Sara Cox - ‘it made me feel a bit of a failed mum’

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0:25Welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that flips the traditional interview format on its head and asks guests about moments that they failed rather than succeeded and what, if anything, they learn along the way. I just wanted to remind you that for the first time ever, How to Fail is going on tour and will be presented by Hey You, the home of reality TV. Each show, I'll have a very special guest sharing their three failures on stage so you can expect the usual uplifting, hilarious and moving conversations. Tickets are on sale now. Head to feign.co.uk or follow the link in the show notes. You can hear more of us chatting and discussing your questions and failures over on Failing with Friends.

1:10This is the kind of thing you'll hear us talk about over there. So for me, getting older, the least of my worries, as long as all my bits of my body touch wood, work, and are in fine working order, even if they're not where they always used to be, then I'm just grateful for that.

1:34Although Sarah Cox is best known for being a broadcaster and author, it almost didn't turn out that way. She comes from a long line of, as she puts it, farmer, farmer, butcher, farmer, butcher, people growing cows and killing cows. And her childhood on her family farm in Lancashire almost had her following in her ancestors' footsteps. Instead, after growing up between her father's farm and her mother's pub in Bolton, Cox pursued modelling after leaving school and worked in South Korea, Milan and New York. After that, she became a TV presenter with stints on iconic 90s programmes such as The Big Breakfast and The Girly Show.

2:16But it was as a radio DJ that she found most popularity, presenting the Radio 1 Breakfast Show for three years. And I listened religiously. Cox is currently the host of Radio 2's Tea Time, the most listened to radio show in Europe, as well as being on our screens at the helm of the hugely successful BBC book show Between the Covers. As well as broadcasting about books, Cox writes them too. A well-received memoir in 2019 was followed by two novels, the latest of which, Way Back, was published in March this year. Way Back tells the story of Josie, a working-class Northerner who leaves behind a middle-class North London life to return to her Lancashire roots after her 23-year marriage ends.

3:05On the social media platform X, Cox once said her favourite movie quote of all time was from Pretty Woman. Big mistake. Big. Huge. Which is, I have to say, especially apt for this podcast. Sarah Cox, welcome to How To Fail. Hi, that was so lovely. It's so lovely to have you here. It's actually very intimidating, broadcasting in the presence of one of the great broadcasters. So thank you for gracing the How To Fail studio with your presence. It's lovely to be here with a podcasting legend. And that's the first time the phrase killing cows has been used in an intro to me. Thanks. A pleasure. I mean, your words just quoted back at you.

3:50I have to watch that, don't I? That's what's got me in trouble all these years, is basically the things I've said. What is your relationship with your own mistakes and failures, do you think? Well, I like to think, look, I feel like you just go on a journey in life and I try not to have regrets. There's been so much good that has come from the bad things that has happened to me that I can only be grateful that that was the journey I went on. Like, I can't really have any regrets about any of it because it's all come out in the wash. And, you know, where I landed was quite, you know, a happy place to be in the end.

4:30And that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have made little mistakes. I don't know. Is that an answer even? It is an answer. Absolutely. Yes. You know what? I'm not very good at answering questions. I'm much more further. I like want to swap places and have like some a piece of paper and a biro and be asking new things because it's really weird to be on the on the receiving end of it I think I'm a complete control freak that's really interesting I feel exactly the same as you by the way I do I prefer being on this side as well so thank you for trusting me how long have you been a control freak for is that a lifelong thing I always fooled myself I just told myself that I was very laid back.

5:13My mum used to always say, if you're more laid back, you'd be horizontal. And I think that something's happened over the years, or maybe it was always there. Maybe when I was little, youngest of five, traipsing around after my siblings, maybe I didn't really have any control then, you know, as a teenager, what was happening to me, early career. So now I feel like over the past couple of decades or so, I've become really quite controlling, I think, of my environment and of what I do and because I'm a forever frustrated perfectionist because I want things to be great and perfect but I can never quite make it that way.

5:51So I'm always in a slight state of not disappointment but miffed-ness. Yes or tension because sometimes that tension is what motivates you as well so it probably gives you a lot of drive. yeah and I grew up my mum was always she would always be saying if I just had another hour or so in the day and that's what I feel like that you know I should have that tattooed on me somewhere because that just sums up my attitude which is crazy really because I get a lot done in a day I don't know if it comes from my radio head I like back time my day you know by by 10 o 'clock I should be on the horse your horse Nelly yeah lovely Nelly Nelly who gets a shout out in your acknowledgements for way back.

6:36I mean, you said it's the first time I've mentioned Killing Cows, the introduction to How to Fail, but that's possibly the first time a horse has been acknowledged in a novel. I hope it is. Yes, she has to have some credit for providing, like I say in the acknowledgements, you know, just a moment to breathe and look at the skyline. And she provides that every day. I've been up there this morning. Really? Hence the fringe wash. That's why you're so glowing and gorgeous. So that idea of trying to get more into your day, I wonder if it also has its roots in being working class. And one of the things I thought you did so well in Way Back is you write about these telltale nuances of class.

7:16So Josie is married to someone who comes from a class. I mean, I sort of hate talking these terms because it's a bit inelegant. But he's had a very privileged upbringing and he doesn't really question it. And he's got this kind of nonchalance about life and spending money. And she's always more aware of what money means in terms of value. How much of that was taken from your own experience? All of it. every bit of it was, you know, my husband's just started reading my first novel, Throne, and he's had to stop. He started and he was like, oh, babe, I'm so proud. And I'm like, thanks for dipping into it.

7:54It's been out for a while. But I thought it was kind of cute that he downloaded it on his Kindle and he'd not read it before, but he's had to stop because he's like, there's so much of you in this book and it's kind of making him paranoid because there's a lot of dissatisfied women in my books. And he's like, oh, God. And he can really hear my voice in there. and very much so with Wayback. You know, my husband, he's incredible and he's my best friend. And when you've been raised working class and when you've seen your own mum hold down... My mum hates me talking like this, by the way, because we were so happy.

8:29You know, I do go a bit Angela's ashes. My mum's like, pack it in, it was fine. But I'm just so proud of her, you know, know, because she works so hard and I saw that throughout my whole life. So it really comes from a place of pride in my mum's toil and hard work. But, you know, when you grow up seeing you, especially your mum works so hard, you kind of, you know, you have this, this fear of, you know, the roof not being over your head anymore and falling behind on payments for things. And, you know, I just, and I luckily I'm still touching mud. I'm not in that position now, but I just feel like that's my biggest fear.

9:16And I think that's why I just work and work. And my husband will say, it's fine. You don't have to do the advert for tobacco. And, you know, he's like, you don't have to, it's fine. And I've just got this instinct in me to like slightly twitchy eyed, like, no, I've got to keep working when there's work, you've got to do the work. And that's very much from my upbringing, just the work ethic that my mum had. Have you experienced classism in the industry that you then found yourself in? Not in the industry, but I think just in general life, I feel like, you know, Josie in the book, you know, she comments about the chit chat with like the school mums at the pick up time and you know even though I made some great friends amongst the school moms there was also I found and this sounds awful but there was also a lot of women with a lot of time on their hands there's a lot of whatsapp groups going on and there's a lot of and it made me feel a little bit of a failed mom that you know I wasn't freshly baking you know 300 red velvet cupcakes for the, because I was working.

10:27I was trying to do 32 other things that day. So I couldn't just be this serene mothering goddess who could just, you know, always be there, all the parents' coffees or whatever, because I was kind of always going off to work. But the Northern and the class thing, especially the Northern thing is something that's just sort of, when you live in a different place to where you were raised, your accent is different. So you're always going to get people doing a little bit of your accent back at you which is you know it's fine I get you know I get the odd cabbie but then I'll do their accent you know what I mean a cabbie going to where are you from Yorkshire are you and all that and I'm like no no all that's absolutely fine.

11:09One of the very interesting things that you also do with Way Back is you portray an amicable divorce and it made me realise how rare that is in culture to have that kind of cultural portrayal Yeah. And I wondered again, like how much that was informed through your own experience, not only as someone who's been through a divorce, as have I, by the way, but your parents were divorced too. So how important was it for you to reflect the reality of? It's interesting that you say that's unusual in a book and I've had a few people say that to me and I'm quite pleased because I think it can happen like that.

11:45I think people can just fall out of love and love each other still but they're not in love and I just wanted to explore that a bit. Although it's the opposite of, maybe I was trying to. Wish fulfillment. Yeah, a little bit, I think. You know, my parents had a really tough time when they divorced. And in the 80s, you know, it was, they really struggled for years and years to be, they couldn't be in the same room and, you know, at family weddings and things like that. But it took a long time. It was my sister's wedding. So I must have been sort of 23 or something the first time I saw them in the same room.

12:26And before that, you know, it had been lots of sort of, you know, messages to and fro, you know, from my mum to dad, you know. I guess, you know, I think this isn't really, it's not my story to tell, even though I seem to be blabbing on about it. But, you know, I think my mum was heartbroken and I think she was angry. And I think she found herself in a situation and, you know, divorced from the man that she loved. And I think quite rightly, looking back now with my grown-up eyes in, on, she, you know, she was pissed off that she'd been treated badly and that, you know, she was in the situation that she was in.

13:04So I think it was hard for her to, you know, paper over the cracks and to pretend it was all okay because it wasn't. I am a huge fan of second marriages. Oh, me too. Oh, thank God. Not being so good. I know. You really appreciate when you have a partner in life. You're a team together. It just means so much. And I'm really grateful. And at first I think there was an element of that where we'd be like, I'm not good just because I'm better than that one. That gives me the fear, like I have a physiological reaction to the thought of if I hadn't met him and if I was still in the old situation. He did say to me this morning, Ben, he said, you're my favourite wife.

13:53And I said, you're my favourite husband so far. Just to keep him on his toes. That's so lovely. But he's lovely, yeah. Okay, let's get on to your failures. So your first failure is your failure to control a guest. And it's to do with an Ali G interview when you were presenting The Breakfast Show on Radio One. Tell us the story. so the year was 2002 and I was over 20 years ago now which seems completely unhinged I know okay so crazy and I was so young I mean when I so I do the math and I'm like 27 but I feel when I look back at that time and particularly that day I felt I feel like I was so young and I was definitely really unprepared and actually mistakes were made you know the interview shouldn't have been allowed to happen as it did.

14:43We were way too trusting of basically Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Ali G, because he wanted to do this interview. He was promoting, I always thought it was to promote his film, but it was to promote a single that he did with... Shaggy. Mr. Bombastic himself. Mr. Bombastic. And Ali G came on to the Radio One Breakfast show and we had obviously seven or eight million people listening. And the whole vibe with the Radio on Breakfast show back then was, it was kind of chaotic and kind of wild and fun and loose. And, you know, we wanted to make people laugh first thing in the morning. And that sort of element of chaos, you know, was kind of all part of the energy.

15:31And he came on to promote the song. And because he was being interviewed in character, he wasn't being interviewed as Sacha Baron Cohen, he was being interviewed as Ali G. So what happened was he provided us with the questions and then he'd written a script for his Ali G answers, which looking back now is I just don't think we do it now. Or if we did, we would. Well, as they say, lessons have been learned. And now it would probably be a pre-record if it was with a character who was trying to get as much publicity, who was a controversial character already and was trying to get as much publicity as possible.

16:14So anyway, Ali G comes in, you know, and he's got all the yellow and he's got the tash and the, you know, all that stuff. and we do the interview and my questions are really quite simple and his answers are kind of near the knuckle and a little bit racy and a bit cheeky but it wasn't that outrageous for breakfast. It was fine. And then I ask him a question and he starts to answer and what he does is he pretends, the gag is, the conceit is is that he doesn't want to swear live on the BBC So he spells out a swear word instead, but he spells out the wrong bit and then says the swear word. So that's the gag.

17:00He says, he spells out the word mother, M-O-T-H-E-R, and then says, clear as a bell, fucker. And at that point, like, just the world stops spinning for a second. It's just like, no. And I can't believe he said it. I looked at my producers and they just look shell-shocked and kind of giggle nervously. I kind of laugh. They played it back a couple of years ago when there was a big Radio 1 anniversary and I happened to be on a train and I happened to be tuned in and still it made me just feel so sick and so out of control. And I think I just sort of say, oh, and you hear me go, this is your fault, you tell it.

17:58And I'm talking to my producers because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just flailing around. Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I obviously know it's wrong and I need to somehow stop the interview. What do I do? And I think eventually I play a record and then, you know, I think he leaves. And then afterwards, you know, I sort of say sorry. And the headlines the next day, it was very much completely my fault. It was all on me. There was nothing. I mean, he was just described as, you know, comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, you know, his outrageous comedy creation and his character Ali G that did it.

18:40You know, there was no sort of shame put on him for stitching me up, essentially. He really stitched me up. And I think, I don't know Sasha at all, and, you know, I'm sure he did it because he wanted publicity, and it really, really worked, but it really did me in. And when I left the studio, because at the time I was married to a DJ, and we were really into clubbing and stuff, and I had on a T-shirt that says, that just said, dirty, dirty house music on the T-shirt because it was just any other normal day, you know, you go in and whatever. And the next day, the paps had been waiting outside when I'd got out after the show and they'd cropped the picture so it just said, dirty, dirty on my T-shirt.

19:30Dirty, dirty girl, it's all your fault, you know, and it was a man who'd come in and had just, you know, shouted fucker on a live BBC show. It was just, it was really tough. Yes. I mean, I think what comes across so clearly there is the amount of pressure you were under age 27. Yeah. At the helm of, and we can't overstate, for anyone who doesn't remember this or wasn't born then, like the level of fame that the breakfast show itself had, the level of kind of cultural importance it had in those days. Yeah, it was huge. Because, you know, people were just listening on their radios. You know, people weren't streaming.

20:16It was a real sort of appointment to listen. The radio on breakfast show was huge. And, I mean, it's still big. Any breakfast show is big. It's always the shop window to any station. But back then it really was. And he was a huge character. And a big guess for us to have. And at the time, I didn't feel too young to be handling it. But looking back, it never should have been allowed. I was also really shocked, and I shouldn't have been because we all know, you know, it's 20 years ago and it was a different time. But when I looked back at the cuttings in advance of this interview, how you were spoken about, written about in respectable newspapers, seemingly respectable newspapers.

21:01There was one in particular that said Cox, who was known for her lewd on air antics. And I was like, hang on a second. In the context of this, there's one person who's being quote unquote lewd, which is such a Victorian word anyway. And I was like, that's not my memory of what you were like as a presenter. You weren't lewd. You were hilarious and like funny and witty and all of those things. But it felt like as a culture, we could not compute that a woman could be doing that. Yeah. And also it was him. He was the one who'd said that on my show and I was the one who got the kick in the next day.

21:40A lot of the headlines were like, Cox forced to apologise, Cox apologises for, you know, and it was all about like how I'd messed up rather than what he'd done to me. But yeah, I mean, it'd be wrong of me to sit here and to, you know, there were occasional times where I would push the envelope a little bit and I would perhaps be fruity but I would always do it it would always try and be to get to a gag and to try and make people laugh it was never just for the sake of it and I always really like to be really open with my listeners and I think that's what people were quite charmed by and what they enjoyed was that I was quite real they didn't know what box to put me in basically that's that's been the story of a lot of my career where they just couldn't quite work out well hang hang on a minute, how do we label you then?

22:29Oh, you've got a sense of humour. You know, if it was a man, they'd be, again, like they used for Sacha Baron Cohen, I'd probably be like, you know, more like outrageous or outspoken or controversial or whatever. But instead it was, to your point, these Victorian lewd and, you know, rude, vulgar kind of. I want to come back to this, but I want to ask first of all about the term ladette. Yeah. Which is, that's when I came of age as well, like that time. Which at the time felt really freeing. It felt really freeing seeing you and Zoe Ball out in your slogan t-shirt sinking pints. Yes. Because again.

23:10I did it for you. I know, thank you so much. It sort of showed that there was a different way of being a woman. Yeah. But it also came with so much baggage. So how do you feel about that term now? I kind of hate the term, but I've always hated it. But I think I just hate it literally of that collection of letters where they've cobbled together the word ladette meaning because I hated if they'd come up with a brand new word. Totally agree. that didn't have the word lad in it, then it'd be fine, which meant women spending their own earnings, having fun, going out with their friends, having independence, not being afraid, you know, not worried about being glamorous or feminine or, you know, ladylike, but actually just being themselves and having a laugh and being really good mates with other girls and supporting.

24:02If they'd come up with a brand new word, then I would have been... So the vibe of Ladette and the fact that they tried to minimise, you know, to try to just hold us down a little bit with that was that you're just trying to be like the boys. And we were never trying to be like the boys. I didn't that to me that didn't that didn't make sense. I'm the youngest of five and my two older sisters, especially my eldest sister, you know, she always had good girl mates. she was all that she was when I was little I grew up because she's like 12 years older than me I'd you know when I was little she'd be going off with her pals to Blackpool and my mum always had great friends you know and would know how to have a good time so I felt like we were just doing it in the public eye and they just suddenly had to cobble together a label and that's what they they came up with so I I don't like the word ladette but I'm proud of that time that we were able to just be ourselves and have fun but the the interesting thing with the with the Ali G thing is that it was it was 20 years later so that was 2002 and then 2022 I'm on All Request Friday on Radio 2 and it happened again where somebody came on and swore but I knew exactly what to do because after the Ali G thing I think you know I think that it almost became like a rule of what to do when this happens in fact I know that you know they had to the bosses had to suddenly think okay because I don't think it was an issue before if people when you've got live radio that if people are going to come on and try and swear we have to have some sort of guidelines about what DJs are expected to do the pattern that you follow the actions that you take immediately and I think that was explored and decided on in in the wake of the Ali G thing so you know when campaigners get a law named after them it's a bit like yeah like the motherfucker law Sarah Cox motherfucker law and it is that you apologize you have to stop the guests they can't be on the show anymore you've got to apologize you've got to play a song you've got to move on you know when it happened 20 years later I do all requests Friday and someone rings up and do you know about this no oh um so we get we've got an amazing phone answer as the phone operatives they come in they're brilliant um and they get all the details but and it's a it's a request show and it's every single link you're speaking to a different caller and um this caller gets put through to the desk and there's a looking back there's a couple of moments he says one of his kids is called Boris right and it rings and there's when I think back I'm like at the time I was like huh but you're live and it's fine and people are nervous how they speak and then he said that he had a I think he said he had a son but then he said kids and then it just like it didn't quite tally up but you know you're live on air it's radio too it's all request friday it's all vibes so he asked for queen don't stop me now and um and then he we're chatting and he's like yeah queen don't stop me now and i'm like okay whatever you know lewis or whatever it's called and then he goes oh um sarah and i'm like yep and he goes Matt Hancock is a cunt and so look and this is my reaction I'd be terrible on my radio yeah because you laughed at them so you have to not presumably you have to not laugh well I mean to be fair it's fine retelling it because it all went okay in the moment now especially the last thing you want to do is laugh like afterwards it's like a time like oh my god you know so in the moment and when you listen back to the clip of uh the Matt Hancock moment I'm I say out loud I commentate on what I'm doing basically because I know the rules so well by now that I sort of go oh sorry about that and I immediately pulled down his fader so he can't say anything else so I've cut the caller off and I'm like I'm really sorry it's live radio I know this kid's listening I'm really very very sorry about that and I play a song and move on and it was and I was so calm and I knew exactly what to do and it felt really nice because it was it'd come full circle it was 20 years since you know the debacle with old Sacha Baron Cohen and it'd come 20 years and it felt really nice to be that in control and you know on socials people were really nice about it and you know they were they were tweeting the clip and it got in the papers but it was all because it was all handled well and it felt really nice it just felt like the learning yeah the first time it happened with Ali G did you feel a sense of shame I'm getting the sense that you didn't you weren't necessarily that supported at that time yeah I did I I felt I actually in myself didn't feel any shame at all I felt like people thought I should have been ashamed because they tried to pile all the blame on me but I could kind of see through it I kind of knew that I'd not done anything wrong I hadn't sort of poked and prodded him to that point and dared him and encouraged it I was just such a sitting duck because it was all scripted for his side and not for mine

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30:50Your second failure is your failure to farm. Yeah. Tell us about this. I mean, where do I start? Well, I guess it's a tough one. When I was younger, I'd be like, I felt like the world was so my oyster that even through my 20s, definitely, Even through my 30s, I thought I could still be, I might be an oceanographer at some point. I might live in New York or probably have a place in Madrid and I might retrain and be this. And then it dawns on you that actually you're probably not going to do those things. And the biggest thing for me that I always thought I would do would be, you know, was that I'd be on a farm.

31:33and when I was younger I always thought I would, it sounds really bad because I always thought I'd be a farmer's wife which is interesting so not a farmer but actually married to a farmer and supporting them on the farm and it being a joint venture you know and I would have that lifestyle where you know I would be the one making a big pile of hambulties and going up the field with it during haymaking and I think that just goes back obviously to what I saw with my dad and with my childhood and everything. We never grew up in the middle of the countryside. My dad's farm is on one side it's countryside and on the other it's sort of like an estate you know it's kind of semi-rural.

32:23So it's not like I'm in the city and I'm like a country mouse in the city like terrified but I always thought I'd have I don't know more space and that I'd just be you know on a farm maybe there was there's five of us and none of us have have farmed and I think that's quite sad and maybe because I was the youngest I thought maybe it'd fall to me eventually you know my dad's got his farm and it's he's a he's a tenant on this farm so it was never that thing of like the farm will be handed down and there's thousands of acres you know somewhere in Sussex that's yours yeah you know it was always quite a small working farm and still is now my dad's still on there with support from my brother so wow but you know is there something about the rhythm of farming that you liked the the way that the day was parceled out I'm probably quite rose-tinted about farming you know there'll be people who farm who listen like you have no idea love do you know what I mean because I know that it's a real vocation and maybe that's partly maybe it's more that it's in my my blood and that's what just drives me to want to do it in some form and I hope to at some point um maybe you know the battle is on to try and get a little place with a bit of land somewhere out of London I don't know if I'll ever do it I don't know if it's the rhythm or more the kind of the realness of it I never finish a radio show and then step back and hands on hips and go that was good you know what I mean it's kind of much more it's hard to pin down where I just like the practicality you know the practical side and I love farming people and I love horsey people because I feel like they're no nonsense and maybe that's where this comes from a little bit as well.

34:21When you work in TV for a number of years you feel, you know, I feel like I've been dicked over and lied to a few times and I feel like I've been promised things and then haven't got them, you know, and you feel like sometimes a creative career you can get a bit of a kick in and it doesn't seem that honest. And I feel like farming and dealing with animals is more an honest, you're dealing with animals who are just more trustworthy. Yes, that makes total sense. Yeah, does it? Yes, that's such a beautiful way of expressing it. Yeah. Talking of your career and the media industry, did you lose your job on Radio 1 when you were on maternity leave?