Tabitha Webb

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0:36Hello and welcome to The Midpoint. My guest today is someone who seems to be a master at rebuilding. Tabitha Webb spent over a decade as one of the UK's best known fashion designers, dressing everyone from the Princess of Wales to Claudia Winkleman, building a brand from nothing. But fashion was never the whole story. Alongside it, she's quietly built a second career as a novelist and her debut book, No Regrets, earned her a phone call from Jilly Cooper, telling her to keep writing. Her brand new novel, Playing the Field, is about exactly the kind of reinvention that so many of us are quietly hoping for in midlife.

1:09Starting again, maybe going somewhere new and on your terms. She's also a mum of two, a podcaster and someone who's never been precious about admitting life is a juggle. The chaos, the contradictions, the bits that don't always make it into Instagram. So I want to talk to her about all of that. Reinvention, risk, rewriting the story at 50 and why this might be the boldest, funniest work of her career to date. Let's go chat to Tabitha Webb. Tabitha Webb, welcome to The Midpoint. I know, it's so exciting to be here. I feel like I know you already, actually. We've done that thing where people who follow each other on social media try and work out if they've physically been in the same room before.

1:44Isn't that horrific? I actually don't know whether we've maybe embraced it or not in the past. With your previous life, and let's go back at various iterations of Tabitha Webb. Okay, yeah, I know there's been a lot of midpoints, I feel like. I've really started a lot, yeah. But I love that. I think in the introduction, I mentioned the fact that you're good at restarting and good at re-evaluating. Clearly from the outside, it would appear. And you're not wedded necessarily to going, it has to be this or it has to be that. I know. I keep seeing these memes on social media about ADHD. Not that I think it is a meme, but I'm like, God.

2:16And then my friends go, well, of course, of course, that's you. Of course, you've got it. You know, as I start a new business every six months. But I think it's also this really fearless thing that I have that I'm not fearless about a lot of things, by the way. Like I have hideous anxiety and health anxiety that cripples me. But as far as like business and taking risks, I just don't have any fear about it at all. I will just go, oh, there's a gap in the market. I'm going to try that. And if that doesn't work, I'll go, well, that didn't work. Let's try that. And if somebody says, do you want to do this?

2:41I'm like, yeah, let's give it a go. Which is, is that stupid? I don't know. No, because obviously it doesn't always completely come off in the way that you might have intended at the beginning. but that hasn't put me well that's but that's great because i think you know the other thing that the meme that constantly gets fed to everybody is you know that failure is the biggest teacher and you know that's the only way you're going to succeed and all those entrepreneurs that we hear about who had 27 richard branson he's like my idol i'm like how many times have you gone bankrupt because i'm right on your tail buddy that's that's a bit how i feel but i started my life here in soho in in advertising and i was a producer and i i dropped out of uni so i started producing really young and it was in the days when you didn't really need to go to uni you know so by the time all my mates came out I was already producing like two million pound budgets and and I was like well I'm earning 22 grand what the hell there's got to be more out there I've got to be able to do something else working for somebody else as well working with somebody else working for the head of M &C Saatchi whose bonus got circulated and I was like hold on a second you're taking home two million I'm taking home like 250 quid and I've worked 18 hours a day sleeping in edit suites I'm not sure how this pans out for me and I thought well you know I could end up as head of TV at an ad agency which would be great but then what then where do I go and that's constantly in my mind it's like but then what do I become and my mum who was a store worker the whole time we grew up you know my parents were divorced and she worked three jobs put us all through school and I think me and my sisters all got that from her that desire to to work and look after ourselves so then I decided for no apparent reason that I'd start a handbag brand do you remember Orca yes yes I mean what should have been I had an Orca I'm sure I mean save it could be worth fortune in a hundred years when everyone's at my funeral but I feel like I nearly feel like Orca was my my glory days it was the ignorance that I went into it with um so what's so let's go back to the moment where you go I'm gonna start a handbag brand like so random right yeah and how How would you get that off the ground?

4:39I was sitting in M.C. Saatchi in Golden Square and just thinking, I can't do this every day. And this is awful. I'm going to go to hell for this. But I did look around and see a lot of middle-aged women who weren't married, who'd kind of been wedded to their careers. And I thought, I don't want to be them in 15 years. I want to go out and do more. I think it's really important you say that, actually, because we're not dissimilar in age. And through my career, I have seen that in the very early part. It feels like the couple of generations before us had to make the choice. Yeah, I agree. And you weren't being cruel.

5:10That was the reality. They wanted to really smash the ceiling and they wanted to get on. Their personal life seemed to be the thing that got sacrificed. Yeah, and they could not do both, actually. That was really, really true. And I remember this woman I really did idolise in the TV department. And she got married and she left. You know, she then went to have her kids and she left what was a really, actually, great career. She was a senior producer. And so I think I thought, OK, let's look around. I can't find the handbag I want. And it was just a random thought I had. I carried so much stuff, got such a bad back.

5:39And I was like, I can't find a cool big handbag. So I actually got out the yellow pages and I went through it and I looked for a leather shop and I found one in the East End and I drove up to this leather shop. I knew nothing, by the way. I'm so like fashion and commercially and design inept. I can't even draw a tree. And I saw these amazing metallic lamb napper skins on a pile. and I went, would those work on a handbag? Like if I bought some? And they said, yeah. I said, okay, I'm going to buy a pile. Can you send me to a factory? And they sent me to a factory about 15 minutes down the road in the arse end of like the east end when literally I probably should have been shot in those days.

6:17A policeman actually stopped me and said, what are you doing here? What's a girl like you doing here? You know, there are gunshots over there. And so I walk into this dark factory and there's this guy called Junior there who had this factory with his dad that they'd had for like 60 years. And he said to me, I see posh girls like you come in here all the time. He said, what makes you any different? You know, that you want to get your handbags made. And I said, I just I'm going to do it. I really want to do it. I have this idea, but I can't draw it for you because I can't draw. And so we kind of sat and I talked him through what I wanted.

6:49And I think what we ultimately came up with probably wasn't quite what was in my mind, but it was my launch handbag. And he took ages to make them. And I worked in a restaurant every night and every day. and then my spare time I went with the money I saved I started the business and I got myself a stand at Top Draw which was a trade show in Earl's Court and I was at the very back in the very back row everyone had these beautiful stands and mine was so appalling because I'm just so crap at that kind of stuff and I had some few shelves from Ikea and then House Fraser came along and they were like we'll place a quarter of a million pound order on everything and I only had like eight handbags.

7:25Junior hi. Literally and I rang my mum and I said what do I do and she said you always say yes and we figure it out later um and that was everybody needs that mum in their lives always yeah she's always said to me just say yes and there'll be a way and I mean that's probably also been the death of many a thing I've done yeah sure yeah let's do it um and and that was the launch and then we just had this crazy five years of you know celebrities would wear it and it would go in heat or l or vogue and then you would sell out and this was before online sales presumably as well days before social media and online sales where we would sell through shops and people would ring the telephone and order and you would write down their address and take their credit card over the phone and then send them the bag you know and you it was a real case of you did something and you saw an immediate result so it's kind of tangible you'd go okay I am getting press in new magazine on Sunday so I will go to the studio I will sit there I will wait for the phone to ring I will take the orders and I will sell out um and it was just an amazing ride you know it was days we'll never did you produce or manufacture everything in the UK at that point then I moved to China right um and that was very wild because I was quite young and I was didn't speak much Mandarin either at the time at the time I wasn't great at Mandarin and I suffered from what my factory called as Hong Kong fever, which is that I'd land and just go wild.

8:50I never got onto their time zone and I'd land and I'd party for four days straight. There are probably quite a few reasons why that business didn't survive. But it was a really wild ride and I had an amazing team under me and none of us had any idea what we were doing. And I had no business plan and it just worked. You know, there are some amazing stories. How did it come to an end? it came to an end because a brand well I started the business and I never trademarked the name because I didn't know you had to I just registered it as a business and I thought well it's covered and then a another big handbag brand came after me telling me that I was stepping on their toes and that I was trying to ride off their name and I was like oh my god I can assure you I'm not like you do very different product to me but I was suddenly hot on their tail in all the department stores, London Fashion Week, the trade shows.

9:40So that took a few years to come for you like that then? Yeah, it did. It did. I'm just trying to think actually. It probably took like two, three years. And then they just really went for me. Mega lawyers trying to shut me down. Took me out for a coffee and went, just go home. They literally just said, just stop. Oh no. Yeah, they said, you're just a young girl. They said, just stop the business and walk away. I was like, wow. You really, really upset me now. Obviously rang my mum. Mum's like, where does he live? Going to get him. But ultimately, you know, we hired big lawyers. And although we probably would have won if we'd lost, the lawyers were saying to me, we shut your business down.

10:21You know, it'll be the end of your brand. You need to rebrand. So I rebranded and it's probably my biggest regret. And that was when you... Really? Yeah, because I think the brand never recovered from losing the name Orca because it was so established. It had such a big launch. It had such a big following. Is that when you became eponymous? There was Tabitha Webb then? Yeah, so I named it Tabitha, Tabitha Bags. You know, you look through the list of all the companies and every name is taken. I was like, even like Green Grass or, you know, The Moon or whatever you want to call it. I couldn't find anything to call it.

10:53And everyone said, you're most protected if you call it your name. But I think that just changing brand names is a really, really tough thing to do. And I think it's very rare that the brand carries on its momentum. So when that kind of fizzled out, really, and didn't kind of get to where I maybe should have done. How easy was it to pick yourself up for your next idea? Well, I mean, I was still in my 20s, so the world was my oyster in my mind. I was like, yeah, let's keep going. And then Danny Minogue approached me and was like, do you want to start a clothing brand? You know, we'll launch Project D while I'm on X Factor.

11:24I'm sitting here in front of 18 million people every night. And I was like, I mean, yes. What was it about you? How did she met you previously and kind of connected? So she carried the handbags and she used to come in and see me and she lived just down the road from the studio and we'd go out to lunch. So I think it's important to budding entrepreneurs to understand relationships matter and that was a relationship. Yeah, it was. I mean, listen, working with your friends is just, you know, we all say it over and over again, don't work with your friends, don't work with your friends, don't work with your friends and then every person will go, oh, but no, it's different.

11:57This relationship's different. This friendship is different. We're going to be fine. We've had a really honest chat up front. It's going to be fun. It is never fine. I don't think it is ever fine. I think that, you know, we went into it as best mates and I had never made a piece of clothing in my life. It was what we did was really, really tough. And she brought with her a lot of consumers and a lot of public interest and a lot of press. And it wouldn't have mattered if we'd launched, you know, rucksacks or paper bags or put people in. And, you know, it didn't matter. People were just going to buy it and the shops were going to buy it.

12:36But actually, that was kind of like our worst enemy. And I think that when the orders came in and we looked at this order book, I said to Dan, you know, the bravest thing we could do is turn half of these orders away because we're never going to be able to deliver. Because I don't know enough. You know, I'm not an experienced designer. I haven't been to St. Martin's. I don't know how to make a piece of clothing. And I'm trusting so many people to deliver. but we we did it and we blagged our way through it for a good eight years and lost a considerable amount of money but had a great time along the way and then but what you recognized i think from your advertising days this was like a very early kind of influencer model wasn't it in a way with a celeb yeah when you look now i mean the celebs had always been given and gifted things in the hope that people would see them and it was a different way but now obviously it's a very different way to sell things isn't it so so you were from maybe from your advertising days were you pivoting and using that knowledge do you think yeah I think so I think I have a real love for brand I think I'm I love creating brands like if I was you know homeless I would go and create brands I think it's the one thing that I'm good at sustaining them and selling them for a fortune at the other end perhaps not but I'm very good at creating them but it's been so interesting to watch the power of celebrity actually because i think yes celebrity works if it's the right celebrity and it's the right messaging um i think which celebrity you use is really really important um but i think nowadays celebrity doesn't sell how it used to i don't know do you see that well well i see what i see on social media are influences that i've you know never heard of never don't know what they're they've done before clearly having a power to communicate with their audience.

14:18Yeah, it's extraordinary. And it doesn't matter that they're not on linear television, radio, podcasts even. They just, they had that specific audience. A friend of mine, a neighbour of hers was a runner. She set up an app that was all about her running. And she now literally all she does, she's not a professional runner. She doesn't even run that quick. She's like, I mean, I present athletics over four hours for a marathon. It ain't impressive, right? So she's running, but she's now a full-time running influencer. Who'd have thought that was a job 10 years ago? I mean, does it irritate you? No, I think it's incredible.

14:51Do you? Do you know what irritates me sometimes is when top athletes have lower kind of follower counts. Yeah. And they're committing their lives. They're incredibly, for me, inspirational. You know, I would love our youngsters to kind of know about these people. And you're going, how come, I mean, Dina Asher-Smith is a prime example. About a few years ago, I realised that her following was lower than some of these influencers a run type of accounts. You can't really run. Well, yeah, I mean, they can run and it is inspiring to see people go from couch to 5K and all that kind of thing. But for me, it's kind of really inspiring to see people who've, you know, pushed boundaries and records and things.

15:29I agree. I want, it's like, I really want the real people. This sounds awful as well. God, yeah, I think they hate. But I mean, so, you know, I've got a book lunch next week and it's interesting. We're going to get on two books, don't worry. No, but I was just going to say on the guest list. No, yeah, yeah. I look at it and I go, it's not actually the celebrity who are going to come and sell my book. It is the influencers. And it's people that you have. The book market is amazing for that, isn't it? Well, yeah, but it's not. I haven't even invited book influencers. I don't really know them. But I mean, you know, you're inviting fashion influencers, but you're inviting people with these big follower counts whose consumer, their listener, their watcher is so engaged in them.

16:07But you and I probably wouldn't really know them. But that's the amazing thing about how this has all shifted, isn't it? It's so bizarre. how they track and what their... Yes. So like when I started and, you know, Fern Coffin would go out or, you know, all the OGs, Zoe Ball, everybody out and about, Davina, you know, then you would see an immediate peak in your sales. It doesn't happen anymore. That's not the power that it used to be. The world has changed so much. I think also that's to do with consuming your media in so many different ways now, you know, the amount of people that don't watch TV, you know, or they're only watching YouTube or they're not watching, you know.

16:42So it must be your old industry. It must be incredibly challenging. I much preferred it how it was, where it was just basic and linear. Now you need seven points of contact to get anything to work. And it actually slightly destroys my soul. I'm like, I don't really have the energy for that. I just want it to be a really simple transaction. You be my friend. You wear that. I sell it. And we're all really happy. so uh part of that despondency maybe uh uh is that what led you to first sit down and start being creative or to to put your ideas onto paper when it came to writing or was it was writing something that you had always enjoyed no i don't think so i mean i wasn't particularly good at english at school i think i was definitely in set three maybe attempting to read you know bleak house or something but i would often sit with my friends in in the chemistry lesson and write sex scenes we I did write a lot of sex scenes, which could also be to do with my bad grades.

17:39But, you know, it was just funny. We found it amusing. We used to order ourselves the Sunday sport at school. I mean, we still have our WhatsApp route called The Slags. And those are the three of us who are at school together. And we still send each other a lot of filthy stuff. So I'd like to credit them. But, you know, actually, when I was 16, my stepmother, it's so weird. It's something that's always stuck in my mind. She went to see her psychic that she used to see every week. And she came back every week. She saw a psychic every week. Oh, my God. She so did. and she was American and she came out one day and she was like, well, that was not about me.

18:07That was about you. And I was like, oh, what? So great. And she said, apparently you're going to be a really famous romance author and that's going to be your career trajectory. And I was like, that is so weird. OK, well, thanks. You were 16 at the time. I was 16. Oh, never really thought about it again. And then I was interviewing some authors at HarperCollins for their new author evening. And Rosie Nixon, lovely Rosie, I was interviewing her. And then the exec publisher came up to me that night and she went, you've got some funny stories. She said, would you like to write some books for us? Which, by the way, annoys my agent, who says to me, that's really, really hard for people who spent their whole life trying to write.

18:48I think the average age of the first author's publication is 42. And they're people who have slogged away for years. Yeah, so I could see why that would annoy people. I could see more hate mail coming by me. And I said, you know what? yeah actually like my mum said yeah I'll try that I'll try that and uh I said I would love to and she said well submit us three chapters I went away and I I wrote three chapters and I sent them in and she went I like the way you write but don't write that story she said that's too close to you it's too human she said distance yourself go and write something else um so I did but I found it a really really hard process I found my ego took a massive battering um I didn't like being told that what I'd written wasn't good enough.

19:33They said that my character, my main character was very judgmental, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I thought she was funny and cutting. They were like, no, judgmental and mean. So I, you know, so it was a lot of reworking for me and I was so out of my depth. And it was very difficult to juggle that with fashion. I found that really hard. You know, people say, oh, you've got to be able to do everything. I just, I don't think I can I think I kind of have to do one what was your writing uh routine like then how did you did you close yourself off for yeah I came drop you know school drop off on home and write every morning um I can't really do a lot in the afternoons I mean I'm I'm hopeless and um it took me years to write it like it was a very very slow process with a lot of rewrites and um the first book was from the point of view of three characters which is an insane idea when you don't know how to write and haven't written and my agent kept saying to me go to a you know a writer's workshop I was like no I didn't do that yeah I mean I'm just I'm so difficult um anyway so that that was the first book that might have been quite good advice to take up actually I I still think it would be great advice I think I should go I think I should learn to garden I think I should learn to cook there are so many courses I think I should go on that make me a better person by the way um and so then yeah the second book I got a two book deal so then I kind of had to write the second book but it took me five years I was very slow because the fashion kept kind of taking off and it was easy for me so it took my attention and I was like oh I've got this to do and this is doing really well I'll just do this collaboration and then you were producing some gorgeous bits I remember having some lovely tops that um yeah there were some really lovely pieces coming out you know it's it's so cyclical and as much as I say it's not about who you dress it is about the momentum um and then obviously you know you get the joy of dressing the princess of wales and then you get this moment where for a month you look and you go hold on a second hold on i can do this i'm gonna make so how did that come about hi this is becca moore from for the girls and this podcast is sponsored by airy where you can find the right bra in 59 sizes soft fabrics and good fits if your bra strap is digging into your shoulder right now it's the wrong bra we get so used to being in pain as girls that we forget it doesn't have to be this way your clothes should not hurt i got to the point where i stopped wearing bras altogether and now my life has changed you guys the only bras i have in my dresser right now are aerie and i'm not kidding aries on a mission to make you feel good and that starts with your bra your bra should hold you in not back visit aerie.com to find the right bra for you um she just chose yeah luck i think you know yeah and then you know once she starts wearing you a few times it the whole business kind of blossoms do her people bring the clothes in and i'll speak to you at first they call it in right yeah they call in pieces you know that's going to her yeah but you have no idea on tenter hooks going is she gonna wear it i mean and that can be for like a year i actually had this conversation with another designer and this other designer said to me we cannot live like this where we wake up every morning and go, is it today?

22:43So when it's not a business model. When it does happen. Yeah. And she's photographed wearing. Yeah. I mean, her power is extraordinary. Yeah. But I, you know. If you've got 75 ,000 versions of that outfit ready to go in the spare bedroom. Just in case. But I think the thing about that is that people buy that item of clothing. They don't buy into the brand. so although you are selling so many of that one thing they're not like brand consumers they're not there for your journey they're not there to come along for the ride so it's very easy to get really carried away by it and think that this is going to be the making of you um i can confirm it is not but it is um a wondrous thing you don't get a royal seal of approval stamp to put on your um label i mean i did feel slightly envious the other day when i saw a few designers getting it and I was like, do I hang around for one of those?

23:38I'd really like one of those. How long does it take to get that? Yeah, exactly. I'd really like show my kid I got one of those. We jumped away from writing just for a second there. No, because you're saying like the, you know, the process is obviously, it took you a long time, took you a while to get it going. By book two, did you start to kind of find your writing flow? I think I enjoyed my story a lot more and it was from the point of view of one person. So it was a much more, to use the word linear again, a lot more straightforward story and I brought in a lot of multi-generational relationships and it was more a story that I was living because it's based in the countryside and it's about the farming community not that I farm or garden or cook really but um you know I live by a river and I dream of this hot god-like creature emerging from the river naked he never does but in my book he does um and you know the kind of safari dinners and the pilates in the village hall and the gossip and the confusion.

24:31And it was just a very simple story. Like we were saying earlier, kind of everything's been done before, but it's how you do it. And this girl moves from the city to the countryside. She's had her heart broken. She's had her heart broken, you know. And she's looking to... In a predictable way, her boyfriend was shagging his secretary in the wine cellar. This happens very early on in the book. This happens very early on. And by the way, for our dear listeners now, they can probably understand why Jilly Cooper herself has penned a letter to you before she passed saying that you should keep on writing because this does sound incredibly rivals doesn't it it's quite rivals i mean so julia she rang me out of the blue can you imagine answering the phone and she goes hi she rang you oh i thought that she wrote you i'd budget picking the phone up and it's jilly cooper i know well to bring my mom in again i went mom is that you are you taking the piss and she went no it is jilly it's jilly cooper um she said i read your book last night she said my son was in america and saw some press where you had said that i was your idol so i wanted to read your book and she said I just wanted to talk you through a note a few notes I had and I was like I wrote them all down but obviously the book had already been published so it was a little late but she said and I wanted to tell you the things that I loved and she said I think you're such a a joyous writer she said I just want to say to you please don't give up she said I really want you to write she said we need more authors like you basically Tabitha she was handing the battle no my god don't say that she was saying she was saying you need to pick this up because i wish god i would do anything but she's a marvel but what's happened obviously with rivals is a generation have now picked up a lot of her books and realized that she i mean she's commercially phenomenal success um but perhaps was there was a slight snobbery about about her books and actually there's a i had the relationships the you know the obviously the countryside lifestyle which you know is is not completely true to life yeah but it is utopic in many ways it's kind of how we'd like to imagine it and she was kind of the the queen of it wasn't she you know and how she loves men but she loves women as well like she wants men to be strong and masterful but she wants women to be in control yeah i mean and but but the interesting thing is is that if you or i wrote a jilly cooper book today and we took it into the publishers they'd go no way yeah we're not publishing that it's too long it's too raunchy it's too sexist you know we wouldn't yeah actually wouldn't get away with it yeah and that's what's so bloody amazing about them i mean if i could have pushed my book harder i would have done but there's a lot they say no the reader won't like that the reader won't like that and that's that's quite hard because i feel like you you're going to well you shouldn't underestimate them yeah you underestimate them they would actually love that they would find that funny so you know there's a little bit of not wanting to offend people along the way but she's a source of inspiration obviously yeah enormous I mean and she's just you know and then she kept writing to me she wrote me letters um and she always wore my shirts when she did shoots and she said to me in one letter she said if Rupert Campbell Black had ever met you he would have fallen madly in love with you I'm like Jilly it's framed in my bedroom that is I know magnificent I know I feel like you should have a t-shirt with that on do you I think I probably should actually.

27:49Yeah. I love that as a concept. But, you know, I think with the books, like with the fashion, there is just so much noise out there. And I wake up some days and I think, I really hope I can shoot the lights out with this. And then I wake up other days and I go, but there are 5 million people doing this who are more qualified, who write better, who are cleverer, who use longer words, who, you know, why should it be me? And there is that constant doubt. Yes, enormously. In the end, I ended up hiring a freelance editor to work with me an hour a week. I was going to say a therapist. That's next on the list.

28:22I do need one of those. And she was really just there to kind of say to me, Tav, stop. You've got to believe in what you're writing, because if you don't believe in what you're writing, you're never going to get to the end. And I kind of just, for an hour a week, I sat and I spoke to her about the story and what I was doing. And it was somebody who was invested in the characters like me and could say to me from an external point of view, This is working. Your character would do this. And I also had multi-generational relationships with people in their 70s falling in love, which I love because there is no age limit on love, right?

28:54And... There's a lot. Love is very important to the book, you know, because in the end... Love, love. Spoilers. Quite a big spoiler, but go for it. Love conquers all. There might be a happy ending. There might be a happy ending. Could be. And so are you deep down somebody who truly believes in love and is very romantic. Are you an old-fashioned romantic? Absolutely not. He would also say this is all false advertising in his life. It's not nearly as good as the book Repetainer does. But I mean, I do think that I am constantly looking for love and happiness and romance and fun and sexiness. And I just want to find the joy in it all.

29:37I still, despite being happily married with two children, think it would be amazing to run off in the distance with a scanty clad man in the river or a hot farmer or a gorgeous cowboy who's going to throw me on horseback. And I don't really like riding, by the way. But, you know, zoom me off into the distance and put me around the bonfire with some marshmallows and the guitar and sing me some songs. You know, I really want all of that. I think, obviously, I'm never going to get it. So I'll write it instead. So I'll write it. Yeah. But I really wish we were all having that, all that wonderful romance and sex and love.

30:09My sex is very romantic. It's kind of inspirational. Did you find it easy writing, the sex? My mother is so horrified by it. She's like, it's gratuitous. And I don't know why you've had to put it in there. And now I can't give my book to your friends. And I can't take it to book club. I just don't understand why you've done it. The publisher did say to me, you know, before Christmas, they said, Tabitha, you've written a lot of sex. But it's all in different locations, but not different positions. Do you think you could mix it up? And I was like, God, I'm like a 50 year old menopausal woman. Not really.

30:46But I'll try. So I was like, God, crap. I found that quite hard. So I was having to do some deep diving, some research on that. And I, as much as I've got, you know, I'll talk about it. I do find it a bit mortifying. Like, you know, all the mums at my daughter's new school, I'm like, how am I ever going to face them when they've read this book over the summer? You know, she, in fact, I got her to start a term early. And I said to the head of admissions, he said, why do you want to move her now? and I said, oh, I said, I've just got a book coming out in the summer. And I said, I think it would be great if she got a seat under the table before she started.

31:19So that there's not too much judgment. That's so clever of you. I know. Did it work? I don't know yet. I think she's got a couple of friends. Oh, is this? Okay, so this is this book. And what do they think? Your kids. So my 14-year-old, obviously, it is, it's a funny thing for her, right? Because on the one way, there's that kind of like proud, oh, my mom, she's written this, this book full of sex. And I heard her kind of reading it to a few friends, you know, and on the other hand, I think it's probably slightly mortifying. My eight year old, he doesn't understand, just walks around going, oh, my mum writes books about sex or something.

31:51But obviously doesn't know what it means. Know what the word means. And it's not mean to me anyway. Yeah. But yeah, no, I do. You know, my mum proofread the book for me and she did say to me, right, page 154 after the word cock. I don't like this either. I you know this isn't comfortable for me or for you can we just get it done I was like yeah I mean so you know yeah that's kind of and uh are the ideas flowing now have you got or is this is this character could there be a return I would I I love the world I've created I I love the characters I've created um I love the farming community I love the older characters I nearly think the older characters are weirdly nearly the strongest in there and I think they'll be the most loved um i would love them to have a story and their whole kind of tale so i would love to move it forward maybe there'd be less sex with the older characters or or maybe not i don't know ask your mum see what she thinks yeah exactly gross no yes i think that probably would be uh so i would love you know i see it as like a kind of saucier virgin river a sunday night read yeah um it's not going to challenge us all it's not going to win the booker prize but it's a nice gentle raunchy read that's going to take us through a lovely sunday evening and does fashion still swirl around your head in between do you know so i kind of took the decision a couple of months ago i was going to stop um i've done it for so long and i find it i am finding it really tough i think it's really tough out there and um do i still have the desire to do it i think not to sell online not to have an online shop to collaborate with people like i've just launched this great furniture collaboration which is this really cool tiger print sofa and i have loved it and i love doing the print and selling it and having it in my house and um i'm launching a something with a beauty line pride beauty doing a chevron scarf for them that's going into m &s in two weeks and will be like 120 m &s stores and that is a really great thing to do i've really enjoyed it and then your creativity has another outlet and i feel like then building the brand has not been a total waste of time.

34:00Like, yes, I haven't sold the business or made a lot of money. Don't come to me for business advice. But I have managed to move the brand to a place where I think I can enjoy it more. You know, I'm getting targeted on Instagram by climbing my second mountain. I feel like they're listening to me and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to climb my second mountain. Love that whole, have you read that book? No. I think we both need to order it. Well, you don't need to climb a second mountain. Do you want to climb another mountain? Well, go on, tell me about it. Well, it's all about people who have gone out and tried to prove themselves for the first half of their lives.

34:34They've earned the money. They've done what they think they should do. And then they go out to do what they want to do. Right. And that's why so many people are out doing crazy, amazing challenges and doing things that aren't earning them money, but are things that they really want to do that are going to bring them satisfaction. And I feel like that's what I want to do. I want to go and talk to people and spend time with people. I you know fashion can be quite lonely writing is really lonely so I'd like to find other ways to spend time with people and build other things I think so the second mountain the second mountain in the second half is the midpoint yeah oh somebody should do a podcast god they really should have you thought about that you mentioned um health anxiety very early on um so at 50 yeah it's a time where a lot of people kind of look at themselves and think right okay what am I going to do to make sure I'm healthy in 20 years time 30 years time did you change anything in the kind of late 40s early 50s kind of health and lifestyle area is it somewhere that you you've looked not really I mean I think that I have always put myself under so much stress to succeed and um the same as my sister actually my sister's a big kind of uh financier talking head and we often say to each other like she's always so stressed she's on the brink of you know not coping and I'm like why do you do it all like you you have such incredible success she really does have success you know and she said because I I don't want to be that person who says a she said I don't have to clean my house she said if I if I stop working everyone's gonna say why do you have a messy house and I have no excuse which I thought was hilarious um and B it's the ego you know she's like I want to to work this hard but then and have something to talk about when I'm at a drinks party and say who I am and um but then I think god we're both so stressed and it can't be good for us like the anxiety that we create in ourselves from being so stressed but I haven't no I haven't really changed anything although I do feel in the last I don't know whether everyone would agree but in the last 18 months I've definitely felt maybe more anxious but maybe it's because I control things more I mean my health anxiety has plagued me since I was in my 20s actually and it does definitely go you know in swerves up and down up and down and there are some times when it is crippling and it's it's how does it feel how does it manifest itself um you know if i become obsessed with with having something and i or i certainly don't like being around do you go check check yourself out all the time then are you oh i mean i go through spates of you know we often say that i finance the doctor down in hampshire where we live like what would happen if i wasn't around can i just quickly pop in just there's just one thing you know and then there's a few others on the list exactly and there are a couple of friends down where i live who are kind of very patient with me we have a lot of doctors down in hampshire so i have a couple of best doctor mates i'm like could i just ask you a quick question um but i i do feel awful because where do you think that came from um did you was there somebody with somebody do you know i know i mean i i was actually it was one of the things that made me leave advertising i was working in advertising And it literally hit me in a tube out of the blue.

37:46I was like, I've got to get off this tube. I have to get off this tube. And it was Piccadilly. And I got back out and I walked up the stairs and I found a station guard. And I was like, you've got to help me. I was like, you've got to get me home or do something. I don't really remember anything. He put me in a black cab. This black cab took me home. No one charged me. The black cab didn't charge me. He dropped me off at my house. And I was just having a hideous panic attack. and I actually went back and found the station garden, gave him a box of chocolates. I think I gave him a box of roses actually.

38:16I was like, thank you so much. And then from that day, this anxiety started and my grandmother was still alive and I went down and spent a few days with her in Guildford where she lived. We went to the library together to look for books. You know, she was like, it's extraordinary, darling. I've never heard of anything like it. Tell me what it is. How does it feel? You know, you're going through the library. Sort of trying to find a book about anxiety. Life before Google. You know, what is it that I had? um and i i just so it didn't start as health anxiety it started as anxiety and that has over time become a health anxiety so so you are you good on diet and exercise and no i mean i should be so much better i i again go through spates of trying to get really healthy and then i'm not great you are so good i watch your videos you are so strong but i think i'm quite i feel quite lucky that I have always done it I think it's it's quite challenging to get it into your life if you've not always done it yeah and I I miss it if I don't do it so yeah so do it every day five or six days a week okay um depending on schedules work schedules and things try and do something you know and that could be as as little as 25 minutes with an exercise band or it could be going for a run or doing weights but I feel better so much better for it yeah I feel it's yeah it's like a a magic kind of bullet for me you know gives me energy keeps me focused on what i'm eating because i know that's really important fuel you know so so and i think it's you know you can start from a tiny amount of exercise and build up you know so it could be 10 minutes 15 minutes but it's just moving yeah the body and getting getting everything kind of going and flowing yeah i mean you see i used to be a total fitness fanatic i played lacrosse Virginia England I was like in my old days um I was like you know I was really into it and then actually I think having a second kid later um yeah I was 43 when I had Poe and that kind of took a toll on me it kind of hit hit me harder than I thought it would actually and then you know we went through Covid not long after and I think I felt like I got quite unfit during Covid actually and so I definitely am aware I would like to get fitter in fact my eight-year-old lay on the ground yesterday I was only wearing a pair of knickers and took a picture of my bottom from the ground and then showed it to me and went look how big your bottom is and it's got all those dents in it and I was like oh my god I was like I'm never going to eat again and I'm going to exercise for four hours a day for the rest of my life I mean it literally broke my heart that's that's that's brutal I mean that's quite how brutal is that how many of us would like a photo taken from that angle i think you know i think we can probably write the names on a poster stamp for the people who'd be uh yeah that's i mean there are there are other angles i think that might be more pleasing um but you know i i have my weights i have my pellet on and i go through spats where i'm on it every day and i'm trying really hard and i make sure i walk my 10 000 steps a day but i would definitely like to be fitter but then i get to the evening and i do love a bowl of crisps and uh you know i do really love those um i'm not a big drinker though you know i'll have a one or two glasses of wine a week and that's kind of me.

41:26I think, is that a lifestyle change that's kind of coming gradually from, I imagine in advertising and living and working in Soho, certainly, when you did, that it was much more of a party lifestyle. Also for the anxiety. You know, if I drink more than that, I feel awful. So I kind of, and I am a control freak. So I do like to be very much in control of how I'm feeling and, you know, my surroundings. And your husband's South African, isn't he? South African, yeah. Geologist. Wow. Yeah, I know. So how does that, What do you do for a geologist? What is that? I mean, I know it's rocks, but like, who pays you to look at them?

42:00I know, it's a good question. We're the most ill-matched people. I mean, he is like a quiet, brooding, super intelligent. He says that I've totally destroyed his brain with the mail online and celebrity knowledge. And he says things to me like, when I talk about Jen, Jennifer Aniston, he goes, she is not your friend. I'm like, no, but if she met me, you know, we'd have a thing. You, Jen and Kate, we'd hang out. you know, and I've had to teach him what maxi skirts are and things like that. I mean, he's a proper Athlo geek, as my friends call him. You know, he's a nerd. But he said to me something about some tiles for the bathroom yesterday.

42:34And he went, but you don't like marble. It's chaff. I went, oh, my God. I said, it's all about the nuance. I said, this is something you will never understand. It's the nuance. A little bit is fine. But yes, he is a South African geologist. and he got himself, he spent three years in the Antarctic mapping Antarctica, has these incredible like stories and pictures and spent all his life with penguins and two other guys. And it was just this incredible time for him. He was so hot then. Long blonde hair, ripped beard. He was like my dream man. It was a good 15 years before I met him. And then ended up working in banking in the mining area.

43:14And now he runs a mining company. So him and my sister Marion constantly say to me, please give up the fashion. you just lose so much money. I could lose less money just sitting still, you know. But I constantly think I'm going to smash the lights out, which is why I keep... Well, your second mountain is a coming, I think. Do you think that's what it's going to be? Yeah. And I think your energy and enthusiasm for taking on new challenges and projects and for finding what it is that, you know, you think is, you know, the next good idea. If people like you didn't exist, then it would all be very samey, wouldn't it?

43:49then administrators would have nothing to do. You know, imagine if the world was full of risk-averse people who never tried anything, then we'd never invent anything. I think, you know, absolutely, on the one hand, people need people like us. I mean, my other sister always says to me, Tabs, you're like Marmite. You know, people will either love it and be there for it or they're not. And it's a funny thing, actually. I do, you know, I meet people and I often say this to my husband, actually people meet me and they think they want to be my friend that they want what it is I have to offer or the craziness they think I have or what it is I'm trying to do and you know then six months down the road they'll either like fully be in there with me for it and kind of enjoy being part of it or they'll just be like this isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be you are you know it's not as fun as I thought or you're you're too crazy or um but you know I just think if we don't wake up every day with ideas trying to do different things and I mean I have five business ideas a day and there are some I wish I'd done that I haven't done um and I think if I just stuck to one thing I'd probably be better off but I can't it's just not who I am and there's you know I mean god if I could become an amazing romance author who actually succeeded and you know launched a podcast on love and I could talk to people about sex and love and romance all day long it would be great if that is your thing that's maybe your second mountain I think you know I would just go and do it because I know so many of us just don't do it yeah and you have done it you've written the books and you're writing more and you've got you know the pod the love podcast the love pod yeah are you gonna come on and talk to me about love yeah maybe not sex my kids my kids my kids are already embarrassed about the amount I've given away um yeah my son was like can you just shut up about sex that was when he was 17 he's 20 now now I think he just thinks it's hilarious but um it was when he was first first became a professional rugby player and a quote was taken out of a podcast that was then played in the dressing room and kind of on a loop yeah they're brutal in those professional sporting environments so yeah he didn't um didn't appreciate it but yeah i think they it was all to do with when his uh dad kenny had prostate cancer so so we had some really honest conversations yeah and what about your daughters does it bother them she's lois is um not yeah she's she's not that bothered she's okay they just think it's funny you know but I did say out of respect that yeah I didn't even want to talk about romance when I first met Kenny because I always thought I was going to jinx it you know 25 years married this year so I think we're okay now to talk about it yeah does he mind you talking about it?

46:23no no he wears his heart on his sleeve and he's very you know very romantic so yeah he's fine and we did a whole podcast about prostate cancer together which is part of the Midpoint series so that's where it all kind of came up which was the point of the conversation I think I think for my daughter, who's 14, she's absolutely in that mortification moment. And this sodding social media hell that they all have, which I feel is so crippling, actually, for like 14, 15, 16 year olds. And so everything I say or do, you know, the kind of mortification that someone might see. And, you know, even if I post a picture of her walking away, she's like, oh, my God, can you take that down?

47:04What if one of my friends sees? and I hate that for them so much that they have to be at the mercy of that. Go build the podcast. Okay. Yeah, write some more books. Okay, great. And do what Jilly, if Jilly Cooper tells you to do it. Then I've got to do it. I think you've got to do it. Okay, thanks for that. You can be my new encourager. It's been great having you on The Midpoint. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

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