Davina McCall: “I was doing cocaine with my mum at 15!”

Davina McCall has been an icon of television for 40 years. The host of Big Brother for over a decade, tens of millions of people looked to Davina to bring a national obsession into their homes. But few know the real story of Davina. From a heartbreaking childhood that saw her take drugs with her mother to hosting one of the biggest shows in the world, she’s come a long way. At every step along her journey, no one was going to define her but herself. No matter how many times she got hurt no one could take away the one thing she could control, her resilience. Consistently breaking down barriers and forging new paths, Davina was the first female television host to put her bubbly and occasionally feisty persona front and centre, and she was the first mainstream figure to create a fitness platform that has inspired millions of people to get active in the fifteen years she’s been in the game. Having consistently inspired so many people in her life, she dropped by to gift us some of her inspiration too. Davina: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3GCcF7P Twitter - https://bit.ly/3XafyCp Davina's book: https://bit.ly/3WNHhc9 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo 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 think out for everything.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  She was worried about me. Do you know what I mean? Like, that was her last thought, like...

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Davina McCall.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  She's a TV presenter, a fitness fanatic.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Multiple-time bestselling author. Rarely off our televisions, and what you see is what you get.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  It's good to be back. After Big Brother, I thought, "What else can I do to get famous?" So I was always a bit of a show-off. "Mum, you made a mistake. Look how great I am." That's at the back of everything.

• 0:35Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 0:37Speaker 00

  I did coke with my mum at 15. I did it with my sister at 14.

• 0:40Steven Bartlett?

  You were doing drugs with her?

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, all drugs were my problems. I'd left my job, no money, nothing. I would literally do anything to stop feeling like this. I'm gonna phone someone for help. I'm fucked.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  10 years ago, you lost Caroline, your half-sister.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  It was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to me. I was just trying to be really strong for her. And I kept saying to her, "I'm gonna be fine." She'd put a fence around her, and I thought, "I'm fucking climbing over the fence and I'm gonna get in." Don't wait for somebody to say that you've got six weeks to live. Because the best seven weeks of my life with my sister were those last seven weeks of hers.

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  Davina,

• 1:39Steven Bartlett?

  what was your first defining moment?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Um, definitely...

• 1:51Speaker 00

  Uh, realizing, the moment I realized my mum wasn't coming back to pick me up. So I got taken to my granny's, my paternal grandmother, most amazing woman called Pippi, got taken to her house in the country, which I knew really well. I used to spend quite a lot of time down there with her. And my mum wasn't with my dad, she was with another man, but I didn't kind of question that. They'd split up, but I didn't, I didn't know that or kind of understand. I don't think in my head I realized what was going on. And she said, I'm going on, on holiday and, you know, I'll be, I'll be back.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  And I was like, okay, great. And I stayed with my granny. And then after a couple of months, I thought, is she coming back? But then I thought, I didn't want to, this was such a different time. You know, I'm fifty five, so this would have been over fifty years ago. It was such a different time that you didn't ask people, children didn't go, where's mommy gone? Or when's mommy coming back? I knew that I was a guest at my granny's house, but I wasn't. It had all been planned, my granny had been given my custody. My dad was coming down every weekend to, to be with me. Um, they were sort of sharing custody, but my dad was trying to make money in London and my granny was taking care of me day to day.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  And it had all been sorted, but I didn't know that because they just thought, well, she's young. She won't really remember or realize. Let's all just brush it under the carpet. And it's so interesting because nowadays with my children, everything that happens, we're like, how do you feel about that? Are you okay? Let's talk it through, blah, blah, blah. Just didn't happen back in those days. So I grew up thinking that my mum had left me. Um, and had never come back. So at about probably four, maybe six months after, after she'd gone, I realized that I wasn't gonna live with her again, but I was left feeling guilty because I felt like my granny was looking after me.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  And she didn't want me in some way. Not that she didn't, she was so loving to me. But somehow I was overstaying my welcome. So I think that was a defining moment because it set up a chain of events, a fear of abandonment that kind of made me make some really stupid decisions all through my teenage years into my twenties. And and something that I've worked diligently on since my early twenties to let go of.

• 4:30Steven Bartlett?

  Why did your mother do that?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Well, my mum grew up in France with two parents who were very loving but didn't know how to um give her their time. So I think my mum needed time and contact, but they just gave her a lot of money. They were they were quite wealthy and they just, you know, at eighteen they gave her a lump sum of money. She went and spent the whole lot on clothes and the Eve Sanoran. She got a food disorder, she was very thin, it was the sixties. She was like a model. She had a fade done away nose job. She she was incredible looking, lots of drugs, quite a lot of drink, like crazy fun lady.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Met my dad, my dad was super hot, like young guy, they were an it couple, he was so in love with her, she was completely out of, probably a sex addict when I when I look back at her life and unashamedly so, the French are very, she's French, French are very different about sex. She was kind of, you know, she was, it's only bodies, that was her catchphrase, like, you know, oh, it's only bodies. And you'd think, no, that's someone's husband, like, that is, you know what I mean? So looking back, she she wasn't well herself, but she was so young, like this was, we're talking twenty two, twenty three when she met my dad. She'd already had a child at sixteen, been forced to marry the father of that child,

• 6:00Speaker 00

  they'd got divorced, then she met my dad. So she was troubled herself, right? And my dad tried to help fix her, but it just wasn't going to work and she ran off with someone else, um, having had several affairs and everything. And my dad was broken hearted, absolutely broken hearted. And the courts in the UK, because I was born in the UK and had been brought up here, gave my granny and my dad custody, which was so rare. So, um, I, I, I'm not sure how hard she fought. I'm not sure that she did. But um, that was what happened. But I did go and see her in the holidays, but that was. What do you mean? Quite, quite crazy, like. What did you see?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I, oh my god, like, what didn't I see? I mean, my mum would. She would wear, this was quite a funny story. I mean, and some of it makes me laugh now, but it would be, she'd go out with me, like in a floor-length electric blue coat. And we'd get out and then she'd go like that to someone and I'd think. She'd flash them. God, she's naked. Yes. Like she'd be naked underneath her coat and she'd flash someone. She'd think it was hilarious. And I'd just be like, oh, oh, God, somebody, please, like, make the world disappear. But at times.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  It's really hard to explain, but I loved my mother. Like, I really wanted her to pull some mummy. Business out the bag. Like, I was like, come on, you can do this. And. Sometimes she'd give me a hug and I'd think, oh, my God, this is it. Like, this is what it feels like to be hugged by mother. But then other times. You'd be reading her, right? It'd be like, well, I've got to be. I've got to be a sweet little girl. Oh, no, I'm gonna have to take care of you. Or like now I have to be really good fun. I've got, I need to entertain you. It was always wearing a thousand different hats to see how she was going. And, and my granny used to say to me, when we did start talking about it when I was older. She said we'd have to, like.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Kind of, it would be funny for a month when you came back from France. You'd be a little bit on edge and we'd have to just really get you back into your favourite foods. A routine at bedtime, safety, re-ground me. So when I say I'm half nun, half wild child, it's because of that life that I've had, like. Drugs at twelve with my mum, like.

• 8:26Steven Bartlett?

  You were doing drugs with your mum?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, like smoking weed at twelve, coke at fifteen, fourteen.

• 8:32Steven Bartlett?

  With your mum?

• 8:33Speaker 00

  I did coke with my mum at fifteen. I did it with my sister at fourteen. You know, it was like, it was, there was no. And then I'd get back to the UK and it would, it would be back into your secondhand clothes and sort of safe, small life, like simple. My life was very simple. I mean, I say secondhand clothes just to give you an idea. I was in my grandad's jumper and an old pair of jeans and I get to Paris and they go, what are you wearing? Here's loads of money. Go and buy some posh loafers and get your hair done. And, and I'm twelve, like I look like a proper Lolita. But I, and I'd quickly realise that my life in Paris and my life in, in the UK, they must never know about each other. Because if, if they knew

• 9:18Speaker 00

  in the UK about my life in Paris, they wouldn't let me see my mum. And I didn't care how mad she was. I still wanted to see her. Does that make sense?

• 9:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  So my, my sister also was my lifeline in Paris. So my sister, who's six years older than me, even though we did do drugs together, and I know that sounds bad, but she was my rock. Like she was my, she grounded me when I was in Paris. So we stuck together. We understood what mum was like. We worked her together.

• 9:46Steven Bartlett?

  Caroline.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, Caroline, yeah. And then my mum, you know, but I, I did like going to Paris and also because I was young and they didn't stop me from doing anything. It was crazy.

• 9:58Steven Bartlett?

  Having sat here with um standup comedians, I remember Jimmy Carr said to me, he said, often it's assumed that comedians themselves are depressed and that they're cracking jokes to kind of cheer other people up in an attempt to cheer themselves up. But he said to me, you should actually ask them which one of their parents is depressed. Which one of their parents were they trying to please and entertain? You said earlier, you know, did I have to be this one day? Did I have to be a joker? Did I have to take care of her? Was your personality shaped by that, that desire to sort of keep her in good spirits or win over her, her affection?

• 10:28Speaker 00

  I think it taught me some amazing skills in reading people. So um also my granny was unbelievably good at this as well. So people used to think my granny was psychic because somebody would walk in the room and she'd go, are you okay?

• 10:43Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  And they'd walk in smiling, but there would be a an eyebrow raise or a flicker of an eye or something and she'd go. You're right. And they go, oh, God, is your granny psychic? Then like she can read me, she can see straight to me. I feel like being with my mother, she could wa- I could hear by the way she walked.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  What person she was going to be when she walked through the door. I could hear the steps coming and I'd think I know how to behave the minute she walked through that door. So that's an amazing gift.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  And that's how I choose to see everything that's happened to me. I am absolutely not a victim. Sure, some of it's been hard and it's like you said, I'm happy. We were talking just before we started. I'm happy. And yes, life throws me curveballs. But I choose to learn from those and still be happy rather than cling on to the curveball and let it pull me down. But I often wonder whether it's it was the hardship that made me. When, you know, small wins or little wins in my life were massive.

• 11:49Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  You know, a hug from my mum that felt a little bit like a parental hug rather than a needy or an angry or. Uh, uh, that would be a huge like I'd done out on that for a month. I'd be like, but yeah, but I got a hug two weeks ago that was epic. You know, so I think you hold on to these little things, but I don't know, some kids might not, they might not see or feel that thing because they don't. Have that in them. I wonder whether we are born with it. It's such an interesting. Concept positivity. Can you make yourself positive if you aren't?

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Have you ever spoken to the Speakmans? I remember going on this morning, the Speakmans are a couple, Nick and Eva. They're on this morning as kind of psychology experts. They kind of, they're like, they help you train yourself out of patterns of behaviour. Those guys said something that if you are a negative person at the end of, you know, it's raining and it's rained for the third day in a row. You finish your negative sentence with, but luckily. And you have to say, but luckily, and then think of something, but luckily. But luckily, it was so dry in the summer, it does mean that the reservoirs will be full. And you finish every negative thought with a positive. And they said it takes about two to three weeks. To naturally start thinking, but you know, that's probably not a bad thing.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  But it's just remembering to do that is so hard.

• 13:16Steven Bartlett?

  When you were, when you were like sixteen, seventeen, you, you know, you said you'd started doing drugs with your mother in, in France. But what did you want to be when you were older? If I'd asked you at sixteen?

• 13:26Speaker 00

  I probably, probably need to clarify actually that me and my mum only did drugs twice.

• 13:30Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  I mean, I know that's twice times too many in my book, but. I don't want to give this impression that she and I were taking tons of drugs together because that would be a false impression.

• 13:40Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  I just needed to put that, put that there, yeah. But, um. What did I want to be when I was sixteen?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was quite nihilistic, I think, in a way. I wasn't thinking about anything except for the weekend.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  And where was I going to go and what club could I go to and how could I go out and what? How could I party? And that was beginning, I moved to London when I was nearly fourteen. And when I moved to London, suddenly the safety of the country. Had disappeared and I started finding ways to go out and take drugs and find people that took drugs in London. I was living with my dad and my step mum and they were very kind of solid, straight people, but. My life did slightly change then. So I wasn't really thinking about anything at that point. Really, the time when I started forming. An idea and I was basically just a show off would have been eighteen.

• 14:41Steven Bartlett?

  I was basically just a show off.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, because.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  I think because I had this fear of abandonment. If I was, if I did, look at me, look at me enough. Look at me, I'm here, everybody, don't need me, ah, needy, people pleaser. Everybody like me, like that, that's who I was. And actually, what drugs did for me at that time was they made me feel

• 15:08Speaker 00

  safe. They made me feel like I was being hugged in that maternal way. That they filled this hole that I had here. And then as soon as the drugs started running out, the hole would fill up, sort of, the hole would be there again. And I think, oh, my God, what's the nearest thing I can get? You know, um, man, laughter, attention, drug, like, help fill the hole. So I was always a bit of a kind of, you know, bit of a show off.

• 15:38Steven Bartlett?

  And at eighteen, you drop out of university?

• 15:40Speaker 00

  Never went, nearly went to university, um, didn't go to university. And this is always something that I

• 15:49Speaker 00

  want to say to, to kids. I didn't really know what I was doing. I was an absolute car crash, I would say, until I was twenty three, twenty four. So when I was nineteen, I, um, I'd left school. I went to Australia for a few months. I came back and I thought, I'm going to save up money. I'm going to get, you know, go working, going to save up some money. I'm going to try and get enough money to go back to Australia and live there. I loved it out there. I was clean, I wasn't taking any drugs. I was just driving to the beach. I mean, it was such a different me and I liked that me. That was the nun, like, my nun was freed in Australia and I thought, I quite like this person. I like who I am.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  And then a girlfriend of mine said, I'm going to Saint Tropez for two weeks. Do you want to come? And I was like, yeah, but I haven't got much money because I had all my savings and stuff. And I didn't want to delve into that. She had quite a lot of money and bless her, she came on the coach with me from Victoria down to Saint Tropez. And her parents had a house there. And then I started dipping into the savings. And then in two weeks, I'd spunked eight hundred pounds that I'd saved up for my flight to go back to Australia. And I never went back. And that was a kind of, you know, that was the wild child me, dancing on tables in Le Caf duois in Saint-Tropez till God knows what time in the morning, hitching a lift off people in Ferraris, trying to get back to, I mean, awful danger,

• 17:15Speaker 00

  danger, danger everywhere. How I'm still alive, I've got no idea. Um, but hilarious, you know, it was just part of my path. But that meant that I never went back to Australia. And I I got a job as a waitress. I was a really, really good waitress. I loved waitressing. Did you ever do that?

• 17:34Steven Bartlett?

  Well, my mum had a restaurant when I was super young, so I did did it a little bit. But I was so young that it was I was more just of a gimmick, you know, he'll get loads of tips because he's eleven. Um, but not, not, not properly, no.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  I learnt a lot. I bet you did.

• 17:46Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I I learnt a ton from working in that restaurant, yeah, about people and customer service and stuff. And then I worked in like, you know, there was a shop called Republic, like retail a lot. I worked a lot on.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  I did that as well.

• 17:55Steven Bartlett?

  What did you learn?

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Um, well, just people. I mean, people skills and what people want and that the customer is the most important person.

• 18:04Steven Bartlett?

  You said people pleaser.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's my natural, that was my natural habitat. So I'd I'd go and I'd like make people feel amazing while they're having their meal and make sure that they had the best service ever. And it felt like a win to me. You know, at the end of the night, I thought, I've done a really good job. I've made loads of people really happy. And that made me feel good about myself. So it was a great job for me.

• 18:25Steven Bartlett?

  When did you first realise that you wanted to do something in media TV?

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Um.

• 18:29Steven Bartlett?

  Or was it more a chance?

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, so that that's quite a good story. So I was working, I got a job at Models One after the, after the, and it was by chance, it was complete fluke. I got a job at Models One, working on Stephen, the male model section at Models One. I was a booker for the male models. I mean, I'm telling you, nineteen or twenty year old me walking in there, I was like, this is the best job ever. All these gorgeous men walking out. I fell in love every thirty seconds for the first week. Um. And then what was interesting, it just became, they just became normal. I was like, oh, there's another good looking guy, whatever. Um.

• 19:09Steven Bartlett?

  Desensitized.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's fun. It's so funny, though, how quickly that happens. But I'm still friends with loads of them now. Again, it was a great time in my life. Slightly car crash, lots of drugs, lots of kind of madness, but also a very kind of good time in time, in terms of work and having fun. So I was at this agency, loads of beautiful models everywhere. I get approached by this guy who knows I love music. And he said, you want to run a club with me at Subterranea? And I said, yeah, great. And he said, bring all the beautiful people. So these club nights caught the attention of somebody at MTV who was going to launch MTV Europe. And they needed to, for the launch of MTV Europe in Amsterdam,

• 19:53Speaker 00

  get loads of celebrities from the UK to Amsterdam, but do it in a really cool MTV way. So me and this girl called Sarah Blonstein and um a guy called Graham, we were in charge of entertaining the celebrities from Victoria Train Station to Amsterdam and back. And it was like Duran Duran, um Zodiac Mind Warp. I mean, it was really, really fun. And I dressed up as a cleaning lady, lipstick on my teeth, curlers in my hair, a tea urn full of champagne, and it was riotous. And at the end of that night, when we were heading back um from Amsterdam on the plane, I thought to myself, I'm gonna work at MTV.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  That is the best place. Those are the best people. And while I was there at that night, and this is what, this is another defining moment. That night when I'd gone, I said to someone, can I get your number? Because I'd love to kind of look at job prospects at MTV. Would it be all right? And he's like, yeah, sure.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  I had the number and I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna call this guy. And then I called him and I said, you know, would it be all right, can I um to sort of send you a showreel? If I did a showreel, because I'd like to be a presenter on, I didn't even know the word Vijay then. On MTV and he was like, yeah, sure, sure. And I started making showreels and I must have sent him like three a year. And relentlessly called him until he said, please stop calling me. After a couple of years, he said, could you just? Like, I can't give you a job at the moment. We only want European presenters. And I said, can you give me someone else's number? And I'll call them instead. And he went, yeah, you can take Mike Cavan's number. So I took Mike Cavan's number.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  And eventually, a year later, Mike Cavan said. There's a vacancy. So I'm twenty four. I've just got clean. I'm, I'm six months clean and sober. I'm absolutely radioactive. I can't believe I'm sober. I'm still can't believe I'm waking up with dry sheets. That my pillow, you know, we're talking about small wins. My sheets were dry in the morning and I'd know when I woke up and I saw daylight and I think, I know this is morning. This is amazing. That's such a win.

• 22:15Steven Bartlett?

  Sheets are dry?

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, sweating. I used to sweat in bed withdrawing at night and my sheets were dry.

• 22:22Steven Bartlett?

  Is this, what, what drug causes that?

• 22:24Speaker 00

  So heroin. So I, I was um in the end. Um addicted to heroin for maybe the last three months of my using. But the nun took over, I think, at that point and was like, you are addicted. Now you have to stop.

• 22:41Steven Bartlett?

  What, what was that moment that where, and what was, can you really zoom in on that moment of? You reach a point and you go, this has to change.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Hmm. So my best friend had said she was gonna take me to Santana. She didn't use or drink really. She'd had a brain injury when she was younger and she couldn't for ten years. So she didn't. And she got me into her car and I was like, I'm so excited about going to see Santana. I was probably.

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  What Santana?

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Um, it's a band.

• 23:07Steven Bartlett?

  Oh.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Steven Bartlett.

• 23:08Steven Bartlett?

  I know, sorry.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Go and do some revision.

• 23:11Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm so Santana.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Can I just say something?

• 23:15Steven Bartlett?

  Santana, I'm gonna like them, really, okay.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Um, and I got in the car. And she shut the doors and she said, I'm actually not gonna take you to Santana. I need to tell you some things. I was like, yeah. And she said, I know that you've been lying to me. Weirdly, I'd been off heroin for a month at that point. Because I'd been away, I'd done a geographical. I'd gone away looking after someone's, uh, nannying for someone for two weeks and got clean. And then I'd, I'd, I'd also been with my mum in Morocco, so I'd had no heroin for a month. But I had just come off the back of a twenty-four hour cocaine bender. Which had made me realise that heroin wasn't my problem, all drugs were my problem.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  If I, if I wasn't taking heroin, I couldn't take cocaine normally either. I, I couldn't just take it for four hours and then go to bed. I had to take it for twenty-four hours. I was an animal. I thought, oh my god, I'm, I'm not just addicted to heroin, heroin's not my problem, it's all drugs I've got to stop. She gets me in the car and she goes, I know you've been lying to me. We all know you've been lying to us, all your friends. And you are the topic of conversation at every dinner party I go to. And this shame starts piling on and I, I started feeling a bit, well, fuck you. To her, and this is, this is virtually my only friend I've got left. And I do say, well, fuck you, like, fuck you.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  I didn't really know what to say because I couldn't really argue with what she was saying. And I said, yeah, I didn't wanna go and see something really childish, like I didn't wanna go and see Santana anyway. Get out of the car, I'm trying to get out of the car, she slightly shut the doors, it's all eggy, awkward. Slam the door, walk away from her, immediately burst into tears and think I'm not gonna turn back around and let her see I'm crying. You know, get inside, go straight to bed. My parents, you know, I was, um, sleeping on a camp bed in my, in my dad's sort of wardrobe. I'd move out of my boyfriend's home. His fault that I was using, I'd got worse. I'd left my job. I thought that was the thing that was making me use. I'd got worse. I had a car, but no money to put petrol in the car.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  I had not, nothing. I was on this camp bed and I would sort of walk into the, like, my room, which wasn't really a room, it was a cupboard. Sit on the bed, go to sleep. And then an hour later, I wake up and I think, I'm gonna phone someone for help. I'm fucked. I can't, I can't do this anymore. I phoned this woman who I knew was clean. And it was as if she'd been expecting my call. She goes, oh, hi, Davina.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  And I was like, I was just wondering if you're going to a meeting um tomorrow. She's like, yeah, yeah, I'm going at six o'clock, you know, World's End. Come and meet me there.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm just interested to see what, you know, like, what it's like. She's just, yeah, great. Come along if you want. She didn't ask me what's going on. She didn't ask, which was exactly right. And the next morning I woke up and I felt so full of shame and I thought I'd go and see Sarah. So I went to see Sarah at work at lunchtime. Sobbed. I said, I'm not expecting you to believe me. And I know I'm gonna have to prove myself, but I just wanted to let you know I want to change and I want to do something about it. And I'm gonna go to a meeting tonight. And I could see a slight sort of, are you really? Like, is this really gonna happen?

• 26:47Speaker 00

  I just thought, I, I don't know how much more I can give you, tell you, but I really, really mean it. So I went to a meeting that night. Just spent the next two weeks going to meetings every day, well, and for ninety days after, sobbing. Just sobbing in every meeting of surrender. I don't care what I have to do. I will literally do anything to stop feeling like this. And N A taught me how to live. And how to change. And how to heal myself. I, I owe N A my life, literally. But it also gave me my career. And weirdly, having tried to get a job at M T V while I was using all those years.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  The, the time they say, come in for an interview, we're gonna finally screen test you after three years of trying. I was six months clean. And I didn't mess it up. You know, I turned up on time. In fact, I turned up a bit early. That was new for me. Um, I turned up clean and smelling like flowers. And with a smile on my face and colour in my cheeks, that was new for me.

• 28:00Steven Bartlett?

  You said N A taught you how to heal.

• 28:04Steven Bartlett?

  What did you learn about healing? And what did you learn about why you were addicted to narcotics?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Um, well, I learnt about fear of abandonment. I probably hadn't heard that as a phrase. Then I didn't understand. From listening to other people talk about their experiences, sometimes I think, oh, no, that wasn't quite my experience. I don't think that's why I used. And then I remember hearing someone and thinking, that's exactly me, that hole, and it never fills up. And you're constantly trying to fill it with anything. And then when they said, here is where I'm learning to fill it myself. And I thought, that's what I want. I want to line the hole with something impermeable. That means it will fill up and never empty again.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  And there are steps in Narcotics Anonymous and any twelve step programme. And, you know, if you work through these steps. And it is like, people would go, oh, it's like a cult, you know, it's really bad. But I did replace my addiction with addiction to Narcotics Anonymous. But I know which addiction I'd rather have, like. I went all the time, often twice a day. Because it was the only place where I felt completely normal. I'd be around other people going, yeah, I felt like that. Oh, yeah, I did that. Oh, God, I messed up this. Or, oh, yeah, I had, um, you know, liaisons with people that I didn't,

• 29:33Speaker 00

  I didn't care about, I didn't know, but I thought it would fix me. You'd think, God, these people are so honest. It's, I've, I realised the power in honesty. I mean, that's your thing, right? Speak your truth.

• 29:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  It's powerful.

• 29:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, freeing oneself, isn't it?

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Hmm. So I learned, I learned everything to help me. I did have like another transformational moment when I got hypnotized. Um, for a job that I was doing about eight years ago. And that was like, that was when the impermeable seal went on my fear of abandonment. And it was unexpected because I wasn't going to the hypnotist about that. I was going to the hypnotist about not feeling anxious going in a submarine to a thousand meters under the sea.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Tiny three-person submarine where you can't stand up and there's no loo. And it takes forty minutes to get to the surface again. And I thought, I don't get claustrophobia, but I don't want to find out at a thousand meters under the sea that I am cla- indeed claustrophobic. So I thought I'd better go and get hypnotized just to make sure. And that was, have you ever done hypnotism?

• 30:50Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Oh, man. I mean, if you've got an issue. That is something that you've worked on a lot and is hard to let go of. I mean, I didn't even think really that my fear of abandonment issue was still there, but I do think, I do think it was. And we did some regression work. Where I went back to me in the kitchen, looking at my granny, thinking my mum's not going to come back. And I don't know what to do and I feel a bit guilty. I think I've overstayed my welcome. And the hypnotist said, go get, go get that Davina, take her by the hand. He said, where's your favourite place in the garden? I said, the oak tree.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  So he said, take her to the oak tree. So I took her over to the oak tree, little me, four years old. And he said, okay, sit her down. And sat her down. And he said, you know, comfort, I said, she looks worried. And he said, comfort her. I said, I feel silly. I don't know what to do. It's me. It feels weird. And he said, imagine she was one of your own children. Comfort her as if she was your child. So I put, I put my arm around her. And I thought, okay, this is easier. And then her head went on my, on my chest and I was stroking her hair. I said, I don't know what to say. I kept thinking he's looking to me to say something profound and I've got no idea how to do this.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  And he said, well, why don't you tell her it's all gonna be okay. And I really started crying, like really crying.

• 32:29Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  And he said the same thing, it was up. And I said, it's not gonna be okay. I take drugs, I make stupid decisions, I put myself in danger, it's bad. And he went, but look at you now.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  And it was like.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Oh my god. Look at me now, I'm great. And it was like everything went, you know, all the cogs and the wheels and my brain all went click. I am gonna be okay. I looked at her and I got like her head in my hands and I was like, you are gonna be okay. Your life is gonna be amazing. And it will be full of, you know, ups and downs, but you are gonna be okay.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  And he said, you can take her back, let's take her back. So I went back to the kitchen. And I put her down in the seat and she's smiling at me. And then he says, we can leave now, but he said, before, before we leave. I want you to just turn around and look at her one last time and tell me what she looks like. I said, she looks happy. And he said, great. And then he brought me around. I was like bawling.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Like, this is amazing. What's happened? What's just happened? And he said, we've planted a seed and he said, let's just wait and see what happens there. He said, this, this was basically to stop you feeling like you're gonna. Be abandoned at the bottom of the sea, but actually I think maybe we've done something bigger here. It might be kind of amazing what happens. And a couple of things happened after that, that where I said, actually, it's not okay. Uh, to treat me like that. I would never have said that before because I was worried you'd abandon me. If I, I, I stood up to you and said, hmm, not okay. I'd think, oh, you might not like me anymore. I, I, it was very important that everybody liked me.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  And suddenly I was like, actually, I can stand up for myself in a non-aggressive way. And not actually mind if you like me or not, because I'm doing it for me.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  Oh my God, it was mega. And I feel like from that moment, I've been a different person. In all of my decisions, in my outlook on life, it's been mega.

• 35:01Steven Bartlett?

  So your, your career then in TV. One of the things I read is that it was heavily fuelled, and we kind of talked about this before we started recording, by your desire to be famous.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yes. I mean, the, the first MTV thing, so I, I'd wanted to be a singer, another desire to be famous. I wasn't good enough. I was like, I would be an amazing backing vocalist. I, my, my nickname at home is the harmoniser. I can't listen to a track without harmonising to it. I absolutely have to.

• 35:29Steven Bartlett?

  That's annoying at some point though, doesn't it?

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Yes, because all my kids are like, oh my God. In, in the car, I'm always like, hmm. You know, like they're going, oh my God, like stop. If I could have turned my family into the Von Trapps and I really tried. Like that way, or made them all do choir. I all had to kind of do singing lessons. They just weren't buying it at all and I'm so upset about that. But if I could have had the Von Trapps, that would have been my dream. Anyway, failed singer. What else can I do to get famous? All of this, obviously, mum, look at me. You made a mistake. Look how great I am. That's at the back of everything, right?

• 36:13Speaker 00

  And I mean, for example, when I was fifteen or sixteen and I I did quite well in my O levels. They were O levels back then, as how how old I am. And I called up my mum to tell her I'd done quite well in my O levels. She was really angry.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Because she felt like I was just trying to show her up or that, you know. Don't think that you're, she was drunk, she was drunk, she took it badly. She's like, felt that it was me trying to say that she wasn't good enough or that she'd done something, you know. Ah, and I was so confused by that. Um, that I thought I'm gonna show you, like, I'm gonna make you want to. Anyway, I my aim was I want to get my own show on MTV. That's what I want. And I got my own show on MTV and I presented the first show and I went up to the dressing room afterwards. And I cried and I cried and I cried and I couldn't figure out why I was crying. And I called my sponsor, which is something you you have in Narcotics Anonymous. Who's there to help you decipher yourself.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  And she said, right, you know, we picked it apart and picked it apart. And I said, it hasn't fixed the whole. It it it didn't make me think, oh, my mum's gonna want me back. And then to top it all off, my mum did call me and say she'd seen it, because you could see it in France, because it was European. And she said, what, you know, you think you should stop pulling the faces, you pull these faces. And I was like. That was not the desired effect. I did not want you to think that. I wanted you to think, wow, you are amazing, you know. And um.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  So it was, it was a really. Heavy moment. And then I thought, wow, I need to warn everybody. You know, being famous, you've got to do it for the right reasons. I did it for the wrong reasons. And now I'm here and I've got this job and I'm on the wheel and I don't know how to, you know, I can't get off. I didn't want to get off. I mean, I I was enjoying my job. Don't get me wrong, working MTV. Were some of the greatest years of my lives, my life, but.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Actually, it's probably his lives. I've had lived about ten different lives in my lifetime. And MTV was one of them. But I think that that realisation that the thing that I'd been aiming for, that I thought was gonna fix me and it didn't, was like, again, the end of something and the start of another phase of my life. Okay, well, you're gonna have to find it inside somehow.

• 38:48Steven Bartlett?

  And that that hole you you referred to, is that hole filled now?

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Filled. Yeah. I mean, I've

• 38:56Steven Bartlett?

  One hundred percent filled.

• 38:57Speaker 00

  I've never been so happy. Like, I can't even

• 39:03Speaker 00

  I sat

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Do you know, it was really funny, because I said, I said to my boyfriend this morning, I said, I'm gonna do this thing with Steven Bartlett this morning, and he was like, oh, my god. I said, I am not gonna cry. I'm like, I haven't done Piers Morgan specifically for this reason, because I was like, I am not gonna sit and do but it's weird, because it's the thing, it's talk, I could talk about my pain till the cows come home and not feel a thing, because it's so far removed from me. And it was a long time ago, and I've processed and processed and processed it. But feeling happy, like, is so alien, like a hundred percent, like joyous.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Sitting on the train and just feeling so good this morning. And it's not like, um, euphoria, or a druggie happy, or a fake high. It's content. Oh, my god, it's like, I can't, I cannot quite believe it. And I and I don't, you know, I've been walking forwards. But I don't know how I got here, just walked forwards. You know, but settling, settling down. Um, I feel like I've I've grounded in a way that I've never had before.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  And, you know, I think it's so important to talk about this stuff because at fifty five, if you'd have said to thirty year old me, what's life gonna look like when you're fifty five, I'm gonna say, really sad. I probably won't be doing TV anymore, it won't want me. And I'll be really boring and I won't be having fun anymore and so and I think, my God, I couldn't be wrong more wrong, like, I've gotta go and tell everybody, quick. Tell everyone it's gonna be okay. Stephen, it's gonna be okay.

• 41:04Steven Bartlett?

  I've never had someone say to me that

• 41:08Steven Bartlett?

  their feelings of happiness make them emotional.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Oh, when I think about it, well, because I'm grateful and I think because, you know, we were talking about what makes you a positive person. I think it's because you think it's been a roller coaster, right? It's for you, it's been a roller coaster. But like, it's not about the Lambo or the house or the mansion, it's about this. And your roller coaster and your journey to money and making it and then realising it doesn't fix you and then you fixing yourself by being on a journey of self-discovery, which you massively are by talking to all these different people, you're like taking little bits from

• 41:54Speaker 00

  everything that somebody says to you and thinking, I'm gonna use this for me, that was a great tool, thank you very much, I'm gonna have that.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  It's like you are healing yourself, this is your N A meeting, this is, this is your, this is your recovery.

• 42:08Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like you've just blown my cover.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is your recovery, now how amazing is that?

• 42:11Steven Bartlett?

  It's crazy privileged.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, but in, you know, and it's just gonna, these are all seeds that are planted in you that just continue to grow. So life gets better, you know, Mother Nature throws you crepey knees and crepey elbows and crow's feet, but it also throws you a full heart and a peaceful mind.

• 42:41Steven Bartlett?

  Your career, your, your, your career in TV, that whole journey, it's been one of the most incredible careers that I think most people could ever hope for in any industry ever, you know, you, the top of your, your game. Um, I first came to learn about you because of Big Brother, but there's a career before that and there's a long, long career after that. When you reflect on what advice you would have given yourself or like why you made it to the very top of that, that pyramid, what is the answer, Davina?

• 43:11Speaker 00

  I mean, this is another thing that I marvel at every day because I've been many times in my career where I've thought, this is it. It was interesting, after Big Brother finished, um, I contacted a friend of mine who was like a tech, a tech, a techie person. And I'd had this thought, like after Big Brother, I thought, who am I? And where am I gonna go? And it could all end. And as the person that was providing the roof and the food on the table, it was on, like me, I had to think of my next step, what was

• 43:51Speaker 00

  I gonna do? I'm not sure how long television's gonna last. I mean, it's still going, which is amazing for me, but I thought I need to get into technology and the internet and I need to go online. And I came up with an idea for, I thought about it in terms of an exhibition centre, but you could put that online where you would have everything from money, advice, personal advice, mental advice, um, kids advice. And I went and talked to a few people about it and for whatever reason, it didn't happen. But it wasn't meant to happen. I tried to get it off the ground for like two or three years. I tried to make it a TV programme. I tried to make it an exhibition. I tried to make it an online

• 44:34Speaker 00

  thing. And you know, when you're swimming against the tide with an idea and at some point you've just got to take your hands off the steering wheel and go like that wasn't meant to happen. But then I got offered Long Lost Family. Now, Long Lost Family, I've been filming that programme now for 13 years. It makes me feel so good, that show. And I've helped so many people on it, which has been so wonderful to be part of that moment in their life where they learn something that's been an itch that they couldn't scratch for years and years and we can provide that scratch.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Um. So I always think, well, just start walking in that direction. And something else will come along, but never just sit down and wait.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  You know, I've never sat down and thought, oh, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna stay here and and wait for something to happen to me. I've got no embarrassment or shame about emailing a TV company or a head of a TV company and going, have you thought about this? What about this? Can I present that if it happens? Can I do this? I've, I'm literally begging ITV to let me present midlife Love Island. I could fill a villa in Love Island with middle aged people with the best backstories you have ever heard in your life. They've lived a life. They're widows. They're people who have been through horrific divorces. They are people who have split up with somebody and decided they wanna try going out with somebody the same sex as them. They're like

• 46:04Speaker 00

  interesting people. I'd watch that show.

• 46:07Steven Bartlett?

  That's really interesting.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I was like, I need to present it, please.

• 46:10Steven Bartlett?

  What are they saying about that?

• 46:10Speaker 00

  They said, oh, we're looking at something else that's quite similar. We might consider you for that. Well, if I hadn't sent them that email in the first place, they wouldn't have thought about me for the other show, maybe. You've got to make opportunities happen. They never just come to you. Keep walking. I'm always talking to my kids, just keep walking. Something will come. Kind of form, build the foundations and just keep walking. And as you're walking, you're laying more and more path. Don't sit and wait for the path to be laid because it'll never come to you.

• 46:43Steven Bartlett?

  There's this word manifestation you've used in this conversation. What role and what does that mean to you? You know, you're talking there about proactively like attacking the day. I, I almost liken it to, the analogy I've given before is when you get in your car in the morning, you set the sat nav, which is the manifestation, but then you've got to drive. If you just do one, if you just drive, you're going to get lost. If you just set the sat nav, you're going to be in your garage all day. You have to do both together. You've talked about how you attack, like send the email, make the phone call, pest to the person at MTV. But then what role does like the manifestation play in all of that?

• 47:16Speaker 00

  It's interesting because you said you've got, it's all very well putting it in that the sat nav is the manifestation, but then you've got to drive the car.

• 47:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  But in, in, in my mind, I see that if you start, if you know where you're going, your car self-drives.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Like, you, you almost are always walking in the direction because you can see it. I know that at some point I will do this.

• 47:47Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  So I've sent this email to this woman. Um, and I've just told you about it because this, this was a manifestation. It's triggered my memory that I've told this, I'm going to send a follow up email today.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Now, is that, is, is my car self-driving? It kind of is like, because I've been telling you about a manifestation because I had it in the first place. You've just reminded me, I'm going to send the email.

• 48:12Steven Bartlett?

  That for me is the difference though, because there's so many people and we all know them that have sofa ideas. They'll turn to you while they're watching, yeah, I've got this idea for this TV show.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Sometimes they're really good, right?

• 48:23Steven Bartlett?

  Fantastic, but it doesn't matter because they don't have the, the next bit, which is, I'm going to get up and send an email. And like you've just said, I'm going to send another one. That for me is turning the key in the, in the ignition.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Yes, maybe, yeah.

• 48:35Steven Bartlett?

  Some, there's a lot of people that are going, oh, I'm sitting there for Tom, Tom, uh, this is where I, I want to go someday. And then they just relax back into the, the chair in the car and nothing happens. And then there's some people I meet, tends to be the people that sit here with me, that took that weird kind of, um, nothing to lose first step. And you go, that was rude. Or you go, oh, really? You just like showed up there or you just begged them on email? And those are the people that I tend to sit here with.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  So Anita Roddick started The Body Shop and she lit kind of my, um, lit the wick of kind of interest in, lit the fuse, I mean, of my interest in activism. And she was saying, um, you know, if you don't think that you have the power as one person, then you've never been to bed with a mosquito. She said, be as annoying as a mosquito. And I was like, I think that's me. I am as annoying as a mosquito. And that when I meet somebody, and I bet you're the same, Stephen. When you see a kid and a kid comes up to you and goes, Stephen, can I have your number? Cause I've got an idea and I want to come and pitch it to you. You would go, yes, absolutely.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Whereas other people might think, oh, I can't do that because he's Steven Bartlett or I'll have to email him or. Oh no, I've seen him on the telly. I can't approach him. But when you meet a ballsy kid.

• 49:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  And they go, can I come and shadow you for a day or um, uh, give me a number I wanna, you think, yeah, sure.

• 50:01Steven Bartlett?

  Cause I always respect the, the tenacity and the asking. I see myself in it a little bit.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 50:06Steven Bartlett?

  I remember I was doing this podcast one day and um, I was, I was recording with a guest and then I got up to walk out. And the, the person they brought with them in their entourage was the niece. And she goes to me, hi Stephen. I know this is, I know you're leaving and I know you've just interviewed my auntie, but. I have a podcast I've just started and I would like you to be on it. So can we record it now?

• 50:25Speaker 00

  Did you say yes?

• 50:25Steven Bartlett?

  I was like, of course. I was like, let's sit down. And we sat down and recorded for like forty five minutes for her podcast.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Stop it.

• 50:32Steven Bartlett?

  Her podcast is killing it. Shivani, isn't it? She, she's killing it now. Like when I say killing it, she's actually killing it. She's like killing it now. But I, I remember doing a post on LinkedIn about that moment, tagged her in it and said. I just respect the ask, you know? Cause my life has been riddled with moments as I saw in yours where. I just sent the email. I had nothing to lose whilst sucking stealing pizzas on my own in, in Manchester. What did I have to lose at that point by just sending loads of emails? I remember Sam's, I think it was Panasonic or Samsung gave me free cameras. I sent an email. They were like, here's all the free cameras to start your business. When I was fourteen, I sent these emails to this vending machine company. They fit us secondary school with free vending machines that we made profit from. So I, I'd learnt the power of just like asking.

• 51:14Steven Bartlett?

  Nothing to lose. Maybe my ego might take an L, but he gives a fuck. I've got nothing to lose.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  What's the worst that could happen? But I think also when the worst has happened.

• 51:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you're not scared of it.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  It's happened.

• 51:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  You know, getting a no to me is just a yes that hasn't happened yet. I'm always like, oh, you're saying no, but.

• 51:35Steven Bartlett?

  You mean maybe.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  You mean maybe, right?

• 51:37Steven Bartlett?

  You mean asking him.

• 51:39Steven Bartlett?

  I sat here with Professor Galloway, Scott Galloway, and he told me about the arc of happiness, where he says, you know, his idea was that our happiness kind of looks like a bit like a smile, where we kind of start happy at the start of our life, it gets a little bit difficult in the middle, and then at the end, the kind of fifty-ish age, when we go into that second spring, it's happy again, typically. Again, this is not the same for everybody, it's kind of a generalisation. But at the bottom of the arc of happiness, when things are most difficult, is when we start losing people in our lives that we love. And I know 10 years ago, you lost Caroline, your half-sister.

• 52:17Steven Bartlett?

  Talk to me about that, that experience, and also generally the process of how you've dealt with that grief.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Hmm. It was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to me, still to this day, like, the worst. So I told you a little bit about Caroline with my mum, and that she was six years older than me. And she lived in Paris, she was the result of my mum's pregnancy when she was 16. And she endured a lot, well, a lifetime with our mum, and that was very hard on her. And she was left with many hang-ups from that, of, she was, she, she used to find it hard to be completely honest all the time. So she'd tell big exaggerations about things or make up stories. But this is because she'd had to lie to cover for

• 53:08Speaker 00

  my mum her entire life. Not all the time, but just she'd make her life a bit more exciting by telling untruths. And I, I don't want to do her a disservice in her death, because we talked about this when she was alive. And I go, is that a porky? And she'd start laughing. And she'd go, well, it did happen, but this didn't happen, you know. But it was just trying, I understood her, and she understood me and all my defects of character. And she knew exactly why I did things. And she was an insular person, quite an insular person. And her favourite thing would be to go, she lived with me always. We had six dark years when we didn't live together, but she lived with me when I had a two-bed

• 53:52Speaker 00

  flat in Hammersmith. And.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  We were very friendly together, like I just understood everything about her and she understood all my idiosyncrasies and I got all of hers.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  And so, her favourite thing in the evening, you know, I love socialising, I'm a people person, I like going out, I am touch. She would be TV dinner, food on lap, foie gras, a ton of butter, French bread, glass of red wine, spliff. If I would say to her, do you wanna come for a walk round the garden? She was French, fully French, so her mum and her dad were French. And I'd say, do you wanna come for a walk round the garden? She'd go, no. You know, exercise, not her thing. Absolutely hilarious person, so funny. But very secretive. And I was bleh. I would tell her everything, she would tell me nothing.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  It was very annoying. Um, I would walk round naked in front of her all the time. I'd go, come, I'd phone her up, I'd go, Caroline, come, come and talk to me while I have a bath. I mean, I was so annoying. I was an annoying little sister, right until the very end. So she'd come over to the house and she'd sit on the floor and I'd go, like, talk to me, tell me everything, what's happened at work, blah, blah, blah. And then I'd share something or I'd talk about a problem and she'd help me iron it out. She was amazing, so good to talk to, so kind of wise, always a bit painfully honest with me, yeah, but you know you're overstepping the mark, or you know you shouldn't be doing this. She was the only person that could do that with me.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  But because she was so secretive, things were going a bit awry. So she'd just had her 50th birthday and she sort of walked into a door once, a door was half open and she kind of walked in and I was like, didn't you see that? I thought she's been smoking too much spliff, you know.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Um, and then she was sitting at the table and she was talking to me and she had a glass in her right, uh, her left hand, it was her left hand. She had a glass in her left hand and as she was talking to me, I was watching the glass. Her left hand was tipping further and further over to the side and I was watching the glass and the water was just about, and I went Caroline, your hand and she went, oh, but she had to look at it to tip it back up. And I was thinking, that's very weird. And she became a bit clumsy and I thought too much weed or menopause or something. She became a bit forgetful. She kept going off menopause. I can't remember what's going on. She had a sore back and she'd fallen over. We'd been in the garden and she'd fallen over.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  And she kept going, you know, when I fell over my back's like still not right. She used to cane the Advil. I mean, she was terrible with like painkillers. She used to take sleeping pills, you know, she'd slightly medicate herself weed, sleeping pills, Advil, like all the time. I just thought she's on another planet. But it got to the point where I thought something is up and I'd invited her to come to France with us for half term. She always came on holiday with us and she said no. Which was very unlike her. And I was like, are you sure? She went, I just want to stay here. I'm so tired. I don't feel, just feel like I've got flu coming on. I was like, okay.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  I got back. She'd had flu all week. She'd been in bed all week. I was like, whoa Caroline, like, I think maybe you should go see someone. She said, no, I think I'm coming out of it. Then the next morning.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  Someone had been walking past her window and they said, um, Davina, I think you should come. I can hear Caroline shouting for help. I've got the key. Open the door. She'd been on the floor all night. Um, she was in her pyjamas. She'd soiled herself. She couldn't move. She was paralyzed down half her body and I was like, it's a stroke. Quick, call the ambulance. The quicker we can get, I've seen the better. The rat car comes, you know, stroke expert. He walks in, he goes. I don't think this is a stroke. I was like, but it must be a stroke because half her body's gone. Like, this is what happens in a stroke. They get her in an ambulance. I'm now a bit worried. I'm thinking, if this isn't a stroke, what is going on?

• 58:05Speaker 00

  But I was just trying to be strong for her. I just go, it's gonna be fine. We're gonna get you to hospital and they're gonna get it sorted. It's probably, you know, bit of menopause, bit of whatever. Maybe you're smoking too much. We get out of the hospital. Test after test after test. And I was thinking, brain scan, I understand. And then they said, we'd like to do a chest X-ray. And I was thinking, why are you doing a chest X-ray? If it's clearly neurological. Off she goes for the chest X-ray. And then about an hour later, we get a doctor come in and he goes, we've got something to tell you. And we're both thinking, yeah, we're in A and E, right? And he goes, yeah, you have primary lung cancer in both lungs.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  And you have two brain tumors. It's metastasized to your brain. And the pain in your back is where your lung cancer is then going into your bone. So you've probably had bone cancer as well.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  I was like, that can't be right. And she went lung cancer. And then she looked at me and she went, it's all my fault. I went, it's not your fault. Like, it's not your fault you've got lung cancer. And she could see her just going tick, tick, tick, smoking, all those years, smoking, the smoking, the weed, and I was like, stop, stop. We need to think like, what are we gonna do? Like, okay, what are we gonna do? In the meantime, I have to, I just said, I'm just gonna go and call

• 59:34Speaker 00

  um, my mum and dad. I'm just gonna go and call them and just let them know what's happening. And I called them.

• 59:42Speaker 00

  I couldn't breathe. I was like in the corridor going, I think I'm, I think I'm, I think I'm gonna have like some kind of attack, like I can't, I can't process it. I don't understand what's happening. That I think they're telling me, because they hadn't said the word die. I think they're telling me Caroline's dying, like she's got so much cancer that she's dying.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  I said, I'll, I'll keep you posted. I go freshen up my face. I, there was a nurse there that I've seen a couple of times since when I've taken my kids into A and E. And I always give her a bit of a special hug because

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  she came up to me in the corridor. And she was like, are you okay? And I was like, I'm not okay. She was like, what's going on? And I said, well, my sister's got this and this. And she was like, really sorry. She just gave me a hug and that was it. And then she went, I've never forgotten it, you know? That hug, I needed touch. I needed someone to. I went back in, kind of tried to dry off my eyes or what have you. We just sat there in silence really. And then lots of people came in and were looking at her. One of the saddest things was someone lifted up her back to put the stethoscope on the, on her back and listen to her. And I saw, I know this sounds, sounds so weird.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  But I saw a black head on her back and it was massive. And it had grown into kind of a, a sore. It looked horrible. And I thought, no one sees you. No one, no one sees you naked. No one, you don't let anyone in. Like I am the closest and even I am not in. Because you are so protective of that painful child. She'd never done the work. She'd never got to N A or A A. She wasn't really an addict. I mean, you know, she smoked a lot of weed, but I didn't, I didn't see her as that. She wasn't an alcoholic. She wasn't. But she, she had, she'd put a fence around her.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  And everybody was at the fence and she had so many friends that loved her so much, but nobody got inside the fence. And I, it made me so, so sad. And I thought, I'm fucking climbing over the fence and I'm gonna get in. For however long you've got left, because you are not shutting me out. We had the best talks. She was in hospital for a month. We had the most amazing, brilliant talks. Like, I thought, God, why is it that when you're dying, we get to do this? Why did we not do this a year ago? Like, if anybody's listening and they feel like they've got a relative that they want to get into or get. Do it. Now, don't wait for someone to die.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Because the best seven weeks of my life with my sister were those last seven weeks of hers. And so she had a month in the hospital and then we, I said, I want to get her home to her cottage. I had to go around and find all her weed.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  And it was everywhere. I literally could have, you know, started dealing. She had that much weed squirreled away. I think she'd forgotten half of the places that she'd had it squirreled away. I chucked it all away. Um, I wasn't, I didn't find that hard at all. Like, I wasn't, I was never interested in weeds. So it was easy for me. I, um, set up her house, got the plumber in, put in things for her to hold. Um, occupational therapy came and told me all the places where I need to put stuff, harnesses, hospital beds, blah, blah, blah. Set up her whole cottage, got her back home.

• 1:03:30Speaker 00

  And just hung out with her and we got a carer and she, she had chemo booked in, but the first chemo was booked in for two days after she died. And we thought she had six months, we wrote a bucket list. And on the bucket list was um just the sweetest stuff, like go to France one more time and um see the kids. We tried to make as much of it happen, get loads of her friends down. Lot of the stuff we couldn't do. Again, like, why do people do bucket lists when they're dying? Like, do bucket lists when you're alive. And also, I would challenge anybody listening to this podcast, because this was a real thing for me. If somebody said to me, Davina, you

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  have got six months to live, what's like the most important thing to you now? Like, what, what really matters? Don't wait for somebody to say that you've got six weeks to live. Say, I love, I say I love you to all of my friends, all of the people that I love, nonstop. Check in with people, call people, make sure they're okay, spend time with people, make the decisions where you think, if I was to die tomorrow, is this the decision that I'd be happy with? Equally, if you've got somebody very toxic in your life, and they are really ruining your life, you know, if you had six months to live, you

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  would be, the first thing I'd do is let go of this toxic person. Do not wait. You know, do it now. And you deserve to be happy. You deserve to not have this toxic person in your life. And Caroline, again, I guess, you know, I'm always looking for lessons. She taught me so much in her death. She was so brave. She never once complained. She never once got frightened. She never cried. And she tried to look after me. And one of my most, I'm sorry, Stephen, I know I'm talking a lot, but there was one moment I do want to tell you about. So, obviously, no one had ever seen her naked. And she had

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  this amazing character called Claire. Oh, my God. She was the best ever. She was the most gentle. She understood respect and dignity. And she knew Caroline, almost straight away, she knew what kind of person she was. And Caroline would not let me get her undressed or ready for bed. It was like, I don't want you to see me naked. And the night that she went to sleep for the final time, and then three days later, she died.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  She was doing this kind of knitting thing with her hands. She was really uncomfortable. You could see there was something, something had changed a bit. And I was like, hey, you okay? And Claire didn't come until maybe seven or eight in the evening to, to put her to bed with the district nurse. And um, and she said, I, I wanna go to bed now. Oh no, Claire was there, but she needed somebody else to put her to bed because there was hoists and everything. And I said, well, look, Claire and I could do it, but it would mean that it would be me. And she went, "Okay", but laughing. And I was like, "Are you serious?" And she went, "Yes." And I went, "Oh my God, Caroline, thank you. Thank you." But at the same time, I was like,

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  "Well, you know, I'm gonna cry like, this is the, this is Mecca. I've arrived, you know. This is my pilgrimage to my sister. I've, I crawled over the fence and I'm now at her body." And I said to her, "Would it be all right if I did the diprebase?" Because I needed to diprebase her before she got into bed so she didn't get bed sores. And that's like moisturising every inch of her body.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  And she went, "Yes, but you're not gonna do it again. Like, this is the only time. I'm gonna let you do it once." And I said, "Oh, thank you so much." And I got to, she had the softest skin. I'm very furry. My, my sister had no hair, like at all. She was bald as a coot. And her arms and stuff were so soft. I got the diprebase. And I was like, "Oh my God, Caroline, your arms are so soft." And she was laughing, where she's going, "Oh my God, you are ridiculous." I was going, "This is amazing." And I got to cream her whole body.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  And it felt like she'd given that to me. And it was hideous for her. And even when she was dying, she gave me a bit.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Of herself that I had never had before. And it was so nice.

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  And she went to sleep that night and actually in the middle of the night then they came. And they gave her a bit more morphine. They said, okay, she was really distressed. She was calling me mummy.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  And holding on to my hand. She'd never been like that before. And she, they gave her some morphine and it calmed her down a bit and then. For three days she just slept basically, but I was with her when she went and it was really lovely. And I kept talking to her the whole time because they say your hearing is the last thing that goes.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  And I just wanted her to know I wasn't crying. I was just trying to be really strong for her. And I kept saying to her, I'm gonna be fine because I think out for everything.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  She was worried about me. Do you know what I mean? Like that was her last thought, like. Are you gonna be all right? Because she knew. How much of a backbone she was for me. That's what I meant about it being a reciprocal agreement. Like. It wasn't just me taking care of her. She was taking care of me. And she, it was a reciprocal agreement and she wanted to make sure that. I was gonna be all right and I kept going, I'm gonna be fine. And I talked out all the time, but in the last. Five years, so I had a huge grieving thing. Seven years after she died, I went like. All summer, she died on the first of August and all summer I couldn't shake off this. Cloud.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  And somebody online interestingly had said often seven years after someone's died, it's like a bang. And I was like, this is what's happening to me. Seven years, it's like so painful again.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  But since then, you know, and me being in a good place, I keep telling her, I keep going, oh man, like, I wish, I wish you were here, like, so I could show you how great it is. She'd be living with me now and, you know, she'd be so happy, we'd be good. I imagined myself, I always thought that I'd be wheeling her around. I always imagined she'd probably get emphysema and she'd have an oxygen tank. And I'd tell her that, I'd go, if you carry on doing that, you're gonna get blooming. And I said, but I'm happy to wheel you around, I am, we'll go and live by the seaside somewhere and you and me can be a couple of old grannies and I'll, you know, I'll take care of you. But I didn't, never thought she'd die at fifty.

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  But she was a great person and, but her, her passing. My dad, you know, when he died, he had Alzheimer's and I, it was expected. We knew it was coming, we'd spent ten years preparing for it. It was still horrific, but he was seventy eight. And I knew he'd lived an amazing life, but I still felt my sister had so much more to give, you know.

• 1:11:32Steven Bartlett?

  What is that process of grief like? Uh, you know, I ask these questions because I've been fortunate enough to not go through that arc of grief yet. And I think about it, it's been like, I think it haunts me a little bit in my head sometimes. Um, that process of grief, what you learnt from it, what you would, what you might impart on me.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Do you ever feel like an island in your life, like, that your family are all around you, but you're not quite attached, like, you are slightly on your own?

• 1:12:02Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:12:03Speaker 00

  I always felt like that too.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  So I'm sort of attached, but not quite attached and other people are attached, but I've never. And it's not a bad thing. It's not because anybody's tried to detach me. I just feel like an island.

• 1:12:17Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe you didn't, in my case, I feel like I didn't learn attachment. I didn't learn how to, to, you know, I call my parents by their first names and I.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  Do you?

• 1:12:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I don't, I, you know, I feel like we're in a family of islands.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  That's called an archipelago.

• 1:12:30Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what it's called?

• 1:12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, a group of islands all grouped together. It's an archipelago. So I, I don't, so your partner, I know you don't talk about personal life, but. Is it like two islands have come together? So you've formed a like a little.

• 1:12:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Like I said to Michael, like Michael's Ibiza and I'm Forman Terra.

• 1:12:48Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  I'm the like, the really kind of gorgeous, like hot, beautiful, unspoiled island next to him. He's quite a party island and we've formed like. We've now formed Ibiza and Forman Terra, but we are two islands that have come together. But I, I, I feel like. As, as, just to talk about the grief thing, I've, my mum died. My dad's died, my sister's died. I have an amazing step mum who I love very much. She's still with me. Um, I have a half sister out in Australia who I love very much, but I don't speak to um as often because of the time differences and everything. Um, and so now I really, I feel like.

• 1:13:32Speaker 00

  An island, I've got very close family and stuff. It's not that I'm not close to my family, but I do feel. But I've got all my kids are on my island. They're with me. They're in me. They're part of my DNA. Um, but it's just an interesting concept, that feeling, you know, but when you meet somebody and you really get on with them, you can form a little. Bond, but you're still two islands.

• 1:13:56Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm, but there's a bridge.

• 1:13:57Speaker 00

  But there's a bridge.

• 1:14:02Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. My, funnily enough, my girlfriend is the opposite. Which is funny because I sat here with a relationship matchmaking expert and he talked about these three different types of attachment that we have. One of them is like evasive. I think that's what he said, where you're kind of trying to avoid the prospective connection. You self sabotage, you're always trying to kind of run away from commitment. The middle one was nervous, where you're always very nervous about attachment and that makes you needy. And then the third one, he said, was, I'm going to paraphrase, basically a stable. We all know those people. All of their parents are together still. They have, you know, their parents seem to be best friends and work together. They, they end up being like best friends with their partner.

• 1:14:45Steven Bartlett?

  They just seem to have no problems. And he says, it's, it's a risk when two aversives get together. It's also a risk when an aversive and a nervous get together because you have someone who, in my case, is trying to run. You have a girlfriend who wants attention and quality time and I'm trying to run and she's trying to. He said, you have to both together get to becoming a stable together. And I thought that was interesting because she has helped me to become stable. I don't run away emotionally, open, affectionate. But we've managed to get there together and maybe that's the bridge. Maybe when you feel, you know.

• 1:15:20Steven Bartlett?

  Does any of that resonate with you?

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, I think I've prob, I'm in a stable for sure. Yeah.

• 1:15:27Steven Bartlett?

  Were you always, were you always a stable attachment type in relationships?

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  No, because I had the fear of abandonment.

• 1:15:33Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  But then this, this, I feel like this hypnotist kind of transformed me to be able to form healthy friendships.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  Changed my whole outlook, I think, on relationships.

• 1:15:50Steven Bartlett?

  You wrote a book, it's here in front of me, called Menopauseing. Why? Why did you, why did you want to write a book on it? Writing books is a lot of effort.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Steven Bartlett?

  You know, so you have to really want, want it. And you're, you're now in a very intentional phase of your life. So this must have really, from everything I've learned about you so far, must have really mattered.

• 1:16:10Speaker 00

  Totally. I mean, I think I did, I did two documentaries, which were eye openers for me. The first one was a huge risk and I thought, oh. Am I literally committing professional Harry Keery here? Is is my entire career gonna implode now that I am banging the menopause drum and telling everybody that I'm menopausal because I'd hidden it for so long? I thought, is this gonna be a bad thing or a good thing? I had no idea, but my life was heading to in this direction where I'd been talking to doctors and learning things and I thought, I've got a platform. And I don't understand when it's something that happens to every single woman.

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  It's not even like it happens to some women, it happens to every single woman and some trans men and we know nothing about it. This is a crime to to womanhood and it is also not good for society. Because women are behaving in a bizarre and irrational and over emotional way sometimes. Seventy five percent of women have symptoms, twenty five percent of women don't. That those seventy five percent are gonna be behaving or going through things that either will affect their jobs, their work, certainly will affect their relationships, certainly will affect their children's lives if they've got kids. And yet we don't know anything about it, neither did you or you or anybody else know

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  anything about what was going on. And I thought, I've I have got a platform and most of the people that follow me on this platform are women. I I've got to, I've got to do something about it. So I did this first documentary and I kind of watched it at home like, oh my god, this is gonna, oh my god. And then I went out for a dog walk the next day.

• 1:17:59Steven Bartlett?

  It's always on the dog walk.

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  Stopped three times. Yeah, it's always on the dog walk. It's always goes off and when I walk the dog, it's like amazing. No, and I got stopped three times. And I was like, oh, hi, yeah, hi. And they went, oh, my god, we watched it last night. I was like, oh, wow, did you? And then one person cried. Another was a guy that stopped me and said, oh, I watched it with my wife and then we called my wife's sister because my wife's sister's definitely, you know, she's been like lost for so long and it's so good and I thought. God, I think this is gonna be great. I think this is gonna really help people. This could be seriously good. But like, page one of menopause questions, I still get asked, can I take HRT while I've still got periods? Yes, that is exactly when it's the best time to take HRT. Oh, my GP's

• 1:18:45Speaker 00

  told me I'm too young. No, forty five is completely normal times. You're thinking, wow, I'm not reaching as many people as I thought I was. I've made these two programs and I've talked about it and I've shared about it and I've shared about it online and I've said you can watch it on all four and all of that. But I just thought there needs to be something where it can be on a table or in a loo or in a library or in an office space where people can go and reference and look something up and know that they are getting a hundred percent correct facts. Because the doctor that I wrote this with is, unlike me, extremely prestigious about telling

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  the truth and about getting correct scientifically valid validated information out there. So me and her make quite a good team because I'm all the kind of huge feelings and passion and anger and laughter and silliness and she's the science.

• 1:19:44Steven Bartlett?

  What are the symptoms and what symptoms did you experience in your life? Because there'll be people listening to this now that are thinking, oh, they might have seen it in their parents.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  They might know someone, yeah.

• 1:19:52Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I I thought about people that I know when I first started learning about menopause from actually Gabby Logan, who said she actually, you played a huge role in in her journey and her sort of figuring all of that stuff out. But what are those symptoms to be looking for? And how much do they impact one's life and relationships?

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  So the symptoms can be varied. They can, you can just get one symptom and it can absolutely floor you, or you could get five symptoms and they don't massively bother you, or you might not get any symptoms at all. So twenty five percent of women go through it with absolutely like sail through, don't even know that it's happened until their periods have stopped. Then fifty percent of women struggle a bit, like I would put myself in that fifty percent, I struggled quite a bit. And then twenty five percent of women, it will be so bad that they will think extremely dark thoughts, often suicide, um, will feel complete hopelessness, have to leave their jobs, have to leave relationships or get left, um, it has catastrophic effects on their life.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  So the, the symptoms, estrogen, depletion in estrogen affects every organ in your body. So forgetfulness, brain fog, I mean, that is chronic. Where the fuck are my keys? Yeah. Where the fuck are my keys? Well done. Chapter in the book. Love that, Stephen. Thank you. Um, you know, the, the, the forgetfulness is epic, um, and embarrassing and also another thing that makes you feel old overnight, your body starts changing, um, a bit of extra weight around the middle because, um, Professor Tim Spector now has explained to me that women metabolize sugar differently, uh, in midlife and estrogen and, um, the way that

• 1:21:36Speaker 00

  that affects your digestive system and your gut changes in menopause. That's like fascinating, so many changes happen. And so I had night sweats, I had the mood things, I had, um, but all of the, the, the brain fog was the thing that was really affecting my work and I just thought, I'm not even sure that I can continue working. But I did end up through a long process, and it's all explained in the book, but end up seeing a private doctor and I'm sad that I had to go to a private doctor, but I seriously thought I was going mad and somebody flagged up, maybe it is the perimenopause, but I said, I've been told by my GP, I'm too young. They said, well, maybe go and, you know, pay and go and see somebody. So I did. And they said immediately, you're perimenopausal.

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  I had, I've got hypothyroidism. I've had that since I was twenty eight. Where my thyroid is underactive and apparently people who have have hypothyroidism can start menopause early. I didn't know that. And they taught me through all the perceived risks and the benefits. I didn't know there were any benefits to taking H R T either. I thought it was only gonna give me breast cancer. I thought it might take away my symptoms, which would be the only benefit, but actually there are health benefits to taking it. And I weighed it all up and I thought I'm definitely, definitely gonna go on H R T. You can take it for the rest of your life. We get asked that a lot. You get asked, like, does it postpone your menopause? It doesn't postpone your menopause.

• 1:23:02Speaker 00

  But if you stop taking it, you wean yourself off, you can occasionally get an odd flush even after your periods have stopped. Um, it's just the estrogen depletion in your body. If you keep taking the estrogen, you probably won't have the hot flushes. But some women have to stop because they do get um breast cancer that's estrogen receptive and then um. They are required. But I met somebody the other day who'd had breast cancer. And um she'd gone on H R T because she felt the quality of her life was so bad. That she had sat down and weighed up, look, if it comes back, how are we gonna deal with it? What would I do? How many times do I get checked a year? She weighed that up herself.

• 1:23:46Speaker 00

  But it's a very personal decision. Some women would be like, I don't wanna take that risk. I don't wanna take the risk of getting cancer just to make myself feel better. But for her, she felt so bad. That it was worth the risk. So it's a very personal journey for so many women. But it is a journey that.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  When you know about it and you know what's happening to you, is an easier journey to take.

• 1:24:12Steven Bartlett?

  What about men? You talk about men in the book.

• 1:24:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, so they're like really important. I'm gonna tell you a story about a guy the other day. He sent me a tweet. And he said, I got your book. And I went to the living room door and I opened the living room door and I chucked in the book and I ran away.

• 1:24:30Speaker 00

  And it made me laugh when I read it. And and I thought, oh, you know, banter hilarious. Was he rounding their tux to his wife? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I'm terrified. And then I thought, actually, do you know what? I'm gonna send you a direct message. So I messaged him, because he was following me. So I messaged him privately. I said, are you okay? And he went, it's actually quite hard. Like, I don't know what to do. And I thought, oh, that was a bit of banter, but actually, you're struggling, right? So I was like, hey, listen, I've got a great tip.

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  Leave the banter at the door of the living room. And why don't you go in and you can pick up the book and sit down and read it with her. She'd absolutely love it. I can't tell you how much it would mean to her if you said, um, um, I don't know what to say or how to help you. And I'm feeling, tell her how you feel. Um, but in a non-comedy way, like really tell her how you feel. And then say, what can I do to help? Can I, can I read this book with you? Can we, you know, what can I do?

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Anyway, the next day he sent me another message and he went, oh, my God, I did it. And it was so good. And we read a bit of the book together. And I feel much better informed and I don't feel like it's me. Because I think he thought it was him, you know, and being. It's hard to explain when you're being a bitch. That it's not their fault, but that everything that they do makes you want to. Like, run away or shout at them. But it's not their fault. How can that not feel like your fault? When you've got somebody doing that to you?

• 1:26:18Speaker 00

  And just knowing that it is a thing that happens. And that there are things that you can do about it. Makes all the difference, you know, to a man. So I think, and to the woman, you know, for a man to then go, oh, I see. It's like, oh, he gets it.

• 1:26:37Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what, though, there's, um, there's a fear I have about this because even in the case of him buying the book and then running in, I know it was a joke, running in there, throwing it in there and closing the doors if it's a grenade or something. There's a, there's a fear as a man that if I was to approach my partner with the book, it would be me saying.

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  There's something wrong with you.

• 1:26:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:55Speaker 00

  Hmm. I mean.

• 1:26:56Steven Bartlett?

  See what I mean?

• 1:26:57Speaker 00

  That is why.

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  Um, an honest and open conversation about how you're feeling, not like you've been a bit moody recently. I bought you this book to say, look, yeah, like, say, if a man was listening to this and he thought that his partner was perimenopausal. And they've maybe noticed three or four symptoms. Buy the book, read it, or have a look at the symptoms. If you're worried about what they might think, hide it and read it. Look at the symptoms, do a little mental checklist. I think you've got this, this and this. And then go, look. I've been feeling like this recently. I've been feeling like you don't love me anymore and I really miss you. Say something nice. Say something about how

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  you feel like we've grown apart a bit and I want to bring it back. And I've been thinking and I listened to some stuff and I heard something on the radio or, you know, how did you hear about this book? So then you say, well, I was listening to the podcast, I'm a CEO.

• 1:27:57Steven Bartlett?

  Like and subscribe.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  And I like and subscribe. And so I thought I'd buy the book and have a look at it. And I think some of this is, can I show you something? Can we sit down? I'd really like to show it to you. And if they get annoyed, don't worry, they might get annoyed and walk away and go, I'm not perimenopausal. And then come back and secretly read the book. Or they might come back and go, I'm sorry, I, I was annoyed, but I think I am. And then they might have a cry. It, it can work out a million different ways, but it just needs a bit of patience, bit of understanding and no banter. Banter is like bad in several situations. Banter is bad around periods.

• 1:28:42Speaker 00

  Do not do banter about periods. You can do banter about haircuts, clothing, uh, loads of things, but banter about periods is not funny. Banter in childbirth, not funny.

• 1:28:54Speaker 00

  Unless wife has given you permission to bounce, or unless she bounce at you, then you can bounce back. And banter during menopause, unless she bounce first. I always go by the one, because these are times of great vulnerability. And sometimes a bit of banter can really hurt.

• 1:29:15Steven Bartlett?

  We use the word mission earlier on. We used it in the context of once you decouple from the need for validation or to fill that hole, you can have a much more intrinsic internal mission to set your life in a new trajectory. What is your mission now? As you sit here, you said you're fifty five. What is your mission?

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  I really like helping people. So I think that's a general mission. If I can help in any way, like what can I do to help you? I think I've got a platform, you've got a platform, you're helping people.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  You know, that's like, I feel like that's your mission to spread. Spread good using your platform. I guess like I've, I've worked hard all my life to get a platform. Now I've got a platform. What am I going to do with it? Do I want to make more money or get more followers? Really, I'm not really bothered. Do I want to help people? Yeah. So everything is like, is this going to help anyone? Is this going to do any good? Even something is kind of, you know, lingerie to me is a, is a superpower, like lingerie is one of the most important builders of self-confidence. When I was single, I used to wear badass lingerie because

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  the first act of self-love is what are you going to put on underneath your clothes that's next to your skin that no one else is going to see that only you know what you're wearing. You know, I see women who look absolutely amazing on the outside, but they're wearing grey holy underwear. And it's a act of care, self-care is looking, looking nice only for you. It's an amazing act of love. So I want to help people feel good about themselves. I want to get the message out there and I also.

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  What do I want to do? Yeah, so I just think that is my mission. I'm always thinking about jobs like because of my sister, I was thinking about a TV programme I'd love to do called Legacy. Because my sister was a beautiful person and I never think she felt it. But my god, her funeral was amazing and she was loved so much and I kept thinking, why aren't you here? Oh my god, you'd love this. You had no idea how much you were loved. What a huge impact you had on so many people's lives. I thought, wouldn't it be great to do a sort of this is your life type TV programme, where you bring all the people together but for somebody that is life limited? Somebody who has a year left?

• 1:31:54Speaker 00

  And you do their funeral before they die? Have a, have a living wake for them.

• 1:32:01Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:32:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, it's horrific but great at the same time. And if you found somebody that was willing, I would love that.

• 1:32:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was thinking about it from a TV, a TV's perspective, but wow, what a range of emotions.

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  This is your legacy. Look, all these people.

• 1:32:21Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. And getting the roses while you can still smell them.

• 1:32:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's kind, that kind of thing, like, I can do a job and, and do something lovely. I mean, I'm not sure if I would find anybody to get that off the ground because it's, it's quite extreme, but this is.

• 1:32:37Steven Bartlett?

  You're manifesting again.

• 1:32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've said it out loud on here, someone might hear it, you never know.

• 1:32:42Steven Bartlett?

  You are, you're such a legend for so many reasons. You have a real talent, which I didn't realise until I'd really met you here. Having, having watched you on TV, but there's just something really quite electric and, and wonderful about you, but that's probably why you were so successful on, on TV in the public domain. Because there's this electricity to you. I don't know if anyone's ever told you that before. This real, just like brilliant, engaging electricity. So, um, it's been an incredible honour to meet you. I've learnt so much. I felt a full, the full range of emotions. Your podcast is fantastic, which you do with Michael.

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:15Steven Bartlett?

  Making the cut.

• 1:33:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Can I tell you something funny?

• 1:33:18Steven Bartlett?

  Please.

• 1:33:18Speaker 00

  On Apple Podcasts.

• 1:33:21Speaker 00

  They, Michael, my partner is called Michael Douglas. And they've got a picture of actual Michael Douglas with me and I keep thinking Catherine Zeta Jones is going to come over and like laugh at me, go, are you doing something with my husband? I go, no, they've got the wrong picture up there. I've written to Apple so many times.

• 1:33:36Steven Bartlett?

  No, you haven't.

• 1:33:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have. I keep writing to Apple Podcasts going, mate, please swap Michael Douglas's photo for my Michael Douglas. I'm going to get into trouble with Catherine, okay?

• 1:33:48Steven Bartlett?

  But it's a fantastic podcast. You sit there with your partner and you talk about life.

• 1:33:52Speaker 00

  Recommend things. So we recommended, in fact, the specific episode and we were recommending your podcast in general. But the specific one was the Jimmy Carr one, which was, he was a great, such an interesting.

• 1:34:03Steven Bartlett?

  Mind blowing.

• 1:34:04Speaker 00

  Right, like mind blowing. Yeah.

• 1:34:05Steven Bartlett?

  I saw that. I think I DM'd you after.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, you did. You did.

• 1:34:09Steven Bartlett?

  If it was straight after that. No, it was after that. It was after, you'd done a story about it as well and I, yeah. So thank you for that. We all freaked out a little bit because you're such a legend. Oh my God, Davina McCullough is listening. We need to step this up.

• 1:34:25Steven Bartlett?

  It is though, moments like that are super surreal for me because, you know, I've watched you on, on screens and I've admired you for so long. So to hear that you were listening, it's like, oh my God, what did we say? So thank you for that.

• 1:34:35Speaker 00

  You said good things. It's okay.

• 1:34:37Steven Bartlett?

  And your book is amazing. We were talking before you, um, we started about how the way you've designed this book, from the colours to the cover, to the, the, the structure of every page and how engaging and unintimidating it is and accessible it feels, um, is also intentional. You've done it also for a reason.

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  I want it easy to read. I was just saying earlier about the, the hands on the front, you know, I wanted those two hands at the bottom to look like, I'm going to help you out of this and we're going to do it together. And that the messaging is positive because I think people, um, I had viewed the menopause as an incredibly negative thing. In my thirties and forties and actually it's been a time where you're actually talking to me here and asking me how I feel. And I'm saying happy.

• 1:35:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 00

  I mean. You know, this is what menopause has done for me. I feel so happy. So I wanted to kind of convey that in some way and make it a book that when you are feeling diminished and invisible, that you can pick it up and it's easy to read and you will see yourself in every page.

• 1:35:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, when I do this podcast, sometimes I have moments where I'm so grateful to get to do this because because I meet these amazing people. But then I learn about things that are like, like, it's like I'm in a hall and I thought the room was fully illuminated. And then I have a conversation about menopause and then another light goes on that I didn't even know, you know, and it's like the room has just got bigger because someone has turned the light on for me. And learning about menopause over the last, from you, from this book, from over the last, from what Gabby said and what you'd, you know, the influence you've had on Gabby. So maybe you're fucking, oh, so many things make sense now.

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  Hmm. I mean, well, my mum had a medical hysterectomy at 28 and would have been plunged into the menopause and didn't get HRT. So imagine what impact that had on her and her behaviour and her actions. You know, I've, I've forgiven my mum a little bit for some, I mean, not all of it, but I've let go of it. But I, it's explained some of it.

• 1:36:39Steven Bartlett?

  I actually did want to talk to you about that situation of forgiveness with your mother because many people can relate to having someone in your life that you fight to change. You try your best and you know, because they're your mum. And at some point, sometimes we have to say, listen, we've done more than we can possibly do to the point that we're actually hurting ourselves now. And we have to kind of cut ties is a bit of a drastic way of saying it, but we have to kind of start protecting ourselves. Did that happen in your situation at some point?

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  So with my mum.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  She'd, she was an alcoholic. I then got into recovery and then came the thing of how long do I go along with my mum being an alcoholic without saying, you're an alcoholic? And you need to do something about it because it's getting really bad. And after a few years of being in recovery, talking to my sponsor, going to meetings, sharing about it, I thought, I'm going to confront her about it. And I said, you're an alcoholic, you need to do something about it. And then she got really fucking angry with me and she didn't do anything about it. And I saw her another couple of times. She was stationed abroad with, she'd married somebody that worked at an embassy.

• 1:37:52Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  She couldn't move around. And eventually I just said, look, I can't, I can't see you until you get sober. And a couple of years later, she went to live in South Africa with her husband and she got sober. And I invited her to my wedding, to Matthew. And she came and she was sober and we went to an NA meeting together and we held hands and we shared. And then Matthew and I went on honeymoon and we went to Paris afterwards, saw my mum again. It's kind of like amazing, like it, it was kind of as I had hoped it

• 1:38:38Speaker 00

  would always be. It was like a miracle. And then six months later on my birthday, on the sixteenth of October, just in case you want to send me a card next year, on the sixteenth of October, I'm away in Edinburgh and the paper comes upstairs and it says, mommy, I need a meeting on the front page of the Mirror. And I'd never spoken about going to NA because it was an anonymous fellowship. And the point of being an anonymous fellowship is that.

• 1:39:08Speaker 00

  Nobody knows you go. And she had sold a story to the papers. About us going to that meeting and the papers had twisted it so that it was like I was about to relapse before my wedding. And that she'd taken me to this meeting and, you know, it saved, sort of saved me. It was like that kind of tone. And then inside, because I'm like you, I, you know, I've never printed pictures of my children ever. There, I've never even posted a picture of them on Facebook, not even on my private Facebook page ever. There's never been a picture of my kids anywhere. Now that my kids are nineteen and twenty-one, the older ones they can choose, I will never post a picture of Chester online.

• 1:39:52Speaker 00

  There's pictures of our honeymoon, I, like, I hadn't, I wasn't posting, I wasn't, wouldn't, I mean, Instagram wasn't around, but there was. She, in the newspapers of us, like, together with her. I was like, somebody took out my heart and grabbed it and ripped it out. And I felt the shutters coming down. I thought, I trusted you and I was, you know, I'd let you back into my life and I'm gonna put the fucking shutters down because you're not gonna get back in again. And I called her up and I was like, what are you doing? She said, oh, it was a celebratory thing, you know, that we'd gone to this meeting together. I said. Nobody knew I was in the fellowship. I said, you go to the fellowship, you know, it's an anonymous fellowship. It's not like you, you're new to it. You've been clean for a year. Like, what are you doing?

• 1:40:34Speaker 00

  I was so upset. And my sister, who had always felt a bit invisible.

• 1:40:41Speaker 00

  Was not mentioned in the article once. And my mum hadn't said, I've got another daughter, or my daughter lives with, with, you know, Davina and Caroline live together, or. Nothing. She said nothing about it. Like, she, she was invisible. Hurt her so much. She never spoke to my mum again, ever, from that moment. Um, she was gonna go over and see her in South Africa. They had a plane, but, uh, ticket booked and everything. And then she realised she'd probably bought the ticket with the money that she got. Because my mum didn't have any money. I was giving her money for medicines and things like that. She just was, they didn't have much money. And then I carried on giving them the money because I thought,

• 1:41:20Speaker 00

  who do I want to be when I die? Or when she dies, I want to have been the person that I respect. So I thought, I'm not going to pull the money and not give her meds. So I kept giving her the money. And then every now and again, she'd kind of reach back in. I'd think, oh, my God, this is different. Then she'd do something else, so another story would come out. Or every time I kind of reached out, another story would come out. And in the end, um, I found out she was dying of cancer um, in South Africa. And I lay in bed in England one night and Matthew was asleep and I put my hands out on top of the bed with my palms facing upwards.

• 1:42:04Speaker 00

  And I closed my eyes and I imagined shoots of light of forgiveness coming out of the palms of my hand, going across the world to South Africa, to Pretoria where she lived, and straight into her heart in the hospital. And I just kept saying, I forgive you for everything. I just totally fucking forgive you. I don't care anymore. Forgive you, go and like be, go in peace. And then me, my sister and my husband and our kids all went away for a wedding in America. And my sister and I got the news when we were together

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  that she'd gone. And I looked at her and I said, she's gone.

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  And she was like, wow. And then we both had a little cry. And then Caroline looked at me and she went, I feel relieved. And I said, so do I. Is that terrible? She went, I don't know. And I said, God, it's, it's, please don't let, and I said to her quietly then, please don't let me be a person that dies and anybody ever feels relieved about. Don't let me ever live that life. And Caroline said, me either.

• 1:43:19Speaker 00

  And Caroline definitely didn't. We were fucking broken when she died. So she, she achieved that. And I hope that when I go, I don't ever like leave anybody feeling happy that I've gone. Gosh. Well, I'm not happy, but, Relieved, yeah. But when she died, she freed me up to remember funny times as well as all the, when she was alive, I could only remember the bad.

• 1:43:43Speaker 00

  And what I was missing. And when she died, you know, I was able to remember her being hilarious and arresting people drunk as the citizens arrest or things that were just funny.

• 1:43:56Steven Bartlett?

  Did you go to her funeral?

• 1:43:57Speaker 00

  No. And again, will I regress it? No.

• 1:44:07Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question for the next guest.

• 1:44:15Steven Bartlett?

  And the question left for you, very good handwriting, is what makes you most angry about society?

• 1:44:29Speaker 00

  Cancel culture.

• 1:44:31Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, have you been on the receiving end of it?

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Steven Bartlett?

  When?

• 1:44:34Speaker 00

  Um, I wrote a tweet about Sarah Everard's death when it was getting really nasty online about men.

• 1:44:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:44Speaker 00

  Um, and I said that, um,

• 1:44:52Speaker 00

  that abduction and death from abduction is very rare. And we don't need to completely panic about that situation. I wasn't talking about any other kind of things that happened to women. I wasn't talking about domestic abuse or any of the other awful things that happened to women. I was just talking about abduction and death from that. It is rare and we just have to not start blaming all men because, and I was thinking about my son. My son was really cut up about it and he didn't know how to behave. He felt like the enemy suddenly. And I was trying to explain to him that he wasn't. I said, you know, we've got brothers and husbands and kids that are worried and what they want to help.

• 1:45:36Speaker 00

  Let's not demonize all men. My God, like I got 200,000 likes.

• 1:45:44Speaker 00

  Um, but I didn't see any of those. I just saw the ten thousand comments uh asking for me to be murdered or burnt at the stake, or, you know, I'm a woman hater, or I'm a hashtag not all men person, and, you know, don't understand about domestic violence. They don't know anything about my life. You know, I've, I've, like, I've lived a life and I've experienced a lot of really terrible things and many terrible things have happened to me, but I just didn't feel that this was the moment to attack all men, because in life I have discovered that we need to come at life together, men and women, segregating everybody into groups, separate groups, separatist groups. I don't, I think it's antisociety. We need

• 1:46:28Speaker 00

  to all work together and alienating people, an entire sex is, is not a good idea. You know, like, we need, you need to have our back and we need to have your back. I know lots of men that really changed their behaviour after hearing about how frightened women are in the streets and, you know, like if they're walking towards a woman, just go, it's okay, or cross over the road to walk on the other side. And maybe they didn't do that before. That's a good thing. Like, we need to commend that rather than, well, you know, if we weren't frightened of you in the first place, you wouldn't have to do that. It's you guys. You know, I just think there's got to be a more open conversation. Anyway, couns- cancel

• 1:47:13Speaker 00

  culture. So it's only happened to me once. I didn't take, take it down. I went to bed for a weekend. And um, I was ashamed, I was ashamed and frightened to go to sh- go shopping in my local supermarket. I didn't want to go out in town because I felt like everybody'd read it and hated me. And then I read quite a few articles afterwards where they were saying, no, completely understand where she was coming from. She was right. And I was thinking, oh, oh, right. And so I kept the comment up there because I do stand by it. But I wish that, I think my big mistake and the thing that I should apologise for is that I posted it three days after, four days after she died. And it was timing, my timing was shit.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Um. And it was way too soon. And I did, again, out of something that was really bad, a bad experience for me. I did learn something from it and I won't do that again. But I don't, I think cancelling somebody doesn't let somebody learn something and ruining someone's life, which happens a lot. Somebody's whole career gets finished. You're never letting them learn.

• 1:48:20Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:21Speaker 00

  The lesson. You've got to let them learn the lesson, come back. And give them the space to say, I could have done it differently and I've learnt something.

• 1:48:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Speaker 00

  So it's, I think it's a sad thing that. And also it means that often

• 1:48:37Speaker 00

  in the public domain, I won't say something that I think or believe in because I'm really frightened I'm going to get cancelled for it. And it might be something quite mundane or small or topic, but I think we best avoid that.

• 1:48:48Steven Bartlett?

  I don't know how we change that.

• 1:48:49Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:48:50Steven Bartlett?

  There is some people in our society who just don't give a fuck.

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  You change that.

• 1:48:53Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:54Speaker 00

  By stopping social media. Because for the, for the 10,000 people that are verbalising how much they hate it. 200,000 liked it.

• 1:49:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 00

  So they agree, but you only hear.

• 1:49:09Steven Bartlett?

  And there'll be a lot of people who couldn't even like it, touch it.

• 1:49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:12Steven Bartlett?

  Because of the fear of like, oh, this is going to come up in your favourites.

• 1:49:15Speaker 00

  That happens a lot. None of us are saying.

• 1:49:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Speaker 00

  What we think or believe in, or questioning something. You know, it's terrible when you can't question. Oh, why are you doing that? Like, is that a good idea? I mean, when we stop this podcast, I'm going to talk to you about a couple of things that are happening at the moment, which I think are interesting. But I can't.

• 1:49:34Steven Bartlett?

  Say anything.

• 1:49:34Speaker 00

  I can't form an opinion about it because I can't talk about it anywhere. I need to, like, I need to find somebody I can actually air it with, you know?

• 1:49:41Steven Bartlett?

  It'll get clipped and then it goes viral, isn't it? Yeah. Terrifying, isn't it? It's crazy because we

• 1:49:45Speaker 00

  Such a shame.

• 1:49:45Steven Bartlett?

  Comes from that debate, the conversation, the questioning. All of our progress in society has come from that. A conversation, brave conversations with ideas that at their time were maybe denied or um, not believed in. But because of conversation and progress, because of the fearless nature of some people in our society, whether it's Martin Luther King or, you know, the suffragettes, whatever, things changed. And we, we can't do that anymore with the, the nature of the world, so.

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  And how, so how are things going to change?

• 1:50:14Steven Bartlett?

  There is, there are some amongst us, the brave ones, who, who seemingly don't give a fuck. And they are taking all the arrows as they go.

• 1:50:24Speaker 00

  And that, we've got to like.

• 1:50:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it makes you ask questions about yourself. Yeah, but there are, you can think of those people.

• 1:50:30Speaker 00

  I'm just wondering, like, at what point, at what age am I, because I've got a feeling I'm going to get to an age where I'm going to go, fuck it.

• 1:50:39Steven Bartlett?

  I feel like J K Rowling just kind of went for it at one point.

• 1:50:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I feel like that is another story altogether. I was just about to enter into it and I thought, nope.

• 1:50:47Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:49Speaker 00

  Don't want to get cancelled.

• 1:50:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, okay, well, we'll, we'll finish there. I want to thank you so much again. It's a real honour to meet you and have a conversation with you. And I hope we do this again sometime because I feel like we've got so much more to talk about.

• 1:50:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, God, me too.

• 1:51:00Steven Bartlett?

  Well, we won't be cancelled.

• 1:51:01Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. And thanks for letting me into a bit of your life as well. It's been nice.

• 1:51:07Steven Bartlett?

  Not at all. It's been a, been a huge honour and I've really, it's been rare and rich in conversation.

• 1:51:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:11Steven Bartlett?

  Because of your energy, but also because of your wisdom. So thank you.