The Don't Buy Her Flowers Podcast

Steph chats with Laura Belbin AKA Knee Deep in Life and Victoria Emes, two brilliant comedians who separately have taken social media by storm, leading to hundreds of thousands of followers, books, a stage show and then together, they have created the Podcast ‘No Holes Barred’, where listeners write in with their frankly disgusting stories. Obviously Steph asks them about the grossest ones.  ...

After studying Design at London College of Fashion, Beth Huett opened her clothes shop Dolly Rock in St Margarets in 2011. Beth talks with Steph about getting started and the challenges of being an independent retailer, Brexit, and the Pandemic. Beth closed her shop after almost ten years at the end of 2020, and tells Steph about how she made the decision to avoid adm...

Yvonne Telford is the founder of clothing brand Kemi Telford, which she started in 2017 with £60 and some tote bags. Yvonne tells Steph about her founder story and how the business evolved into what it is now – a highly regarded fashion brand with partnerships with John Lewis and Tate, celebrity fans and featured in Vogue.   Yvonne talks with Steph about the boom Kemi Telford experienced duri...

Steph spoke with James O’Hara about his life in hospitality as a serial business owner - the challenges, the peaks, managing a team and the lessons James has learned along the way. James also talks about how young people don’t drink like we did in the 90s/00s, Covid’s legacy and how belligerence has helped him as a founder.   James’ career in hospitality started with a club night in Sheffield...

Emma Cantrell is the CEO of Children’s Charity First Days. Emma explains why she started the charity in 2013 when her two children were very small, initially to redistribute kids’ clothes and toys from people who didn’t need them anymore to those that did.    Since then, Emma and her team have added more services including advising families on where they can get additional help, peer sup...

Abi Selby founded Spabreaks.com in 2008, a spa booking service working with more than 700 spa destinations in the UK and a team of 65. Abi’s aim was to make spas accessible to every body as well as spotting the business opportunity of matching customers with vacancies in spas that needed filling.   Abi talks with Steph about realising the opportunity in the spa industry, starting a business s...

Steph speaks with Psychotherapist Zara Arshad about what is really going on for couples after a baby arrives – the common feelings of anger, disappointment, resentment, loneliness, and feeling underappreciated. From her own experience, Steph found it tough and was also surprised to feel this way as no one had really mentioned it prior to having a baby.   Zara specialises in couples and new pa...

Laura Danger AKA That Darn Chat has amassed a massive 350k+ followers on TikTok and an Instagram account growing by thousands every week, creating videos about the mental load, with the strap line ‘Domestic labour is labour’. The reaction she gets shows that Laura’s is a voice people are wanting to hear from, and as one of Steph’s favourite topics, they get into it!   They discuss t...

Aileen Barratt is the woman behind the hugely popular Instagram account Tinder Translators, where she translates the awful bios in dating apps to explain what they really mean. ‘Looking for fun’ means ‘looking for sex’, ‘girls that look after themselves’ means only thin women should apply, and we learn how to spot if a man is, in fact, married.   After sharing funny (dreadful) dating bio...

Anna Mathur is a Psychotherapist, mum of three and best-selling author of three books all aimed at helping women manage anxiety, self-esteem and calm after having children.   With 180k followers on Instagram, Anna’s drive to take therapy out of the therapy room and support more women comes from a trickier experience with her second child, when she couldn’t keep up the façade anymore. She...

Natalie Lee AKA Style Me Sunday talks with Steph about her mission to ‘free’ people from shame when it comes to our bodies, sex and fitting in, and answers some questions from listeners agony-aunt style.     Natalie has undergone a lot of change in the last five years, on her view of her body and sexuality as well as ending her marriage. Steph and Natalie talk about summer bodies, g...

Steph chats with Sunday Times Bestselling author Sarah Turner AKA The Unmumsy Mum. From launching a blog in 2013 after having her first baby and feeling she’d been missold motherhood, Sarah’s authentic voice has amassed a huge following; currently over 400k on Instagram and over 700K on Facebook.  Steph and Sarah met on the ‘blogging scene’ back in 2014, and they recall what it was...

Matt Coyne, AKA Man Vs Baby, has made a career writing and talking about being a dad (after a stint as ‘the worst graphic designer in Yorkshire’ among other things), amassing a huge following across social media.   As a Stay at Home Dad, Matt shares his insight in to men being praised for showing up, with expectations on women so much tougher, and the narrative of dads as either wet or buffoo...

As part of the Don’t Buy Her Flowers fatherhood series, Steph speaks with food critic and journalist Jimi Famurewa about the role of men in parenting, how fatherhood has changed and the influence of his matriarchal upbringing.   Jimi talks about the nostalgia of learning Nigerian cooking with his mum over Zoom during lockdown, the bizarre feeling of his career really taking off just as restau...

Steph speaks with gay dad, husband and business owner Jonathan Kirkby about surrogacy and fatherhood in the lead up to Father’s Day.     Jonathan explains the complicated process of surrogacy, discrimination he’s experienced, and what he would like to see change in people's understanding of surrogacy. They also discuss the impact of becoming a dad on Jonathan’s relati...

Steph talks with Matthew Fray, a relationship coach and author of ‘This is How your Marriage Ends: A hopeful approach to saving relationships ’. After his own experience of divorce, and after some soul searching, Matt had a kind of reckoning where he realised that how he had behaved in the marriage – mostly the every day little things that cause the same rows – had over time eroded trust, whi...

Dr Karen Gurney AKA The Sex Doctor is on a mission to help us understand how desire works, particularly in women, because it is NOT the spontaneous desire that we see in the movies. In fact, she says ‘It is normal to never feel like sex, out of the blue, ever, in a long term relationship’. As well as female desire, Steph and Karen discuss how sex changes from those exciting ear...

During Maternal Mental Health Week, Steph talks with Clinical Psychologist Dr Caroline Boyd about how challenging that first year can be, including feelings of isolation and rage, and feeling disconnected from a partner. They also talk about the Supermum Myth, parenting perfectly and how an expectation of motherhood coming ‘naturally’ impacts hard when it doesn’t.   Caroline explain...

As an End of Life Doula and a Funeral Director, Anna Lyons and Louise Winter have more experience of death and dying than most. They talk with Steph about why it is their mission to get people talking more about the inevitable, and share what they’ve learned through their work about life and living.   Steph talks with Anna and Louise about why their message is important an...

The Don’t Buy Her Flowers Podcast returns for season three with Kate Lawler - DJ, broadcaster, Big Brother 2002 winner and hugely honest author in her recently published book Maybe Baby.   Steph spoke to Kate during what was a crazy week of book promo as well as her partner Boj getting Covid, which meant that as well as being crazy busy, their usual support network couldn’t help. Kate ended u...

Em Smyth went into the Pandemic with no children and is living and breathing the Rush Hour, as less than two years later she has two kids under two and a half. Em is keen to address the misinformation that seems to be rife around adoption, talking Steph through the adoption process (top tip: don’t joke about worrying your kid will become a serial killer when you’re being vetted to become adoptive...

As well as just bagging a National Comedy Award for Best Comedy Podcast and completing a record-breaking arena tour, Rosie Ramsey is about to host a TV show on BBC One with husband Chris, and talks with Steph about her background as an entertainer via Pontins in Somerset, holiday repping in Faliraki and as a radio presenter.   Rosie describes the phase they’re in as ‘The Drowning Stage’, expl...

Steph talks with the artist formally known as Annie Mac about Motherhood, her career and the huge change she made leaving BBC Radio 1 in 2021 after 17 years. As an internationally renowned broadcaster, DJ and events curator, Annie has added Author to her CV with the publication of her debut novel Mother, Mother.   Steph and Annie discuss social media and Annie’s decision to manage her time on...

TW: includes discussion about baby loss, death and grief.   Sarah Gwonyoma, founder of @WhatSarahReadNext talks honestly about what happens when life throws a lot of grief your way, coping when life is turned upside down, and making big career moves when she stopped to work out what she really wanted.   As part of our Motherhood series, Sarah talks with Steph about how it feels to become...

Steph chats with Comedian, Actor, Presenter AND Author (phew) Ellie Taylor about her career. She’s come a long way since playing Nancy in Oliver aged 17 and they discuss the terror/joy of Stand Up Comedy and some of Ellie’s recent projects including what it’s like to be in the multi-award winning show Ted Lasso (Emmys! SAG Awards! Golden Globes!) as the brilliant Sassy.    Ellie says new...