Bella Mackie - ‘I Will Never “Fix” My Mental Health’

Bella Mackie began her career as a journalist, writing for publications including the Guardian, Vice and Vogue, before writing her bestselling debut, Jog On. The book explored how running helped her rebuild her life after the end of her first marriage triggered debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. She followed it with How To Kill Your Family, a darkly comic novel about a young woman methodically murdering her wealthy relatives. It spent 47 weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list and is now being adapted for Netflix, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Two more novels followed, including her latest, Claws Out - another bestseller, this time taking aim at the absurdities of North London’s liberal elite. It’s a world Mackie knows well. She grew up in North London, the daughter of journalist and campaigner Lindsay Mackie and former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, and still lives there today with her husband, Radio 1 DJ Greg James. In this episode we cover her OCD, how she feels she hasn’t ‘fixed’ her mental health - and perhaps never will, her ‘failure’ to leave home and what it’s like to be married to someone painfully level-headed. This bonus episode is brought to you by @arlalactoFREE - all the taste, easier to digest. IN THIS EPISODE 00:00 Intro 02:51 True Crime Origins 04:11 Rewriting Crime Tropes 07:17 Funny Draft Fail 10:37 Success Fuels Anxiety 14:57 Living With OCD 22:02 Childfree Choice Backlash 30:41 Cozy Season Sponsor Break 31:35 Failure to Launch Confession 32:15 Living Near Mum and Dad 33:48 Therapy Rejection and Detachment 34:43 Anxiety and Codependency Roots 37:31 Privilege Nepotism and Validation 39:26 Tony Blair as the Adult 44:01 Driving Cycling and Creative Life 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: Anyone else’s mental health is an island you can’t get to. OCD is like Pokemon, you can catch them all. Greg [my husband] lies down on me when I have an intrusive thought and does a chicken dance on me to make me laugh. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Bella’s novel, Claws Out, is available to buy now: harpercollins.co.uk/products/claws-out-bella-mackie?variant=56397858537851 Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Dolly Alderton - swap.fm/l/XM98joc3GFEMTsLfkEfR Caitlin Moran - swap.fm/l/CaitlinMoran 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Join our community of subscribers here: https://lnk.to/7i0moR Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: askhowtofail.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I developed OCD symptoms when I was 10 or 11, but didn't tell anyone because they were embarrassing and I didn't know what they were. And then I started having panic attacks when I was like 18. I don't mind talking about it. I mind people's reactions imagining that they like know what's going on in my womb. Like what's going on in my womb is like, everything is packing it up and leaving town, baby. She once said that if I moved to Australia, she'd like throw herself in the Thames. Like she, I think, is just as codependent as I am.

• 0:27Elizabeth Day?

  How to Fail is brought to you by Aala lacto free. Delicious dairy with all the taste, easier to digest. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that believes failure just is a fact of life, but it's how we respond to it that is the true test of character. Before we get into today's episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.

• 0:56Elizabeth Day?

  Bella Mackey established her career as a journalist, working for The Guardian, Vice and Vogue, among others. Her first book was the bestselling non-fiction work Jog On, which told the story of how running helped her overcome anxiety and depression after the end of her first marriage left her experiencing panic attacks. In 2021, Mackie published her debut novel, How to Kill Your Family, which spent 47 weeks in the Sunday Times Bestseller list. The tale of a young woman meticulously killing six members of her wealthy estranged family is now being adapted for Netflix, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Two more novels have followed, including her latest, Claws Out, which has been described

• 1:40Elizabeth Day?

  as an acute satire by Nigella Lawson. It too is already a bestseller. The social milieu lampooned in Claws Out, the North London liberal elites unaware of their own absurdities, could be said to bear a passing resemblance to Mackie's own upbringing. Her mother is the journalist and campaigner Lindsay Mackie, while her father, Alan Ruspridge, is the former editor in chief of The Guardian. Mackie grew up in North London, where she still lives with her husband, Radio 1 DJ Greg James. "I grew up really privileged, so I've kind of seen these echelons in different ways," she said recently.

• 2:19Elizabeth Day?

  "I've punched up at rich people and I felt like it's time to punch myself in the face." Bella Mackie, welcome to How to Fail.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  But what an opening, thank you.

• 2:31Elizabeth Day?

  You are one of my most requested guests.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Oh, that's nice.

• 2:34Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm so happy because we finally get a chance to meet. We've never met in person before. We failed at that.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  I know. See, the London liberal elite doesn't always work its magic. You don't always, not everyone is friends in the way you think they are.

• 2:47Elizabeth Day?

  That's true. I loved that feeling of you punching yourself and your, your, your immediate milieu in the face. And I know that when you were a child, you were obsessed with both true crime and Hello magazine.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, my two loves. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:02Elizabeth Day?

  And do you feel that your literary career is just?

• 3:06Speaker 00

  It's just that.

• 3:06Elizabeth Day?

  That progeny.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  I never branched out. It just was these two influences in your childhood. So be very careful what you're feeding your kids because ultimately it will be the thing that they do as an adult. It was crime and the class system in this country, which I just find, I, I think you do too, endlessly fascinating.

• 3:21Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Tell me more about the crime, though. What was it as a child that you liked about it?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  I mean, I couldn't tell you. I was a very, I was a very nerdy, anxious kid and I, I don't know why the crime, maybe it's the same reason everyone likes true crime, is that there's something in it that gives you a thrill, but you feel safe, you know, in your own home. You know, you kind of, you can do the ironing, you can do something incredibly banal, but you're listening to the worst things that have ever happened to another person. There's something very weird about the way that we all imbibe true crime. But there was just some kind of animalistic nasty part of me that found it all fascinating. You know, the worse, the better, to the point where I remember, you know, if, if a murder was sort of bog standard and, and not descriptive, I'd be like, oh, next. You know, this is me at eight. And I do sometimes think, is that why I have an anxiety disorder? Because I was just, just as much as I could reading this stuff.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Thank God there wasn't the internet when I was a kid. Thank God, because I'd have been on all those kind of Faces of Death websites, I think.

• 4:15Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things that I admire about your fiction, though, is that you subvert the genre so cleverly and you subvert a lot of the archetypes. So it's never just an unlikable evil woman, or it's never just a woman who is a helpless victim. They are given so much more agency than they are in, in true crime. Was that deliberate?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  I think after I'd done my sort of true crime stint in, in my sort of early, early years, I then read a lot of crime fiction. And the crime fiction that I read was so often, woman dies, nameless sometimes, naked sometimes, you know, horrible things done to her. And then the person, the savior, would be a man wearing a leather jacket, you know, who was handsome but didn't know it. And maybe he had like a drinking problem, but not too serious. Like he could get it together for like, you know, for the big thing. And, and that was kind of how everything was centered. And I remember, I, I think I overdosed on those books to the point where I felt icky at the end of reading them. I felt a bit traumatized, not, you know, but I just, there's something about those books, you can kind of, they can get a bit too into your psyche. And so I thought, if I ever wrote crime myself, I would want to write crime that didn't make

• 5:19Speaker 00

  women feel scared at the end. You know, like there's an episode of Luther, I don't know if you've watched it, where a man slides up from underneath the bed, underneath the bed. And as a result, if I'm on my own at night, I have to check every single bed in the house. I have to check every cupboard. I didn't want books that I wrote to feel like that. So I wanted to write books that were kind of 10% removed from the real world, slightly elements of ridiculousness in the murders and with women who are equally as sort of in control and centered as the men in the stories and not kind of helpless victims. Quite often, like the worst people you've ever read, but you know, you kind of root for them.

• 5:54Elizabeth Day?

  Totally. And I, I know that women authors get asked all the time about unlikable characters and it's sort of really irritating and sexist, but I'm about to do it.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  No, no, go for it.

• 6:04Elizabeth Day?

  I think, again, it's, it's so in evidence in Claws Out, which is so delicious and hilarious, and it's got this shifting moral call throughout. So as a reader, it's a very satisfying experience because you're never sure who you're rooting for. You're rooting for all of them at different points. How difficult is that to, to keep a hold of?

• 6:23Speaker 00

  I think it's something that I did by accident, to be honest, because when I wrote How to Kill Your Family, I wasn't thinking about whether my main character Grace was likable or not. To me, I was just enjoying the story. I was having fun with it. And then I got all these messages from female readers saying, I just really like her and I don't know what that says about me. I feel really odd that I like this, you know, she's a serial killer. And I remember thinking, oh, I did that by mistake. I didn't mean to make her likable or make you root for her. So I think it's not something I set out to do to kind of keep you, keep you with them. But obviously, if you don't, as a reader, root for the characters that you're reading about, it takes you out of the story and you kind of think, well, why am I bothering? So if they're just rich and they're just unlikable, I think you're just waiting for them to be murdered immediately. You know, that could be chapter one, that could be a short story, that could be a tweet.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Those characters appeal to the bits of ourselves that we don't, that we know are nasty, that we know we're jealous of people or we have mean thoughts or, you know. And so if you read characters like that, that's the bit I think you're rooting for, is the kind of, the bad bits of you in a character.

• 7:20Elizabeth Day?

  You are very funny.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 7:23Elizabeth Day?

  You are just naturally an incredibly funny person. Is it true that you wrote 130,000 words of a previous draft and you ditched it because you didn't think it was funny enough?

• 7:32Speaker 00

  No, I didn't think it was funny. No one thought it was funny. It was my second novel after How to Kill Your Family. How to Kill Your Family did really well and I'm not just bragging, like it just did well, like nothing to do with me. It just was one of those snowball things where it did well and I was really taken aback by it and really, um, like overwhelmed by it and nervous because I just thought, oh my God, everyone wants me to just write How to Kill Your Family again. Like How to Kill Your Family 2, they're all back. Like she's killing more family, there's no more family. And so I thought, I'll pivot and I'm just going to write something really serious and I'm going to write something really profound and meaningful and it's going to win the Booker Prize. And it's going to be, you know, it's going to be a seminal work of, you know, the blurb is going to say luminous, you know?

• 8:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  And I wrote it and everyone, we had this meeting with my editors and they all did like a head tilt and they were like, oh. And they, and they didn't meet me in the office. We met at like a neutral space, like in a bar. And, and they all sort of were like, oh, you okay? Is everything all right? What's going on in that noggin? Everything, do you need to talk? And to be fair, I was really anxious at the time and I was like, oh, oh, this doesn't, it's missed the mark, this, it's not funny. And so I deleted it all. I didn't delete it, it's still in the cloud somewhere. But I did go back and look at it about two years ago and like full body cringed at how embarrassing it was, like, oh, like, like there were lots of like long pauses and like a woman looking into the distance. And yeah, I just, I can't write serious, apparently.

• 8:50Elizabeth Day?

  Is that true, though? Or do you still have ambitions to write something outside of the genre in which you are incredibly successful?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Doesn't everyone?

• 9:02Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I think most authors probably have the ambition to win the Booker Prize.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Or, so I think most authors wanna win the Booker Prize, sell fifteen million copies.

• 9:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Or, you know, a third secret thing that I'm not thinking of. And I think authors feel, you know, I think you look around at other authors and you're like, oh, you're doing well, you're doing well, like, you've done this. You always want the thing that you don't have, you know, so I think after I wrote I Had to Kill and it did really well commercially, I was like, well, now I have to write something that's kind of literary and acclaimed. And I think maybe I can't do that.

• 9:35Elizabeth Day?

  I think you can.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  I don't think I can. I don't think I can. I think that, that, that attempt showed me that I can't.

• 9:42Elizabeth Day?

  Interesting.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  It's like writing sex. I can't write sex.

• 9:44Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, well.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  I write, they, they took their clothes off, they closed the door and the next morning they had breakfast.

• 9:52Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:52Elizabeth Day?

  Well, there is very good almost sex in Claws Act.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  There you go, almost sex.

• 9:56Elizabeth Day?

  I really liked that couple. I really liked that couple. Okay, let's move on to your failures, which are brilliant.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 10:03Elizabeth Day?

  They are proper failure. Sorry, that's such a weird thing to say, but I am so appreciative. Thank you.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  After doing years of this show, you must have some people who are, you know, like when my husband did it. I'm sorry, but my husband did Ad Bell and he's never felt anything. And he was literally like scraping the barrel of like, I can't play cricket. And I was like, you are debasing yourself and the show. You should give this show more respect.

• 10:26Elizabeth Day?

  He was absolutely lovely, but I do remember a point where I was like, where, you must have some darkness, Greg, where do you put it? But he's just a lovely man.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  I've got loads, so I will leave that out for you.

• 10:38Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. Your first failure is your failure is you put it to fix my mental health. One of the things that I wanted to ask you about your success is whether you've been able to enjoy it or relax into it.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  No, I think it's made it way worse and I haven't enjoyed it at all, which I think is such a waste of success for someone. Like I could, someone else could have that and be having the best time. They'd be like, I don't know, renting hot tubs and, you know, sleeping with celebrities and taking loads of cocaine and just having the best time ever. And I sit in my room sort of like, oh God, I'm having more intrusive thoughts than I had before. So huge waste of time for me to be successful, it turns out. Never, never get what you want. And so, no, yeah, no, it's not, it's not, not, not, not been enjoyable at all.

• 11:26Elizabeth Day?

  Is that partly because you feel more eyes on you? Does that play into it?

• 11:32Speaker 00

  No, I don't think so because I never feel eyes on me because I'm always alone on my own writing. So I never feel eyes on me. It's more like, it's, it's just an internal pressure, you know, that I think the next book has to be as good as the last thing. And, and then, you know, my own measurement of failure has changed, basically. In that if the first book I'd written had sold ten thousand copies, I'd have been beyond thrilled. I'd have been so happy. And then maybe if the next one had sold eleven thousand copies or nine and a half thousand copies, I'd have, you know, I'd have had that same feeling. But because the first one just blasted off into space without me having anything to do with it, it's just this kind of mad confluence of events.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  That, that has changed my perception of what is failure. And so that is, I mean, maybe there's a way I can, I'm sure over time I'll become, you know, more accustomed to it and everything will recalibrate. But I think at the moment, it's still, it's still a bit, like I look at it and I think, oh, you know, I sort of wish it hadn't, I wish I hadn't done that well, which is so stupid.

• 12:30Elizabeth Day?

  No, it's really honest. Thank you. I mean, talking about your mental health, as you have done very generously and openly over the years and written about it too. Can you have, do you have a first memory of when you started to feel a certain kind of way? That now you look back on and you're like, oh, that was the beginning of my mental health journey?

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it was like, I think it was given to me in the womb. Like, I think it was a special gift that like was passed down to me through generations. But I, my first memory of it would be at primary school when there was some kind of after school event and my mum was helping out and I was saying to her, oh, we have to go home. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. And she was like, you can breathe. What are you talking, you know, obviously couldn't understand. It was the eighties, like a different time, a different time. And I look back on that and I'm like, oof, yeah, that was quite a boring classic first symptom of anxiety. And then I developed OCD symptoms when I was ten or eleven, but didn't tell anyone because they were embarrassing. I didn't know what they were. So, and then I started having panic attacks when I was like eighteen.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  So it was kind of, I think it was just there the whole time, simmering away, about to explode into my, into my late teens, early twenties, which is when most people get diagnosed, if they're gonna be diagnosed with anxiety or depression.

• 13:49Elizabeth Day?

  And how were your family around it?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  I mean, they were very sympathetic. I mean, I don't think anyone knew what it was until I saw a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said, oh, you have OCD. And before that, I think there were like words, again, it was the eighties, a different time when people would call you like nervous or, or tricky maybe, you know.

• 14:11Elizabeth Day?

  Or a warrior.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Or a warrior. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those kind of labels. And then they were great. They scrambled to get on board with it. But I think it was hard for them not knowing how to, you know, what to do and how do you look after a child who's, you know, refusing to get out of bed or, or says weird things like, you know, I remember saying to my mum, like, oh, do you think if I had a knife, I would stab you? And her being like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Or asking my dad if he was a robot, which I remember he answered very nicely, but at the time he must have thought like, oh, this isn't great. What's going on here? So I think even now, I think it still stymies,

• 14:48Speaker 00

  stymies them sometimes. I think, why wouldn't it? You know, anyone else's mental health is a, is an island you can't get to. So, you know, I don't, I don't blame them for it. I think they've been as, as good as they can be.

• 15:00Elizabeth Day?

  Does it feel lonely?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Cause again, because it's an island, we all, look, there is no unique experience of mental health. Weirdly, I think if you look at like the worst place in the world reels on Instagram, you will see someone talk about the same exact fear you've had, which does obviously make you feel better. You think, okay, fine, like, you know, someone else has had that exact thought that that one bottle of Diet Coke in the supermarket, you know, you, you worry about picking it up because you're like, has someone poisoned that one? Has someone tampered with it? I saw that on reels the other day and I thought, I've never had an original mental health thought in my life. But you're still in your own head and you're still, you know, thinking these thoughts sometimes twelve hours a day, you know, so

• 15:41Speaker 00

  it is really lonely, which is why you have to talk about it, which is why I talk about it all the time, which is why I urge other people to talk about it. Cause that's the only way you can make it better for other people and, and importantly for yourself.

• 15:53Elizabeth Day?

  Weird question. Do you think your OCD and those intrusive thoughts helps you write crime?

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Someone said to me the other day, do I feel like the darkness of my brain somehow, yeah, that it's kind of cathartic or therapeutic or in some way that it helps me write crime? And I'd never thought about it before. But I thought it was an interesting thing to think about, you know, that, that somehow I have no control over my own dark thoughts. But I have control over my fictional dark thoughts, you know, and they don't fuss me. They don't phase me at all. You know, I can think about the worst way to murder someone fictionally. I won't, you know, my heart won't skip a beat. And then I'll think about, you know, I don't know, you know, did I take the keys out the front door and start having palpitations? So, yeah, maybe.

• 16:36Elizabeth Day?

  Where are you now with mental health? This idea of having failed to fix it, did you feel at one point that you would get quote unquote better?

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did. I think I spent at least most of my twenties denying it because it felt embarrassing and lonely and I didn't know anyone else like that. So I felt like, just don't talk about it. It'll go away at some point. Didn't go away. My thirties, my, my first husband had just left me. So then I was like, okay, I have to get a handle on this because it got to the point where I was having panic attacks if I kind of walked to the end of the road. So I thought I'm gonna become agoraphobic at this point and I'm not gonna be able to go anywhere. So I have to get a handle on it. So I did get a handle on it. I got a therapist and I started running and I did all this stuff. And I, I did feel like I was somewhere near cured and, you know, what my, what my perception of cured was.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  So then the pandemic happened and, and my brain just fell off a cliff. And I think also that coupled with the fact that I'm now like well into my forties. So hormonal plus pandemic means that like the handle that I thought I had on it just like fell into the sea, never to be seen again. And so I would say, I would say that I'm okay. But I think I have now lost hope of ever being where I was, say, eight years ago.

• 17:54Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, Bella.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's my, that's why I said it's a failure because I do feel like a failure at not being able to crack it. You know, I've done, I've done all sorts of, you know, things. I've done like, you know, EDMR, EMDR.

• 18:07Elizabeth Day?

  I always get confused. One is like a dance.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Music. One is therapy for trauma. Yeah, they are different things, although maybe not, maybe, you know, be much more helpful if I was just going to a dance music festival. You know, I've done that. I had a weird therapy guy who wanted me to talk to my inner eight year old, which was so creepy. Breath work. You know, I've done all the things, medications, you know, exercise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've taken supplements that I've seen people talk about online because I'm like, oh, maybe that'll do a thing, you know. I bought one of those mats that you lie on that has nails in it. Cause you know, someone said that was great for,

• 18:40Speaker 00

  for anxiety. I don't know why it would be. I've done the journaling and I still don't feel like I'm ever gonna get a hold on it really. And that bleeds me out because I just think, oh, like the OCD is just so. Prevalent in my brain. And it's just the main thing every day, really. Um, and my grandpa had it and my uncle had it. So it's like, it really is like the gift of the lineage.

• 19:08Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Um, and my grandpa never, I don't think ever escaped from under it. And I don't think my uncle really did either. I think like, we've all been given it. To me, that does feel like a failure. Just because, you know, you judge yourself differently than you judge someone else.

• 19:22Elizabeth Day?

  And your OCD, you've described some of the intrusive thoughts. Is that the, the main symptom of it?

• 19:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's always intrusive thoughts. It's never, um, obviously lots of people have compulsions where they, you know, clean things or, you know, turn off light switches or whatever. And I'm kind of lucky and I don't have that, but I just have the mental ones. And, and also I guess the compulsion ones, which is like maybe asking for reassurance or, you know, obsessively Googling something and, and themes change for me. You know, there are lots of OCD can take on only form, I think, really. People talk about different themes, like as if they're only seven, but it really is like Pokemon. You can, you can catch them all. So there's like existential OCD and health OCD and, you know, but ultimately they're all the same thing. But it's just a very sneaky illness and, and most of the time you don't really think it's OCD. You think you're genuinely legitimately worrying about something. And then you, you think, oh no, this is just another, it's just the same thing. It's a shapeshifter.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  But, you know, it's that thing that it just demands all your time. And so you can spend whole days just down pits of mad worries rather than like living your, you know, your one precious life. So yeah, so I, that's why I think it's a failure is that I think you've got all the resources. You're really lucky. You're really privileged, you know? Why is it that even with all those resources, you can't crack it? You can't conquer it? Crush it with my mind vice?

• 20:37Elizabeth Day?

  Do antidepressants help with OCD?

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yes, they do to a point. So I've always taken antidepressants on and off. Sometimes I hear people that say, oh yeah, like completely got rid of all the thoughts. It's fantastic. And I've just never, that's never been my experience. Um, oddly, I think hormones help with the thoughts quite a lot. Cause I think actually when you, when your hormones start crashing off a cliff, like goodbye forever. Um, I think that can make OCD much worse. So they help a bit. Um, wine helps. I know it's not an official answer, but it's really good for like a glass of wine calming the mind. I'm sorry to all doctors listening. Um, and running, running and exercise helps, but, but you know, never for, never for very long.

• 21:17Elizabeth Day?

  Does writing help?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting. Yes. Yes, you're right. It does help actually. Writing helps when you're feeling anything, right? When you're feeling sad or angry or cross or whatever it is, writing does help. Um, I think that's why people say you should journal.

• 21:30Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things that really strikes me when I'm hearing you talk about this is how similar in some ways it feels to some of my journey with fertility. So that idea of you just need to find the right drug or the right magic cure, or you just need to lie on a hillside in moonlight and rub your right temple three times and then you'll magically get pregnant. But of course, that journey has an endpoint, like even if it's not the endpoint that you want. And it's not something that you have to live with. You might live with the loss of it, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't have to be taking drugs for it for the rest of your life. And I, I was in two minds whether to ask you about this better because I know you get asked about it all the fucking time.

• 22:11Elizabeth Day?

  And it might be exhausting being some kind of poster child for a child free existence. But I feel duty bound to ask you about it because I know that so many How To Fail listeners and viewers really appreciate your take on this, on deciding not to have children.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  No, I don't mind when people ask me. I mind when people write comments on social media saying like, I think actually she should have a child and she's being an ass that's not doing it. Or like, I think she's stopping her husband from being happy. I mind that. I don't mind talking about it. I mind people's reactions. Imagining that they like know what's going on in my womb. Like what's going on in my womb is like, everything is pecking up and leaving town, baby. I think that I always assumed I'd have kids because I think that's what you do. And especially of women my age, our age, I think of, you know, it was very much like when you have children, when you have a child of your own, when you're a mother. Quite a lot of when, never and if, you know, if you have a child.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Uh, so I think I just assumed that I would have a kid and then I got married for the second time and I think we just were like, well, that'll be the thing that we do next, you know? We've hit the marriage thing and now we've run out of things to say. We'll have a kid. And then, yeah, we didn't and we talked about it. And then I think we both kind of came to the conclusion that like, did we actually want to have a kid or were we just two people that had kind of assumed that we would have a kid? And, and genuinely, we've now talked about it for, we've been together 10 years next year. So we've talked about it for like, seriously, we've had conversations about it for about eight years. And we've gone on endless bloody dog walks where we've just walked and walked and talked about, you know, the potential,

• 23:50Speaker 00

  the potential baby that we don't have, you know, that kid is, you know, that could have been neurotic by now, the amount we've talked about it. I think we just decided that we weren't sure we wanted it enough. And enough is, I know that's different for everyone. Again, you know, not, not everyone. You know, some people don't want a kid and then they have a kid and it's the best thing that ever happened to them. Some kids, people desperate to have a kid and have a kid and maybe they're a bit like, oh, I wish I'd not done this, you know? So the idea of enough is different for everyone, but for us, I think we just thought it wasn't, we would, we could take it or leave it. And I, that just didn't feel like a good enough reason to do it. But I remember something had come out about Greg, like a good thing, not a weird thing. But something had come out about Greg in the news. So I'd Googled his name and this mum's net thread came up.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  And there was a woman being like, he seems lovely. Um, his, I think his wife is stopping him from have a kid, having a kid because of her mental health. And I think that's really sad. And I remember being really crushed by that and really upset and angry about it and thinking like, you bloody bitch, you know, mind your own business. But I think she probably, this random person on mum's net had a kind of a point, which is, I think if my mental health had been better, I would have jumped straight in and done it without thinking about it. And we would have a kid by now. But I think you do have to also concede that if you have bad mental health or erratic mental health or whatever it is, that that is also, you know, can be a challenge in, in motherhood. And it worried me a lot, the idea of having to cope with OCD and motherhood.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  I know that OCD often gets worse in pregnancy and postpartum. And that really worried me because I, like, as I say, I don't have a handle on it now anyway. So the idea of then throwing a baby into the mix scared me. So that has also been a consideration. And I, I think I felt quite defensive about that. Maybe three or four years ago, and I now don't feel defensive about it because I think, I think there was a weird sexism behind the, the comment, you know, about the idea that like she's stopping her husband from doing it as if he doesn't have agency. Because oddly, in the discussion, sorry, this is such a long and boring answer.

• 25:51Elizabeth Day?

  It's an amazing answer.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Um, in the discussion about me and Greg having children online and stuff, it's always about me and my decision. And never about, like, as if Greg is just a passive, you know, he's just going along with like this weird angry woman who's got mental health problems. Poor Greg, like he should be with someone nicer. And like, no one ever says like, oh Greg, what do you think? Or if they do and he says, I don't want children, they don't believe him. So it's very weird. It's a very odd sexism that's, that's built into it. And, um, that's why I don't like talking about it is just because of the reaction. It's not because of the conversation.

• 26:25Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Because the reaction is so loaded with other people's, how people are invested in motherhood and parenthood and children. And fair enough, like it's, it's such a complex thing as you, as you say, talking about your own fertility struggles. Everyone has their own story, but it's very hard that in that, in that case then not to, you know, overlay your story onto someone else.

• 26:45Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Uh, another thing we have in common is that we've both been married twice.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Hmm, it's very glamorous.

• 26:51Elizabeth Day?

  It is so chic, isn't it?

• 26:52Speaker 00

  It's very chic. I think three times, people start asking questions.

• 26:55Elizabeth Day?

  Diana Leland, yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Five, chic again, but I think three to four, bit, bit weird. Yeah.

• 27:01Elizabeth Day?

  Totally agree.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  And then it gets chic again. But like, if we're gonna do more than two, we need to get a wriggle on.

• 27:05Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly.

• 27:08Elizabeth Day?

  Bella's life philosophy. How important is the person you marry when you are living with this level of mental health?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Oh God. I mean, yeah, you do not want to pick the wrong one. Jesus. Um, first one was a wrong one. Um, I don't imagine he's listening. Um, but if you are, I hope you're doing well. Yeah, but this one, great. He's great. And weirdly, because Greg does not have any mental health issues. Greg's like, um, he's like a Disney prince. Someone said he looks like a Disney prince. He's got Disney prince hair, which I think he really enjoyed hearing. And he's just like sunshine and lilies. And like every day he's like, just gonna have the best day today. And you know, if something bad happens, he's like, I'm just gonna turn that around. And actually, you know, his dad was really ill this year and he's had so much to kind of deal with. And I've just watched him be like, the most normal, the most level headed, the most in control and amazingly balanced about the whole thing.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  And whereas I'm like, I would just be running around in a circle screaming, naked probably. You're just so amazing and calm and even handed. It's, it's beautiful to watch, but I am also like, fucking, how are you like this? This is so unfair. Why is your brain like this? Uh, he'll go to bed and he will be asleep within five seconds. Like nothing troubles him. He's just like, no. You're like, how, don't you want to sit here and like look at reels just to quiet your brain down so that you're not thinking about the end of the world? Like what happens if you wake up at three AM and you're thinking about climate change? He's like, I just don't do that. Just tell you, tell yourself you're not gonna do it. Um. So anyway, he's great. All that is to say, given that he's incredibly even-handed and you think he might be like, oh, you're mental, he's amazing and really unflappable.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And I can tell him something insane. And what he'll do is he'll just make me lie down on the floor wherever we are. And then he lies on top of me like a cow and does like a sort of funky chicken dance. And then we laugh about it.

• 28:58Elizabeth Day?

  We need to prescribe Greg James. Would you mind?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Funky chicken lying on you.

• 29:02Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  He's quite a heavy boy. He's a tall man. So, you know, I think there probably would have to be like a weight restriction, like, you know, like on a ride.

• 29:09Elizabeth Day?

  It's like a weighted blanket.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:11Elizabeth Day?

  It's so lovely to hear that he's actually like that.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he really is. He's not one of those people that goes home and is like, God, I hate the public. No, he's like genuinely like, God, I had such a great day today. Everyone's so fun. Yeah, sickening. Yeah.

• 29:24Elizabeth Day?

  I know you lost your beloved dog recently.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  We did, yeah.

• 29:27Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm so sorry.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 29:29Elizabeth Day?

  And I know that you're not as much of a fan of cats, but I have a beloved cat. And so the idea of anything happening to Huxley, and I just wanted to say that I'm so sorry for your loss.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  I think more people should get cats because they can live like forever, right? Like 25 years.

• 29:44Elizabeth Day?

  I'm hoping so. I'm hoping so.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  How old is Huxley?

• 29:46Elizabeth Day?

  Seven.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Oh, God. I mean, it's a child.

• 29:48Elizabeth Day?

  I'm already worried.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  No, that cat's gonna live till it's 30.

• 29:51Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I hope so.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then you can get a clone cat. I thought about cloning him, not seriously, before you get in the comments. Yeah. I was thinking about Barbra Streisand cloned her dogs.

• 30:01Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  And very chic, Barbra Streisand. And also Diane von Furstenberg's husband, Barry Diller, cloned his dog that he found running around Shannon Airport and he cloned it.

• 30:11Elizabeth Day?

  Then and there.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Then and there. Just, they just, they flew the scientists over to Shannon Airport. They performed the procedure. Yeah. And I really did consider, no, I didn't really consider it, but for jokes, I would constantly say to Greg, like, I think we should get him cloned. I think we should get him cloned for LOLs. And then when he died, the day he died, I did think, fuck, we should have got him cloned. It would have been amazing. But then obviously, we'd have had like all the bad legs and all the problems. But yeah, I did think, fuck. But yeah, no, anyway, he died and it's shit. And we walk around our house being like, where's Barney? And then one of us goes like, he's dead.

• 30:45Elizabeth Day?

  I hope you're enjoying this special episode of How to Fail with Bella Mackie. I just wanted to take a moment to pause and share a life lesson I live by. It's to never give up. Whether it's a dream job, a relationship you believe in, a place you want to live, or even diet. We're coming into cosy season and I adore snuggling up with a hot chocolate before bed. But I don't want to be feeling full and bloated when I'm trying to sleep, which dairy can sometimes cause. So if dairy sometimes leaves you feeling a little uncomfortable, you might have assumed you just have to live without it. Happily, that's not the case with a la lacto-free on the table. It's a delicious range of dairy products with all

• 31:27Elizabeth Day?

  the taste of dairy, but without the lactose. So it's easier to digest. Try a la lacto-free in your next weekly food shop.

• 31:39Elizabeth Day?

  This is an amazing failure. We've never had it before in the history of this podcast. Failure to launch from my parents.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  I'll tell you why no one's ever done it. It's because it's really embarrassing.

• 31:48Elizabeth Day?

  I think it's so brilliant that you're talking about it.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  I think it's embarrassing that I'm talking about it, but I figured like, why the fuck not?

• 31:57Elizabeth Day?

  Well, I think what it hints at is that you like your parents.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I do. But I also think it's probably really unhealthy. No, in fact, I know it's really unhealthy, which is why I'm telling you about it.

• 32:07Elizabeth Day?

  Okay, so tell me about it. What is this failure to launch?

• 32:10Speaker 00

  So failure to launch, obviously, just means, you know, you, you have not fully detached, I think, from your parents or from being like in the child role. So I didn't move out until I was like 28. Like, just didn't see why I should. We lived in a nice house. Again, a lot of that's privilege, isn't it? Like, we lived in a nice house. My parents were nice, all of that stuff. I thought if I moved out, I wouldn't have a nice time without them. So when I did move out, I moved across the road into a flat, literally from my window, my bedroom window, I could wave at my dad in his study. And if he was having like a glass of wine in the evenings, I'd be like, I'd text and be like, I'm coming around. So I lived there and then I met Greg and Greg was really okay about it in a way

• 32:55Speaker 00

  that like other boyfriends, I think, might have found it creepy and not told me. I remember I took a date back to my parents' house on like the second or third date. I took him back to my parents' house. I was like, oh, do you want to come and have a drink? And he was like, yeah, yeah, sure. And then in the kitchen were my entire family, parents, sister, dogs, everyone. And we had a drink with them. And he obviously was absolutely appalled by the whole thing. So then I moved with Greg to Shoreditch for, for a while until I made him come back to where we live now. And my parents live around the corner. And my mum jokes that it's like a little bit too far away because you can't kind of directly see each other's houses. That's not great, especially at 40, what am I, 43? I went for a run during the pandemic and my mum, my mum phoned and for some reason, she said, and when I die? And I said, if.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  And then burst into tears. So I think a therapist would say, you've got some work to do because they will die. And you're going to be fucked. Yeah. So, and then I did go and see a therapist recently about this. And she didn't like me. And so she sort of got rid of me as a client. She did it in a really smooth way. I bet she does listen to the podcast, actually.

• 34:03Elizabeth Day?

  Interesting.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Victoria, if you're listening, I don't, I don't hold it against you. It's okay. I was quite boring.

• 34:08Elizabeth Day?

  Do you want therapists to like you?

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Yes, of course. Yeah, doesn't everyone? Like, that's totally normal. Like, I did have a therapist who did like me. And he used to email me like randomly. Like, he emailed me at five in the morning, the day I got married to Greg, being like, congratulations.

• 34:22Elizabeth Day?

  Did he mean congratulations? Or did he mean you're the love of my life? Don't marry him?

• 34:25Speaker 00

  No, because he was a gay gentleman.

• 34:26Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  He genuinely meant congratulations, but it also must have meant that he had my name on Google Alerts.

• 34:31Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, okay.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  Which is funny. But yes, anyway, so I did talk to a therapist. The therapist didn't like me and she got rid of me. And so now I'm just like, oh, I guess I'm just never gonna detach. And I'll detach when they die, slash, if they die.

• 34:46Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. What is it about your parents that you like so much?

• 34:51Speaker 00

  I don't think that they're like special. Like, let's not hype my parents up in this situation. I think it's more like my anxiety issues.

• 34:56Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 34:56Speaker 00

  I don't think it's because they're amazing. Also, I don't think they do listen to podcasts. I think it's fine to say that they're not amazing. They're lovely. I love them.

• 35:02Elizabeth Day?

  Your dad follows me on Instagram, which is one of my greatest claims to fame.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Okay, right. So he will see, he'll see, he'll see the clip.

• 35:08Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so honoured.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  He'll see the clip. Fine. Dad, if you're watching, I do think you're fantastic.

• 35:14Elizabeth Day?

  And thank you for saving newspapers.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Yes. And thank you for saving all of news.

• 35:19Elizabeth Day?

  Genuinely, that's how I think of him.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  No, they're great. They're really funny. I love them. Like, we get on like a house on fire. They're not, they're not like other parents. When I was growing up, like, we had people like who lived with us, like just random people would come and live in the spare room for months, years. My friends, one of my friends lived there for a year, one of my sister's friends lived there for a year. But always people in and out of the house. And, and they kind of, they know my friends, they know, you know, everyone kind of, they've sort of socialised with people for years. So it doesn't feel like parents in some ways. Maybe that's the North London thing, you know, it's the kind of, no, they're like my friends. But I think it's more my anxiety. Even as a kid, when they'd go out at night, you know, I'd cry because I'd be scared and unsafe on my own. I think I look for other people who I think are the adults in the room and the safe people who aren't

• 36:05Speaker 00

  gonna know how to deal with something. And so that's what I look at when I see my parents. I think they're the adults and they're gonna fix this for me and they're gonna make sure I'm okay. And I've never learnt to do that for myself. That's why it's embarrassing because I haven't learnt to do it for myself.

• 36:19Elizabeth Day?

  Do you get anxious when you go on holiday and you're not with them?

• 36:22Speaker 00

  No, not, not, not because I'm not with them. But I get anxious because I'm like, well, who's the adult? Now we're in a, in a different place.

• 36:29Elizabeth Day?

  Do you see your parents every day?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  No, but I speak to my mum at least, at least once a day. And if I don't answer her phone calls, she will text me to ask if I've been abducted.

• 36:38Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  And if I'm walking back from her house, she's like, text me when you get home. We're quite, I would say we both have that issue. She isn't as much to blame as I am, maybe, I think. But we like it. She once said that if I moved to Australia, she'd like throw herself in the Thames. Like, she, I think, is just as codependent as I am. So it's her problem too, but she's, she's not gonna have to be the one to fix it.

• 37:00Elizabeth Day?

  You're very close to your sister, Lizzie, as well, aren't you?

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, massively.

• 37:03Elizabeth Day?

  Does she have the same kind of relationship with your parents?

• 37:06Speaker 00

  No, she's healthy.

• 37:07Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Her and Greg are healthy and they have a WhatsApp group where they just talk about how annoying I am.

• 37:11Elizabeth Day?

  Just the two of them?

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And it's like tipped over into bitchy. Like, I remember being like, I think you're like, we're at bullying level with this WhatsApp group now. Like, you're actually being mean about me. Yeah, she's fantastic and amazing. And she moved to Hackney, which my mum thinks is like, she can't believe how far away she is. I'm like, Mum, it's 20 minutes on the overground. She's like, it's so far. I can't believe one of my children moved that far away. So no, she is mentally very healthy.

• 37:34Elizabeth Day?

  Do you see this failure to launch as attached to your first job in journalism? When you worked for The Guardian and your dad was the editor?

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:44Elizabeth Day?

  Do you regret that now?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:46Elizabeth Day?

  Do you?

• 37:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I'm like, oh my God, it's just nepotism. It's terrible. Of course. I'm like, how was I, how did I think that was a good idea at 23 or whatever? Dreadful. And I wasn't working for him. Someone else hired me because, obviously because I knew them, you know. The whole thing's awful. You know, you shouldn't, you can't defend it. It's just dreadful. It's dreadful. If you have that kind of privilege in your life, you have to, you have to constantly reiterate that and constantly be like, the way I got to where I got to today is not the way, it's not an achievable route for anyone else. Sometimes I get people being like, oh, you know, and how did you get into books and what can I do? I'm like, I have to say how I did it in order for you to understand that it's not a failure on your part not to get there. It's that I just had connections and, you know, leg ups and all the things. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm sure it's all connected,

• 38:31Speaker 00

  that having anxiety, failure to launch, the whole shebang, yeah.

• 38:35Elizabeth Day?

  Has it ever been intimidating having two such successful parents?

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Yes. Now it's not, but it was when I was growing up. Yeah.

• 38:45Elizabeth Day?

  And how important is it to you? Because it is to me. And this is, and it's absurd because I'm 47. So I am, I know that I am now an adult.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  See, you know it. Well done you for knowing it.

• 38:56Elizabeth Day?

  I know it technically, but I still desperately want my parents to be proud of me. Like, I still think of that a lot as a motivating factor.

• 39:05Speaker 00

  I just think I had the luck of thinking that my parents were proud of me. So I don't worry about that. I'm not, I'm not trying to seek their validation. I just want them to be around in case I get in trouble and need them. Like, I want them to, like, that's insane. My mum is, you know, I'm not gonna say my mum's age because she'd murder me. She looks great on it. But, you know, she doesn't need me to be like panicking her at sort of, you know, 11 o'clock at night about something. I need to. When I was going through a really mad OCD spiral in my early twenties and I was lying in bed every single day just watching, I think I was watching um A Place in the Sun a lot. Do you remember that?

• 39:42Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  I don't know if that's still on.

• 39:43Elizabeth Day?

  It is.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  But they just, they go to Spain and none of them ever buy the houses that they're looking at and I think they just want a free holiday thing.

• 39:49Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  I think it's a really good ruse, you know, you do like a three hours work and you just get an amazing holiday. I was watching a lot of A Place in the Sun and I was having lots of crazy thoughts and I remember thinking, it will be okay because Tony Blair is Prime Minister. And I didn't even like Tony Blair at that point, he was quite unpopular, but what I'm, I think in my head I thought, he is a serious person, he knows what's going on. And I'm having all these mad thoughts about like, is the world real and you know, are my parents aliens and am I, you know, living in a lab? All these crazy OCD thoughts. And I thought, but that can't be true because Tony Blair is in charge of things and so everything must be okay. And I think that was my thing of just looking for the adult, which is insane.

• 40:32Elizabeth Day?

  No, you've explained that so well.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  Saying this on a huge podcast.

• 40:35Elizabeth Day?

  That's, that explains that so well. Has it been tough for you, given our recent run of prime ministers? Like when Liz Truss was Prime Minister, were you just fucked?

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Can you imagine? It's just so hard for me, you know, I put my trust in these people, but you know, for them to fix my OCD freakouts and you know, and then you get Liz Truss, it's just, it's not acceptable. Yeah, do better. Andy Burnham seems, yeah, I'm like, okay.

• 40:54Elizabeth Day?

  I think you can trust Andy Burnham to be the adult.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  You're in charge, yeah.

• 40:57Elizabeth Day?

  What is your route forward going to be though, Bella? Because I, I'm worried about you. How are you going to?

• 41:02Speaker 00

  I've got no idea. I have no, I have no idea.

• 41:05Elizabeth Day?

  Do you speak to Greg about it?

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you know.

• 41:08Elizabeth Day?

  He can't perform the role of the.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  He can't, he can't become Tony Blair, can he?

• 41:12Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, I wouldn't have asked him, he is very popular.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, he is, but you know, then Tony Blair was very unpopular and then he found God and all that stuff. I don't want that for Greg.

• 41:19Elizabeth Day?

  You need someone actually older, don't you?

• 41:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, but no, I can't, they'll all die. I can't, the point is, I have to make myself Tony Blair.

• 41:26Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. There's the answer. There's, and that's what we'll call the episode.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  That's what getting clipped, doesn't it? I, yeah, that's what I was trying to do with this therapist, he didn't want to see me anymore, was, I was trying to be like, oh, I need to make myself Tony Blair and I need to be the adult in my own room. Um, but I haven't managed to do it and I sort of am just pretending it's not going to happen. I'm like, okay, well, my parents will just have to live forever, they'll, I'm gonna have to clone them, is what I'm gonna have to do. Keep them, grow them up so that they can be adults. And failing that, kind of make my sister be the adult in the room slash, yeah, or Greg until he kind of leaves me for like a 25 year old.

• 42:02Elizabeth Day?

  Stop. Your sister's younger than you, isn't she?

• 42:05Speaker 00

  She is, but everyone thinks I am younger.

• 42:07Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. I, I had a similar thing with my sister because I'm the youngest, but I read older.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Oh, it's devastating for both of you, I'm so sorry.

• 42:14Elizabeth Day?

  I know, but that's, but that's good for you because your younger sister, she's got a good few years left.

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, she's, she's healthy stock.

• 42:21Elizabeth Day?

  And she's producing the Netflix.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  I thought you were gonna say, and she's producing children, I was like, she is.

• 42:25Elizabeth Day?

  Is she?

• 42:26Speaker 00

  So I also have those, yeah.

• 42:27Elizabeth Day?

  Great, great, that is good. She's producing your Netflix show as well.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  She is, yeah, I sold it to her because I thought, like, just keep it in the family, yeah.

• 42:34Elizabeth Day?

  How's it going?

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Uh, well, they don't tell me anything, obviously. They don't want me involved. I don't know how it was for you, but like, they were very much like, thanks so much for the rights, goodbye forever. They got like a good writer to come in and do it and not me. She, to be fair, she's good. She sends me like occasional audition reels and there's like some exciting cast announcements that they haven't made yet, which like are incredibly high camp and brilliant. But I think it's just a question of like, ultimately, one day I'll be allowed to go to the premiere, I hope. They, on the, on the contract thing, it says, every effort will be made to invite Bella to the premiere. I was like, sorry, I'm not a substitute teacher, like, I wrote the book. Um, I think they just imagine that the writer is the most unglamorous person in the whole world and they think you're gonna turn up in like wooden beads and a caftan and they're just gonna, you know, put you right at the back and not on the red carpet.

• 43:19Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  I don't know, when it comes out on TV, are you just gonna watch it like everyone else, yours?

• 43:23Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, I've already seen it, but I, like you, I was just so happy to hand it over to someone else.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  Hmm, so you didn't, you didn't write it for screen?

• 43:30Elizabeth Day?

  No, I didn't want to. I think it's a completely different skill set and it's not one that I have.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I think too.

• 43:34Elizabeth Day?

  And I just feel, having made that decision, they can do what they want with it. And, and so I've been very relaxed about it and I think they've been quite shocked at every turn.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 43:44Elizabeth Day?

  Pleasantly surprised by how relaxed I am. Because to make five hours of TV out of a book is a whole different enterprise.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's so different. But then, did they put anything in that surprised you? Was it like, you know, incest or like a weird goat or something? There wasn't anything that you were like, oh, no.

• 43:57Elizabeth Day?

  I wish there'd been a weird goat. I, maybe I'll insist on that next time. No, no incest, there are definitely things that surprised me, but in a good way. Okay, your final failure is your failure, you've given me two actually, it was very generous of you, failure to learn to drive manual or ride a bike.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just thought after those last two, like navel gazing, like me being like, I need Tony Blair and I'm sad. I thought it'd give you like a embarrassing one, another embarrassing one. I can't drive a manual car and I can't ride a bike and I do find both of those things to be huge failures.

• 44:30Elizabeth Day?

  Can you dive?

• 44:33Speaker 00

  No, what are you talking about? Of course, I can't drive a bike, of course I can't do a dive. Come on.

• 44:41Elizabeth Day?

  Do you also get people convinced that they can teach you? Because that's so annoying.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  No, no one wants to teach me because everyone understands like where I am in life, where my level is. And everyone is very aware that I would not be able to do a dive or ride a bike. My husband's like, he, I think he offered once to teach me how to ride a bike and then since then has rode back on it and he's like, I'd just be very worried about you in London traffic. And I say, that's so sweet of you and he says, no, no, no, you, you have to be decisive and, and confident in London traffic and I just, I just don't think you would be. And I said, do you think I'd crash? And he was like, yes, I do, I do think he'd crash. So he no longer wants to teach me, he has officially rescinded his invitation and he bought a manual car that I can't drive, which I think is like a declaration of war. I think it's very aggressive to do that.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Um, to be fair, it's a 1997 Espas, so I don't really want to drive it. But I do feel like it is quite embarrassing that I, I decided at 17 to learn to drive an automatic and can't drive a proper car as a result.

• 45:41Elizabeth Day?

  But you can drive an automatic, so that's good. Lots of people don't even have their driving test.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  No, sure, but I sort of think that's cooler in some ways to just be like, I've never needed to drive a car.

• 45:49Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  But I drive a car, can't drive on the motorway my own because of, because of panic and also can't drive like an actual, if you put me in a real car, I wouldn't know what to do.

• 45:59Elizabeth Day?

  Why has he bought a 1997 Espas?

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Well, that is the question, obviously.

• 46:03Elizabeth Day?

  Is that like a Ford or something?

• 46:04Speaker 00

  No, do you remember those big people, six people carriers? They look like Fred Flintstone would be going around in them. And they have seats that swiveled towards each other so you can sit as a picnic as a family.

• 46:16Elizabeth Day?

  That's very cool.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  It would be cool if you had six children and you lived in 1997.

• 46:20Elizabeth Day?

  Are these related to your OCD, these failures?

• 46:23Speaker 00

  No, what, those ones?

• 46:25Elizabeth Day?

  Yes, these specifically.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  No, I think that was laziness because I just thought, I thought in the future we'd all have um, automatic cars or flying cars or something. I thought eventually we'd all have jetpacks like in the Jetsons. So that one was just lazy, I'm very lazy. And cycling is, I know, I learnt to cycle as a child. I'm not like a, you know, I'm not, I'm not an anomaly, a statistical human anomaly. I learnt how to ride a bike, I knew how to do it, I went on bike rides with my family and then somewhere along the line, I forgot how to do it. My sister put me on a bike five years ago and I fell off immediately and she like wet herself laughing. And now I can't do it again because no one will teach me, because no one thinks I'm competent to do it.

• 47:01Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  And I'm lazy, so I won't teach myself.

• 47:04Elizabeth Day?

  Got it. But you're still running?

• 47:06Speaker 00

  Yes, I am still running, not as much as I was because I was running 13 kilometres a day and I was like, oh, that's turned into OCD and I didn't realise it, sneaky. Um, so now I'm also doing the weights thing because you have to do the weights in your 40s because that's what all women have to do now, is lift weights.

• 47:19Elizabeth Day?

  What are you writing now? Hideous question, but I'll ask it anyway.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  I'm writing some non-fiction.

• 47:25Elizabeth Day?

  Ooh.

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, basically an exploration of the space between the person that we are really and the person that we pretend to be in the world, not just online but in the world.

• 47:36Elizabeth Day?

  That sounds amazing.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Um, because I'm always trying to be the person I actually am.

• 47:40Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  Everywhere. But I'm also aware that there's this big chasm between the two things. So I'm trying to explore that, but in a funny way. And then I'm writing a novel that is murdery but is set in the past and someone like coined the term crime travel. It's time travel, but it's crime travel. So I'm doing time travel into the past with murder.

• 48:01Elizabeth Day?

  Fun. Are you writing them both simultaneously?

• 48:04Speaker 00

  I'm not writing either of them at the moment.

• 48:06Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. But are you capable of doing that?

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Uh, we'll, we'll find out. I don't know, unless I have a deadline, I don't do anything.

• 48:14Elizabeth Day?

  How do you write? Do you write by hand or do you go straight onto the laptop?

• 48:18Speaker 00

  God, no.

• 48:19Elizabeth Day?

  No, okay.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  I'm not Charles Dickens, like I'm not sitting there with a quill.

• 48:21Elizabeth Day?

  Although you did recently get compared to Charles Dickens.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Thank you, that's why I said it, thanks. I just wanted you to drop it in. I write on the laptop, I try and write a thousand words minimum a day.

• 48:31Elizabeth Day?

  That's exactly what I do.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just think it's a good number. Over that, you start feeling like you're just doing it, you know, you don't know what you're doing, you know. Um, I think Philip Pullman does 500 a day, which I think is so funny. I'm like, how are you finishing that book?

• 48:44Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, this is so refreshing to me.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no.

• 48:46Elizabeth Day?

  And do you write, do you write during the night?

• 48:48Speaker 00

  I do, I write whenever, I just don't have hours and I write on the floor and I, yeah, I'm a very weird, sometimes I write on my phone, which I think is probably like one of the most shocking, appalling things you can do as a writer and I think would make Dickens like come and slap me from the grave. I'm not structured.

• 49:04Elizabeth Day?

  Bella, you've been a complete delight. You've been a wonderful guest on How to Fail and I really appreciate you coming on.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 49:14Elizabeth Day?

  I hope you got as much out of this episode of How to Fail as I did. Brought to you by Arna Lacto Free, delicious dairy with all the taste, easier to digest. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.