this is inspiring for people to hear because, firstly, I was so sure about acting. I was really, really sure. Like, you know, when you fall in love with a person and you can't believe when that relationship starts showing that it's not working because you're like, but that is the person. Yes. When I was 12, me and my sister Cheryl used to, when we were supposed to be in bed, make up plays. And I really knew this was it. And I really knew what it was because actually what I thought at the time was, this is how you escape yourself.

25:34This is how you escape your life. You become other people. And I knew it was a job and it was a lorded job that beautiful people did and then went to, you know, awards ceremonies and things. So it was glamorous. It had everything. And I was so precocious about it. I remember we had a theatre and education come to our assembly. And I would have been, you know, secondary school, but early, maybe 13 or 14. And they said, who here wants to be an actor? and I like put up my hand and I told them my plan which was Oxbridge, RADA, rep to get good because my whole thing and I remember saying it then is I don't want to be famous till my 40s like because you know your 20s and 30s is really competitive and I wanted to be like at the Royal Court when I was 70.

26:15I remember when I met Carrie Adlauid at university so I was 21. Carrie Adlauid. Thank you. I remember meeting her at university and saying to her no I'm going to peak in my 70s like who wants a life because my dad was in a pop band when he was a teenager and I've seen like you don't want fame then you want to be working towards it steadily I love that yeah but can I just interrupt just briefly you mentioned your dad there I wonder how much of that was also related to your mum having you when she was 18 is that right so were you sort of on some level aware of not doing things too early I that actually made me think like I didn't want children because I'd seen I mean I had personally ruined people's lives were you told that it's not explicitly explicitly but every mum has a moment where she loses her shit and goes do you know what I could have had if it wasn't for you she had three children by herself and was working to support us and we were horrible children and I don't mean as in not worthy of love and we were loved but we were feral my mum could not tell us to do anything we were feral we were feral especially me and Cheryl.

27:22Feral Cheryl, they called her. Feral Cheryl, yeah, the English teacher now who will kill me. But I think much more implicitly than explicitly, I could see how difficult my parents' lives were because they had no money, they had no qualifications, they weren't married when they had me, or they got married when they had Cheryl. My dad felt very trapped, my mum had no choices. and your parents pissed off when you were a child yes yeah which was good because they made each other unhappy and that's another good thing about and I know you've covered this before but there is no failure in relationships leaving relationships is a really brilliant thing to do when they make you unhappy and showing your children you should be making choices to make yourself happy is a really good thing but I think parents really struggle they feel very guilty and I know that children get upset but it's much better I know a horrible thing about a family where the parents got divorced but didn't want anyone to know.

28:13So the dad stayed in the house. They were separated, but the dad stayed in the house sleeping in the son's bedroom. So that no one, and you think that, that's a really terrible message that you're giving to your children, which is you suffer. Yes. And you stay because that's what people expect of you. A nice dramatic divorce is much healthier, I think. So how old were you when your parents divorced? Okay. Yeah. And your mother was left raising, your dad went to live in Australia. eventually first of all he was he's a jazz musician so he lived in London for a bit and in America for a bit but he really has followed he plays the saxophone I mean I really hate jazz I don't know if you think it's really nice I used to play the trumpet so I'm like a bit into it age 12 you know you want to be an actor and famous in your 70s and then yes and it felt so definite and it felt so real and the astonishing thing is I didn't doubt it and I didn't doubt it I left school at 18 decided I wasn't going to go to university I did try to go to Cambridge I told them it's just for footlights and also I mean I applied to do philosophy it was a ridiculous interview and then I was really shocked not to get in that they didn't want me for footlights and then I started working and the work I was doing was sort of theatre and education or old people's homes or street theatre and I was really really good at applying for jobs and writing letters and going up to people hustling I was really good at hustling and occasionally I would get jobs and placements and little things like holiday camp stuff or like just and everything felt like it was a journey and in my head I'm writing world autobiography as I go yes then after two years I was singing with Robbie Williams's dad in Nottingham and I was getting paid a hundred pounds a week and I was so far over my overdraft because I used to be able to do that I'd had a job in Italy doing theatre and education the cash machines had been letting me take out cash that I didn't have so I'd gone so far over my overdraft that this hundred pounds a week wasn't actually I didn't have any money I was stuck at a hotel for three months and I read a book which I think was Kate Atkinson's behind the scenes at the museum a brilliant book I know Kate Atkinson is just so fantastic isn't she yeah she's incredible yeah we'd have a whole lot of podcasts to snore on for Kate Atkinson it was a seismic change in my life because she made university sound attractive for the first time and I thought oh you get a student loan so I applied from from Nottingham.

30:27I didn't even have the train fare to get there. Eventually, my mum had to lend it to me because they wouldn't give me my student loan at Nottingham. I had to go to Sussex to get it. And I wasn't planning to go to university. I was just planning to take the£800 and run. Then when I got there and everyone had been dropped off by their parents and they had stuff like saucepans and duvets and I had nothing. I had some books and some cigarettes. And it just felt really romantic. And I thought, oh, there's a drama society. I'll do drama for three years and it'll improve my acting, which is how I met Carrie.

30:52I had my best friend. Then after the university, I auditioned for drama school for five years and I never got a call back and I think for anyone else that would have been a sign of this job isn't for you as in you're not good at it or you're not again it was just all part of the autobiography I thought all of this was the journey the rejection was part of it I used to make collages out of my rejection letters and decoupage things so the opposite of a manifestation mood board in a way isn't it yeah because I thought it would be so funny to look back on. Yes, when you're on How to Fail. Yes. Yeah, in my head I always had that, when they find out they tear me down, when they're kicking themselves, when I get to be one of those people who gives my BAFTA acceptance speech saying, don't give up kids, everyone said no to me, no one ever said yes, no one believed in me and I guess I was very comfortable with that narrative and then stand-up was an accident.

31:45There's a sketch show in Little Venice called News Review and I'd been doing a terrible play about air hostesses with the music of Steps with the word changed. And we had been going... Oh, she sounds iconic. It sounds iconic. I don't want to be too mean. Okay. It wasn't. Trust me, it wasn't. And we performed at little theatres near airports for air stewards. Right. And, oh God, I'll tell you another time about the guy whose play it was. And really, really luckily, the woman who directed the play, she directed News Review. She asked me to audition. She thought I was funny. And I said, I'm not funny.

32:20I'm deadly serious. I wanted to make political theatre. That's what I'd learned about Sussex, is that you can use entertainment. I sound like David Brent, to change minds. Yeah, like the Trojan Wars. And Chantel had just been on Big Brother. Because you have to do impressions. She just won Big Brother. And I did Chantel, which was very much my wheelhouse. And then I got it. And then from that, I sort of fell in love with a stand-up for a bit. And number one, went to see stand-up comedy. And I had thought stand-up was improvised. I'd only seen probably Billy Connolly and Jack Dee on TV and Harry Hill.

32:53I thought they were making it up. I thought they were geniuses. But I didn't realise that it was a craft that you put together. And then I saw people in Macs holding pads. And then I decided that because I was so creatively stifled when I was out of work, that I would start doing open mic nights. some with my guitar and some with comedy and essentially the comedy was acting it wasn't it was sort of speeches it wasn't stand-up as you would recognize it now and then accidentally and it is all accidental this is why it sort of failed upwards I was working in New Forest doing reminiscence theatre with old people which is a hard crowd it's a really really worthy job yeah but they are tired or you're standing in front of the tennis but um reminiscence theatre and then I was coming to London on coaches and doing stand-up at night and I did the funny women competition semi-final Catherine Ryan had invited lots of agents I would never have thought to invite agents Catherine Ryan everyone wanted to sign her there was a really long queue of course there was because you know she's been a star since she was born and one of the agents who she had invited is my agent and then it was like a love story where I got a Facebook message the next day like did I want a meeting and I thought it was Cariad pretending for my confidence I know it's so sweet and essentially I went to meet this agent and she looks after Simon Pegg and Catherine Tate and all of these incredible people she says what do you want to do and no one had ever asked me and I said I want to play Latitude all of my friends do Latitude and that was my that was my ambition at that point wow yeah and she sort of said have you met this person have you met this person have you been in this room and really what I said to her is I want to be an actor you know and then we did do some acting she still tries to put me up for stuff but I had a real breakthrough in therapy about a year and a half ago and it was such an obvious thing it was such an obvious thing when my therapist said well this is all you wanted to be seen so of course you weren't a very good actor like that's why it's stand-up and it's like it all fits together it comes from my childhood it comes from wanting attention and there was a bad actor I never lost myself I knew that that was the whole point of acting I knew that the point was you become someone else but I never did it I was Sarah Pascoe with a hat on you want to be seen yes so deep yes so deep and then that's why stand-up became accidentally without me wanting I think if I'd wanted to do it it'd have been much much harder but it was always my hobby in the background it was always that have a glass of wine go up there I loved meeting comics I loved the creativity of it I loved the brand newness that you could write something on the bus and then just go and say it or respond to like you know the news and stuff but I never ever thought I never valued it properly which is probably how I was able to get through the first couple of years without putting any pressure on myself do you still want to be at the height of your fame in your 70s is that part of the plan I would really like to produce work that's my best yes later it must be hard if you create your best work and no one wants it but I think that would be better than looking back you know like bands first albums and going you would you would know nothing nothing's as good as people still want us to play that song yeah mambo number five still have to crazy what else did he do you know your second failure is linked to your first in that when you are a quote-unquote successful stand-up you go to edinburgh yes and you've chosen the edinburgh festival not so much because it's career related but why so I went out there first as an actor Cariad and I both did and I would honestly describe us as the lowest of the low in if there's an Edinburgh pecking order but even before when I was at Sussex they never sent a play to Edinburgh other universities did Sussex didn't the drama department didn't have a budget really and I think it's something you have to be quite rich to be able to do either university has to be rich and pay for you or you have to have money where you can go and pay for a flat because obviously Edinburgh is not a money-making place someone's making money but not the performers you know so we wanted to go when we were at Sussex we couldn't go shortly after we left maybe a couple of years we did Shakespeare for breakfast which is 10 in the morning so I say lowest of the low sea venues 10 in the morning it's a devised play we got 300 pounds for six weeks so in Edinburgh terms in terms of making money it was good but we lived 15 of us to a three-bedroom house and with one toilet so it was really and we had to sort of traipse in there at nine so we did two shows in a row we did the Shakespeare devised one where everyone got coffee and croissants and then we did like a kid's play which would be like Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood our show was so early in the morning and I'm I was sleeping with a guy he wasn't my boyfriend but I definitely liked him and he was coming to Edinburgh he'd rung and said he was coming to Edinburgh to see me and the night he came I had to go home to go to bed like 12 or 1 it wasn't super early but had to go home and what happened after I went home is that he slept with my director in this house where there were 15 of us in three bedrooms and then decided to come and see my show the next morning so I had this bombshell when I woke up that this boy that I liked that I thought was coming to see me just because I'd gone home early had just like got off of someone else not even someone else my director and then sat next to her holding her hand watching me do my embarrassing 10 in the morning play and the mistake I made so I thought that was my rock bottom I thought oh Edinburgh Edinburgh is so cool it feels like school you can't get away from people everyone knows and that's the problem with being single up there is it's just a cesspit you know everyone's up till five in the morning everyone's really drunk oh it's a cesspit it's horrible and then you know you're with someone one week and then they're with someone else the next week and it's fast forwarded like oh it's so gross that's horrendous but you went back and it wasn't your rock bottom Because I kept thinking I could win at it.

38:37So it's like the next, so we did Shakespeare for Breakfast for a couple of years. And then I did a play. I mean, the play itself, there was no problem with the play. And it's when I did So You Think You're Funny, which you can only do when you've been doing stand-up for one year. So you have this one opportunity to get to the final of So You Think You're Funny. But I was sharing a bed with a girl. Because the play had, I mean, nothing ever happened. Sharing a bed? This was an unpaid play. Yeah, and I was sharing a bed with a girl. And it's not her fault. But both of us would just try and cop off with people so we would have somewhere else to stay.

39:04like so yeah because it was it's grim it's really grim they'd say you think you're funny and then I felt like okay next year I'll have a pass to go to a bar and then I did a solo show and then I think the trouble was every year I kept going back thinking I could win it so I did a solo show and what I wasn't prepared for was exposure no one's kind and I say that obviously the guardian they don't have meetings like should we be nice because people are just trying to be creative and put stuff out there but also members of the public can review you and I hadn't known at that point yet I actually was quite excited a reviewer had put me as the number one thing to see in Edinburgh right and he'd said that I was a combination of Sarah Silverman and Stuart Lee you couldn't hope for a better byline amazing amazing so I'm doing my first ever show in this little hut for 40 people it's about confidence actually it was about ego and I lost all of my confidence probably second show in and then got these like horrible eviscerating two-star reviews like saying that I was worse than genocide you know because they have to you know they're just people who have to fill their copy yeah was this but I was sold out now they're worse than okay and also magazines and blog and I did stop looking online and it's good because I never ever looked again yeah I did learn right then and there is nothing there for you I've had a similar experience with book reviews yeah and it's so much better not looking at anything and also those ones are still tattooed on my brain that's how I know you can't look yeah you were talking to Yomi about this we learn from negativity so unfortunately we cling to the people who say negative things yeah and that doesn't ever go away and that's why we can't have it because I think actually it stops you making stuff or when you are trying on a blank page to write something having being heckled by your old criticism yes it's not conducive it doesn't make you go I'll show you it's still there because part of you believes it or knows that some people believe that to be true about you it's the antithesis of creative liberation isn't it you're being berated rather than liberated yeah need that on a t-shirt your beats poetry maybe i should go to edinburgh have a horrible cesspit time am i selling it for you it sounds horrendous if you wanted to have a breakdown yeah go to edinburgh so that you don't did you actually have a breakdown i didn't have a breakdown what kept happening was i kept going thinking this year you'll be fine so i thought that first year as a solo stand-up.

41:27In some ways, this is where the failure success, where the cross-section is interesting because I did sell all my tickets. I didn't lose money because a promoter paid for me because they thought I would have a career. They sort of invest in you early on, which happens for very few people and it's very fortunate. I did, I think, get industry in. My agent is fantastic, but I did some shows to silence, like plays. There was one show where a man went out to get everyone a Sambuca because everyone was having such a shocking time, including myself. and imagine this I've just remembered this there's no exit to the room it's an attic so I had to stand behind a curtain which meant people would be slagging me off as they left and I was literally two inches away from them with my fingers in my ears trying not to listen and going oh well it's worth a fiver because my ticket you know it's when they have two for one days and stuff or I like two shoes that's bad but then you know it's a journey you spend all year building yourself back up again it's good in a way to start uh I was gonna say destroyed my routine this is how unhealthy it was I stayed up all night all night every night and in the morning which it wasn't it was 3 p.m I would have two norepinephrine two red balls two Cronenberg two fags and that was my routine before my show and then I wouldn't eat till afterwards and I'd have avocado on toast and then you go of course you were unhappy like anyway of course you were burnt out of course you're burnt out and that's it what I hadn't realized until I read your failure and how you wrote it to me is that in edinburgh you are automatically entered to the prizes yeah so you lose yes so you or even though you haven't asked to take part in this contest you end up feeling like a loser the two things you can do to sort of eliminate yourself is you can call your show a work in progress they are not so that's why often people go for a month and do a 45 minute work in progress before they go because the year that people feel like they're most likely to win is newcomer so your first year is the biggest loss really because it's the smallest pool but yeah it's horrible that last week people are broken I don't think again the audience don't really know it's not called the peri-a anymore it's not worth perhaps what it once was but in terms of the next year you will be in absolutely every room if you get nominated as in like every meeting room everyone will say what's your ideas what do you want to write what do you want to do and it feels like that's the biggest chance you've got and you think you're fine about it until the nominations come up and they're like what did I do are you going to stop doing Edinburgh now I have stopped doing good well the reason is so just I'll quickly just quickly go through the journey every year I kept building myself up and actually my work did get better my work did get better I got better I drank a lot less in Edinburgh so there were some lessons learned but the last time I went to Edinburgh which is the last time which is the time that I sold all of my tickets before I went up it's my lads lads lads show it meant I didn't have to pay for PR I didn't have to do a single magazine shoot a single interview I didn't have to sell my show I sold it all and I could add a couple of extra shows in if I wanted and I picked accommodation that was really far outside of Edinburgh and it had a pizza oven and I was going to have this healthy time and this was going to be the one which didn't break me but unfortunately my ex-boyfriend wrote a show that was about our relationship and mine was a little bit about a breakup but being single but his was much more and because I had a little bit of a profile especially in Edinburgh people knew who he was talking about and his show then went on to not only be very critically successful but to win that award and it was honestly the most absurd thing was like oh I can't win here and we luckily weren't horribly acrimonious I had to walk past his queue every day to get to my queue and sometimes just especially like third week I was crying one day and I just you know in Edinburgh you do cry it's overwhelming someone was trying to take photos with me while I was crying and I was saying can't you see I'm crying like it's genuinely like Freud has designed all of the things that would be most challenging for your psyche yeah and put them in one place over the course of one month yes I think it's true for lots of comics and we punish ourselves thinking that we have to or there's something wrong with us that we're not strong enough to take it whereas what I now I've just admitted quite zenly is that is not a place I will flourish yeah oh Sarah thank you that was so enlightening and actually I think will be so helpful for anyone in that world listening to this podcast and I know that there are a lot there are a lot of creatives who who feel like failures constantly because of these kind of setups so thank you yeah it also So I know that part of what was going on for you during this time is your third failure.

46:00Yes. Okay. So third failure is pregnancy. And it's in terms of, again, the cross section with success. The days that you get your period when you really thought it was you were pregnant and that kind of thing. And when it happens at work and sometimes with comedy, you can have really fun jobs or really big jobs and your personal life cannot come into it. So I did have circumstances where things were going well at career, but was very undermined by my repeated failure to get pregnant. So three relationships. I started trying with a boyfriend when I was probably just starting stand up about 27, 28.

46:38And I'm really glad now looking back that I didn't have children with him or with my next long term relationship. but at the time that wasn't what it felt like and and and also it felt like it was a big part of those relationships fizzling out or you know becoming a lot less fun I'm not having future those kind of things but the thing that I did which I again I don't know if this is a regret I just I didn't go for investigations I didn't try and find out why I wasn't getting pregnant I thought if it was meant to happen it would happen which actually means I gave all of the power to something else which meant it then became very intertwined with worth am I good enough to be a parent or is the universe saving me from being a parent or saving like these possible children from a bad parent and so I kept reinforcing it wasn't supposed to happen and then and also I thought things like a trade-off I thought well the universe has given you all of this with your work how dare you say I want something else as well I really did think it was a trade-off and every month I always got my hopes up especially with Steen Steen when before we even kissed told me he wanted a family and I knowing what I've been through said you know you're open to adoption he's like I really want to have biological children he's Australian Greek I think he's been asked since he was 18 where's the baby it was really massive for him so the right at the beginning of our relationship was this and especially because of my age where I must have met him in my late 30s it wasn't like we've got five years to go travel have fun together it was you know we're going to try really soon if not immediately halfway through every month I always bang on just like it's now I can feel it and I would look in my diary to look at the stuff that would be impossible because I'd be having this baby that's not going to work and then when I wasn't pregnant I would look again at the same jobs like well at least I can do that now but at least oh I will be doing that then I always such this trade-off and worse and then because of COVID like lots of people I had all my work cancelled in two phone calls a year worth of work basically we were in Finland doing a documentary I got a phone call from my agent which was about you know the first stuff being pulled and then by the time we landed it was the rest so the really good thing was that I'd always had 40 as my cut-off point like um Sheila Hetty in her book I loved 40 being the line because I needed a point where I just recovered and went okay didn't have children and also the other reason I think of it as a failure is what is so shit when you're going through it is not having a definite answer that you can just react to and just go I can cope with definiteness or I can't cope with is not knowing I can't cope with maybe or unexplained unexplained miracle accidental and then again the narrative getting to say to this like prospective child guess what I'd given up I was 41 and you get told so many things like relax get drunk on holiday stop trying so much and it's so much space in your brain so much space in there constantly where you are what could be happening should i have a glass of wine should i have a cheeky cigarette because you know second half of the cycle and then i think things like no no because if you don't have a cigarette i love a drunk cigarette if i don't have a cigarette then i definitely won't be pregnant but if i do have it then i will and then i'll be furious with myself and i these trade-offs constantly it's like a form of magical thinking it is magical thinking you because there is a lack of explanation and similarly to you i had unexplained fertility and no reason for it and nothing definite and it's very difficult then not to fill that especially if you are a storyteller which you are with your own stories and if you are a woman then generally those stories are going to be extremely self-critical yeah and then on top of that if you're a woman who's been socially conditioned to believe that it's a biological imperative to have children and that people fall off a log and get pregnant there's all of that i got so obsessed with they've got a special your name but people who didn't know they were pregnant so they gave birth so obsessed with them yeah and then you start thinking should i fall off logs more yes let me google falling off a log and whether that's spiritually aligned with getting pregnant yeah google is not your friend it's not it's really not it's a really sad place it's a really sad place and then and again a little bit like the bad reviews you can't unlearn those things other people's sadnesses other people's traumas other people's emotional attachments to things or theories on things there's part of it that's great that it's a collective they're so common which is what I talk about in my show my second half is about having my son and I want to say it I'm always so aware of like there'll be people in my audience why I don't talk about my miscarriage actually is because I kept thinking there'll be someone who's having one there's someone who's having one who's coming out to cheer up and it just made me think I'm just not going to do it I'm so sorry that's okay I'm so sorry I've done more to get to this point without winding up you have I know you're saying yeah into covid time so what was good was were you doing ivf sorry that's when we started ivf that's when you started okay and my husband and i have to say i'm grateful to him because i told him i can't do anymore and he he said please he said can we give two more years and do this properly with doctors really try and two more years 40 to 42 sorry to interrupt so your miscarriage predates the ivf my miscarriage unfortunately was why we were waiting to start ivf okay and so you know you have that thing where it's ring us as soon as you get your period this is the cruelty of it in terms of the story because it was a really early miscarriage and i'm not diminishing what i went through but after no after such a long time never getting pregnant oh my god that's so sorry please don't be sorry but also i wanted to say that just because you then have a child it doesn't go away i know like and people i think like lots of people to have miscarriage did you just stop talking about it people stop asking you after two months our ivf was put off it was so shit because i was 38 when we started which in where i live i'm on the border of harringale islington you can have ivf we could get one round of the nhs and then because it was smooth because of covid i was then too old but islington they layered to 40 which again is a very unfair thing because it's just a richer thing so we had to move doctors because it wasn't where you live it's where your doctor is so we moved doctors from there to there you you know, 100 metres.

52:50Now we're going to have an IVF on the NHS, but then it got cancelled because of COVID. So we went private and, again, I'm fortunate. So we're getting the phone calls. Yeah, ring us when you've got your period. And I've had late periods, very cruelly, you know, up to sort of 35, 37 days, that horrible, horrible week. So 32 days, still don't have my period. They said, if you've done a pregnancy test, and I said, my period's always late. I don't need to do a pregnancy test. But 35 days, I did a pregnancy test and it was pregnant. And that's the only time, that is the only time we ever celebrated i know yeah because after that it's never ever a celebration ever again it is such a thief of joy and then the stupid thing the reason it feels like a failure is because then i had a pregnancy again that word successful and i'm really lucky that i didn't have huge health complications with him he was massive like there wasn't like worries my pregnancy but it was horror because I kept thinking he was going to die I did hundreds of pregnancy tests and I haven't been able to throw a single one away and I was thinking yesterday if there ever is when there is eventually a climate catastrophe and we're all underwater I'll be able to make a little raft for my children out of all of the thousands of pregnancy tests I did I was doing several a day it was the only way I could reassure myself I was pregnant because the progesterone makes you feel pregnant yeah but I'd had that before yeah and then the symptoms had gone and then I'd started bleeding so the progesterone you can't trust it you can't it's a horrible thing about IVF you feel pregnant as soon as you start doing those bloody pessaries hundreds of pregnancy tests and then I got obsessed with the ones which can tell you like plus three weeks or how much you are but then you sort of age out of that I went for scans all the time private scans and as I walked from the room I would think well what if he's died now yeah you poor thing you poor thing I think it's so common I think it's so common I I totally thank you so much talking about it because you've articulated things that I have felt in such a brilliant way and I've never heard anyone else do it and part of the reason that I have given up my not given up but let my fight for a child go is because I can't bear the thought of another miscarriage I've had three yeah and I also I'm too scared to get pregnant because I know I like you I would feel terrified every single moment and like you I have a drawer full of pregnancy tests from those and they fade over time they do yeah which is actually a sadness like oh it's sort of the final fading of something that did exist but yeah to all intents and purposes the world doesn't think it does and how is your pregnancy now with your second baby so number one I thought it would be easier I actually felt more neglectful because I've not been able to focus as much anxiety on him and whenever I do I feel anxious I mean it is anxiety how do you cope with the anxiety like what how do you get through it because nine months is just it's forever the first thing I do in the morning you know like people check their phones I literally just check the fertility app and I see it plus one day and you're just plus oneing towards sort of viability even though you know that's no guarantee of anything yeah and then you're just plussing it and the app tells you, oh, this week they can do this.

56:00And eventually at some point it says their lungs are ready to breathe oxygen. I don't think anything helps you deal with the anxiety. And I know that this is common for women who are infertile. Like it doesn't, I really hope there are women listening who are like, no, that didn't happen for me, I loved it. I got so jealous of people who thought a line on a pregnancy test was a baby. Imagine having that much uncomplicated faith in the world. There's a horrible documentary on Netflix about a woman who was murdered by a husband. and it's horrible because she's been murdered by her husband and she's got three children she's pregnant with her fourth and she's doing a video for her facebook and she says on the way to the first scan so excited because at this point you're always thinking is it one is it twins and I was like is it fuck what there's some people thinking is it twins not is its heart actually beating is it growing poor woman poor woman but there are some people who literally go oh shit I'm having a kid I totally hear you it forever changes the way you view the world and even that thing of baby announcements on Instagram, sharing the scan, having baby showers.

56:59These are things that I would never, had I ever got a lasting pregnancy, I would never have done. Well, I still don't like them. And I've had a child. People show their bumps in ways that I consider, I get a really odd reaction to it. And for years and years when I just couldn't get pregnant, I had a blinkers on actually. I just didn't see stuff. I was really spiky. I was especially spiky on stage. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I thought all my audiences were coming to my shows going, but yeah why is she not having kids I was so projected out but now I find there's this gratuitousness about bumps and with the promo for the book sometimes people want to take full photos of me it's like I do I will never stand there with my hand on my I will not do that pose I don't identify as that person that's not how I feel about this there's something I wanted to say to you based on an article that you wrote when your friendship book was coming out because it was about people because I've got a leg in both camps right I'm cuspium I'm an infertile woman who then had a child and I still don't identify as I couldn't even do NCT classes I couldn't be around people who were just who were just pregnant who thought it was this wonderful beautiful thing people say things like our body's doing these amazing things and to me it just feels like terror it feels like an accidental terror that I'm not in control of it was about someone saying about the love right to you it's not true you've never known love like yeah it's not true there's two things I have my problem with it number one I think it's how parents feel when their kids aren't there because when the kids are there you don't feel that way it's when you're feeling a glass a glass of wine at a wedding and a night off and you are thinking I do like them I think I think partly it's that it happened to me at a wedding yeah I know it's a wedding that's what I was imagining so I've only been out once since I had my son which was Emma Forrest book launch and it was lovely I still wouldn't have said that to anyone and it isn't how I feel about him actually I think you have an emotional spectrum and I had used up all my emotions before I was 40 when I had him I had had all the emotions it's but I also think it's people trying to convince themselves because it's so fucking horrible.

58:48Yes. It's drudgery. And I think they say it aloud and they say it aloud to other parents. And it's like, why do you need to add that on the end of every sentence? My son put like sweet potato that I just steamed him into my hair. And then they'll say, oh, but it's amazing, isn't it? It's like, no, we can just say the shit thing. He did a shit, it's a horrible boy. You can say that. I think they're trying to convince themselves when they say that out loud. I think the language is too simplified. It's too complex. no sentence covers it love is not the word oh I don't know it's not all of it so I thought why would you sit there that way I've never known love like it you're telling yourself that you're telling yourself you made the right life decision or it's okay or you can cope and you can go back it's drudgery I love you love is the appropriate yes okay yes how I feel yeah about you I am so grateful for your existence in this world well thank you I feel the same about you oh Oh, Sarah.