Sue Perkins - “My Late ADHD Diagnosis Changed My Life”

You might know Sue Perkins from her long-running partnership with Mel Giedroyc, presenting The Great British Bake Off (The Great British Baking Show for our American friends), or from TV and radio shows including The Supersizers..., Just a Minute and her many travel documentaries. A comedian, broadcaster, writer and presenter, Perkins has been a fixture on British television for more than 25 years. In 2023, she was diagnosed with ADHD, inspiring her latest Audible Original, Attention Please!, an exploration of neurodivergence, dopamine and what it means to navigate life with a differently wired brain. In this episode of How To Fail, we discuss Sue's late ADHD diagnosis and how undiagnosed neurodivergence shaped her childhood and school years; the traumatic experience of having a pituitary tumour dismissed by a male doctor because she didn't have a husband or boyfriend, and the lasting impact that had. We also talk about grief, shame and friendship, as Sue reflects on drifting apart from her university friend, Shayla, before her tragic death, and what this loss taught Sue about showing up for the people we love. Questions this episode tackles: How do I manage my ADHD? How do I cope with the death of my friend? How do I discuss my fertility with doctors? IN THIS EPISODE  00:00 Introduction  03:04 Dopamine and Maestro 06:09 Sensitivity and the News 07:36 Childhood and Being Seen 10:09 Rejection Sensitivity 11:32 School Test Trauma 15:01 Undiagnosed ADHD at School 16:56 Diagnosis and Lockdown Spiral 19:42 Sponsor Letter to Future Self 21:10 Parenting Yourself After Loss 21:31 Health Scare and Fertility 21:56 Emailing the wrong person 22:04 Pituitary tumor diagnosis 23:51 Not advocating in care 25:36 Fertility grief and acceptance 27:16 Parenting yourself instead 32:26 Bake Off kindness ethos 35:37 Shayla and comedy beginnings 38:28 Drifting apart and loss 42:36 Shame, guilt and friendship lessons 46:14 Closing reflections and goodbye   💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER:  My fertility has nothing to do with my partner, and it has nothing to do with my sexuality. I think it’s my role in this life to be a great aunt and to be a great godparent. If you feel something, it’s not enough to feel it, you must act on it… make the thought, the feeling, the need and the love real. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS:  Sue’s new audio book, Attention Please! available here: www.audible.co.uk Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content  Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com  📚 WANT MORE?  Mel Giedroyc (2026) - http://swap.fm/l/HTFMelGiedroyc   💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE?  Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts  Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories    👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth:  Instagram: @elizabday  TikTok: @howtofailpod  Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod  Website: www.elizabethday.org    Elizabeth and Sue answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://lnk.to/7i0moR   Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: askhowtofail.com    Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan    Engineer: Matias Torres  Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson  Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot  Executive Producer: Alex Lawless    How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production.    Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts  To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  My fertility has nothing to do with my partner.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  It has nothing to do with my sexuality. I was not worthy of being medicated. I've lost so much work from going, you can't treat people like this. And I'm the one that gets handed my B45.

• 0:18Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is the podcast that believes we learn much more from our failures than from our successes. Before we get into this episode, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single conversation.

• 0:36Elizabeth 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

• 1:19Elizabeth Day?

  can live more of the life you want to live. 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. One of the things we talk about a lot on How to Fail is how difficult it can be to take that first step. And starting a business is no exception. With Black Friday approaching, it's a great time to turn an idea into reality. Shopify makes launching an online store easier with ready-made themes and AI-powered tools, including Sidekick, its AI assistant, which helps you set up your shop and plan promotions without needing coding skills.

• 2:01Elizabeth Day?

  Whether you're exploring a new venture or finally acting on an idea you've had for years, Shopify gives you the tools and support to get started with confidence and make the most of the busy shopping season. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.co.uk/fail to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first. My guest today is, according to her Instagram biography, an athlete, Nobel physicist and bullshitter. Wikipedia has her down somewhat more prosaically as actor, broadcaster, comedian and author.

• 2:44Elizabeth Day?

  Her quickfire wit and self-deprecating banter has made her one of the nation's favourite presenters over the last 25 years. Born and raised in South London, the daughter of a car salesman and a secretary, she won a place at Cambridge University, where she ended up president of Footlights and met her comedy partner, Mel Gedroich. She is, of course, Sue Perkins. Mel and Sue, as they became known, started out taking shows to Edinburgh and writing for French and Saunders before fronting the cult TV daytime show, Light Lunch. They became household names as presenters of the Great British Bake Off for seven years. Since then, Perkins has presented multiple programmes, including The Supersizers on

• 3:28Elizabeth Day?

  TV and Just a Minute on Radio 4. She's written a bestselling memoir, is currently halfway through a national stand-up tour, and her new book, Attention Please, out on Audible this month, is a moving and funny exploration of what it's like to live with ADHD. She was diagnosed in 2023. Famed for her comedy, Perkins is also an acclaimed writer and has been shortlisted for Autobiography of the Year at the National Book Awards. Among the other many strings to her bow, somewhat literally, is a talent for conducting. She won the 2008 BBC reality TV show, Maestro, and remains an associate conductor of the Orion Orchestra.

• 4:11Elizabeth Day?

  "I'm a passionate person," Perkins once said. "There's a lot going on underneath my carousel of blazers, a cauldron of sensitivity and emotion." Sue Perkins, welcome to How to Fail.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  It's delightful to be here.

• 4:26Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so happy you're here. How was that? You were worried about having to sit through the introduction?

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I felt anxious.

• 4:31Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  But I learnt a lot because I had no idea I was nominated for anything because.

• 4:35Elizabeth Day?

  You were?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't, it's interesting. My life, I'm so busy sort of just being in my life. I don't really stop to acknowledge anything that's actually happening as a result of it. So it's just keep going. So I was delighted to hear that, albeit 10 years too late. What a lovely thing for them to have done to have nominated me. That's nice.

• 4:54Elizabeth Day?

  But it's probably a very enlightened way to be, to stay present. How much of that do you think is to do with neurodivergence?

• 5:03Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I don't know, because I've only got the brain I've got. I can't sort of, that's for other people to tell me, I suppose, whether what I experience is unusual or typical or whatever. But all I do all day is hunt for dopamine because I don't have any. So my days are preoccupied with any little jewel of information or excitement that will give my neurotransmitters the oil they need to function.

• 5:31Elizabeth Day?

  Well, that explains Maestro, which is, I think about that TV programme more than you would imagine. It was so great.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  It was amazing. And I don't mean I was amazing, I mean it was amazing.

• 5:42Elizabeth Day?

  It really was. You and Goldie, like trying to be conductors of orchestras.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  David Soul was in it.

• 5:47Elizabeth Day?

  It was incredible and you were amazing. I mean, an extraordinary achievement to be able to conduct at that level.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  I think there's something in my brain which wants to do the most complicated thing. So whatever I do, I want to make it super difficult. And there's something about music which has always appealed to me because it uses both sides of your brain. So it's arithmetic, it's architecture, it's pure emotion and it's exciting and it's overwhelming. I got the chance to conduct at the Albert Hall and I conducted Nimrod, which was a favourite piece of my dad's. It was just after we'd lost my dad. And I was so overwhelmed, I've never been more overwhelmed in my life. The music was in me, it was through me, it was just, and I ended up having to hold,

• 6:38Speaker 00

  it's a very slow piece of music, and you can only conduct it a certain way by drawing kind of lines, these big horizontals. But the problem is the longer those lines get, the slower it gets and then you can't get it back. I was crying and I was having to use my other hand to drag it along. It was that overwhelming. So I think in Maestro, I was just so lucky because I got the chance to have a fast-track experience into being in front of an orchestra and using, I mean, some of us knew how to read music and some didn't. None of the musicians knew how to read music, that's why I found it fascinating. Goldie and all these brilliant people, I'd listened to Goldie's music when I was growing up, I loved him. Didn't read music.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  And he created his incredible conducting by writing on the walls, like this kind of mind palace of, and it was mountains and valleys and I said, what is that? And he went, it's Beethoven's Fifth, mate.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  And I think music does that. It unlocks, no matter how your brain works, it unlocks something primal and emotive and I absolutely loved it. And actually, it was one of those things where you think, yes, that's what the BBC should have been doing all this time. Live, weird, niche, educating and entertaining in equal measure. It's not for everyone. Why should it be? Well, this obsession in making programmes for everyone, when you could just make something quaint that stays with some people.

• 8:02Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. I wanted to end on that quote about sensitivity being a sort of cauldron of sensitivity and emotion. What was the last thing you were sensitive about?

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Ah, this morning. I was crying this morning about something. I think that this morning I was talking to my partner and it was like, why do we read the news every morning? There was a seven-year-old girl's face on the news and she lived in Gaza and knew how the story ended. And it's not just that which is horrific in itself, but it's the compound news stories one after another. Why do we, why do we do it to ourselves? I think I asked that question. And there's certainly the need that I have to feel like.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Engaged. So I felt, maybe that wasn't unduly sensitive because that's just a natural reaction to something awful. But um, yeah, I think yesterday I was with mates and we were making, we were making bread. I don't make bread. But I was just carried away by,

• 9:05Speaker 00

  her partner's not very well. And I all, I was very aware that the making the bread was such an intense diversionary tactic. So I helped her.

• 9:14Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  And we silently made a very complicated bread. And we, we didn't need, it's, it's what's, what's in the margins, isn't it? What goes unsaid. Sometimes that is the most, makes me feel the most sensitive.

• 9:26Elizabeth Day?

  You've got an extraordinary mind.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Well, that's kind.

• 9:30Elizabeth Day?

  We will, we're going to get on to your failures in a minute. And the first one deals with your childhood. But I wonder what your parents made of you.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  I think, I think they just thought,

• 9:43Speaker 00

  who's this?

• 9:43Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  And where's it come from? There's a great picture, which I always, I've promised, been promising my therapist for like, I don't know, maybe five years, that I will bring in to the session.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  And I'm in our little back garden. And I'm on a picnic rug. And for some reason, one ear has just stuck out like it's receiving data from another planet. I haven't noticed one ear sticking out before, but it's just sticking out there. And I look totally like, where am I? And my mum is slightly separated from me and is smiling. But there's a degree of separation where she's going, look at you, whatever you are.

• 10:20Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  That.

• 10:21Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  It's not that. This is no criticism of my mum, who I adore, by the way. But it's like, aren't you curious? And I think,

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I think, I think that's very much the way they viewed me. It's like they were really kind. And my, they were, they sacrificed a lot to give me the privilege that I have now.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Um, they gave up everything. In fact, you know, I think there are a certain generations who almost don't exist. They make, they extinguish themselves. To, to, you know, to give the energy and the fire to the, to the next lot. I really feel that my parents gave up everything. Or at least didn't pursue their own loves and ambitions so that I could have mine. But yeah, I think, um, I was just away with the fairies, basically. I would write very long, very intense plays. I would force people to be in them. They were about very obscure philosophical ideas that I'd gotten rumbling around my noggin. Um, then I would get locked in for a couple of weeks, wouldn't want to speak at all. I would, I was so shy and I

• 11:28Speaker 00

  couldn't speak very well. So for a lot of my childhood,

• 11:33Speaker 00

  I felt I had, I was misunderstood. But that wasn't their fault.

• 11:36Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  It was a physiological thing and it was whatever.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  And that's been the preoccupation of my adult life is to be understood. Because I wasn't, not, not because my parents didn't understand me, but I couldn't make myself understood as a child.

• 11:49Elizabeth Day?

  That makes so much sense. And I relate to it profoundly.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  In what way? Can I ask questions either way? Does it work?

• 11:57Elizabeth Day?

  You are allowed to ask questions, yes. We're an equal opportunity.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 12:00Elizabeth Day?

  Um.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  I'm gonna sip tea, but that doesn't mean I'm not engaged in it.

• 12:03Elizabeth Day?

  I know. I think I often feel defensive if someone says something about me that I believe to be untrue.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:12Elizabeth Day?

  And the defensive thing kicks in and I immediately want to explain myself. And for years, I thought that that was sort of sensitivity or, you know, a tooth in a skin or, and now I think it's, I actually want to be known. But I don't want visibility to be confused with availability.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 12:33Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yes. Um, one of my best mates says, you like to back into the limelight.

• 12:37Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, that's so good.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's brilliant. She's absolutely brilliant. And she knows me like the back of her hand. And she's so acute when it, she's also in the public eye. She's so acute when it comes to matters of, of visibility and how much of that you can choose.

• 12:51Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  I think, I'm not interested in being well known, but I am interested in hearing people's stories and telling my own. Stories are everything. I mean, I, and I can make stories out of anything. Anything. Because that's the cohesion, isn't it? That's the glue. That's, that's the thing that keeps us alive. Um, but yes, when my story is misinterpreted, it's awful. I mean, for me, it's magnified because I have, I didn't realise what it was, but yeah, rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which is like the albatross around anyone's neck who has it.

• 13:26Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. Let's get into that. Because your, your first failure is when you were six years old.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:33Elizabeth Day?

  And you were sitting a test to try and get into school.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:35Elizabeth Day?

  What happened?

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Well, I'd been educated up to that point by some quite aggressive nuns.

• 13:41Elizabeth Day?

  Okay.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  Who seemed to spend most of the time I was at school, smacking me because I ate with my left hand, which as we know, cardinal sin. So let's beat that out of the child. Now, my dad had been brutalised by monks when he was at school. And they'd really hurt him. And my dad had a very traumatic life. Certainly early life was very, very traumatic. And when he heard that the nuns were hitting me, that was it. I didn't, I think I was out of the school the same day. He couldn't bear it. It's like, no one's going to ever, ever do anything like that to you. So I immediately had to, sort of mid-year, so it was April, I think it was, or March. Mid-year, I had to try and sit a, um, an exam to get into another school. And my reading was very good for my age,

• 14:26Speaker 00

  but everything else, a little bit, a little bit off the pace, shall we say. I mean, quite drastically, probably off the pace. And I was still at this point incredibly shy and, um, stammered a bit and didn't want to look at anybody. And it was all, a bit of, communication was a bit of a nightmare. And I had a very simple test, which was, there was a kind of framework, wooden framework with cutouts. And there was a square cutout, and there was a star cutout, and there was a triangle cutout, and there was an oblong cutout. And all I had to do is take these three dimensional shapes and put them in. Just feed them through. And I, I looked at one and I couldn't make it three dimensional. I looked at it and I just put it in the first, so I was already bored. I know that now. And I put it in, put the star against the

• 15:12Speaker 00

  square. It didn't go in. And I'm like, and certainly at that stage, as I wasn't really speaking very much and I was too shy to express anything, all of that gets internalised. So I'm getting very anxious, I think. And I just sit there, trying to put quite literally a square peg into a round hole. Until I think, I'm gonna probably wee myself. But I'm too scared to ask if I can go to the bathroom. So I sit there, trying to put the wrong thing in the wrong hole. And then I do wee myself. I'm kind of intimidated, you know, I'm intimidated by authority and I don't think I've got a place. And I think I'm weird. And I think I'm, I'm too much or too little or whatever. And so that's the first, it's one of my clearest first memories, actually. How interesting.

• 15:55Elizabeth Day?

  It is very notable how many people come on this podcast and choose an early childhood memory. And like you, one of my earliest memories is also a failure. So I think you're completely right, that they do end up shaping you in so many ways. But the response to it shapes you just as much as the experience as you're going through it.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Yes. And I think what's interesting about childhood failure is that you, you approach it as an adult, multiple times with multiple perspectives. You know, there's, you know, I would have viewed that maybe differently in my twenties than I, I do now in my fifties. I think it takes on a greater sort of resonance and pain. I think the more you learn about yourself, the more miles there are in the tank. How, if it's a good memory, how far adrift maybe you are from it. And if it's a complicated memory, how you'd have liked to reach back in time. I mean, I think it's no surprise that some therapies involve visualising your younger self and taking your younger self by the hand.

• 16:55Elizabeth Day?

  How was school for you? Because you would have experienced school with undiagnosed neurodivergence. At that stage, there just wasn't the language at all.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Most of the time, socially, it was great because I liked having fun and I liked telling stories and I like being kind to people. And I like it when people are kind to me. And I want to listen and I want to understand everything. There were a couple of times when, because I wasn't very sporty, I got kicked or I got bullied a bit. But yeah, as I say, I didn't really notice because I'm like an arrow. And I'm led, as I understand now, to dopamine.

• 17:30Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  So I'm not going to get too dragged down by the bullying. Not because I'm a superior person or I'm super strong, but because I don't have time for it. I don't have time because I've got to find jewels. And that might come in the form of, oh, you know, social geography. And I've just learnt about why human beings move according to resources. Or I might have discovered a piece of music that I don't want to know the name of, I just am moved by it. Whatever it might be, that's going to always make me more interested than the privations of the moment. So I didn't feel bullied, even though sometimes I might have been. I felt, I had a good bunch of mates. I felt I laughed a lot. But I was very disruptive. Or I was utterly disassociated. But yes, in

• 18:14Speaker 00

  science lessons, I would set fire to things. I'd have my head in a fume cupboard, the buns and burners would be on. And it got to such, I was about thirteen and I'd failed everything. Where I would just go into certain classes and they would go, you up the front, take the chewing gum out, and I want to see your hands. So you'd sit there, almost like you're in a prison. Because you'd be doing something, I'd be fidgeted and I ticked a lot and I, you know, you know, busy. So I think that's why I got this very patchwork set of results from A's to fails. And I either failed things or I aced them. And that's how I've gone on in life, really.

• 18:51Elizabeth Day?

  When you were diagnosed in 2023.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:55Elizabeth Day?

  I would like to know what the sensation was like for you. Was it a relief, but was it also sad?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was mainly sad. The problem is, is when you can do anything.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  You're the ADHD brain, or at least my brain defeats itself because every single day it was do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, and it changed. Make a banana bread. What's a carrot? Where the cat? How do you go to carrot fruit fry? How do you stop that? What's companion planting? Why do you need a kneela? Well, because your knees have gone, so you need to do more exercise. What exercise? What's isometric exercise? Dumbbells? How much? Ow, I've hurt myself. It goes on. And that's just a second of my brain, layer upon layer of confusing, expansive, distorted thinking. And what happens? You become paralyzed. My life works best when there is, I mean, I push against it. But when there's a degree of structure, I won't impose that structure. I won't remember the structure. There's a whole team of people with my agents who have to tell me what I'm doing, including coming here today.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  And I really want to be here today and I'm really pleased I'm here today. But God, if I didn't have somebody telling me where it was and how to get there, and I wouldn't get here. So that makes sense.

• 20:05Elizabeth Day?

  It does make sense. It's like you're leaving lots of cupboard doors open.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's almost you don't have any control over it. And I couldn't, I wanted to write and I couldn't. My brain was atomizing lockdown. I mean, I can only write in 20 minute bursts anyway, but it had gone down to two, three minutes, two, three minutes. And so I ended up, and I thankfully don't drink or do drugs or any of that stuff because I know I'd be dead by now. But the temptation to just blow my brains out with something was so extreme that when I came out of lockdown,

• 20:35Speaker 00

  it was time to see what's going on. And it's the only test I've ever aced. Full marks. Full marks.

• 20:41Elizabeth Day?

  When you say catatonic and that you wanted to blow your brains out, you mean that genuinely?

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Yes. I don't mean suicide, blow my brains out. I want to be really clear and I don't want to put that out there in any, in any way, shape or form. I wanted to not be, which is the same, same as not the same as ending my life, but I wanted to use alcohol or get my hands on something that could stop my brain, just stop it.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  But I'm too scared of all those things to do it. But I wanted to just turn it off and go into a sort of state where I wasn't at war with my own head. And what's been great about writing, but specifically writing an audiobook, it has no paper trail. Is I get, you can put your headphones on or your ear pods on and you can be in my brain and you can hear what it sounds like.

• 21:36Elizabeth Day?

  I've realised as someone who has gone through multiple rounds of unsuccessful fertility treatment and recurrent miscarriage, that actually part of my journey to parenthood in this lifetime is parenting myself. And that.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  That is a very beautiful thing.

• 21:50Elizabeth Day?

  Yes. It sounds quite self indulgent when I put it like that, but I think it is necessary.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  It doesn't feel that way.

• 21:57Elizabeth Day?

  It brings us on to your second failure. And I'm so grateful to you for talking about it. I want to preface that with this. Thank you.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  You're very welcome.

• 22:04Elizabeth Day?

  Which is that at age 34, you had a, a health issue.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:10Elizabeth Day?

  And it led to you being told, as you put it to me casually, that your fertility was fucked.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:18Elizabeth Day?

  You didn't tell me casually, you put that, you said, I was told casually.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  I didn't realise. So I sent an email with my fails, not realise, of course, it would go direct to you. So I was just writing, I was just writing that to my agent and just going, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was fucked. So it's come across incredibly casual. So I, I think it's probably very important for both of us to make clear that the failure that I'm talking about is not the failure to conceive.

• 22:37Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  There is no failure in anything connected to fertility. What, what, what the failure was in that instance. So I, I had some very, very odd blood tests and some very odd hormonal readings. And it became clear because of the very high levels of a certain hormone, prolactin, that I had a brain tumour, a benign pituitary tumour, which is benign but symptomatic. And when you have a baby, your prolactin levels rise. It means you can lactate. It means you also have in the midst of unimaginable exhaustion, I think, some real pep and fire that means you can protect your child. And that's important psychologically because it has wrecked extremely high levels of that hormone have wrecked my life and my body and my mind.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  So I got diagnosed and then I went to see an endocrinologist.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  And I didn't really understand, and it's taken me a lifetime really to try and understand this condition. And I'm sure people who have it will appreciate how difficult it is because of course it touches on the endocrine system and nobody really has a clue how that works, not even the specialist really.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  But the consultant said to me, oh, yes, there's the levels are high. Yes, you have that. You've got a, we've done the MRI. Here it is. It's in the middle of your head and there's a lump and all the rest of it. Do you have a husband? No. Do you have a boyfriend? No. Oh, well, that's fine then. That's fine then, because it's going to affect fertility. Now.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  My fertility has nothing to do with my partner. It has nothing to do with my sexuality. But my failure in that moment was to not, it comes back to taking a child, actually. It's not advocate for myself and to go, what are you, sorry, what is this about? In that moment, I accepted that I was not worthy of being medicated. And that of course comes down to lots of things. It comes down to the cat doffing that I saw my parents do. It comes, it's a cultural thing. It's a class thing.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  It's a gender thing. It's gay shame. It's, it's, it's, it's a horrible twisted dance of all of those factors that mean in the moment when you are being spoken to by a member of the medical profession, you don't ask questions and you just accept.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  And it was seven years later when I'd suffered all kinds of psychiatric horrors as a result of this absolutely extreme kind of hormonal brain dance, neurological soup. Also in the writing of this book, by the way, I discovered for the first time on my own that the tumour depletes whatever dopamine I had, because the medication they give you, gives you dopamine. So I now, my ADHD at that time then went to, to, to levels where I just couldn't be present in any situation. But I'm 42 and I get a second opinion because people who love me are worried about me. And when I look up after telling my story,

• 25:39Speaker 00

  the guy has his head like that and he goes, but we've always had pills for this.

• 25:42Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, no.

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Simple drug, a very extreme drug. But had I been put on it, if I'd wanted to, it would reverse everything. I could have come out of the menopause that I was put in immediately. I was not worthy of being medicated and I did not challenge that. And at 42, you know, my life had moved on. And, and I think

• 26:05Speaker 00

  people I love very, very dearly have gone through extreme fertility challenges at around about that age. And you will know yourself, you know, the roller coaster of pain and the way that women are just supposed to not talk about it. They're not supposed to talk about child loss. And yet it's so prevalent. It's everywhere.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  I never got pregnant. I don't know whether that would have resulted in a, a healthy baby or whether I, I, I would have had the pain of not carrying full term. I won't know that. My, my loss is much more abstracted. You know what I mean? It's much more of a philosophical thing. But the failure to not advocate, the failure, the failure to not, I've got myself to the state at 34 where I love myself enough to just go, sorry, do you mind saying that in, I don't, just rewind a bit. Why is my personal life got anything to do with prescribing pharmaceuticals?

• 26:55Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Because even if I'd said to him, no, no, I don't want a baby, although weirdly at the time I had been discussing routes to have a child with my then partner. That medication would have stopped panic attacks and anxiety. It would have taken me, as I say, into seven years of full menstruation with all the gifts that gives to mental health, bone density, lipid levels, all that. Not worthy. Not worthy. Not worthy.

• 27:23Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, Sue, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  I'm sure it's happened to lots of people. And that's why I'm always very happy to talk about it because I don't have a sense of poor me. As I say, it's, it's, it exists almost as a philosophical concept because I never had my babies.

• 27:37Elizabeth Day?

  I love how you put that, that you never had your babies.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:42Elizabeth Day?

  Do you miss the babies you never?

• 27:43Speaker 00

  I do sometimes, yeah. You put it beautifully. So in this lifetime, your, your, your role is to parent yourself.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  And I, I'm not saying, oh, you know, I'm, I'm subscribed to the whole reincarnation thing, but I, I think you get your life and you make your peace with it. And I actually think two things about what I've been like as a mom. I would have been a fun mum and I'd have loved them to the point of absinthe, the world and beyond. But I'd have been a very anxious mum at that time. I've got three nieces and I, I just couldn't adore humans any more than I love them. And they're 23 and 19, coming up for 20 and six.

• 28:29Elizabeth Day?

  Oh.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  And I watched a six-year-old running the other day. I thought, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall, don't fall. And I could feel this pain in my chest and I just got emotional because I thought, that's what you'd have been like with your babies. And they probably would have just gone, mum, you're too much. Maybe I'd have been too much because I do feel such incredible protective anxiety about children. I think it's my role in this life to be a great aunt and to be a great godparent. It wasn't for me in this life and it wasn't for you in this life.

• 28:58Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  And there's something, there's a moment in that that we have to sit with, but there's also an acceptance.

• 29:07Elizabeth Day?

  I'm glad I have you in this lifetime, too. I think it's so important to have other women living this experience.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  I think so, too. And I think to be really unflinching about things without worrying about consequence, all we can do is tell our stories in the best, most honest way we know. I'm not ever, ever trying to piggyback on anyone else's experience or claim it, whether it's the neurodivergent experience or the experience of being a woman or whatever.

• 29:37Elizabeth Day?

  Can I ask, this happened when you were 34?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:40Elizabeth Day?

  The initial diagnosis?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:42Elizabeth Day?

  And that is an age when the vast majority of one's heteronormative peers are popping out babies with seeming ease.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:50Elizabeth Day?

  I have had Mel Gedroich on this podcast previously.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:54Elizabeth Day?

  And she spoke about how during those years she was having children.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:58Elizabeth Day?

  How much of a pressure did it place on your friendship?

• 30:03Speaker 00

  I remember very clearly her getting married and I had to do the speech and I cried, the, the suppressing, I can feel it now, the suppressing of what I felt, the suppress, because I thought, here's this platonic love. It's going to come as a shock. I never wanted to marry Mel Gedroich. I love her. And then work-wise, I'm married to her, but she's my family and I love her. But it felt like you're going somewhere. I think I talked about it when I wrote about it, but you're going somewhere where I can't go. Being married, being, being, being able to hold down an intimate relationship was such an unknowable thing for me at that time. And being able to have babies, also, you know, I was unmoored from that concept around about that same time. And I remember she gave birth and I

• 30:46Speaker 00

  was intimately involved in, in, it was a very long labour, the first, for first. And I just wanted updates and I wanted them too much. And I forgot she was married. And I tried to break into the hospital that night with my then-partner because I just needed to see her. And I saw her very early the next day. So, you know, really only nine, 10 hours later. And I just held her baby and I just, I was so proud of her. And I, of course, I know she's just the greatest mum. I've subsequently thought about it and I think, I, I'm, I'm very lucky in my friendships. They're very close and I, I always want to

• 31:27Speaker 00

  understand people and be understood. And I tend to have long-term intense friendships with people and I love that. But with Mel, there needed to be a letting go. As adults, we need to let go of some things. And that was it, the great, the, the sort of this slight untethering of, I can't go where you're going and you have to have your family in. But we had not ever had a different experience from one another until that point. And it was bitterly painful. I didn't feel envious, by the way, but it was bitterly painful, but utterly necessary. Because at some point, you have to rip the Band-Aid off those intense

• 32:06Speaker 00

  mutual attractions, platonic mutual attractions. And you have to be your own person. And I think for many years before, I don't know if she'd agree, but I felt we were just one and the same culturally and politically and familiarly aligned on everything. And then this thing separated us, made us individuals. And now I can look at her as an individual, so peer-to-peer, adult-to-adult, and go, you're magnificent and I love you as much as I ever did, but in an imperceptibly different way.

• 32:37Elizabeth Day?

  That's so well put and so beautifully and lovingly expressed. Thank you. As you were talking, I don't know whether this is a mad thing to say, but I'll just put it out there.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm up for that. Madness is my jam, so good.

• 32:50Elizabeth Day?

  Correct. The way that you both presented Great British Bake Off feels to me rather parental.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:01Elizabeth Day?

  The way that you would, you would look after the contestants. And really, it was so radical for its time in that it brought kindness.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:09Elizabeth Day?

  And loveliness to the fore of a reality TV format.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:14Elizabeth Day?

  Does it strike you as parenting?

• 33:18Speaker 00

  No one's ever put, put it as parenting, but I totally get that. Yes, shepherding, certainly. I've always sort of felt that, you know, it was at a time where TV was very combative and it was always like, get the narrative, but get the most dramatic narrative and make people cry. And that's what they tried to do. And then we just said, we've had enough of this. And we walked out and for some reason, I found myself on the phone to the director general of the BBC and I've no idea why. And I was so scared. But I just got put, put through to him because we were raising complaints about behaviours and all the rest of it. But it just seemed very important in that moment that people were entering our office, our workspace, and you treat them with respect. You don't put a camera in their face and ask about their dead dad. How disgusting. Do you know what I mean? And unless, of course, it's, you know, it's an environment where we understand that that's

• 34:00Speaker 00

  conversationally going to unpick things together like this one. And I, I, I think it was just a time where it was the most counter-cultural thing we could have done. We didn't do it deliberately, but to just be decent.

• 34:13Elizabeth Day?

  Was this conversation with the BBC's director general before Bake Off started?

• 34:17Speaker 00

  It was day, it was the, it was the, I think it was the evening of the first, I'm sure Mel talked about this when she came on, but yeah. So we were both, we both said, no, we've had enough. He was a very charming man. And he just said, I gather you're having problems. And, you know, I want to tell you from our point of view, what we're expecting and all the rest of it. And we'd like it if you came back to the show and don't resign and all the rest of it. I mean, now I wouldn't have a stand a chance, I don't think, at getting through to the director general. But, but it was, we had a chat and I was like, you know, the accommodation's really bad. I think there's bedbugs here. There's really, the, the people are being treated in a certain way. And by the next morning, we were able to just have a very relaxed conversation and go, we'll stay, but just

• 35:00Speaker 00

  do it differently. Now, listen, I don't want to demonise the production because it's their idea, right? Bake Off's their idea. I don't want to comment as like, kind of, hey, we saved everything. We didn't. We're just grumpy women who went, we'll get sacked. We're always leaving things that are successful, man. We just walk out of everything on a prince, on a whim. I've lost so much work from going, you can't treat people like this. And I'm the one that gets handed my B45. That's fine. I think we just thought, well, they'll, they'll just get somebody else in. As I say, the whole hosting role isn't particularly important in, in, in that show necessarily. But no, they stuck with us and we found a way of all working together and it was pretty peaceful in the end. And yeah, I just made some terrible puns and, and cuddled people and said, that's great. And ate so much.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  Where each week we dive into all things strange, spooky and supernatural and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  Greetings. It's Mel Gedroich here, host of Where There's a Will Is Awake, the podcast that laughs in the face of death. Yes, that's right. Celebrities plan every detail of their dream demise, from the funeral playlist to the buffet at the wake. And our recent live funeral shows in an actual church delivered plenty of deliciously dark surprises. So if you've ever wondered what Mark Watson's final meal would be, or how Phil Wang would like to be remembered, you're in luck. You can watch and listen to Mark Watson and Phil Wang's funerals now exclusively on Amazon Music. See you on the other side.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Shelley Jensen was about to retire early after selling her veterinary practice for millions. But a moment of vulnerability became a way to take away her rights.

• 36:59Elizabeth Day?

  Don't you see how destroyed I am as a person?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Her husband fought to save her before Shelley lost her freedom forever.

• 37:07Speaker 06

  This is a life or death matter. My wife's life is at stake.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, this is Free Shelley Jensen. Available now on The Binge.

• 37:18Elizabeth Day?

  Talking about your friendship with Mel brings us on to your final failure.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:25Elizabeth Day?

  Which is about a friend of yours dying when you were 43.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:30Elizabeth Day?

  Tell us this story, Sue.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  So, her name was Shayla. And when I got into university, I was sent a form. It's amazing now, knowing what I know, that I was able to send that form back. But I did send it back, probably about six months too late, but I sent it back and they said simply, do you want to share a room with somebody or do you want to have your own room? I thought, I want to share a room. I want to have, let's have all of this experience. Let's meet a stranger and be forced to be in close proximity to them. What's the worst that can happen? What I didn't realise is that the rooms at college were split level, but open plan. There were no walls, really. I was just above Shayla. And there was an open stair, which

• 38:14Speaker 00

  was very, very dangerous when you're drunk. And then she was downstairs. And I arrived and this foul-mouthed, brilliant Welsh nationalist greeted me. She'd never met anybody from London before or the South East. She had come from such a difficult place.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  And how she had got to this gilded, you know, educational kind of palace, unbelievable. She's an unbelievable person, smartest person in the world.

• 38:54Elizabeth Day?

  And she got you into comedy, didn't she?

• 38:56Speaker 00

  She did. She was the person that she, she, we both got our grants and I was sort of thinking, right, I've got to make this last. I'm going to work in the college bar. I'd be very prudent. Anyway, she spaffed all of hers in the first week on some very expensive stonewashed denim, two pairs of contact lenses, which were lost in the first week. And I can't remember something else, of some weird tassely bag. Gone. So, but she did have a tenner and that was a fortune.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  And she said, what are you doing tonight? I said, I don't know. And she said, there's a comedy night on. I bet you a tenner. You won't do a slot. And because I always accepted air, I went, yeah, I'll have that for you. So I went and she walked me down and I said, will you come in? And she went like, fuck, I am. Like, I'm not interested in seeing it, but just got me to the door to make sure I was going to do it. And then that was the night I met Mel. So she shepherded me into this new life, really. She just took me to the door and then I saw her late at night and I don't even know. And I didn't take the money off her because I knew she had spaffed her, her grant. So, um, and we just hung out. She was so brilliant. She got bored of doing English, uh, at the end of the first year.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  She said she wanted to do politics and they didn't want to let her in, but she got in to do it. And she did a three year course in two years and got a start for congratulatory first from a mining town in Wales with, you know, no legacy kind of parent who's Oxbridge. It's just brilliant, brilliant, unusual, charismatic, lightning rod of a human being. And then just before we graduated, there was a boy. And she liked this boy and maybe this boy liked me, but I didn't notice because I never noticed anything. I mean, literally somebody has to be in my face like that, nude with a poster or a flashlight saying they want to have sex with me, even then I would get very awkward and I think they're probably lying or it's this elaborate joke or the, honestly, it's, it's work.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  But the way she described it is he liked me and she liked him. I didn't go out with him. But in the end she did, but for some reason it created this slight warp in our friendship.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  And we saw each other a bit after that, a little bit, but it petered out and she wasn't very well.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  And she never took care of herself. She was reckless. She was fire and, you know. And I was always concerned. I was going, you need to look after yourself because she, she had this thing going on with her foot. And it was like, she couldn't feel it, but it was like a hole in it and she had type one diabetes. And sometimes she'd phone me at the dawnings of mobile phones and she'd say, um, I'm in a bus stop and I don't know where I am. And she was going into a hypo and it just worried me. And then, and we didn't speak. It's just one of those things that just dies on the vine and then, and I thought about her all the time. All the time. But she just, it was that thing where I felt disconnected and then you just drift and drift.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  And of course you just, the distance between you gets wider in your head, wider and wider and wider.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  And I remember exactly where I was when I found out she died, got rung by a mutual friend.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  And she died in her sleep.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  From, you know, a diabetic coma. And I just was, I just slid, I just slid down the, down the front of the cabinet.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  And I just thought, where have you gone? I mean, she'd been gone, but, but there and now she was gone, but not there, if that makes any sense. And I couldn't, I just wanted to reel her in. I wanted to tug on the threads of time and space and pull her in and just give her a hug and just say, but all this stuff and I love you so, I love you so much, you crazy bastard. You fucking crazy, crazy fuck that can't look after yourself. And I'm so annoyed with you because I can't look after myself. And we're two mad children who found each other at this peculiar time in our lives where we were moving from who we were as children into who we're going to be as adults.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  And then when I got back home from the funeral, I typed in her full name.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  One click and I saw she had her Twitter page. Clicked on it, two clicks and it just said, follows you.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  And that's how far away I was in all that time. And I never, ever looked at it. I never thought to look and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for it because I really loved her. And I saw a picture of her and she had a Staffordshire bull terrier and she was cuddling it. And I did the only thing I could think of to do, which I know, I know that dog charity and I'm now involved with it. And I gave them as much money as I could lay my hands on.

• 43:39Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  And put a plaque on the wall for her. And the next dog I got was a Staffordshire bull terrier. God, they're bastards. Credible animals. And, and that fail is mine. Or ours, although she did her bit by following me.

• 43:57Speaker 00

  If you feel something, it's not enough to feel it, you must act on it. Just one hand on the table and make it real, make the thought and the feeling and the need and the love real. And we'd have kind of just like that and she'd have, I mean, the abuse I would have got, it would have been delicious. I'd have met her, she'd have gone, you look, it could have been too fat, too thin, too silly, your hair's mad. What the hell are you doing on television? It would, it would have been some joking kind of abusive entree. And within 20 minutes, we'd have been almost heads touching, getting into stuff and, and shame on me because I, I missed out. I missed out.

• 44:33Elizabeth Day?

  I'm interested in the use of that word shame.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:36Elizabeth Day?

  Do you feel guilt?

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Shame is, I'd say probably the biggest feeling I've ever had as the, throughout my life. Riddled with it all the time. And I, I go into flea every, I do an hour a week trying to get rid of it. But the bucket is always filling. The bucket will never be empty, but I get it to a manageable level.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Where I parent myself to the point where it's there, but it doesn't overwhelm. And I think in some, in, in some cases, I think, I hope people understand that because a lot of people, some of the feelings they have can't be completely cured or managed. Uh, well, they can be managed, but they can't be completely overcome, but you can live with and you, you decide. You decide.

• 45:24Elizabeth Day?

  How has this experience changed, if it has, how you show up for your friends?

• 45:34Speaker 00

  I think I've always, I hope I've always been a very attentive friend. Most of the friends I never drifted from, so I'm still very much on board and embedded in their lives. I think what it does is it makes me open to new friendships. I think the friendship door, we tend to close it because we think, I can't make, I can't make the headway I need to in this amount of time. I've only got this amount of time. How can we, I don't think like that anymore. I just think where connection is, I will follow it. And some of those things build and become great things and some of these things peter out. But don't, don't be ashamed if it doesn't work out the way you want.

• 46:12Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Just be present in it. I think I could have been present in that friendship and it would have been a different friendship, but I'd have been okay with that. And I'd rather have had those years in a, maybe in a less intense way with her. Than just throw the baby out with the bathwater and gone, well, it's gone weird. So I don't want to have that. I either want the madness or I want nothing. I'm happy now to take the middle ground and go, you know, we all have lots of strata friendships. They don't all need to be fire.

• 46:41Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah. There's something so potent about a friend made at that particular time of your life.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:46Elizabeth Day?

  When you're finding your own identity away from home for the first time.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:50Elizabeth Day?

  And my experience of it is almost like those losses, whether it's drifting or whether it's something more permanent, as you experienced tragically with Shayla, is it's almost like they know you too much sometimes.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  Yes. Also as well, if you haven't continued that friendship, then they only know you as that person at that age.

• 47:08Elizabeth Day?

  Exactly.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  And what happens if they meet you now and start talking about you as if you're that age and you, you become, you know, don't talk about that. I'm different now.

• 47:15Elizabeth Day?

  Yes.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  One reserves the rights to grow and some people grow with you and some people don't. But I think if you don't take friends with you at those certain key ages, it's harder. Nowadays I can just be friends with somebody, but I'm friends with a lot of the people who, who did this audio book because it was such an intense thing and I overshared so much. We all just, we're mad for each other because everyone's going, oh no, I think I'm a bit like this or whatever. And we all just had this sort of fellowship. I don't, but because they know me now, I'm never going to hold it again. You know, if I drift a bit, I'm not going to go, when I'm 80, I'm going to go, stop bringing the 56 year old version of me up because there's not going to be much difference. I mean, I've done, I was so different back then. You know, uh, it's always about those formative years, I think.

• 48:00Elizabeth Day?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  And if somebody stays almost like preserved in amber, you, it, it's harder for you to, to dust them off when you are, yeah, you, you're a proper grown up.

• 48:10Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so sorry for your loss.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  I'm sorry for anyone who knew her's loss. Yeah.

• 48:15Elizabeth Day?

  And I'm, and I'm also so grateful to her and to your friendship because without her, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  No.

• 48:23Elizabeth Day?

  You wouldn't necessarily be having the career that you were having and being on your stand up tour and having connected with Mel. It's an extraordinary thing to think that that was part of her noble purpose on this earth. What a beautiful gift and what a beautiful friendship that.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, she did. She did. I do believe, and as painful as it is, that without her goading and her, because she had a particular provocation to her, delicious cheeky provocation. Without that, I wouldn't have set foot through the doors. I was a shy person. Wouldn't have gone through the doors and through those doors was all the luck and the privilege I have now.

• 48:59Elizabeth Day?

  Sue Perkins, thank you so, so much for coming on How to Fail.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

• 49:08Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.