213. Bryony Gordon

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. I am sick to the back teeth of, frankly, mediocre men, always mediocre men, thinking that I'm a difficult woman for standing in my majesty and asking for what I need, you know. So I am honoured to be considered a difficult woman. It is a really debilitating condition that does not get treated with the seriousness that it should do. And people sort of joke and they always say, oh, I'm a bit OCD, you should see my sock drawer. And I'm like, oh, fuck off with your sock drawer. Because you must want to shout at them, this is what it's like with OCD. Yeah, it's torturous.

0:47Speaking of pants, you know what I'm going to ask about next. No, I can't for the life of me. She is kind of famous for running marathons in her pants and bras. You could have just said Bryony's kind of famous. For lots of things. One of them is you run marathons in your pants and you're training to do the next one. It's in May, isn't it? No, it's next weekend. What? What?

1:20You will definitely know Bryony Gordon. She's a one-woman whirl of industry and purpose. She's in ceaseless production and motion. She's a journalist, author, broadcaster and podcaster. She's a Daily Mail columnist now after decades on The Telegraph. She's the host of the Life of Bryony podcast now, but she used to host the Mad World podcast, Bryony, where gnashing of teeth, she grabbed top names like Prince Harry. She's the author of many bestsellers. She's the mother of one. she's 10 years sober she's to be seen on the sofa next to giles and nick and thomas warbrick she's running the marathon and she's publishing her debut novel people pleaser in the same week in her own words i'm a fucking legend standing in my majesty welcome to difficult women brownie gordon i'm so it's just such an honor to be on a podcast called difficult women i i i was thinking about this on my way here like what it says about a person who calls you a difficult woman I know and you know why I've called it difficult women because you remember the hot mic moment yes of course of course yeah yeah Clark Theresa May bloody difficult woman and also I'm so glad you said you were honored to be on it because so many women come in and they say oh I don't want to be thought of as difficult and I'm like why the hell not I do want to be thought of as difficult I really do more and more.

2:47And I didn't want to ever be thought of as difficult. But as I get older, I do. And that's the I've written this book called People Pleaser, which is about exactly that, which is like this paralyzing fear. we have Rachel I don't know if you have this but I definitely of like am I going to be in trouble am I going to rock the boat am I going to make someone else's like life difficult you know and I am sick to the back teeth of frankly mediocre men always mediocre men thinking that I'm a difficult woman for standing in my majesty and and asking for what I need you know um so I am honoured to be considered a difficult woman and I hope that I continue to be considered a difficult woman and the only reason that I stop being considered a difficult woman is because we because a podcast like this and people like you and the work that we're all doing mediocre men stop seeing women asking for what they need as difficult and start seeing them as just very normal human beings there is such a long conversation to be had about how far we have all come baby but how far we have still got to go the last piece I wrote on Substack was about the amount of abuse I get below the line whenever I put my name in print but I want to get back to your book people pleaser your your debut novel which is bloody brilliant thank you so much and every word I was like yes yes yes but not in not in that way in when Harry met Sally I would have and very happy if it wasn't that way.

4:21I want to start with your actually quite interesting and not entirely happy childhood even though it was on paper perfect and cozy cat called Moppet loving mother. God you know everything about me. Rachel does her homework you started recognizing in yourself that a slight mental disorder and I think we should start with that because it's informed so much of your work since and why you do what you do since which has brought you to the point you are now which is as you say you have no fucks left to give so let's start with you as a little girl in your childhood bedroom yeah okay well actually even just hearing you say that made me feel a bit kind of emotional because it's only really in my mid-40s and in the last couple of years that I've realized how unwell I was as a child like I always knew I had obsessive compulsive disorder but it really sort of edged into psychotic delusions episodes where I really believed things were out to get me like I believed I mean I've kind of spoken about this before but I I believed that I was pregnant with an alien that was going to like jump out of my I saw that I saw that um like I saw a clip of alien three you know and the chest busting and all of that and but I was genuinely terrified and uh I was just I just spent my childhood in terror I would say and and that isn't actually you know and actually most of my life has been sent spent in a state of terror Rachel when I think about it but yeah so I was as you say there was you know on the face of it nothing like a very middle class upbringing in Chiswick you know I went to private school i had a cat called moppet you know siblings i have i have two siblings i have a sister called naomi who's two years younger than me and have a brother called rufus what a good name uh who is 12 years younger than me he's a mere babe yeah yeah okay have you identified and since that you realized this in your 40s any trigger for what set you off as a child with the ocd and the intrusive thoughts and all of those things i i feel like um what do i feel like i i feel what i think ocd is and what i've come to see it as is your brain's very sophisticated way of trying to keep you safe yeah um so it creates these very narrow lines with within which you have to kind of stay and of course it doesn't make you feel any more safe it makes you feel far far less safe um and I think that for whatever reason you know I I don't I kind of I always hesitate to get into that kind of like let's say laming parents or anything can I just say before you go on that my mother was hospitalized for the worst case of OCD the Maudsley had ever seen when I was seven so this is something I've lived with too because I've had a parent with it yeah and what you said about trying to make your family safe or feel safe is exactly what my mother said she had to go through rituals otherwise we would all die yeah and then when I read that about you I thought god you know this is a common theme for people with OCD they do these things because yeah you feel unsafe and you want to you want to have some sort of control uh and yeah and i'm really sorry that your mother went through that and you you know it was it is a really debilitating condition that does not get treated with the seriousness that it should do uh and people sort of joke and they always say oh i'm a bit ocd you should see my sock drawer and i'm like oh fuck off with your sock drawer you know you want to must want to shout at them this is what it's like yeah It's torturous.

8:27And it is it is a it is a terrible, painful, like almost physically painful illness. And it's a torment. And yeah, so from a very young age, the first way it manifested for me was I was convinced I was dying of AIDS. so it was and what i've since learned is that what ocd tends to do is attach itself to the hysterias of the day so in the early 90s of course there were these kind of terrifying and very tombstone shaming if you have sex yeah there you are you you're ip and you won't know that you have it necessarily you know that was always the kind of that was the thing you could you could have it without knowing you've had you had it and my brain went well hang on then maybe you've got it and even though I was 12 and had never had sex it was I was a long way off taking drugs and you know I I was essentially wearing like floral Laura Ashley skirts do you know what I mean and but my brain was convinced that I had AIDS or that I was going to get it and I would wash my hands obsessively till they bled I would say phrases that I would hope make make the make me you know not have like I would say things like HIV negative I would I would you know I would it was just everything I couldn't and in time I couldn't leave really the house you know and I would sleep with the toothbrush under my pillow because I was scared I would infect my family when I look back my mum had just had rufus right so there was an I was 12 so I was just before I got my first period right so you're this kind of like hormonal you know volcano sort of waiting to erupt I guess and so I do think that was that was what was was going on and um I became terrified I think that I was going to infect my little brother, you know, that was, you know, there was this baby, there was this newborn baby in the house.

10:40And then over time, and it kind of came on very, very, very, very quickly. And it was very intense for a couple of months. And then just almost as quickly as it came on, it disappeared. But then it came back a few years later. And it was this fear that I might have hurt someone, that I might have done something terrible and blanked out in horror what like murdered your whole family not murdered my family but like maybe murdered someone on my way home from school or hurt a child so again at the time then the late 90s the hysteria of the day had moved into it was like sort of like paedophilia wasn't it do you remember that do you remember like newspapers running campaigns where paediatricians were being shaved yes do you I do, yeah, because they confuse paedophile and paediatrician.

11:31Martha's, no, what was it, Sarah's Law, the Sarah Payne? Yeah, yeah. Did you, how close were you to your mother, who seems to be quite busy having more children, and I think working as well? Yeah. Your mother's a journalist, right? She is, yeah. Jane. How did you manage to communicate that you were going through this private mental torment to your parents? um i don't think i did because how do you tell someone that you think you're a serial killing paedophile it must have been it's just so you're like 15 you must have been you must have been terrified for years the world yeah my whole life racial has been sent uh spent in a state of terror and it's like i said still to this day more or less is i'm i'm incredibly hyper vigilant like I'm like a meerkat always waiting for what's the dangerous thing around the corner, you know, but I'm better at it.

12:31But that's my kind of nervous system has been primed to be like, and that's what I'm trying my best to unprime it from being, you know. But yeah, it was, yeah, not very nice. It was really not very nice. But, you know, alongside all of that, And this is the reality for a lot of people, somehow managing to kind of just do all of those things, you know. And a lot of us do. And I think as well. Sorry, I'm going to say something so trite. Don't worry. Go for it. I love trite. I mean, I can't believe this is coming out of my mouth. I love corny, cheesy, go for it. Do you think, given how much you've actually achieved in your life with OCD and all these anxieties, it is your superpower?

13:18superpower no i don't think sorry no i i i know i understand to you brianie brianie i'm gonna wave a magic wand and i'm gonna have taken that away from your whole life your ocd your anxiety your your fears that your family were going to burn in a house fire unless you lay awake would you say yes take it away yes so yeah okay absolutely i totally would but that said i that's not possible so we roll with what we're given and yeah I do think there's an element that's very obsessive I heard someone say the other day someone said to me there's pit bulls that let go of things quicker than you do Briony You're dogged

14:08I mean writing a book between leaving one national newspaper and starting with another or writing a book on maternity leave, as I think you did. I mean, I was like, you totally let the side down there, Brownie. You know what I did? During your maternity leave. Yeah, but I was in a state of terror and hypervigilance, Rachel. I didn't think I was letting the side down. I was just terrified. I was terrified. I was like, I have to do this. Okay, so I've got to ask another really embarrassing question. Given that I, after my second child, didn't even get to the corner shop, which was the chemist in a bloodstain nightie for six months and you managed to write a book.

14:45Do you think you self-medicate with work? Yes, almost certainly. But also what I would like to say to you, Rachel, is that you couldn't get to the corner shop after your second child. I didn't have a second child and that was quite a conscious decision. I would not have had the career I've had if I'd had another child. Just wouldn't have done. Like these books are my other babies. You know, there is no way. And I always think this like there is just no way on God's green earth that I could have done the amount of work I've done with more than one child. No way. And that's just reality. Did having a child, which is a hormonal tempest in itself, and you have pregnancy hormones, which my mother always described as like having the central heating on, and you sort of feel weirdly buoyant, however miserably tired and sick you are, because you're on a mission.

15:43And then you have the baby, and then there's this hormonal crash, and I'm just wondering, have you written about that? I mean, I presume you have, because I found that quite hard. It always took me a long time to recover from the baby. weirdly this is gonna sound so weird i i don't recall that time being particularly any harder than other parts of my life and i and okay so like initially the first couple of weeks i was like everyone fuck off my life is ruined and over and i'm a ruin yeah and i remember I remember like going for a walk in the park and seeing families with happy, happy children and running around.

16:26And I remember thinking quite profoundly, I will never be that we will never be that happy, which was the baby blues. However, that said, I think I was used to a certain amount of hypervigilance by that point. So having a baby, I was kind of like, oh, this I was like, guys, guys this i've been living like this you know keeping everything sterile for the last like you know 20 years of my life it was a bit like when covid happened and everyone panicked i was like my nervous system was like this is this is what i've been telling you this is gonna happen since 1991 you know so i was i don't i do quite well in intense uh i do quite well when this when the shit hits the fan.

17:15I mean, I am the friend that people go to when they're getting divorced or when they're dying. I'm there. I don't, I don't, I will show up and I will hold you, you know, in your worst fucking darkest moments. Your daughter's what, in her teens now? She turned 13 last week. I knew it. I knew she was 12, but I thought there was a chance she could have been 13. We're not going to say who she is. You're married to a financial downlist, but you describe yourself as the main breadwinner. Yes. He loves that. He must really love that. Well, suck it up, dude. No, he does genuinely love that. Well, it must be great because you're on the Mail, which is still, I think, one of the last great payers on Fleet Street.

18:06Well, it's also one of the last great newspapers. newspapers oh it's a terrific paper yeah it really is a terrific paper that honestly blows me away the levels of talent and professionalism that i witness there daily daily do you go in or do you work from home i mostly work from home i go in once a week to record the podcast okay i if life of briny can we just say is the best name for a podcast I think some of our listeners will be too young to get it but I get it I'm glad you do so I go in and it's probably just as well because if I don't if I worked in an office I would never get anything done people are like, probably could you just go away because I'm just like so it's better that I'm at home in my pants writing so I actually do the work I'm supposed to do speaking of pants, you know what I'm going to ask about next no I can't with a life of me.

19:07Bryony is kind of famous for running marathons in her pants and bras. You could have just said Bryony's kind of famous and just left it at that. For lots of things. One of them is you run marathons in your pants and you're training to do the next one. It's in May, isn't it? No, it's next weekend. What? What? What are you doing sitting here rather than pounding the pavement? Because I'm in taper mode. The best bit of marathon training is the three weeks before when you do your final long run. I do my final long run over the Easter weekend and we were in Spain and it was like it was like so hot and I thought what am I doing and I was like were you in your pants another I well I had pants but I had other stuff other stuff on it was holy week it was holy week and also I was by myself in Spain I just didn't wasn't sure how well that would go down but um and I was going in my brain I was like just another 30 kilometers to the taper, 20 kilometers to the taper, 10 kilometers to the taper, five kilometers to the taper.

20:07I just don't know how you do it. Because I'm mental. It must make you feel so good afterwards that you think, I don't know, I don't get running. My kids do. It's a generational thing. You're younger than me. It is the last thing I want to do. I play tennis, you know. There you go. That's your, I would rather chew off my arm than play tennis okay but it just seems so penitential that's that's why i like it no but it doesn't you see i think the first 20 minutes of running are really hard and most people just give up because it's really hard but then they give up before the miracle happens because at like minute 21 suddenly your body says oh my god we've got to produce some endorphins and natural painkillers because we're obviously in we're obviously running away from a lion or something like that and so to start feeling good then then you're like i could just carry on forever so the longer i go which is why i marathon distance is good because the more i'm going the better i feel i mean that's true to a certain point up to about 25 kilometers and then you go i have to say i take my hat off um i want to talk more about your other books actually oh okay before we get back to people pleaser and the mad mad world of journalism which has given us both fantastic careers but um i just want i do want to talk about something i wrote once that i thought was clever which was newspaper journalism is not black and white it's still pink and blue and it's all about how women get siloed into writing about certain things and then men are allowed to go off to cover you know Stranger Formals.

21:52But the first book I read of yours. Oh, I'm sorry that you've read number one. I'm amazed. I love People Pleaser. I think it's a really accomplished and sharp first novel. And you can use that for the payback. Thank you so much. Thank you. The wrong knickers. Literally, I thought, I'll never enjoy this. But my Christ, it starts with you having shagged Russell Brand and finding yourself in a garden or something. How does it start, the wrong knickers? It starts, no, no, it didn't. No, it starts with a guy giving me back someone else's knickers. Oh, that's it, in bed, saying, I think these are yours.

22:30And being like, these are pretty knickers. And I was like, yeah, they are, but they're not mine. Yeah, that was the kind of like... A decade of chaos. I cannot. That book, I did have to look at it the other day for something. And I was like, what the fuck was I thinking? And you went to interview Russell Brand and you ended up spending well oh yeah but that so what i did i did i was sent i mean looking back it would never it would never happen today because uh but no i actually on a serious level no i was like 25 and i was sent to interview him and he was i didn't know anything i mean obviously i knew what i knew about him because i'd researched him but he wasn't the you know he was presenting like big brother's little brother yeah and he spent the whole interview saying can I kiss you and then he got hold of my number and he sort of bombarded me but literally bombarded me and you know looking back if I knew what I like knowing what I know now I would be like red flags but of course I was like oh he's so funny and he's so famous and he's a comedian and he's handsome and you know and he's different and I felt it was like there was real pick me energy going on there for me at the time which is true for you know it was true for a lot of my 20s and yeah I do shudder a bit when I think back about that particular was it can I just ask it was it one one and done um or did it go on for more than one night no it was it was it was a weird it was a Weird.

24:06It was, yeah, I don't. Okay, you don't need to. Yeah, I don't. But I think your titles are so brilliant. The Wrong Knickers, Mad Girl. I mean, who wouldn't read a novel? I mean, a book called Mad Girl, a memoir. Eat, drink, run. You got this glorious rock bottom. I think that's absolute heaven. No such thing as normal. Let down your hair, mad woman. I mean, you're showing your arc. And then people pleaser. And all the other ones are non-fic. But they are memoirish. and you delve very much into your own life and times and experiences and your own cray. And I think someone might ask you, not me, because I know the sort of person you are and the kind of writing you do, is have you ever regretted putting so much of yourself out there?

24:52No. Your bulimia, your weight, your drugs, your drinking, the sex, the wrong knickers, Russell Brand? No, I don't regret it. I mean I might not write those things now but they were off their time they I I felt the need to do it at the time and the thing that all of I hope that the thing that has driven each book I've done is this need I have which is to talk about to talk about the things that have made me feel really bad about myself in the hope it makes other women feel better about themselves does that make sense so like even the wrong knickers which you know but i felt such shame in my 20s that i was for my pick me energy and wanting a boyfriend so much and and and also you know when i was writing the wrong knickers i don't think i was aware that i was in active like addiction and alcoholism for the whole of my 20s you know i was in total denial and And so I don't, I don't, no, I don't regret any of them because I'm proud of them.

26:01I'm proud of them. And I do sometimes read back and go, God, you know, Bridie, you're a really good writer.

26:13You're a total natural writer. I mean, it must just, it reads as if it's just flowing out. Was the novel as easy? Um, novels are just, I didn't have no idea of how different a novel was. Like, give me a soul-bearing memoir about the time that I rock-bottomed on alcoholism and cocaine addiction any day. They are the toughest thing, I think, you write. So, yeah, so a memoir, you send it in and the editor goes, oh, thanks, this is brilliant, a few marks here, there. But they're like, this is what happened to you. like they can't they don't say perhaps we need to you know and you think god i'm just i'm so brave i'm so brave and honest and you pat yourself on the back and off you go to worry about what everyone's going to think of it a novel you send i you send the first draft in and they're like feel sick they're like thanks for that so and then they go away for a couple of weeks and then they come back with with a novel in itself of of notes and a kit kit duval this the amazing author who i remember her saying to me because i was judging the women's prize for fiction when uh what like last year and she said to me that she describes the first draft as a throat clearing oh goodness me and so then you have to and then you know so it's a it's a far more of a team effort i suppose you know with your editor is like it's it's you know they come back with suggestions and which characters you need to develop a bit more and all of that so but I very much enjoyed it you enjoy writing it I enjoyed creating a world but also it's a kind of revenge novel I mean in a way because I mean come on let's just be honest a woman on a newspaper and this is what Olivia Greenwood the heroine of your debut is she's fresh out of fucks and she has she I don't want to do it to spoilers but she has a kind of moment and then she suddenly decides I'm not going to be that person who's come into the office for 20 years and made nice I'm going to be difficult and it's uh and you know all the what ensues from that epiphany that she has a game-changing encounter with a younger woman called rose who i suggest is the alter ego right no slightly the she says the things you would say if you were disinhibited from all your sense of obligation and duty and fear of about having to be a woman in a certain place in a certain way yeah yeah and then she wakes up one morning and she can only she can't people please anymore it's incredible such joy and it's a bit i suppose it is a bit it's a it's a revenge novel in so much as it is all the things you know it's it was a bit of it was like a imagining like imagine so okay we all have this thing don't we where we stand in the shower in the morning and we have these imaginary arguments with all the people we've built up resentments with in the previous 24 hours right and the things you're going to say to them and the things you're going to say to them and in the shower you were like i sound like shiv from succession like i am so fucking sassy right and then in reality i'm going and you're yes sir no sir my big toaster in reality i'm cousin greg and and so in this novel was my sort of like what if you could be that it's a coming out novel really it's about a woman stepping into her power yeah and all those things stepping into her majesty of course can we just before we finish because i've got to get to your difficult time i just which one i know exactly i do want to talk about how gendered journalism still is brianie gordon yes and otherwise you would not have written this novel let's face it well yeah i mean that is my experience in the in my 20s and 30s was you know it was yeah it was they called we called they called when I was at the Telegraph they called the they called features the features department the Cotswolds and I put and this is it was nice and pretty yeah and this is all this is all ended up in People Pleaser do you know what I mean like those and the foreign desk yeah the Baghdad and the and the experiences in this book are very much based on the experiences of my friends and I in our 20s basically in the Telegraph well you know I'm a columnist there, so we've got to be a bit careful.

30:58Yeah, but also other newspapers. Like, you know, you have friends. An newspaper. Yeah, just in the media. But also, I think it could be, it's probably, you know, it could be transferred to any industry, frankly, where, you know, the men are given, cut sort of the slack and, you know, they're allowed to go out and get drunk. But they're not asked to write about the time, you know, their Tampax got stuck in the office loo or whatever. You know what I mean? No. they're not asked to write well that's all for the Labour Party they're not asked to write about their postnatal depression they're not asked to write about their personal issues and if they are asked to write about their if they do write about their personal issues they're celebrated they win the Pulitzer Prize for it they get the Orwell fucking prize you know I totally agree I totally agree and I have been dismissed for my journalism so many times and I just think well fuck you I don't I'm done doing it you know I'm done caring about it and actually you know it is it's so important writing about this personal feeling you know your experience yes it is but I want it to be a bit more egalitarian I want men to have to write about the time they couldn't perform or well they shat the bed you You know, but only women.

32:23And they have a whole section in some papers, which we won't know, where they get to write. They're asked to write about these things. And I've got I've got a collection of all the commissions I've had asking me to write about deeply personal things that no man would ever be asked to write. Yes. Well, what I would say to that is, aren't we lucky as women that we get to connect with each other with these pieces emotionally and talk about the dark shit that we do have to go through? Like, aren't we lucky? Because actually, it's men that are missing out. Okay, no, I think there's something in that.

33:04You know, like, they don't, they're like, well, you can only talk about serious things. Well, actually, it is serious talking about the time that I shat my bed or whatever, you know, but like all the time I woke up in a pool of my own vomit because I was in alcoholism. These things are fucking serious. Right. And the more that I can talk about them, the more that I can move through them and other people can move through them. And we can all be happier, more content, less terrified. It also normalises a lot of universal experiences, but I don't think men are asked to normalise those universal experiences in quite the same way.

33:40Now, it may seem pathetic or OTOs or whatever the word is to ask you, author of a book called Glorious Rock Bottom, to tell difficult women listeners about one of your most difficult times or the time you've had to be most difficult, but this is your moment. Ooh, okay. The time, my most difficult time. um there's always usually the first thing it was it was having to get sober it was probably having to get sober not probably it was it was it was um realizing i was an alcoholic and i needed to get help for that and not having any idea how i was going to do that like not not wanting to carry on drinking but not knowing how I could live a life without drink uh and and that was the most difficult terrifying awful moment of my life and I thought my life was over I thought I'd fucked it you know I really thought I'd fucked it little did I know Rachel I it only just started you know it only just got going I will after this after recording this podcast with you I will go to an AA meeting and my soul will just be bathed you know in in the wondrous the wondrous glory of 12 steps and I just feel incredibly lucky actually so you know and it has taught me how to be difficult without having to resort to substances so like i'm holding my face even as i talk about being difficult you know whatever but um so i it has enabled me to be a difficult woman and i and if you had told me 10 years ago you know sobriety will make you a difficult woman i would have gone i don't want it i don't want it give me a fucking bottle of vodka then and a gram of cocaine but that is fantastic it's wonderful you know it's wonderful that it has given me you know alcohol gives you dutch courage but sobriety makes you properly brave briny gordon on that note i'm going to thank you very very much for being this week's difficult woman and i feel rather envious of your your next engagement as an aa you're welcome to come with me yeah no i might i mean i probably need it i mean i wasn't going to drink last night and i ended up having a most glass of the most delicious 2020 claret you only had one glass i only had one glass i could never do that loser i don't understand that is more mental to me than alcoholism i'm like when i see someone have one glass i'm like are you okay it makes me feel really anxious i am that person yeah no so we're so different well done brani thank you thank you rachel for having me thank you for listening to another episode of my difficult women podcast just remember to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure the latest episode is always ready to go every Friday afternoon.

36:48Bye.

36:51This has been a Global Player original production.