ON FAMILY DYNAMICS… With Bella Freud and Danny Dyer

Families are fascinating: how those first bonds shape our understanding of love, security and ourselves. In this episode, we revisit episodes with Bella Freud and Danny Dyer, who each open up about the simultaneous beauty and complexity of family life. Bella Freud, speaks about losing both of her parents to cancer within a week. As the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the eldest sibling, she reflects on a complex childhood, the responsibilities she carried and how grief reshaped her sense of identity. Secondly, we hear from Danny Dyer, who shares what it was like growing up on a council estate with a single mother. He discusses the shock of discovering his father had another family and how the absence of love in his early years shaped the devoted parent he is today. Family dynamics can feel messy and taboo, but I hope this episode offers reassurance, validation and insight into the ties that form us first and stay with us for life. Listen to Bella Freud’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/mQntNELQPRhZ9CjFQO77 Listen to Danny Dyer's full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/L192dU5DZHQnCUjFWuX8 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Family Support: www.family-action.org.uk Elizabeth’s Substack: theelizabethday.substack.com Join the How To Fail community: howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

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• 0:40Elizabeth Day?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

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• 1:31Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome back to How To Fail. This week, we're talking about family, the first relationships that shape who we are and our understanding of love. My first guest is fashion designer Bella Freud, founder of the iconic Bella Freud label, celebrated for its witty slogan-led knitwear. She's also the great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. Bella speaks with extraordinary honesty about the devastating experience of losing both of her parents to cancer within a week, her complex childhood and the responsibilities she carried as the eldest sibling.

• 2:08Elizabeth Day?

  Then we hear from the legendary Danny Dyer, who reflects on growing up on a council estate in East London with a single mother, and the trauma of discovering his father had another family, and how the absence of love in his childhood shaped the parent he is today, one who's determined to give his children what he didn't always receive. This episode aims to offer reassurance, validation, and some insight into family dynamics that are often considered a bit of a taboo. First up, here's Bella.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  My father was dying of cancer, and we were all expecting him to die. And then, a week before he died, my mother went into hospital for some tests. And she'd come and stayed with me, which she didn't do very often. But she'd been to stay with me a few months earlier and said she'd forgotten her painkillers, and she wasn't someone who took painkillers. And I noticed that and thought, God, that's strange. And she said, I've had some pain in my back or something. She went into hospital, they did some tests, and then they said, you've got a week to live. And she did die a week later.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  And my father died on July 20th, and she died on 24th. So it was so, so strange.

• 3:30Elizabeth Day?

  That must have been horrendous.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was so abstract. And in a way, because she knew she was going to die, and this doctor had told her exactly what would happen. And it seemed to be very peaceful. And also, it made it possible to ask her things or say things, like ask her if she had a will,

• 4:05Speaker 02

  say things like, I'm gonna miss you. And not...

• 4:11Speaker 02

  And that was completely normal. I remember saying that to her. And she said, I feel strangely detached from what's happening to me.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  It was kind of wonderful in a way because there's nothing, I mean, I don't suppose anyone else would want a long prolonged death but her more than anyone. She was a very immediate person and she'd had, they discovered she had cancer in three places and it was completely everywhere. You know, we made our peace and I thought we were going to be at the beginning of some other phase in our lives of begrudging acceptance of each other. And we sort of were and then she, that was it. She was gone. It was like a racehorse, an outsider horse streaking to the front and

• 5:02Speaker 02

  and she said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm just sorry I won't be able to come to dad's funeral. And then we just laughed. And it was, it was great in, in some ways, you know, even though it was unbelievably shocking.

• 5:17Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so sorry for what you and Esther must have gone through at that time. Did you have an opportunity to say to either of them, I love you? Or were you not that kind of family?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I did say to my father once, I'd done some sort of self-help course and and I said, oh, this is the bit where I tell you I love you. And we just laughed. And I think it's, it was really nice and I'm sure he appreciated that. And I tried that a bit with my mother and in a way it was more about gestures and I was so glad that she'd come to stay with me. Because we got, we kind of wound each other up and and we had a really nice, she stayed for two or three nights and we had a really nice time together. And I remember we went,

• 6:15Speaker 02

  because she lived in Suffolk and we went to the Latitude Festival and we went to see Nick Cave and then we went to see Blondie and

• 6:24Speaker 02

  And when we were sort of rocking out, we looked at each other and I thought, yeah, this is, you know, this is where we're to. She just was like a rebellious teenager her whole life. And when I was together with her and that, we got on really well. And we had things out and some were successful and some much less so. But I suppose on, there was some kind of acceptance of each other before she died, which was a peaceful thing.

• 7:03Elizabeth Day?

  Did your father say, I love you back?

• 7:06Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. He didn't really use that language, but he showed it in many ways. So that didn't matter at all. I wasn't, I was, my intention was to say something that was potentially embarrassing, but I wanted him to know anyway. And so he knew.

• 7:28Elizabeth Day?

  Well done you for your courage in navigating your relationship with your mother.

• 7:37Elizabeth Day?

  Your second failure, seamless link, is not joining the circus.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes.

• 7:44Elizabeth Day?

  So was this actually an opportunity?

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:47Elizabeth Day?

  Okay. Tell me this story.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  I think I was nineteen and I, I wanted, I was going through a phase of trying to be an actress or vaguely entertaining, like being in a band or being an actress, being a performer of some kind. And I used to get the stage and look at the adverts and I saw there was an advert for something or other. I don't know if it said. Anyway, I went for this meeting and it was in the middle of Shepherd's Bush roundabout where there was this circus. And I was going for a job, it transpired, of being the girl that dances on a ball. You know, when they'd have an enormous ball and there would be someone who somehow stayed on it.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  And I, I went for the, for the audition and I got the job. And then-

• 8:40Elizabeth Day?

  Wait, so in the audition, did you have to stand on a wall?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  No, no, she just sort of checked me out.

• 8:45Elizabeth Day?

  How old were you?

• 8:47Speaker 02

  I was nineteen, I think, eighteen or nineteen. It was the first part of the job, I'd have to go and live in Birmingham in a caravan on the site. And I wouldn't be paid for anything at all, no living costs, no food. And then after a month, I think, or it was, I would then get my living costs. And then when I was in the circus, I would get the sort of minimum wage. And I just didn't do it. And I stayed home. And I always regretted it. And I actually, I mean, in some ways, I think if I had joined the circus, I might still be in it.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  So in some ways, I'm glad I didn't do it because my life took me in a different direction. And it was one of my fantasies as a child to be in the circus. I loved all the people in it. I always loved people in that type of world. And outside, you know, and outside a life with a lot of pride. And it's something that I still think, oh, God, you know, I wimped out.

• 10:02Elizabeth Day?

  You do look like you'd be a great addition to any circus. I mean that as a compliment.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yes, no, I take it as that.

• 10:09Elizabeth Day?

  You mentioned there that when you were younger, so sort of six, you were the one who felt you had to be responsible in the absence of adult responsibility.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Elizabeth Day?

  And then in your teenage years, that switched. And I wonder how that affected your relationship with your younger sister Esther, if at all.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it did. I, because when we were children, she was the person I trusted. And I don't know if it's an oldest child syndrome that-

• 10:44Speaker 02

  She was so important to me, but I also felt like, you know, I was looking out and she was behind me. So she gave me this moral support, but I was the soldier on the front line. And I, I mean, whether I was or not is neither here nor there, but it's, and I don't know if other eldest children have that feeling of slight loneliness of we're the ones, we also get the love because we're the first one, but then we

• 11:21Speaker 02

  lose it and we get the first, we're the ones that are the experimenters, as it were. She just was such a great ally and she always believed in me and believed me more than anything. And, you know, as a teenager, people are, it's the time where you get dismissed and very much so in the seventies. And she believed me and that was such a big thing. I was always grateful and still am for that.

• 12:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. What's it like today?

• 12:02Speaker 02

  That's more important than ever. There's some kind of thing in some, I can't remember how it exactly goes about resilience and it's something to do with trauma when it's not witnessed is a catastrophe, but trauma when there is some sort of witness, i.e. someone believes what happened to you, makes it much easier to recover from. And when your experience is denied, it's just this kind of, you can get stuck in this thing for your whole life of.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Proving or just disappearing because what everyone saw you're being told didn't happen.

• 12:54Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  To have that information so that it's not dismissed and notice it in other people.

• 13:02Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you. It's so rare, I think, that we talk about sibling relationships. And it's rare on this podcast too, and I really value having the chance to talk about it. As one of two sisters myself, and I'm the younger sister.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 13:19Elizabeth Day?

  And I completely agree with you, by the way. I was so grateful to my older sister Catherine for being the experimenter, the kind of bull walk, the first defence. And it's just a very interesting relationship that completely shapes who we are and our character.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Elizabeth Day?

  And I really appreciate how much attention you pay to family. When you do your podcast Fashion Neurosis, you do it sitting on a chair that was your father's chair in his studio, this sort of battered, beautiful, painterly armchair. And of course, the act of what you're doing is psychoanalytical, as your great-grandfather was the founding father of it. And I, I just wonder what your relationship is with the Freud name.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  My whole relationship was with my father. He never talked about his grandfather. There was no reference hardly at all. He made a few jokes about him and it was really about what you do yourself. And he was the model for that. So we didn't, we didn't use that as a kind of blanket. I felt that would be a bit tacky to just, you know, in the end, if I don't do a good

• 14:46Speaker 02

  job of whatever it is I'm doing, then who cares? If I then use that as some sort of...

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Magic carpet, that's the worst thing I can imagine. So, we were never brought up with a thing about Freud at all. But my father, there he was, he was everything to me. And I just, what, you know, he was just such a powerful

• 15:18Speaker 02

  person in my life and he was, and I looked up at him and how he dealt with life. And he seemed to deal with life by

• 15:31Speaker 02

  painting through any problems.

• 15:38Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable. So you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 16:24Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  You know, obviously come from a family of, you know, of some sort of criminal fraternity. I really started to really feel that when I went into the theatre world. Wasn't so much with the TV world, but definitely when I started to, you know, be around theatre nats, as you'd like to call them. I was well out of my depth with just dialogue in general. Especially when you do a playing in, afterwards you come off stage and then, you know, you've got sort of people in the bar waiting. I didn't quite know what to say to these people really, and I felt that there was always. A class thing going on, but it gives me a drive and an ambition, really. I've never been to drama school. I don't, I don't, I don't wanna lose who I am, the essence of who I am.

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Because I, my, my theory on acting is that my toolbox is me and my traumas and my, you know, my truth. And so I have to dig into my box to, to find certain emotions and feelings and, um, and, and so I, I, I, I wouldn't wanna become a blank canvas. Which is, which is what you're taught at drama, drama school, lose the accent. And then going back to the Pinter thing, that's what happened with Harold. Harold was from East London. But Harold was told, I suppose he was an actor during the fifties and the sixties. So therefore you, you know, working class people, we shouldn't really be on the television. Interestingly, I've just heard a stat that in the arts at the moment, there is six percent uh of working class people.

• 17:56Elizabeth Day?

  Wow.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  It's at the lowest it's ever been.

• 17:59Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Something that needs to change, I feel.

• 18:01Elizabeth Day?

  Tell me a bit about your, your childhood and that idea of being rooted in where you come from, but not forever defined by it. You were raised by strong women, weren't you?

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was raised by strong women, absolutely. My dad left when I was quite young. So I had no real role model or father figure around me. I mean, my mother brought up three children, you know, on her own, on a council estate. And always did it with a smile and always had a cuddle. And that's what our, our, as children, actually. It didn't matter that we had fuck all. It was about our currency as children. And I noticed from having children myself, quite privileged kids, is affection and love and security. You know, so I didn't have my father for that, but I did my mother was always there. She was a great talker, a great listener. I had a matriarch in my nan, nanny Polly, who said a lot. Right? So this was a word that was around me a lot.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Again, going back to the classes and thing, I was only later on when I was at dinner parties and I'd use that word, you know. I, I realised that maybe if you look at the broader society, it's quite rare. That word.

• 19:09Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  In particular, but you know, I I always felt safe round me nan.

• 19:14Elizabeth Day?

  Do you remember that moment when your mum found out that your dad had been having this affair and had another family?

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do, because she was on the phone, she got a phone call from from the woman that my dad was having an affair with and and she just sort of dropped to her knees crying and she had me sister in her arms and I think she knew, I think she knew anyway, but you know, it was like this really dramatic moment of, you know, it's a tricky one with me dad, because obviously I just made a documentary and I was worried about maybe getting a bit of backlash from maybe women's groups and stuff, because I I because I felt that the timing of trying to make a documentary about how men are struggling is probably bad timing, because everybody's struggling. Uh, anyway, I upset me dad because he he he Googled my name and he hadn't watched the documentary yet and he

• 20:00Speaker 03

  and and and the press had said that I said that he was a violent man, he was never a violent man, he was just, he was just a bit shit. And it was my brother's truth, you know, it really affected me when he left. My brother, not so much, he was a bit more, you know, logical about the whole situation. And even though he was younger than me, he realised that dad not being around me and it was going to be a calmer, happy house, whereas I just wanted me dad about, you know?

• 20:22Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  I didn't understand why he wasn't there and I sort of blamed my mother for it. Because she was in front of me.

• 20:28Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  But all these traumas that I had as a kid, I think it just defines you as a human being, you know what I mean? I wouldn't, I wouldn't go back and change anything. I suppose this was the way it was meant to be. And I think it shaped me as a father myself, you know, and try and do the right thing and and and I did speak about my dad's upbringing in the fifties, which was really difficult for him. He was born in fifty five, so and it was a very strict upbringing, you know what I mean? And so he didn't quite know how to be affectionate with his own kids. There was one moment where he was going to cross a road and he said, nah, I went to oldie's hand, he went, no, we don't do that anymore, boy. For some reason, that stuck with me.

• 21:04Elizabeth Day?

  You are very warm. Kindness kind of emanates when you meet you. That's my experience as a woman. So how did you learn how to do that?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  I broke the mould in a sense of I thought, well. I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna be the way me dad is. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna change it up a little bit. And I'm gonna actually probably go over the top with affection and love. And I think, I think because my mother was so cuddly. I, I was brought up with it. So I've made sure that I cuddle my son a lot because I know it makes you feel inside is important. And I think i- it's okay to be a very masculine man, but also let people feel safe around you. I'm really glad I've got me mum's sensitive side, do you know what I mean?

• 21:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Quite happy to cry and stuff, I will do it.