E200: Annie Macmanus: The Real Reason I Became Europe's No. 1 Female DJ

Annie Macmanus is a voice we’ve been hearing for twenty years. First as a presenter and tastemaker for the UK’s biggest dance music radio show, as a festival headlining DJ, as host of her podcast ‘Changes with Annie Macmanus’, and now as an author of her best-selling novel ‘Mother Mother’. Reaching the pinnacle of success with a relentless schedule headlining a 2am show in Ibiza every week before flying back in the morning to present her daily radio show, it took the pandemic lockdowns for Annie to realise she wanted something completely different from her life. So she started again. This conversation explores her decision to check in with herself and walk away from a 17 year career at the BBC to explore her passions of writing and podcasts. She presents the challenging notion that your life needs to have a revolution every 20 years for it to remain meaningful and fulfilling. Topics: Early context People please Your parents Your insecurities Leaving Ireland - being rejected why didn't you keep trying? Labels Cost of being wrapped up in your labels Learning to listen to instinct Feeling burdened Midlife crisis doubts and fears making big decisions Why did you make it? Is your relationship with work healthy? Mental health Tokenism A successful life for you last guest question Annie: Instagram - bit.ly/3iqZtcu Twitter - bit.ly/3UrsxOa Annie's podcast: bit.ly/3UhzNvT Annie's book: bit.ly/3VGwT57 Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb Follow us on Telegram: https://g2ul0.app.link/E5re0ADNKsb Sponsors: Huel - https://g2ul0.app.link/G4RjcdKNKsb BlueJeans - https://g2ul0.app.link/NCgpGjVNKsb Craftd - https://g2ul0.app.link/gZ8in6Dsvsb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I fiercely wanted to prove that I could do it all. But I realised quite quickly that doing it all wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Annie Mac, a superstar DJ. Who's been forging her own cult status for nearly 20 years.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  I was a teenager in the 90s, heroin chic, Kate Moss. It was very hard not to become consumed by what the magazines and the music videos are showing you. Become obsessed with how much you weigh and what you're eating and all of that. I really wanted to get out. I loved music, I loved talking to people, I loved connecting with people. What happens when you put music and connection together? Radio.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  I was mad ambitious, I wanted to get bigger, I wanted to try everything. I felt like I wanted to prove a point.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  There was a lot of pressure being female in what was essentially a man's world. It's a horrible feeling, isn't it, when you don't feel like you can do anything good enough? It became this kind of feeling of the walls closing in. I should be more grateful for the fact that I'm getting sent brilliant music every week and I get to play this on the radio. But I don't feel excited enough for what this is. I felt like I didn't want to be needed by so many people anymore.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  Get yourself together Annie, come on. Jesus Christ, this is your last link on Radio 1.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  It takes time to feel at peace with yourself to just walk away.

• 1:18Steven Bartlett?

  For people that are stood there looking into uncertainty, can you tell them about how you felt in the lead up to that decision? Was there fear? Was there doubt?

• 1:26Speaker 00

  What I've realised now is...

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Annie, what do I have to understand about your origin story? Where you came from, the context in which you were raised? To understand the person that's sat in front of me today?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Probably that I grew up around a lot of noise.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Being the youngest of four. My mum had four babies in five years. So we were all very close together. You know, we were, I guess, I don't know how you would, maybe lower middle class. I was born in a housing estate. My claim to fame was the first baby born in our housing estate. Semi-detached. My dad worked in England from Monday to Friday. So he was away a lot. So my mum kind of raised us in the weeks. And...

• 2:28Speaker 00

  I was surrounded by love. Um, and because I was the youngest, kind of allowed to grow up without too much fussing, without too much disturbance, I was allowed to figure out my own likes.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  And I was hugely influenced, of course, by my older brothers and sister.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  And still am. So I've always been around people. I've always felt a kind of sense of being part of a group, a big family, which gives you that feeling of safety, I suppose. The other thing I would say is that I've always, and you kind of notice this as you get older and you go home and you know, you you regress. When you walk in your front door and you become a teenager again, I I've always noticed that I I I am a bit of a pacifist. Sorry, a pacifier, a diplomat. I like to try and keep the room happy. You know, I like to try and keep the equilibrium between people. So I'll become a joker, I'll become an entertainer, I kind of, I like to try and make people happy.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  So that's, that's another thing I've noticed.

• 3:38Steven Bartlett?

  Was that a useful skill at some point in your life? Or a required skill, keeping people happy, being a pacifier?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  I think it, I think it's become useful later in life, especially in my professional life, because I literally chose a job that was to be a conduit of joy. That was my job on Friday nights. I'm ready on for many years is just to spread the kind of magic and joy that, you know, that music can give, you know, this euphoric feeling. I was that messenger. So I did find a job that led to me making use of that skill, I suppose, if you could call it a skill.

• 4:15Steven Bartlett?

  Certainly a skill. I'm wondering why, why, why you were a pacifier, though? What, is that something?

• 4:22Speaker 00

  I think, I think like, just, you know, there was no, there was never any like, you know, trauma in our house or anything like that. But it was definitely just a loud, busy house. And, you know, four teenagers in one house is a lot, you know, there's loads of arguing and stuff. So it's easy to take, everyone takes a role when you live in a house like that. And my role was to keep people sweet, basically. And as the youngest, it was easy because I was that kind of, you know, I was the one that everyone, I guess, doted on a bit. So it was easy to play that role.

• 4:55Steven Bartlett?

  What influence did your parents individually have on you? When you look at who you are today, can you see sort of an imprint of either of them?

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd say I'd say that there's both, they're both in me quite a lot. My father is an extrovert. He loves people, he loves his friends, he loves chatting to anyone he can chat to. So I very much got that off him. My mom is really bookish and really smart and very gentle. She she kind of, she she parented with real kindness and a real sense of selflessness. And just, she was just soft and gentle in a way that the more I look at now as a parent, I'm just kind of in awe of, especially with four bonkers kids bouncing around the house.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  So, I don't know, I I think my friends have said there's an element of me that's strong and also an element of me that's sweet. And I think maybe that's one parent in each of those.

• 5:57Steven Bartlett?

  Before before you became an adult, what were the things that were you were worrying about? You know, like I reflect on my childhood, I think about the insecurities, the shame, the trying to fit in in an all white school and all those things. And how that kind of shame had a big role in the path I pursued in my orientation. What was, what were the things that were occupying your mind when you were under the age of eighteen, the insecurities, the fears of the world, et cetera?

• 6:25Speaker 00

  So, I mean, there was so much, you know, corporeal stuff, so much about your body and the changes that your body is going through. And were you thin enough and were you skinny enough? You know, I grew, I was born in seventy eight, so I was a teenager in the nineties. You know, heroin chic, Kate Moss, you know, low rider trousers that hung off your hips, that was, you know, like rib cages on show, all of that. So, I mean, it was very hard not to become consumed by what the, you know, the magazines and, you know, this music videos and all of that are kind of showing you. So, of course, like, there was shame. I think in Ireland, you grow up around shame. There's a lot of shame in Ireland as a country. I think it's kind of passed down generationally.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  I was brought up like Protestants, so I went to kind of a Church of Ireland church. But Ireland is, you know, the majority of Ireland is Catholic. So there's a lot of shame in that. When I was born, there was no divorce, there was no abortion, there was no gay marriage. There was nothing like that. But in my lifetime, I've been incredibly lucky because Ireland has changed hugely, irrevocably, and, you know, publicly voted for all three of those things, divorce, abortion, gay marriage. And it's become a way more kind of outward facing country. But I suppose when I was growing up, still, it felt very closed. It wasn't really that outward looking, I don't think. So I felt very eager and curious about the world.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Everything I knew about the world was through the Face magazine, or NME, or TFI Friday, or, you know, all the, all the kind of culture that I sucked up. So I was just curious to go and see it, basically, and get out. I really wanted to get out.

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  Had I asked you at that time, you knew you were gonna leave. If I'd asked you where you were gonna go and what you were gonna do, what would you have told me?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Well, I really wanted to be an actress. That was like my one true love. And that I kind of put all my eggs in that basket. Now, I did apply for an acting course in Dublin with this very prestigious university. It's Trinity University, so uni that's in normal people. That's how I call it now. But I didn't get in, spectacularly failed the audition. That classic kind of went to go and do my speech. It was the soliloquy at the end of Romeo and Juliet and like froze, like couldn't, the words just didn't come, you know, awful. Went home, chopped all my hair off. I had hair down to my, like, to my lower back, chopped it all off. Came home with hair like that long, gave my mom a plastic bag with my ponytail in it and was like, that's it, my life's over. Basically, I didn't get into the course.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  I'm, you know, I was such a drama queen, Steve, clearly. But my life at that point, I'd kind of like, I'd, I'd done really well. Not really well, sorry. I was always kind of, I was just average. I did grand in school, but I succeeded at other things. I was good at sports, I was in the choir, I was kind of like proactive and involved in lots of things. And everything that I'd kind of wanted at that point had gone my way. Until this point. And I was like, well, like, it's so ironic. I was actually voted the person most likely to be a movie star in my year. I was like, it's it's destined. I'm gonna be a movie star. This is easy. I'm just gonna walk into this course and do it. And then just didn't get in. And it was a real rejection and something that I hadn't experienced before.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  And it was actually my mom who really helped me out of that rut. She was the first person in her family to go to university. She went to Queens. And she suggested I go there and apply through clearing. And at that point, I was desperate. I didn't know what else to do. So I went up to Belfast, which is about two hours north of Dublin on the train. And I got in there through clearing and did English literature there. So she helped me find my way out of that rut. She was always a very calm presence in the background, always very wise and calm and kind of. She, when I look back, the more I think about her, the more I think she she guided so much of my decisions. Very quietly, you know, never any pressure or any, you know, just suggesting.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  So I did leave home. I got out. I went to the island of Ireland, but it was technically another country. It was the UK. It was Belfast. And it felt completely different from the Ireland I knew. And it was completely starting again. I didn't know anyone. I was living in halls in this room with someone I'd never met. And I had to start from scratch. And it was kind of cool because it meant that all of the baggage that comes from growing up in Dublin, you know, everyone wants to know what school you go to. Oh, do I know your mom? Does she teach at that school? You know, all of that is gone. I was a completely unknown person. I had a clean slate. I could build my identity from scratch and figure out exactly who I was

• 11:19Speaker 00

  in this new world without the kind of, I suppose, the not constraints or even baggage, but just without all of that stuff that came with me in Dublin. The family connections, the school, all of that. So it felt really, really scary, but also really exciting. And they were honestly three of the best years of my whole life. I found friends. I found a new family for myself in that way and figured out what I wanted to do slowly over the course of three years.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Found the career that I wanted, which was radio. And I always think like, looking back.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  You know, sometimes the things that you don't get end up being the best things that you've ever, you know, gotten in a way. Like, if you mess up, if you fail, if you don't get what you want, that can end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. And that's very much what happened to me. You know, I had one path, it didn't work, I had to turn left. And it meant then that I was able to kind of very slowly and organically feel out how I wanted to live in the world, what made me happy, what did I love. I loved music more than anything. I loved talking to people, I loved interacting with people, I loved connecting with people. What happens when you put music and connection together?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Radio, music, radio. And it was that simple. It was such a simple rudimentary equation. But I made that, I made that equation. And I was like, okay, that's where I'm gonna go.

• 12:50Steven Bartlett?

  Talk about how failure can redirect you towards something else. And I think everybody can relate to that in their own lives. But there was a question in my mind, because I know how persistent you are, and I know how hardworking you are. So why didn't you go back around for another shot at acting? Why didn't you redo the test or go to another college? Why did you go off in another direction?

• 13:12Speaker 00

  It's a really good question, because I asked myself that recently, because I actually interviewed Anne-Marie Duff on my podcast. And that happened to her. She didn't get into acting college, and she went back, and she tried again. I think that maybe I didn't want it as much as I thought I did. Basically, like, I'd been a lead in the school play, and suddenly I was like, that's it, you know, it's destined. But I hadn't done any acting experience. I hadn't done any amateur theatrics, I hadn't done anything like that. So I think I was feeling a little lost. And I think a lot of the time in school, there's a pressure to pick a path. What are you gonna do when you grow up? What are you gonna be? Where, you know, what's your vocation? It's ridiculous to ask an 18 year old. We know that as adults,

• 13:56Speaker 00

  that life changes, life zigzags, you change all the time. So.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Like for me, it felt like convenient because I'd had this experience that was good. And it was like, okay, well, that's grand. I'll just do that as opposed to really kind of thinking it through and coming into it.

• 14:15Steven Bartlett?

  You're talking there about discovering who you are and also that moment when you're you're eighteen and you've got to kind of pick a pick an identity and it's

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:22Steven Bartlett?

  Kind of this unsaid assumption that this is what you're going to be forever. So it feels high pressure. What have you come to learn generally about these labels we put on ourselves? I am a lawyer. I am a actor. And the, you know, I understand why they're they serve us sometimes. They help us to fit in. They help us to be understood. We put them in our bio and people understand who we are before they meet us, etc. But there can also be a real downside to these to kind of pigeonholing yourself in your own mind as a thing.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Completely. I couldn't agree more. I think I think the world can be terrifying sometimes. And I think it's comforting to be able to put a label on yourself and feel like you're part of something, a community, a tribe, a vocational, you know, thing. And also to, as you say, to be understood by people. Prue Leith came on Changes and talked about how she very much believes that you should have a revolution every 20 years in your life. And I'm obsessed with that now because I feel like I'm going through that now, you know, in my 40s. I'm going through my second revolution. And I love that idea that you should be able to completely put, you know, obviously, there's a privilege

• 15:34Speaker 00

  in this, you know, I'm not assuming that everyone could just drop their jobs and go and get another one. But if you are able to afford the space and the time to do that, I think it's so good for being alive to learn. This is what I figured out. Everything's about learning, basically. Everything comes down to learning to to that's when you feel the most alive. That's when you feel the most stimulated. That's when you feel most connected to yourself is when you're learning. So for me, I just want to keep learning. And very much with my own experience now, I have two young sons, that when they are growing up, I'm going to try and be very.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Uh, open about what they do and encourage them. I mean, it even happens now with kids, you know, you can't force them to do things. Can't force your kid to play football if he's not into football. But if he's decided he really wants to kind of do hip hop dance, well, come on then, let's go do hip hop dance. It's kind of, it's the same as adults. You can't force yourself to do something, but if you feel a pull, you should be able to do that. And the only way you feel those pulls is to be able to listen to yourself. So you have to check in with yourself. You have to give yourself the headspace and the time to really allow yourself to, to, to, to listen, to listen to, to how you feel about life, to listen to when things feel a little wrong, or to when you feel unstimulated.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  You know, to come back home at the end of a week, a working week and say, I didn't feel remotely excited or stimulated about what happened that week. Okay, what can I do to change that? How can I tweak things? Do I need to zoom out and really look at my general career? Is there different things I can do? It's that, it's constantly checking in with yourself all the time. And that can lead to small incremental changes, but also really big, big ones, which I feel very excited by.

• 17:29Steven Bartlett?

  It's, it's almost a bit of a paradox that we can become the victim of our own success in that regard. If we become really good at being a lawyer, then we build a community around us of lawyers and we get known as that. We become this identity and then we'll almost become somewhat imprisoned by this identity. Sometimes it's a job title that we were really good at. We got awards for, so now everybody sees us as that. What in your experience is the cost then of becoming too wrapped up in your own label or identity? What, what cost have you experienced in your life? Is there a psychological cost? Is it a?

• 18:03Speaker 00

  I think, I think it's like, it's. It's basically, the only cost is, is a feeling of stagnation, I suppose. You know, like, and stagnation's maybe a strong word, but everyone will relate to the feeling of the word coasting, right? When you're coasting. I, I guess I was feeling that a little bit at, at the BBC and especially with DJing. So they're two very different things, but with the BBC, I felt, um, I mean, I, I loved my job and I'm so grateful for it and all of that, but I think I did feel a little coasty. I felt like I was coasting a bit, you know? And there's a point where you feel like I should be more grateful for the fact that

• 18:45Speaker 00

  I'm getting sent brilliant music every week and I get to play this on the radio, but I don't feel excited enough for what this is. I don't feel like I'm serving my audience right now in the right way. I'm not on their level when it comes to how excited I should be about what this is. So that was a conscious decision to take myself out of that and be able to have someone replace me who serves them in, who are at the peak of their fucking excitement about, you know, that. And I still love broadcasting and I still want to broadcast, but it would be in a different way. With regards to DJing, I feel like the problem with DJs that they always say is that the,

• 19:29Speaker 00

  the DJs grow up and the crowds stay the same age. And that's what happens. You feel yourself growing and growing. So when I started out DJing, I was flinging myself in the crowd. I had a problem with crowd surfing. It was like, stop fucking crowd surfing, Annie. It was constant. I'd get, I'd get hammered, I'd be like hugging people. We'd have after parties and then after after parties. I'd get no sleep. I'd fall asleep in Ibiza Airport, face down, waiting for the flight. Like, I, I had the best time. But then life catches up with you when you have kids and you grow up and you have other priorities. So fast forward ten years, I'm DJing to people who are the same age. But I'm thinking about what I'm gonna put in the school lunches the next day, right? I'm thinking about how much sleep I'm gonna have in the pillow, on the way, on the pillow, on the way home in the back of this car.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Before my kids wake up at six o'clock and how I'll be able to get through the working day tomorrow. I started dividing my time in increments of kind of fifteen minutes. Cause I was so stressed out about not being able to have the time to sleep, to rest, to then be a good parent, to be able to do my job properly. It became like this kind of feeling of the walls closing in, you know, just like I can't please everyone. So at that point, it was like I, this isn't sustainable. It's just not sustainable. I can't keep doing this. And I started DJing a lot less because of that. The world of DJing and dance music and club culture was, in the very nature of how it worked, kind of shutting me out.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Because of how I was changing as a person. But then I kind of opened a door and made it work for me and a lot of other people. And when I do the before midnight shows, people just come up and say, thanks. They're just like, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm fifty two. And I feel like I can belong here and I can come out. And, you know, it's not just people in their fifties, it's all ages, it's club kids, it's mothers and sons, it's, you know, people in their seventies. It's, it's the most beautiful atmosphere. I've never DJed to a crowd like it because they're so kind and open.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  And it's not really that druggie. Everyone's just there. It's their one night out. They invest so much in it and they're there to have a good time. It's nice to know that. My own feelings about something were echoed by so many other people. And I don't know any other women in their forties, really, who are doing what I do. So I was coming at it from a very unique perspective, which is women in their forties just aren't listened to in music industry. Music industry is run by men mostly, right? So when you have a woman in her forties, they're kind of forgotten about, right? I don't think people think about women in their forties or fifties when it comes to selling music, and they really should. It's a big, big industry. There's a lot of income there, there's a lot of investment of time.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  They, you know, there's, there's some great taste. And it's been wonderful to kind of feel like I can give those women a space in, in the world of clubbing.

• 22:39Steven Bartlett?

  There's a real, I hear a real lesson about creativity, but also innovation in that, in the sense that when you, when you think about creating new things, it's very difficult to try and put yourself in the mind of someone who you are not.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 22:50Steven Bartlett?

  And when, when you want to create something that is, that is going to feel authentic and is going to be original and in demand, you should first create something for yourself under the assumption that there's many more people out there like you.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  I couldn't agree more.

• 23:03Steven Bartlett?

  And your music is kind of a reflection of that in many, many ways. Your style has been a reflection of that. It's, it's always felt very authentic.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's the key, right? To everything, in my, in my opinion, is authenticity. And in order to be authentic, you have to trust yourself. You have to have conviction in yourself. And you have to trust that your own instinct is the right instinct, even if everyone else is telling you something different. That, that's hard. And in order to do that, you have to really know yourself.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  So.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think at radio, my job there was to play music and break bands, right? You get sent so much music, okay? Now, at some point, you have to say no to stuff. And the grounds of that, there's many reasons you can say no. They're not the right hype band. They don't have enough followers, you know? They don't have someone from their record label who's nice in me up to play it. But actually, the decision has to be then essentially to you. Does this song move you? Do you feel like this song has got something, ideas, lyrics, sonics? That can, you know, that that elevates it to the point where you feel like moved by it?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  And I suppose there's training in that because it makes you every day, every week, have to use that mechanism in your mind, which is instinct. Do you know what I mean? You have to, you have to listen to your own instinct. So, so I, I was kind of exercising that muscle by default in my job. And I guess that's why I'm so happy and just grateful for Before Midnight, because that is an extension of that. It's, it's me using my instinct and saying, no, I, I believe in this. Surely there must be people out there who, who believe this too. And it's been amazing.

• 25:04Steven Bartlett?

  Instinct is almost, especially in the way you describe it, it's almost a voice inside of you that is, is whispering to you about what the, you know, what you think and feel and what you truly want. But then there's this counter narrative, this counter voice, which is usually outside of you. It can be, oh, well, what if my producer doesn't think that's a good song? Or what if the listeners don't like it? Or what if my parents think I shouldn't be doing this? Has your ability to tune into your own instinct to that voice inside of you? That, that informs you kind of before you know yourself consciously? Has your ability to tune into that grown over time?

• 25:38Steven Bartlett?

  And with evidence?

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it really has, actually.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I think it really has. I mean, as well as the radio shows, DJing is a huge amount of that. It's having the courage to draw for a tune that you know the audience don't know and won't recognise, but you still think will, will keep them on the floor. And again, that is like, it's, it's a really hard exercise and it takes a lot of fearlessness to be able to do that. And it's very easy to panic and just put on the tune that you know it's gonna fill the dance floor. And I have a folder on my USB called Panic for that is special thing. So, you know, we all have those, every DJ does. But again, I think that's a really good lesson in instinct and a lesson in kind of reading the crowd, but

• 26:28Speaker 00

  also holding firm, holding firm to your own conviction in something's good. And I think that has grown over the years. It's grown with confidence. It's grown with, I suppose, the idea of my shows being successful and my DJ sets being successful. So as I've become more successful in my career as a result of instinct, of trusting myself and trusting my instincts and my tastes, then obviously, you know, that, that feeling grows more firm. You, you get less worried about making the wrong decision.

• 26:59Steven Bartlett?

  And as your career's progressed, do you feel like if one side of the pendulum is trying to guess what people want from you in all facets of your life, and the other side of the pendulum is doing what I think is right?

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:13Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think over your, over the last sort of 10, 20 years of your career, you've moved towards the instinct, doing what I think is right?

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 27:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  I'm kind of all there now.

• 27:22Steven Bartlett?

  Good.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Which is lovely.

• 27:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it feels really good. And I think part of my, the, the, the big changes that went on in my life in the last couple of years, kind of extricating myself on Radio One and. Doing writing and writing books and taking up podcasting, that's all been about that. It's all been the kind of nucleus of all of those changes is me saying, what do you want? What do I want? What makes me happy? What is not making me happy? It's all of that. It's all just checking in and, and doing what I feel is right. And there's no way I could have made those changes 10 years earlier, or even five years earlier. It takes time. It takes, it takes time to feel like at peace with yourself enough to just walk away from a career like that and say, no, I'm going to do something completely different now.

• 28:09Steven Bartlett?

  As you know, Intel are now sponsoring this podcast. And last week I introduced you to Intel Evo platform, the badge of approval for high spec laptops that pass Intel's own strict requirements and enable you to be more productive on the go. As someone who spends most of their life on the go, it's Intel Evo that really caught my eye when we were discussing this partnership. The idea that Intel gives your laptop the seal of approval for you on all things like all day battery life, fast charging and high performance makes my life easier when I'm buying a new laptop because I know that if it's got that Intel seal of approval, then it's going to be able to keep up with me. They've basically done all the hard work and research for you and confirmed it's going to be able to keep up with your busy life on the go. Head to intel.co.uk/evot to find out more about Intel Evo platform. Also, for a limited time, you can currently get

• 28:50Steven Bartlett?

  15% off all Intel Evo devices at johnlewis.com. The code is evoc15. That's E V O C E O 15 until December 11th. So head over to johnlewis.com to check out the Intel Evo designs and get your 15% off. Terms and conditions apply. See more details in the description box. Quick word from one of our sponsors. I've got a tip for all of you that will make your virtual meeting experiences, I think 10 times better. As some of you may know by now, BlueJeans by Verizon offers seamless, high-quality video conferencing. But the reason why I use BlueJeans versus other video conferencing tools is because of immersion. Their tools make you feel more connected to the employees or customers you're trying to engage with. And now they're launching one of their biggest feature enhancements

• 29:33Steven Bartlett?

  to impact virtual events so far called BlueJeans Studio. I actually used it the other day. I did a virtual event using the studio, which I think about 700 of you came to, TV level production quality, all done by one person with very little technical experience on a laptop. So if you've got an event coming up and you're thinking about doing it virtually, check out BlueJeans Studio now. Let me know what you think because I genuinely believe, I know this is an advert and I'm supposed to say this, but I genuinely believe it's the best tool I've seen for doing really immersive, simple but high quality production virtual events. Quick one from our longest standing sponsor, Huell. I can't tell you over the last, I'd say over the last, really it's been about two and a half years, it was really post pandemic, how much my health has become such a huge priority in my life.

• 30:17Steven Bartlett?

  Huell has been probably the most important partner in my health journey because I've been in the boardrooms, I've been to their offices, tens and tens and tens and tens of times. I've seen how they make their decisions on nutrition. And that's why it's such a wonderful thing to be able to talk to this audience about a brand and a product that is so unbelievably linked to my values and the place I am in my life of valuing the gym, exercise, movement, my mind, my breathing and all of those things. And most importantly, my nutrition. That is the role Huell plays. And so every time I get to read these ads, I do it with such passion because I really, really believe every word I'm saying and I absolutely love the brand. So if you haven't already tried Huell and you've been resistant to my pestering, then give it a go and let me know how you get on.

• 31:01Steven Bartlett?

  Zooming back then on into that part of your life where you described yourself as having a knot in your stomach. The quote I read is, "I've learnt that for the past six years. I've had a knot in my stomach. I had no idea it was there until it's gone."

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 31:17Steven Bartlett?

  I could relate to that.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, how?

• 31:20Steven Bartlett?

  Um, the feeling, because the broader context of what you were saying there is this feeling that you're like not going to do a good job at pretty much anything at the same time. And almost like a building sense of guilt or trying to find a way to slow down time. Um, and it's always kind of hanging over you and then you can kind of feel it in your chest. I mean, that's kind of what I I took from it is.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 31:39Steven Bartlett?

  Walking around with a sense of guilt and I just need five more minutes to sleep or to be this or to do well for this person.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a horrible feeling, isn't it? When you don't feel like you can do anything good enough.

• 31:50Steven Bartlett?

  It's like the absence of peace.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the it's the opposite of peace. It's a constant feeling of kind of turbulence in your head, constantly being pushed and pulled. Um, so when you take that out, um, again, you you know, you're, I was too busy. I keep I keep talking, I keep going back to it, but I keep talking about checking in with myself. I was too busy to do that. I hadn't done that. I I never did that. I was never like spiritual or into any of that stuff because I was too busy. It was like, I don't have time for anything apart from just getting up and getting through my day. My friends used to take the piss out of me because everything was like five minute increments. They'd call me, I'd be like, cool, give me the headlines. How are you? I don't have time for a full, you know, it was always that.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  It was always like, how can we, how can we truncate all of this into as short a time as possible? So I can move on to the next thing.

• 32:43Steven Bartlett?

  And do more.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and do more or just or just like maintain. I wasn't even about doing more, it was just maintaining at that point. So when I, when I made the decision that I was going to leave radio, it's important to know the context of which that happened. So I I didn't just walk away from the career and be like, see ya, I'm just going to see what happens. I obviously took a couple of years to try out some different avenues. And these were avenues that I felt very passionate about, that I really wanted to do. So one was writing and one was podcasting. And podcasting was a reaction to the BBC. It was definitely me being like, I want to own something that with with regards to my own broadcasting. I want to control it. Um, I love the BBC. I will, you know, fly the flag for the BBC forever, but it can be

• 33:29Speaker 00

  very frustrating working for a huge institution because there's so many islands, there's so many departments. It's very hard to get something off the ground. So I wanted to be a broadcaster outside of the BBC and see how that felt. So that was podcasting. And then writing was something that was very much not professional or career oriented at all. That was for my soul. That was like, I want to try and learn something. I know I loved this. I want to try and do it again. And also, I think in retrospect, it was a way of me trying to understand myself. Because they say that about writing, like writing is a way to know yourself. So I thought if I wrote, in hindsight, maybe it was a kind of weird subconscious way of me trying to climb

• 34:10Speaker 00

  out of the panic, you know, it was kind of like, I know if I, if I make myself dedicate time to writing, then I will have to confront myself. I will, I will have to look in the mirror. And I know deeply, deep down that there's something wrong, but I just don't have the time to confront it. So I was doing writing, I did a course, a six month course. I was also doing podcasting that was on top of DJing, on top of doing my five shows a week, on top of everything else that was going on. So I had two years of total chaos of trying to juggle everything, right? And it was after those two years, when I was like, okay, I know enough. I know I love writing enough. I know I love podcasting enough that I can give these a go. I'm going to take myself out of radio now. I'm going to take

• 34:55Speaker 00

  myself out of my, what was essentially my day job and give myself the space I need to really pursue these things. And that's when the knot left. When I made the decision to leave is when the knot left. When I called my boss and said, I'm out.

• 35:11Steven Bartlett?

  You use the words panic and the phrase, something wrong, to describe the feeling that was kind of underpinning these decisions to go in search of something else to climb, you know, you said climb out of the panic.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 35:22Steven Bartlett?

  In hindsight, I've heard you say that in, especially from doing your podcast changes, you've kind of come to learn that that was in some respect like a midlife crisis. Is that accurate?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  I think. I mean, I think I still might be in the midlife crisis. I like, I feel like something goes on in your forties where you really are compelled to look back at your life. You're halfway through life, right? So you're like, whoa, what's what's gonna happen for the next half? So you look back, you're kind of forced to look in the mirror. So there was that in a way. I think, I think at that time.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  I don't know, I don't know if I would attribute attribute that directly to like a midlife crisis. It was more just, it was more just feeling incredibly stressed and burdened and demanded by people. I felt like so many people needed me. I had a lot of teams around me, production teams, management teams, and a lot of people around me, a kind of ecosystem of people, of which I was in the middle. I'm sure you relate to that. And I felt like I didn't want to be needed by so many people anymore.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  So my kids themselves were very needy and obviously needed to be needed. And I wanted to devote most of the needing to them and then also trying to devote more time to have the space to try new things and learn. I think, I think it can happen to everyone. And I think when you're busy and when you are in a situation where you're just keeping things going, you're just trying to maintain life, you're trying to keep a business running, you're trying to keep your job going, trying to keep your kids happy. It's very hard to come out of the, of the chaos and look in. It's very hard to do that.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  So I spent a good from about the age of thirty to about the age of thirty, from forty, my entire thirties, it was that. It was just maintenance. I was mad ambitious, don't get me wrong. I wanted to get bigger, I wanted to try everything. And I fiercely wanted to prove that I could do it all. But when it got to my second kid being about two, I I realized quite quickly that I just, doing it all wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And actually, there was different ways to do it. And what is all of it anyway? What is doing it all? I think there's something tremendously powerful in being and feminist in being able to choose to step away from a high powered job to look after your kids.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Cause it's a choice. I was very lucky in that it was a choice. And I still worked. Don't get me wrong. I love working. I will never stop working, but I just worked in a way that suited me. That worked for my life as it was then.

• 38:09Steven Bartlett?

  That pivotal decision removes the not. But in the the lead up to that decision was the fear. I imagine there was a lot of people, I I would assume there would be people telling you that, you know, or at least implying that you're making a wrong decision. Or was it because I asked that question because I can imagine people listening to what you've just said. And they're stood on the the edge of that that that decision themselves and they're looking into the darkness thinking. I I'll lose my friendship group. I'll lose this. I'll lose that. It just feels like loss and stepping into uncertainty. Requires a certain level of courage or conviction or a certain, in some cases, a certain level of um pain. There's that quote I used to. I used to love that said, um, change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making a change.

• 38:54Steven Bartlett?

  So for people that are stood there looking into uncertainty. Can you tell? Can you tell them about how you felt in the the lead up to that decision yourself? Was there fear? Was there doubt?

• 39:06Speaker 00

  No.

• 39:06Steven Bartlett?

  No, wow.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  And there wasn't because I'd spent two years. Trying to do the things that I wanted to do behind the scenes. And I knew with all my heart that I wanted to write. That writing was was it. It felt like coming home. It felt like the most wonderful feeling discovering writing again. And I knew that the podcast had potential to be a business if I had the time to put into it. So there was this sense of kind of.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Of knowing that the choices I'd made were right, I didn't feel scared leaving Radio One. I didn't feel scared making that decision because after I made the call to my boss to say I was leaving, I just felt the most huge sense of relief. And I always say that you know you've made the right decision as soon as you deliver that decision, you get a feeling afterwards and that feeling tells you whether you've made the right decision or not. And I knew with that feeling of relief that I'd made the right decision. And, you know, I'd been there for seventeen years, Steve. You know, it wasn't like I'd had the most amazing time. So I didn't feel like I was leaving too soon. I felt like I'd, you know, I'd done a good innings, you know.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  So if anything, I felt at peace and I was just excited. I was excited to get the news out, excited to move on and move forwards. I've always been like that. I'm really impulsive. I'm really, ask any of my friends or my management team and they will say, I'm very impatient. I'm very impulsive. I want things, everything to happen now. So in a way, it was good to have time to make this decision and to have time before it came out to the world to process it, but I genuinely didn't feel fear. And I would say for anyone who's standing on the precipice of change, the best power you can have is knowledge. So know what you're stepping into, you know, as much as you can.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  And you will feel better and stronger about walking away from what's come before.

• 41:07Steven Bartlett?

  Part of the issue, I remember Obama saying on stage when he spoke in Brazil at this conference I was at. He talked about how in his role, when he went to get Osama bin Laden in that compound in Pakistan, is you never have all the information ahead of time.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Never, but that's what's exciting. There has to be unknown. There has to be a sense of the unknown. Yeah.

• 41:29Steven Bartlett?

  A certain type of person is trying to get to a hundred percent certainty. Well, we all know.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  There's no such thing.

• 41:35Steven Bartlett?

  Only in hindsight, you get it.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  But I think, I think there's something very.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Life-affirming about not knowing everything. And something very important about being comfortable in that space of not knowing everything. You can't control life. You cannot control life as much as you try. I have tried. It's not possible. At some point, you have to relinquish control and allow, allow yourself to move through life freely without trying to control everything around you. And for me, stepping into that, there was definitely an unknown ahead. But I knew enough to know that I was going to be okay in terms of emotionally and psychologically. And that was okay.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  So I agree. I think fear of the unknown is undeniable and indisputable. But I think it's about allowing that fear to exist. Acknowledging it, seeing it, allowing it and, and, and, you know, living with it to move forwards. Fear sometimes, you know, is healthy. It's a human instinct. It's important to feel it.

• 42:51Steven Bartlett?

  Seventeen years with the Beeb.

• 42:56Steven Bartlett?

  You became one of the best DJs, one of the most well-known DJs in the whole of Europe. Tremendous success.

• 43:05Steven Bartlett?

  Why you? When you look back and connect the dots, because, you know, there's, there's very few people at that top table. There's a lot of people that want to be at that top table. There's a lot of people that would love, that are listening to this right now and that would absolutely say they would want to take your career to sit at that table, the table you walked away from.

• 43:26Steven Bartlett?

  Why you?

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Well, I think essentially I was different because I was a woman. There wasn't that many women around.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  When I was starting out in the world of dance music, um, so, I mean, there was women. I don't, and I'm by no means kind of saying that there wasn't, but there wasn't very many. Um, so I think for Radio One, they quite liked this idea of having a young woman join the station and, and do dance music. For them, they really liked the fact that I wasn't an expert. I wasn't tried and tested. I wasn't, I didn't have a reputation for being a huge global DJ. They wanted to employ someone that was representative of the audience. My initial tagline for my first show was like, I'm coming at this from the perspective of the dance floor as opposed to the DJ booth. I'm, I'm a fan here. And then obviously I got the gigs off the back of that. And then slowly that transformed into

• 44:19Speaker 00

  me being a touring DJ and, you know, be the residencies and all of that biz. I do think that at the start of my career, there was a kind of, uh, it felt a bit like a phenomenon because at the start, at the front of all my shows, it was women. It was all girls and everyone used to remark on that and I used to love that. So I think there was a feeling of me bringing a different maybe audience to the table.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  I was very amenable. I was very, you know, ambitious. I, I was professional. I showed up. Um, I did the work. Um,

• 44:59Speaker 00

  I had a great team, an all female team who worked really hard.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  I,

• 45:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think, I, I can't tell you any more than that, Steve. I don't know. I find it really, really, ah.

• 45:17Steven Bartlett?

  How long was your apprenticeship? How long did you, from the, from the day you first, you know, DJed Spanner track, um, to when people, the world knew your name? How long was that period?

• 45:30Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, like, as in, like, I used to DJ around my friends' parties and stuff, like, just for fun from, from when I was about, uh,

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Twenty.

• 45:42Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  And then I got my show on Radio One in two thousand and four, so um I would have been uh yeah, it would have been maybe like three or four years. Yeah, because when I got my show on Radio One, people knew my name immediately, which was quite mad.

• 45:59Steven Bartlett?

  Quite mad.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Well, it was just mad to be like, even though I'd worked behind the scenes at radio and I'd seen DJs, it was just quite bizarre to be going from the assistant producer, the person who made the tea, to then being like a DJ, get an agent, let's do a photo shoot, you know, it was just like, whoa, it's quite, but actually, the the biggest shock for me was um going from working full time to having one show a week and just being really like, what? Because I love working, so I was a bit bored, so I had to find find um a like a way to make peace with being freelance, I suppose, and working in my own hours.

• 46:37Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think your relationship with your work is healthy?

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Good question.

• 46:44Speaker 00

  I do now, but it definitely hasn't been in the past. I've always worked from when I was fifteen.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  I I really enjoy working.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  I've been hugely ambitious, so I had a sense of momentum that I felt like I had to, you know, I had to honour.

• 47:09Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 47:12Speaker 00

  I think there was a lot of pressure being a female in what was essentially what felt like a man's world, so I felt very uh like I wanted to prove that this was possible and that women could DJ and we could carry a crowd and we could carry a a club night and an event and a festival and a residency, all of that biz. I felt like I wanted to prove a point, basically, so there was that, but I also loved it. So it was kind of a combination of both. A lot of the DJs at Radio One were really competitive as well, so it's kind of you you kind

• 47:52Speaker 00

  of sense that there's a sense of like wanting to be able to stand and be proud of your lot and what you represent and what you bring to Radio One, you know?

• 48:03Speaker 00

  So that momentum like carried me all the way through from my mid twenties up to, yeah, up to being around forty. And then just kind of just so mad, like just, you know, stepping, stepping off that train. It's just, it's just crazy because you ask yourself all these questions. What, where was all that coming from? Why did I, why did I want to work so hard? Who was I trying to prove these things to? You know, but the fact of the matter is I did enjoy it. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and be like, it was awful. It wasn't, it was absolutely fucking amazing. So I'm really grateful for it.

• 48:40Steven Bartlett?

  But it was unsustainable?

• 48:41Speaker 00

  It was unsustainable for where I was at. And this is the thing that I've learned is that where I was at in my life, it didn't work at that time. But as we know, life changes, our situations change all the time. So I could go back to being a full time touring DJ in five years and do my Ibiza residencies all over again. And I quite like having that openness. I doesn't, this doesn't have to be a closed book now. I could go back to broadcasting and doing like a daily radio show. It's about adapting with who you are at that time in your life and what you need. And that's what I did. So for me, and it's only really in the last year that I've opened up to everything again. I think I'd, I'd been so blinkered like, that's it now. Radio's done, I'm going to be a writer, I'm going to be a podcaster and I'm going to DJ now and again.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  The end. But now it's like, no, actually with Before Midnight, it's like, no, I can really, I can really flourish as a DJ. I can really make this last and blossom into something that's completely different than how I envisioned being a DJ as an older person. Same with, you know, radio, I could go back to that and find a whole new way of doing radio that feels amazing for who I am at that moment. So I really like this feeling of everything being open and attainable according to where I'm at in my life.

• 49:58Steven Bartlett?

  With all of this chaos.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:02Steven Bartlett?

  Is a good word because I think chaos is, going back to something you were talking about earlier, the need for something to strive for in a sense of forward momentum. It's funny, I wrote about how, how we go through lives thinking we're trying to reach stability, having no goals, everything sorted, but really we're actually trying to stay in chaos. And it's kind of a paradox that when we reach stability, we get psychological chaos. And when we're in chaos, we have stability. Like when we're striving and when we have goals to complete and things are busy, we're stable. But with all this chaos that you've chosen over the last, you know, 10 years.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:36Steven Bartlett?

  What's your, your, your mental health journey been like?

• 50:40Speaker 00

  I mean, the mental health journey has been pretty, it's been pretty okay. And I, I realize how lucky I am to say that, you know? I feel very grateful that I haven't suffered from depression or anxiety or anything like that in my life. Weirdly recently, like, and it's interesting that you talk about this idea of when you stop, then kind of you have chaos in your head. So I've experienced a bit of that in the last six months. And I think that is finally like a year after leaving radio, it's all kind of settled down. And everything I've wanted to change has changed. And life is really safe, it's really predictable, and I'm a little bit bored.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  So it's like, I've had to be like, okay, you've got everything you want, but now you need a bit of chaos again. So it's, it's just constant tweaks. So, I mean, I'm, I'm going out on the road again. There's things that are happening that will, will scratch that itch, it's fine. But I, I've also felt kind of like hormonally, just like, you know, I'm 44, I'm in perimenopause. This is all happening to me now, there's a whole different change in life. They call it the shift, you know, everything's changing there. So there's this sense of hormones kind of consuming you and taking over your mental health in a way that if you weren't aware of it, can be really scary and frightening and damaging. So I'm trying to educate myself as much as possible about all of that stuff. So that when it hits me, I know what's coming for me, you know?

• 52:07Speaker 00

  And I know what to do when it comes.

• 52:10Steven Bartlett?

  I was talking to Gabby Logan about that in our last episode.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's so insidious because it comes, it's so quietly, it kind of creeps in and it creeps in and like as Gabby said, like with moods, you know, you kind of, your moods are more extreme, you don't deal with things as well, you kind of get irritable more, angry or upset easier. But for me, I felt like, this is the other thing about perimenopause, it might come and then it will go for six months and then it come back again. So it's really, there's no regulation to it. So it's very hard to pinpoint, oh, that's it, you know. So what you have to do is be really across it and document everything and then be able to zoom out and look and be like, well, that, that, that, that, okay, it is, it's perimenopause. So that's what I'm kind of doing at the moment, I'm documenting everything. But it's like,

• 52:57Speaker 00

  I had a feeling recently of just feeling totally restless, like, oh my God, not, like insatiable, like nothing was, nothing was satisfying me. I couldn't, you know, I would exercise, I'd see friends, I'd go out, I'd be with the kids, I'd, you know, everything I tried, I just could not feel satiated and I did not understand it. And then I realized that it was a hormonal thing. So there's, there's so many things that you go through and it's like a weird jigsaw puzzle. But if you know what you're looking for, it really helps. And I actually have Davina McCall to thank for that because she sent me her book and she's been incredible spokesperson for menopause and perimenopause and just getting information out there to people. I think she deserves some sort of, you know, national

• 53:41Speaker 00

  treasure status. She's incredible for what she's doing.

• 53:45Steven Bartlett?

  I agree. I think she's amazing. She, she DMs me sometimes, I still freak out because I think.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  I'm saying, such a fan. Oh my God, it's Davina off the telly.

• 53:55Steven Bartlett?

  On that, on that point of women related issues, one of the, the things I've heard you talk about is tokenism.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. I I read an article you wrote, I'm gonna get this date wrong, maybe two thousand fourteen or two thousand sixteen in Vice.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Oh, the Vice article, yeah.

• 54:12Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about the article? Your reaction was interesting.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  I feel, at the time, I I felt it and I meant it. So what I was arguing about was, you know, a journalist who asked me what it was like to DJ in heels and, you know, kept referring back to the fact that I was a woman when I DJed and I I was I was pissed off about it. It's like, can you stop asking me about being a woman because you're not asking this to Pete Tong? You know, you're not asking this to other DJs. And then there was a, there was a thing at the time where it was like this idea of doing like all female nights, you know, like just female only DJ nights. And I resisted that because I I, at the time, I was felt like it didn't feel right to to have to put us down to gender as opposed to ability as DJs. Like, why are we, why are you grouping all the women together?

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Like, just, just let us all be DJs together, you know? You're either a good DJ or you're not, the end. There shouldn't be a gender issue. But obviously, over the years, with the lack of, you know, women in the game, it was like, I I kinda had to like, change my mind on that a little bit. Not change my mind, I still don't think that women should, or like DJs should be assessed with regards to their gender. But if we need to have more women in the game, then yes, we should be encouraging any way that we can do that. And if that means putting loads of women on a lineup and reminding people how great women are as DJs, then then go for it. So I think for a lot of my early career, it

• 55:40Speaker 00

  didn't even occur to me that it was, you know, there was, I I mean, I knew there was a problem in that there wasn't a lot of women DJs. And I was always delighted when there was other women around. But it didn't occur to me to to be an activist about it and to shout about it and to try and bring women through. There was one turning point, I remember, when I got asked to DJ at a festival and they wanted me to be a headliner. And I looked at the lineup and the first eleven lines of names were all men. And it was the twelfth line where there was a female name. And I remember emailing back to promoters, who were all guys and saying, who I knew and worked with. It was like, guys, like, come on, what's going on here?

• 56:27Speaker 00

  And that was the first time I ever kind of answered, you know, was just like, this isn't okay. And then from then, it kind of snowballed and I became a lot more vocal about it. Once it clicked that I actually had a bit of power and I could do something about it, you know.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  And it's been enjoyed to watch because now there's so many amazing women. They're like killing it.

• 56:49Steven Bartlett?

  When you think about the next chapter of your life, if we sat here in 10 years' time and I said, Annie, that was a really successful 10 years, or you told me it was a really successful 10 years. What would have it had to involve for that to be the case?

• 57:05Speaker 00

  I mean, this is fascinating because as I've got older, my idea of what success is has completely changed. Success for me isn't numbers, it's not tickets sold, it's not

• 57:23Speaker 00

  awareness, it's not algorithms, it's not anything like that. Success for me now is personal happiness. Personal happiness stems from feeling stimulated, feeling as alive as I possibly can.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Learning and also feeling like the people I love are in the best possible way that they can be in terms of living their lives. So that's success now.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  So if you were to tell me, you know, at the end of my 40s, that you had a successful decade, for me, that would mean that I felt

• 58:09Speaker 00

  I felt like a sense of contentment and peace, but also I felt alive. I felt alive. I always go back to that. I think writing makes you feel alive because it forces you to put what's there down on paper and it forces you to look at what's in your head. And it forces you to figure things out.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  I think learning makes you feel alive. It makes your head tick. It challenges you. So it's that combination of kind of peaceful contentment, but also feeling like pushed and challenged in a way that isn't going to be damaging. Does that make sense?

• 58:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, it does.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 58:54Steven Bartlett?

  It makes perfect sense.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 58:55Steven Bartlett?

  Conversely, then, if the next 10 years was unsuccessful and you said to yourself, do you know what? I made the same mistakes again.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:02Steven Bartlett?

  What would that 10 years involve if it was unsuccessful? And you'd made the same mistakes again?

• 59:06Speaker 00

  I think it would be running away with a sense of what I should be doing as opposed to what I actually really want to do. So let's take this for example. Let's say change is my podcast. It would be, it would be, okay, it's doing well. So I want to double it. I want to do two more episodes a week. I want to try and be the biggest, best podcast out there. And I'm kind of doing that without the resources or without the team around me to do it, taking on that responsibility as opposed to just allowing it to grow kind of slowly as it is. I would also be DJing way more. It would be trying to write a book every two years, which I have been doing. And I don't know if it's just that sustainable.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  And just, yeah, I guess kind of doubling down on all the work I'm doing and trying to be the best and the biggest at what I'm doing as opposed to doing what I'm doing well and within my means.

• 1:00:05Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Steven Bartlett?

  The question that's been left for you is, what is the pain you experience in your life that hurt the most, but you would not erase in hindsight?

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Getting dumped when I was in my twenties. Yeah, getting dumped.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  It was the biggest kind of experience like that. And it was really important for me to know how that felt.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  To be on the receiving end of heartbreak.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  I was incredibly miserable, but I climbed out of it. And I think it was a real big lesson to know how that felt. So, yeah, getting dumped in my twenties. Yeah.

• 1:01:07Steven Bartlett?

  Why was it important to know how that felt?

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Because I'd always been the dumper.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  I I was always that person who kind of was able to up and leave. And I'd never been on the other side of that.

• 1:01:18Steven Bartlett?

  Isn't it the most excruciating pain in the world?

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  It's just awful. It's just ultimate rejection. It's kind of very hard to see past it, but yeah.

• 1:01:29Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of the world will know you as Annie Mac.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:01:32Steven Bartlett?

  But more recently, you've really taken hold of your full name, Annie McManus.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yes, reclaimed it.

• 1:01:40Steven Bartlett?

  Reclaimed. Why, why so?

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  I don't know. I just felt like I just, again, I went through this period of change, Steve, where I just like, I wanted to change everything. I got, I, it was like, okay, I've changed my job, something so huge and what felt quite insurmountable at times. To be able to change that empowered me to want to change loads more. So, writing this book, it genuinely, the first book I wrote, Mother Mother, it felt like a whole different side of me. It felt like all of me. There's, you know, when you're, when, when, when I'm on the radio, well, first of all, when I'm DJing, no one really gets any of me apart from my music selections and the odd crowd surf if I've drank enough. But radio, there's also a very limited kind of surface level of me that you get, that you got,

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  because I was only able really to talk about music most of the time. And yes, there's tidbits of your life. But with this book, it felt like a real kind of sum of all of my parts. So it felt like a disservice to the book to give it that name. I was also very determined to try and call it by my full name.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Contrary way, I suppose, my agent at the time would have probably said that, like, surely you should just cash in on the fact that it's Annie Mac and people know you for that. But I really didn't want to do that. I wanted the book to be judged for the writing and for nothing else. I kind of did it all the way. I should have started with a memoir and then gone to a book, but I did it all. I wrote this strange, kind of bleak novel about addiction and grief and a young girl growing up in Belfast. And it was so far removed from any perception of who I was as a kind of professional person. But I liked that because it kind of, it kind of set the bar for what I wanted to do with the writing. I didn't want it to be influenced by anything that had come before. I wanted it to be real

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  and true and authentic to who I was as a person. So it felt right to, to, to give it my full name, my born name.

• 1:03:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, Annie, I'm, I'm really glad you did because I think it's somewhat symbolic of the journey you've been on so clearly in your life and your relationship with your own conviction and creativity and intuition, which is creating ever greater, ever more valuable art as you kind of, the pendulum swings over to intuition and stepping into yourself and understanding who you are. But I can also tell from the conversations we've had that it's bringing you closer to your sense of like fulfillment in life and balance and all those things, which for many of us, we, we abandon in the pursuit as we're dragged away by our, our desire to fit in or momentum or our success or whatever. And that's created some amazing writing. It's created amazing new ideas, as you talked about with your, your new format that ends at midnight. And it's very exciting to be

• 1:04:24Steven Bartlett?

  on the receiving end of all of that art and creativity. It's also very inspiring. Your podcast is amazing.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:04:30Steven Bartlett?

  My best friend in the whole world, he peppers me every day. He says, you need to listen to this episode. And this episode, he absolutely loves it. My friend Ash, he's my best friend. And I recommend everybody listening to this to go and check it out because if you, if you love deep conversations, if you love realness and vulnerability, then you definitely will love changes.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  Thank you so much, Steve. And, and also like, everything I've talked about has been inspired by talking about change on a, on a weekly basis. That, that is empowering, learning from other people and how they changed their life. So I think that's helped me a little bit. The podcast has helped me to be brave to change. Yeah.

• 1:05:04Steven Bartlett?

  Me too.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Steven Bartlett?

  And yours is one of the real, really important ones out there. So everybody make sure you go and listen to that. I'm excited for your book coming next year.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Thank you, Steve.

• 1:05:12Steven Bartlett?

  I know how terrifying that can be and how much work that is to create something like that. So thank you, thank you for your time. Thank you for the inspiration. And as a fan, I'm excited to see all the wonderful things your passion and sort of intuition creates over the next decade.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  Well, thank you for the lovely questions. I can't feel like I just talked at you.

• 1:05:28Steven Bartlett?

  No, that's the point. I'm not here to talk, people are sick of me. Thank you, Annie.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thanks.

• 1:05:37Steven Bartlett?

  Quick one. As you might know, Crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and Crafted are a jewellery brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewellery. The really wonderful thing about Crafted jewellery is it's super affordable. It looks amazing. The pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made. I think I've worn this piece for almost a year. It hasn't broken, hasn't changed colour because it's really, really good quality. And it costs roughly 50 quid. People will be surprised when they hear that. They'll probably assume that all of my jewellery is like solid gold and costs thousands and thousands of pounds. But what's the point when you can achieve the exact same effect from a piece of jewellery that's high quality and costs 50 quid? That's why I buy Crafted.