How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

We bonded over swearing. And, although I’m not one to brag: Danny Dyer said it suits me. DANNY F***ING DYER! I mean. I know this is a podcast about failure, but surely that’s a major life achievement? Anyway, I digress… Today’s guest was born in East London and had a challenging childhood - his parents split when he was nine after his mother discovered Danny’s father had a secret family. Acting wa...

This week: it’s Mitch from Modern Family! On screen, Jesse Tyler Ferguson brought to life one of the most beloved comic roles in recent years but he’s also a Tony-award winning theatre actor, not to mention host of the wonderful Dinner’s On Me podcast. Jesse was so easy to talk to - I felt I could ask him anything, and frequently did. We chat about his adolescent failures at sport when it seemed t...

Q. What connects the grandson of Pakistani immigrants, the son of a seamstress and bus driver,  one of eight children raised in a three-bedroomed council flat in Tooting, a human rights lawyer, former Labour Cabinet Minister, Liverpool football fan AND the Mayor of London? A. They are ALL Sadiq Khan. At 53, Khan has lived many lives - in his latest incarnation, he is the three-time London Mayor (a...

Ugh I just adore this woman. I had a girl crush on her from afar and recently was lucky enough to meet her properly when she interviewed me on tour. Let me tell you that Vogue Williams is EVEN BETTER in person than she is on screen or in our ears. You’ll know her as one half of one of the UK’s most downloaded and hilarious podcasts - My Therapist Ghosted Me - and as the star of several TV shows, i...

You will probably know Angel Strawbridge from Escape to the Chateau, the hugely popular TV show she fronted with her husband, Dick. You might also recognise her from her trademark vintage style, bestselling books and bright red hair. Escape to the Chateau, which followed the Strawbridges as they renovated a dilapidated French castle with no water, no electricity or heating (with two young children...

TW: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and injuries.  Two years ago, Sir Salman Rushdie, one of the most celebrated and famous authors in the world was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, when a figure dressed in black clothes and a mask rushed onto stage and stabbed him numerous times. He nearly died.  Today, I’m so honoured that this extraordinary man...

TW: this episode contains graphic descriptions of birth trauma and PTSD. You might know Louise Thompson as the former Made in Chelsea star. Or the fitness influencer who launched two businesses and graced the cover of Women’s Health magazine twice. But when she gave birth to her son Leo, all that changed. She experienced a series of life-threatening haemorrhages before ending up in Intensive Care,...

Today’s guest has the biggest selling studio album ever in the UK by an international female artist. She has won five Grammys, sold more than 100 million albums worldwide and, at 58, remains the top-selling female country pop artist of all time. This year, she makes her Glastonbury debut in the coveted Legends slot, undertakes a new tour of the UK and Ireland and returns to Las Vegas for her third...

Oh my. I can’t tell you how moving I found this interview. That doesn’t mean it’s a weepy one - sometimes, the most powerful exchanges are the ones where you witness the sheer strength it takes someone *no*t to cry. Dame Arlene Phillips is defined by her strength: strength of mind and of body (at 80, she’s still hard at work as a hit choreographer). You’ll know her as an internationally celebrated...

When Henry Winkler played Arthur Fonzarelli (The Fonz) on Happy Days, he was treated like a rock star. Afterwards wasn’t so easy though. Winkler couldn’t get work as an actor and his career as a director failed at the first hurdle. He tells me how he endured emotional abuse from his parents and had to cope with undiagnosed dyslexia at school, all of which led to lasting low self-esteem. I learn ho...

TW: miscarriage This week, brace yourself for A TOTAL ECLIPSE… of all other podcast episodes, because this one’s a total banger. I could not have asked for a more open, hilarious, moving or riveting encounter than with the formidable Bonnie Tyler. She grew up in a working-class Welsh family and answered a newspaper ad for a backing singer when she was 17. From there, she went on to be one of the m...

TW: this episode contains discussion of sexual assault and suicide.  In many ways, Will Young is the definition of resilience. As a child, he endured physical and psychological abuse at prep school. In his 20s, he found fame on a reality TV show and was forced to be public about his sexuality by a tabloid newspaper, after which he faced years of homophobia. In his 30s, he coped with extensive peri...

I loved interviewing Richard Osman and can’t stop thinking about our conversation. I think it’s because his brain works at warp speed: I genuinely felt he was three steps ahead of every question I was about to ask. It became something of a personal challenge to ask a question he couldn’t guess beforehand and I *think* I managed it when I asked if he’d ever written to Jim’ll Fix It (he had, by the...

TW: infant loss and birth trauma Dr Jen Gunter is an obstetrician-gynaecologist, pain medicine physician and bestselling author. She’s most well-known to many of us as Twitter’s resident OB-GYN, the woman who took on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop with claims of medical misinformation and one of the fiercest advocates for women’s health the world over. She had premature triplet boys in 2003 and tragically...

My guest today has a nickname in showbiz circles: he’s called ‘Ideal Actor’ because of his scene-stealing talent and his ability to get under the skin of what it is to be human. If you’ve watched Netflix’s monster hit, Fool Me Once,  or seen Sherwood or Back To Life or The Night Manager or if you’ve watched the movies Four Lions or Murder Mystery 2, the chances are you will remember his performanc...

TW: this episode contains discussion of sexual assault and suicide. In the 90s you might have known Katie Price as ‘Jordan’ - featured on page three, known for her succession of plastic surgeries and her complicated personal life. But, in reality, she is so much more than the cartoon character the media created for her. Today, Katie is a mother of five and her disabled son, Harvey, is - she tells...

Nicole Scherzinger became famous as part of The Pussycat Dolls - one of the biggest selling female groups of all time - but it almost didn’t work out that way. For years, she was a jobbing singer and dancer who learned how to deal with rejection from a succession of failed auditions. Yet her resilience - and her work ethic - shone through. Now, after a highly acclaimed run in London,  Nicole is se...

Jon Ronson is a journalistic hero of mine, as he is to many. He was one of the first people to write about the culture wars, well before the phrase became commonplace in our news cycles. His two audio series exploring real-life origin stories from these everyday battles ‘Things Fell Apart' (BBC Sounds) have been a huge commercial and critical success. Ronson has written a handful of fascinating wo...

Big Brother host, Strictly Come Dancing finalist and the woman who, by her own admission, ‘puts black into Blackburn’, AJ Odudu is a force to be reckoned with. Growing up in Lancashire, no one ever knew how to pronounce her name and she was questioned constantly on why she was different. But as an adult, she has turned these early experiences into inner strength - resilience that has served her we...

TW: coercive / controlling relationships Mel B has a story that everyone needs to hear. It’s a story of resilience in the face of severe adversity - and how we can conquer our biggest fears if we put our minds to it. Melanie was in a coercively controlling and abusive relationship for a decade. After finding the courage to leave, she dealt with years of isolation, post-traumatic stress disorder an...

Spoiler alert: I’m low-key obsessed with this woman. Sabrina Dhowre Elba is a UN Goodwill ambassador, a skincare maven, an actor, producer and all-round good egg. She is, then, *so* much more than some bloke’s wife, but given that the bloke in question is Idris Elba, she’s incredibly understanding when asked questions about how she copes with the attention. She joins me to talk about the boxes we...

TW: miscarriage Paloma Faith’s teachers used to ask her why she ‘acted stupid’, which is ironic given that she’s now one of the smartest, sharpest guests I’ve ever had on this podcast. A global singing sensation, as well as an acclaimed actor, she’s got a totally unique perspective on the world - and a refreshingly frank way of expressing it. Her failures included being thrown out of ballet school...

Full disclosure - Sathnam is a dear friend of mine. He was a guest on the first ever season of How To Fail and there’s a very good reason why I’m chatting to him again. A lot has shifted in both our lives. Since he was last on here, Sathnam has written Empireland and more recently Empireworld, two bestselling books which have garnered him critical acclaim, a Channel 4 documentary and which - even...

TW: addiction The popularity of Joe Wicks’s online workouts and meal plans as ‘The Body Coach’ catapulted him into fame during lockdown. He’s a source of endless positive energy for the rest of us, but he had a challenging childhood. Growing up on a council estate, his father had a debilitating heroin addiction and his mother lived with severe OCD. His escape was physical exercise.     Joe’s  fail...

We bonded over eyebrows, amongst other things. You’ll know Dan Levy as David Rose in the widely adored TV show Schitt’s Creek, which he co-wrote and created with his father Eugene Levy. If ever there was a story of failure leading to success, it’s this, as Dan tells me how his multi-award winning and critically acclaimed show was (initially) turned down by every single network in the USA. We also...