Bobbi Brown on doing it all her own way in her 60s

Today’s guest is the queen of embracing the second chapter. Fearne Cotton started young. She became a children’s TV presenter at 15, presented Top of The Pops at 19 and took over Jo Whiley’s mid morning show on Radio One at just 27. But it’s what she’s achieved since turning her back on live radio and TV that’s really remarkable. In 2018 she launched Happy Place podcast, which has since amassed over 50 million downloads and expanded into a festival, bookclub, app and publishing imprint. As an author herself Fearne has written several books including the Sunday Times bestsellers Happy and Bigger Than Us.  But when people talk about Fearne they still describe her first and foremost as a broadcaster - instead of what she is: a highly successful and intuitive businesswoman who has curated an entire career, business and brand around her personal passions. Now she’s turned her hand to fiction, with Scripted, in which a chronic people pleaser learns how to say no. Frankly I can think of a few people (including yours truly) who could take a lesson or two… Fearne joined me to talk about how she finally found her balance in mid-life. We also discussed why being a step parent needs a rebrand, learning not to be a little bitch to yourself, respecting your energy levels as much as your bank balance. And why she love love love love loves being in her 40s. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Scripted by Fearne Cotton and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Aug 20241h 1min

I have known today’s guest for quite some time. Decades in fact. To begin with she didn’t really know me, because she was close friends with my first ever boss. During the time I sat on the sidelines of Lindsay Nicholson’s life, the unimaginable happened and her husband and then daughter both died of a rare form of leukaemia. Then she picked herself and her younger daughter, Hope, up from the ashes and rebuilt their lives. Already a successful editor she became editor of Good Housekeeping where she stayed for 18 years, winning countless awards. As if she hadn’t had more than her fair share of shit already, Lindsay then was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has now been in remission for 17 years. Then I left magazines and our ways parted. But a couple of years later I started to hear rumours - her second marriage (to a man who, from the outside, looked like some kind of knight in shining Armani) had fallen apart, magazines were in trouble and the company we had both worked for dispensed with their experienced talented (for which read expensive) editors. Including her, their most senior and decorated. That would be more than enough. But that wasn’t even the half of it. Now Lindsay has written a heart rending memoir, Perfect Bound about the car crash that triggered a crisis and losing it all for a second time. Her obsessive pursuit of perfection. And how she found it in herself to recover. Again.  CONTENT WARNING: Before we leap in, I have to be honest, this episode is A LOT; a lot of everything. And I do mean everything. A lot of joy, a lot of pain, (including suicidal ideation.) you name it Lindsay has been through it, so if you’re feeling fragile proceed with caution and tissues. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Perfect Bound by Lindsay Nicholson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Aug 20241h 2min

If there’s anything more daunting than interviewing a professional interviewer it’s interviewing an award-winning professional interviewer. Today’s guest Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff-writer on the New York Times and a legend amongst journalists who often find themselves on the monosyllabic side of a celebrity. (Her interview with Bradley Cooper refusing to be interviewed for is a masterclass.) Her debut novel Fleishman is in Trouble was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and then, never having written a screenplay before, she adapted it into a hit miniseries, starring Claire Danes, for which she won an Emmy. I mean. Her new novel, Long Island Compromise, has just been bought by Apple TV and looks set to go the same way. It follows four decades in the life of a wealthy Jewish Long Island family whose patriarch is kidnapped in 1980. The fall out is the story. Wealth class privilege trauma BDSM and controlling mothers abound. I met Taffy in her publisher’s office when she was visiting London to talk about her joy of turning 40 and realising the thing she’d been taught her whole life to be afraid of (middle age) was actually her ticket to freedom, the mystifying effect of money, the unlikely promise she made her mum and why her superpower is spotting a nose job. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

6 Aug 202451min

I can’t be cool about today’s guest, so I’m not even going to try. Ever since I started The Shift I have had a Wishlist and high up on it from day one was Dame Zandra Rhodes. Yes, that Zandra Rhodes. There can only be one after all. For over 50 years, Zandra has been a leading figure in the British fashion industry, renowned for her prints and her use of colour. Over the years she has dressed everyone from Princesses Diana to Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross and Debbie Harry, and collaborated with everyone from M&S to Ikea. Zandra is nothing if not egalitarian. Now 83 (and in remission from the terminal cancer she was diagnosed with at the start of covid), she has no plans to stop any time soon, as evidenced by her new book Iconic, My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects, a whistle-stop tour through her incredible life hanging out with ossie clark, lunching with Truman Capote, making a lifelong friend of legendary vogue editor Diana Vreeland. Which is how I get to be on my way to Bermondsey to hang out at her fabulous flat to talk about her equally fabulous life. I know! Zandra and I sat down with a cuppa to discuss how a “boring little girl” became synonymous with big, bold, uncompromising style, her lifelong workaholism, living a child-free life, using clothes as armour and the rejection that was the making of her...  * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects by Zandra Rhodes and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

30 Juli 202451min

In the last of our FROM THE ARCHIVES episodes, I'm revisiting one of the most important conversations I think I've had on this podcast (not to mention one of my favourites) - with Terri White, the brains behind the award-winning podcast, Finding Britain's Ghost Children, which explored why so many children are missing from Britain's class rooms. Earlier this year, the podcast took home Gold at the ARIAS (industry Oscars etc) as well as a host of other commendations... My guest this week has come a hell of a long way - from the Derbyshire village where she grew up, to London and the editor's seat of Empire magazine, by way of New York where she was one of Folio magazine’s top women in American media. Ostensibly Terri White was living the 'single woman in Manhattan' dream.  But, uber-competent at work, she was clinging by a thread in her personal life, struggling with chronic depression, self-harming and self-medicating with alcohol and prescription pills. When she was admitted to a psychiatric ward it marked the beginning of a remarkable journey that she documents in her extraordinary memoir, Coming Undone. To say it’s raw and unflinching would be a massive understatement. Brace yourself for some extreme honesty as Terri discusses her mental health struggles, being a working class woman in a middle class world, how becoming a mother affected her relationship with her own mother, curing herself of busy busy busy and why she would not go back to 25 if you paid her. Oh, and her extremely complicated relationship with her hair. TRIGGER WARNING: I must stress that if you’re feeling vulnerable there is frank discussion of mental health, sexual abuse, self harm and suicidal ideation. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Coming Undone by Terri White and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

23 Juli 202449min

There are plenty of famous women who we think we know all there is to know without ever having met them. Women we judge based on some random unsubstantiated headline, but there are few women that applies to quite so much as Katie Price. Katie has been in the public eye for thirty years. She started as the glamour model Jordan at just 17 years old and is now a bestselling author and businesswoman.  She has published six autobiographies, 11 novels and two series of children's books, released her own lingerie, haircare, perfume and equestrian lines, starred in a host of reality programmes and won Celebrity Big Brother in 2015.  She’s been through divorces, bankruptcies, carjacking, raised five children and campaigned for her disabled son, Harvey. She has survived childhood abuse, addiction, depression and much more. But Katie Price is sick to the back teeth of other people’s opinions of her. Which is why she’s written her 7th autobiography. This Is Me. Because she’s decided, at 46, that it’s about bloody time she wrote her own narrative, instead of letting other people. Katie joined me from her new house (where the wifi hasn’t been sorted out yet!) to talk about how her breakdown changed everything and the agony of revisiting the worst times in her life for the book. We also discussed ADHD, IVF, body dysmorphia, Botox and why, at 46, she’s finally got the knowledge and experience to take back control. Listen to The Katie Price Show. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including This Is Me by Katie Price and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

17 Juli 202441min

I'm not sure there's anyone quite like Kate Mosse. The driving power behind the Women's Prize for Fiction which is now in its 27th year (the winner was VV Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night) and now the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction (whose inaugural winner was Doppleganger by Naomi Klein), she also manages to write a book a year (and they're not small!) The latest of which, The Ghost Ship, is just out in paperback. In tribute I thought we'd replay one of the earliest The Shift conversations with her. This one is from February 2021 when The Shift was but a baby!... You’d be hard pushed to think of anyone who has done more for women writers than this week’s guest. Twenty five years ago, Kate Mosse was working in publishing when she looked around and realised that everyone on all the awards shortlists looked familiar - pale, male and stale. The result - the Women’s Prize for Fiction - has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and given a much-needed voice to women’s writing. Kate is also a bestselling author of 7 novels and 2 short story collections including the millions-selling global smash hit Labyrinth and her new book, The City of Tears. Kate is kind, funny and candid as she talks about how easily women's history is erased (and why we should never forget the women who went before us), her “other” job as a full-time carer - and why caring is a feminist issue - the devaluing of women’s work, being a pathological optimist and why she CANNOT WAIT to be 60. Trigger Warning: Kate also speaks honestly about bereavement and grief, three quarters of the way through the episode. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Midpoint Plan by Gabby Logan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Juli 202444min

It's Gabby Logan's summer. First there's the Euros and then the Paris Olympics are hot on their heels. Plus, she has a new book, The Midpoint Plan, out so it seemed like a fine time to revisit my conversation with her from a couple of years ago... My guest this week has hosted everything from Final Score to the Six Nations to the Olympics. Formerly an international gymnast, Gabby Logan moved into broadcasting in her early 20s and neither she – nor the male-dominated world of sports broadcasting – have looked back. Now 47, she’s launched The Mid-Point, a podcast about midlife career change and becoming more comfortable in your own skin.  Join us as Gabby talks resilience, reclaiming “middle age”, competitive coping, cooking for Mary Berry and why equality begins at home. Oh, and how it feels to be the Dame Judi Dench of sports broadcasting! And… There’s SO MUCH more. You’ll just have to listen on… * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Midpoint Plan by Gabby Logan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

9 Juli 202449min