Sara Pascoe, comedian and writer

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. My cast away this week is the comedian and writer Sarah Pascoe. Her comedy is omnivorous, taking her from stints on crowd-pleasing shows like QI, Taskmaster and the Great British Sewing Bee to critically acclaimed stand-up, which often blends the intellectual with the observational. One successful Edinburgh run riffed on Nietzsche and the possibility of her boyfriend cheating on her with her doppelganger. She's also a screenwriter and the author of three books, including her debut novel Weirdo, which last year won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for Fiction. She was born in Dagenham and raised by a single mother, who, she says, delights in telling everyone how unfunny she was as a child. In fact, she chanced upon stand-up after seeing her then-boyfriend's turn at an open mic night. Of performing, she says, the last thing that goes through my head beforehand is always, why do I do this? This is such a stupid job. Then, while I'm doing it, I'm not thinking of anything except the next line and manipulating the room. It's like playing an instrument. Sarah Pascoe, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you for having me. So let's start on stage with stand-up then, Sarah. That's a bit of a compulsion for you, I think. Yes. Why are you addicted to it? I think because it's something that I will never be good enough at, which is not me admitting I'm very bad at it. But there is something, that's how the compulsion fits in. And actually, that's where, I don't remember saying that thing about it being like playing an instrument, but I think it is a version of an instrument, but you're playing yourself. I don't mean that in a pretentious way. You're plumbing your own experiences and ideas and thoughts and trying to communicate them as well as possible. But in this framework of hopefully people will laugh at certain points of this and it never feels like it's done. So you're always trying to get better. You're always trying to improve. But I am interested in that idea of the audience and their part in all of that as well. That idea of kind of manipulating the room, you know, playing the room, feeling that energy. Tell me about that. Well, the word manipulation, I don't think I would use now. I mean, I obviously meant it in a context then, but actually I do think it's about communication. The audience make at least 50% of the show. I played Dublin last weekend and everyone loves going to Dublin. Obviously, Irish audiences are incredible and electric in their own unpredictability. And there was a point where a man went to the bathroom and then we all did a prank on him where I pretended that I'd suddenly gone into something very gratuitous and I was sort of miming, making love with the mic stand and the audience were just shouting at me, boo, get off, I want my money back. And every single one of them did it, which wouldn't happen in Basingstoke. Right. And yeah, so you come out as a comic and I guess you make some offers like this, this, this and you sort of suggest a tone and the audience meet you or they add or they go, no, no, no, we're too polite for that. We want it to be like a play, don't involve us. And then together you make something and that's how it feels like, even if you have a very tightly scripted set, it feels like the audience, it's only that version that they see and that you experience all together in that room. Yeah. And what's it like for you writing, you know, to silence as being in a room on your own without that feedback from the audience? With stand up, people who don't or haven't done it always think the worst thing must be a heckle. And they always think that that would be, you know, the nightmare and you'd burst into tears and go home and be so sad. The way you heckle yourself in your own brain when you are trying to write something is so much worse. And it's so loud when there's, as you say, in the silence, because every single sentence, there is a critic in your brain going, who cares? And this is so bad. And you have to go, yes, but I'm still going to finish it. And I'm going to write a bit more and then I'm going to edit it to make it better. Yeah. Sarah, I think we'd better get to the music. Yes. Quick, smart. Your first disc. Tell us about it. So, I've really overthought this whole, I'm on a desert island thing. And I've tried to create a spectrum for every mood for myself. And there will be songs that I just think, and this is one, that will just pierce through whatever mood you are in and make you feel connected to life again. This song, if it was on an advert, would make me buy anything. I love the story in the song, the whole idea of this preacher and the converts. And it feels to me really base sexy. If that makes sense as well. I think Sammy Davis Jr. has such an incredible sexy voice. Even if I'm really sad on the island and I haven't seen a dolphin today, I would put this on and then suddenly I'm on my feet and everything's going to be OK. I feel like dolphins would come out of the sea and possibly sway. Of course they would. And then I'd go, great, I just put this song on again. That's what the dolphins want. They would be, they would love it. So this is The Rhythm of Life by Sammy Davis Jr. Or not by him, but performed by Sammy Davis Jr. Daddy started out in San Francisco tootin' on his trumpet loud and meanin'. Suddenly a voice said, go for it, Daddy. Spread the picture on a wider screen. And the voice said, Daddy, there's a million pigeons waitin' to be hooked on new religions. Hit the road, Daddy. Leave your common law wife. Spread the religion of The Rhythm of Life. And The Rhythm of Life is a powerful beat. But it's a tingle in your fingers and a tingle in your feet. Rhythm in your bedroom, rhythm in the street. Rhythm of Life, from the soundtrack to Sweet Charity, performed by Sammy Davis Jr. with the Films Ensemble. So, Sarah Pascoe, you were born in London in 1981, grew up in Romford, the eldest of three daughters. Tell me about your mum and dad, Gail and Derek. How did they meet? Well, they met in a way that we didn't know was unusual at the time. But my mum had all these scrapbooks in the house with pictures of her sitting outside my dad's house, these Polaroids of her and other girls. So she'd seen my dad on television. And I think it was Top of the Pops. His band were on Top of the Pops once. He was in a band in the 70s. They genuinely were at school together. And one of their dads became their manager. And they released a couple of songs. My mum saw him on TV and said she absolutely knew in that moment she was going to marry him and have his children. But what is so incredible about my mother is that it didn't then, like, weirdly happen fate. She made it happen. She found it where he lived. This is very practical manifesting. Yeah. Before manifesting was invented, she had to get on a bus. She was just on his lawn. Yeah, on his lawn. And she sat out there. And so she knew him to say hello to and the other people in the band. And what was his band called? Flintlock. Flintlock, OK. Which is the name of a gun. And at some point after, my dad wasn't in the band anymore because it wasn't a sort of a long career. My dad didn't want to be famous. So he was in Flintlock and he was quite young himself. Your mum, obviously, a teenage fan as well. Yeah. I think my dad was in the band from 17 to 19. So really young. And some version of, they went on a date or started dating, but essentially they were very young and got pregnant accidentally with me. Yeah. And then they had two more children together. Yeah. So your mum was 19 when she had you. And what impact did that have on you and your sisters, having a mum who was, you know, closer to you in age, lots of energy, but also figuring her life out at the beginning of her life? Yeah. I didn't realise my mum was young until probably I was 16 and she was 36. I had my first baby at 40, whereas I was 20 when my mum was 40. So it's, you know, I had this whole life my mum never got. And because my mum had left school early with not lots of qualifications, she did everything the hard way, which is with kids. My dad, and I say this with love, was never going to be able to support us or contribute financially. So it was all on my mum. Wow, all three of you. All three of us. They got married after my sister Cheryl and then they were already broken up by the time they had Christina. So my mum really was by herself when she had two of us and a baby. She did evening courses and she started working in administration in the health service and then she worked her way up and now my mum has a PhD, which is astonishing. Not because she's not a very intelligent woman, but because she has had, you know, a little bit like how she insisted on marrying my dad. She has clawed her way to financial stability. Tell me about yourself a little bit. I mean, in your teens, you said you were a feral teenager. Yes. What did that look like? Tell me about it. Cheryl and I just wanted to go out. We wanted to look at boys, talk to boys. We liked dance music in the 90s. So I started going clubbing when I was 14 and Cheryl, that means Cheryl was 12. And so we were young. And so she was going to clubs with you at 12? In Rumford, they did not care how old you are. And this is so dark to talk about it now. And can I just say, we had no trauma from doing this, but yes, we went clubbing and we hitchhiked home sometimes. And my mum obviously had to go to bed because she had to go to work. This is why I say feral. It wasn't like my mum didn't care. She cared a lot. She just couldn't stop us. She tried to lock you in, didn't she? She did lock us in. She would hide the keys. We weren't allowed door keys at this point. So there was a point where we would have to wait for her to get home from work, to get in from school because we couldn't be trusted. And she locked the windows. We just broke it. We broke a window really high in the bathroom that she didn't know about. And there was a ladder in the back garden and it was like behind the shed. So my mum didn't know. that what we would do to get back in is put the ladder up against the house. And we'd just wait for her to go to sleep. Or we'd sometimes get home and wake her up. Because we'd have to fall into the bath from this sort of high window. Sometimes she didn't realise, sometimes she was too tired to care, but she definitely did try to stop us. Well, I think we're going to hear some music on that note, Sarah. What's it going to be? Well, so the other thing that happened to me at 14 was that Cheryl and I were deeply in love with many boy bands, but in particular the boy band Take That. Why take that as your favourite one? I think the whole theory about sort of projecting your love and your early sexual feelings onto very safe men that you will never meet is a really lovely part of growing up, actually. You must have met one or two of them by now. No, and actually I think now I can't. Are you studiously avoiding Take That? Aisling was in, one of my best friends, Aisling, who's godmother to my children. Is this Aisling B? Aisling B, she was in the Take That movie that they made a couple of years ago and I queued up for the premiere and I knew that Take That were there and Aisling was on this red carpet with them and then the queue was a bit long and I was just like, no. I just had this instinct of like, don't meet them. I actually don't want that chapter in the story. I just don't want to say an idiotic thing and see that thing cross their face. I understand. Yeah, where they're just like, oh, that's disappointing, oh, that's annoying. I'm pretending not to be bored by you. But they'll be with you on the island. In a way, yes. Forever, yes. With this song, which is Never Forget, and I never will take that. I've been on this path of life for so long We love once a thousand miles Sometimes stroll hand in hand with love Everybody's been there With dangers on my mind I would stand on the line Oh, oh I knew I'd be there Take that and never forget. So, Sarah Pascoe, you told me a lot about your mum in the last section and that your mum and dad split when you were still quite young. Tell me a bit more about your dad now. He eventually remarried and moved to Australia. How much do you remember about when he was part of your ordinary family life? We were definitely really glad that my parents broke up. And I think it's really important to say that because when your parents are unhappy and they make a decision to make themselves happier I think parents really worry about things like what would the effect be on their children? I remember we were just relieved. We weren't like, where's daddy? We were like, great! Those people seem really miserable. Let's hope this is better for them. And I think what we had was very common is that we saw our dad every two weeks at a weekend and we would go bowling or to Canvey Island and play arcade games and things like that. And I think my dad definitely got to do all the fun stuff with us and my mum did all the boring stuff which was really hard. And what did you make of him then? If you're not spending all that much time with him and when you are with him it's always fun that dad can become quite a kind of romantic figure in the imagination especially if they're a musician, a sax player like your dad. Well, let me just correct you. I hate the saxophone. I hate the sound of the saxophone. I hate jazz. You don't like listening to someone noodle away on a saxophone? No. Someone practising an alto saxophone I think is probably the worst sound in the world. I think that might be. No Baker Street on your list today. No. No Baker Street. And actually if a busker is playing it I sort of go, I'll get back on the tube. I'm saying all this a little bit retrospectively. This is child me. I used to have a joke about how jazz reminded me about being neglected. And that is a joke. It was a joke I used to have but it's also true. My dad, I think he still lived in our house but the Coke cupboard, he covered it with carpet underlay. To soundproof it. To soundproof it. And then would lock himself in there playing the saxophone. And what were you doing? He was looking after us. So that was. Where were you? I was just in the kitchen making a hot chocolate. You know, watching telly with my sisters. And he was in a cupboard playing saxophone. Playing the saxophone for hours and hours and hours, yeah. Okay. I'm saying all of this with love. We all survived, I should say, and everyone's fine. But I didn't think of my dad as a romantic figure in terms of following his dreams or being a creative. I didn't, but I also didn't think that being a musician was something that was out of reach. And did he give you any advice about following your creative passions? There's something that my mum really hates but there was a point after I'd. So I tried to get into drama school for two years after my A-levels and didn't get in and then I went to university. And when I finished university, I told him on the phone in Australia that I was going to do a teacher training thing so that I could do supply teaching. I'd just found out that supply teaching, at this point it was like £145 that you could get for a day of supply teaching and I couldn't believe it. And I was like, so I could do that. I could do supply teaching and then I could do auditions and then I could just not do it if I got an acting job. And he said, don't have a backup. He basically said, make it work or starve to death. Essentially said, you have to make it work if you've got no choice. And what do you think of that advice now? I think it's brilliant advice unless you are a sensible parent. My mum was so. My mum's advice, which again I think was pretty great. She said, fine, do what you like as long as you're not borrowing money off me. But he basically said, you can but I'm not going to bankroll this. If you can't pay your rent, that's on you. So both of them were pretty hands off. And so I was very liberated. Well, on that note, I think we should get back to the music. Yeah, so my favourite thing my dad has ever done is last year he released an 18 CD collection, 40 hours long, which is improvised jazz, him on saxophone, and his friend Chris Martin, not that one, from Coldplay on a piano. And it's inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses, which is one of my dad's, if not my dad's favourite book. And with everything going on with AI and technology, the fact that my dad did something that was so analogue, I just loved it so much. So, you know, this is your dad noodling away on the sax. Yes. It sounds like maybe you've changed your mind about saxophones. This is what, I think they call it flooding in therapy. If you're scared of spiders, they throw hundreds of spiders at you. This album is my. So exposure therapy. Exposure therapy. And now I'm listening to this and I think I'm going to make a show about this album. Because you remember, they did like, my dad wrote a porno and it was the funniest podcast ever. I think I'm going to do like, my dad did a 40 hour Ulysses. Improvised Jazz album. Who wouldn't want to come and see that? Exactly. I'll buy my tickets now. Yeah. So, this is Telemachus by Derek Pascoe and Chris Martin. guitar solo and Chris Martin. Telemachus, Derek Pascoe and Chris Martin. So, Sarah Pascoe, by the time you were 12, you decided that you wanted to become an actor. Where did that urge come from, do you think? I've got no idea. I know that lots of people have a backstory of, like, seeing someone else acting really well and going, oh, wow, I want to do that. But I remember staying at my dad's house, actually, with my sister Cheryl and waking her up and going, do a play with me. I've decided to be an actor. So, I didn't let her go to sleep. I was making her do scenes with me. You often did two-hunders with Cheryl, didn't you? Lots of school assemblies? Yes. We did one that was a two-woman version of Oliver. Where I was Fagin and she was the Artful Dodger. Oliver wasn't even in it. Right. Just not interested in Oliver. So, really sobbed it down. Yes. And we actually put loads of songs from other musicals in it. Because I remember, the bit I remember is singing I Feel Pretty to the audience because we really wanted to say I Feel Pretty So Witty and Gay. Like, that was. So, why did we do Oliver if that was the song I wanted to sing? But anyway, so we did stuff like that. So, sometimes it was just really I wouldn't have said this at the time but, like, idiotic. And then I did have educational ones where I didn't think they were telling us about climate change. I didn't think they were talking to us about things like shoplifting. I got caught shoplifting in a body shop and then I was like I need to tell the others it's illegal. And I started a bully line. So, I got volunteers from year 10 and 11 to join me in the sixth form block and we were going to be like vigilantes and we would sing Lean On Me in assembly. And how did that go? Oh, I was very popular. No one ever came to visit us for help because we were the dweebs Lauren is the twist. So, it was more lining up to bullies please assemble here and here's where you'll find us. So, yeah, what did the other kids make of all of that then? Definitely, I knew I wasn't popular before. I'm going to say that. I always did have a friend. I wasn't completely lonely and I think people have much, much worse stories of being bullied at school but I hated school. I knew I wasn't liked and I didn't know how to make people like me. I didn't know how to be in inverted commas cool but I also just didn't know how to be normal actually. In what way? Tell me about that. Oh, God, just I just do the thing. I just do the annoying thing. It would just be wrong. Okay, here's an example, Lauren. Everyone's coming back off holidays saying they'd kissed someone I didn't kiss anyone until I was 16 but I lied about it a lot at school so I would buy a shoplift a magazine like just 17 and I'd fill out the quiz saying that I'd slept with so many people I couldn't remember their names and then I would like leave it out on the table for someone to see I was a liar I told them that Mariah Carey was my babysitter and that she was coming over from Miami to look after me and give me singing lessons I told them there was a jacuzzi bath in my house and take that limo had broken down on my road and they had to come in and borrow the bath and I people when you lie quite often don't say I don't believe you they just don't want to be your friend it's interesting that though that you you still have this kind of um you know it sounds like you've got a lot of self-confidence a lot of gumption you want to kind of get out and you're reaching out to people it's not like you're crushed by their rejection this is where I think early life is really important because I've had this theory always that like if you think of like a human being as like the earth you have the crust which is how people have treated you recently you know how people at work feel about you friends loved ones and that can be quite solid and then you've got this sort of really movable magma bit underneath where there are lots and lots of doubts and you have lots of experiences and you can have really bad days but your core if your early life if you had a parent or parents or other carers who just thought you were the best thing when you walked into a room that really does set you up for life so that's what I think my parents were really young for the first 18 months it was just me they didn't know what they were doing but I had all of their attention and I really did believe everyone should look at me and I do I do just think it gave me this little rock solid core of like an entire room booing and I'd be like I deserve to be here so all the going out is happening then you know when you get to 14 you're kind of going out raving people from drama club so at 14 when my mum was out with one of her boyfriends I'd had a party to try and make people be my friends so all these people who didn't like me came to my house and this is before like Facebook things and when this would be on the news but my house got really trashed and the police got called and then my mum comes home the house is full of smoke and there's bin bags full of like bottles and cans and furniture's broken and it's disgusting my mum I was begging her to hit me I was so sorry I was like please hit me please hit me and she didn't hit me she made me join a drama club in a church hall on Wednesdays and Sundays and my mum said I'll keep you off the streets and I auditioned to be in The Wiz and played Glinda and then then I was really like okay this is my life now the GCSEs don't matter and then oh I was actually like in your face mum should have hit me when you had the chance now I'm going to be a star I want to find out what happened next but first I want to hear disc number four please Sarah what's it going to be? This is probably my favourite song in 2001 I got a job in Italy for three months doing teaching English as a foreign language and we would get in the car every morning to drive to a school and we must have all have been I think I was 19 19 or 20 and then we had one tape at the beginning of the tour which was Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication and then by the end of the tour we also had a Beatles Best of the Beatles we had two albums but the best music and there was something about just looking out the window that early morning blue sky sun and every song off the Californication album makes me feel like a sun is rising in myself and I really love this song that we're about to listen to which is Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers I'll close your eyes and I'll kiss you cause with the birds I'll share with the birds I'll share it's a lonely view and with the birds I'll share it's a lonely view and push me up against the wall red hot chili peppers and scar tissue so Sarah Pascoe your punishment ended up becoming well a life-changing moment for you tell me about that turning point how did things change once you started going to theatre school well I realised that people outside of school wouldn't automatically assume things about me or that they might find things funny or interesting where people at school had thought it was weird and stupid can you give me some examples? I'm trying to think in terms of like being loud okay the classic annoying thing about people who are learning musical theatre is that they sing in public places you know and they sing and they want to harmonise and if you're on a train with them you think I'm going to move courage meeting other people who were like that and that's what they did with their energy was really great for me and what about your kind of inner life at this point I mean today I think you've said that you've got the stand-ups mix of like total self-possession in some ways but then a lot of insecurity in others yeah was that what you were like back then? how was the mix as a teenager? I don't know if I was insecure I definitely thought I was very ugly and unfortunately like all teenage girls hugely fat so so that sounds like insecurity it is insecurity isn't it and also it's so surprising like lots of people probably when I look back at pictures of myself and go there's this picture of me in a tree and I remember on this day like being so upset at my granddad's house that someone had taken a picture of me didn't want anyone to take a picture of me and I'm so skinny and it's just like it's so awful that teenage girls quite often do have such a dysmorphia that they're not right for the world and that translates into oh it must be my body it must be what I look like so you felt that very strongly yes very strongly but I don't think I felt that performing because I didn't mind being looked at in that way okay yes so that was maybe a place you could control and and kind of guide how how you were being perceived yeah or maybe I just wanted to do it so much I then didn't care or I was then I had an opposite so you've got dysmorphia at one end and then what you have is delusions of grandeur at the other which is maybe I will be the next Christina Aguilera because I think at that age I still could have because my dad had been in a pop band I definitely thought there could be a route to international superstars yes yes being a teen pop sensation well that brings me on to your audition for Michael Barromo's amateur talent contest my kind of people yes so again 14 I met a boy called Darren at this drama club and he was going to go to Whiteley's shopping centre and it was a lot about people at school I thought if I go on this programme I'm not going to tell anyone at school they're just going to be watching it on Saturday night with their families and they'll be like oh my god I know her and she's amazing but I hadn't ever sang with sheet music before I'd only rehearsed this song over and over again with the tape and it was more than words by Xtreme and it was too low for me I couldn't sing it and I didn't know when to come in so I went up on stage I remember Michael Barromo being hugely tall and I was so shocked that he was wearing make-up which obviously everyone does in TV and he said something to the crowd and then all of a sudden I'm standing there all these people in the shopping centre they sort of like look over the barricades at you I was wearing a red velour top and the piano is playing and playing and I don't know when this song comes in because I only know it when the man sings and then I realised okay this is rubbish and everyone at school is not going to think I'm amazing and then I thought I'll just have a small cry and then the audience started singing the song at the chorus so I then joined in with them and here's the thing about my delusional self-confidence I walked really quickly Darren didn't wait for me understandably to get the tube back and I walked really quickly out the shopping centre and three people stopped me to say well done and I now know that's because I was a child and they were kind but at the time I thought no one had noticed me crying and I smashed it because two people told me well done for getting up there and what they were saying was that was in itself brave keep going and then a woman told me you've got a very pretty voice and so I got on the train and I was like oh my god I think it went really well people were like running up to me to say well done yeah and then just waited to see myself on television and I was cut out but I did learn something about myself which is that I am the kind of person who will get on a tube to a place they haven't been to before and try and if I have any kind of career now it's because I've done that lots of times and you were tenacious I mean after you finished your A-levels you spent years auditioning for drama school and you didn't get in no I made a collage of my rejection letters because I felt the rejection was very important because Lauren I thought there would be a stage in my life where I'd reflect on and here's my rejection well here we are here we are but I thought it would be that's today at the Oscars but this is a very good secondary maybe next year I did terrible auditions that's the thing I then realised that people actually got coached for their speeches read the plays went to see the plays watched all of the versions I never did that I didn't take it very seriously I was sort of lazy because I thought I was so good and so it's really lucky I didn't get in really lucky and actually there was a relief in going oh I'm not very good at it and failed sideways so brilliantly because I had already been doing stand-up for a few years when I realised oh I'm not a very good actor well I want to get there but I think we should have some music before we do why are you taking this one to the island? right there's going to be bad days on the island there are definitely going to be days where it'll be too samey and I will be depressed I think this song would be a jolt in your arm no matter what time you heard it I think it would remind you that you are alive yeah this is like a a tonic yeah on the island so this is this is get off by Prince I can't put things in a way so it's not to offend or unnerve there's a room and going all around that you ain't been getting served you say that you ain't you know what and baby who knows how long cause I'm a need I say what's right when all I want to do is wrong get off 23 positions in a one night stand get off I'll only call you after you just said - Okay. and the new power generation and get off. So, Sarah Pascoe, tell us how the switch happened. Your ambition went from acting to stand-up. Well, stand-up wasn't for its own sake. I was using stand-up as a stepping stone for acting. And never, ever say that in a green room of comics. They will not respect you. They will say, why are you here? They're like, get out. There's a show called News Review at the Canal Cafe. It's topical. Six weeks, actors do it, and they write a lot of the sketches. And you sing sort of satirical, you know, songs with the words changed. And I did that for six weeks. And I thought, oh, I could perform as a character. And this might help with acting. Or I might eventually be able to ask a casting director to come and see me. So I performed as a character a few times. And then I realised. What was your character? She just held a guitar and didn't play it. So, yeah. But I realised then you could get more. There was much more availability. Having tried to be an actor for so long, which was, I did lots of writing letters. I did lots of going to meet theatre companies or telling people that I was in this amateur production of this or I'm doing this thing over there. Would you see me for this thing? The fact that stand-up, you could just text a man and go, can I have five minutes tonight? And the answer was always yes, especially if you're a woman. It was very enticing and exciting to me. So I texted a man in Balham in a pub and they had a new act night on a Tuesday. And I went and had two large glasses of wine, which is too many, but I was so nervous and I couldn't imagine him saying my name and me going up on stage. And I'd written five minutes about how High School the Musical was unrealistic because obviously I'd had a terrible time at secondary school and it was making out that school was fun for people. So I'd written a version of Secondary School the Musical, which I thought was more realistic. And I performed it to 12 people who smiled at me so politely. No one laughed at me, but I did have that feeling of this is where I belong. Did you? What was that like? Tell me about that. I think it's a neurochemical reward, partly. If you do something that really scares you, what you get afterwards is this rush of, I survived it. But I remember getting back on the Northern Line from Balham to Barnet and feeling like, oh, I'm a one-man band. I'm in touch with something from Shakespeare's Times. I go to town squares and I tell people the news. I tell people my business. I'm a town crier. I'd had two glasses of wine. But what I was high on was, I was scared and I did it. And now that I've done it, now I know what that feels like. Now I want to do it more and I want to do it better and I wanted to write stuff. So the better is interesting, isn't it? Because one of the things that is maybe unusual about you is that you're not scared of not being bad, having to work it out. The fact that they didn't laugh, thinking, oh, okay, I can do that. To not be scared to be bad, it's like the biggest gift you can have. Because then you can learn. I always said that about being content with mediocrity. Perfectionists really, really, really, really struggle whereas if you're content with mediocrity, like I remember when I first got offered Live at the Apollo, all of this just sounds like I'm so bad at my job, but when I got offered Live at the Apollo, I was really aware I was very new to be doing Live at the Apollo, which at that point was such a you've arrived show. And I thought, what would you rather, never doing Live at the Apollo or being the worst ever person on Live at the Apollo? I'd rather be the worst ever person who ever does Live at the Apollo. And that is a nicer way to live, actually, as long as you are trying to not be the worst one ever. So that first gig in Balham, where nobody laughed, 2007, I think. And then, so by the mid-naughties, female comics are really in demand. And there's this new generation coming up and you're part of it. I mean, tell me about that. I think for a long time, people thought audiences wouldn't enjoy comedy from women. And I wasn't around enough to know if that was ever true. You do get the odd gig. I definitely have had the odd gig where people get up to go to the toilet when the woman comes on. But by the time I was starting comedy, it was very infrequent. And it would be a place where you kind of knew, you knew from the sign outside the door. You'd be like, okay, this is a place where men have come to escape their wives. The idea of you being here is confronting to them. But it was very few and far between. And TV audiences, I think, I think they realised that they were having so many all-white, all-male panels. And it's not that that's morally bad. That's a whole other conversation. It's boring. It's boring. And that's what I loved about the conversations about the women that I admired in comedy. It wasn't like, oh, we should let them have a go. It was, oh my God, like, they're coming. All right, Sarah, well, it's time to go to the music. Your sixth choice is next. What are we going to hear? This, for me, and I know on the Desert Island, I probably won't be doing any gigs unless suddenly the dolphins look like they need cheering up. But this is what I would listen to if I needed to change my heartbeat before I go on. So it's your hype track. It's my hype track. Is that what they're called? Yeah. It's my hype track. It's my walking up and down with headphones on, hoping no one comes into the room or knocks on the door. So it's rock star by any idea. And that sounds like no one ever really dies. And there's something about that as well, that as an acronym, that no one ever really dies. Do you believe that? And obviously dying on stage means a very different thing to dying in real life. But I also like the idea of like, no one ever really dies, you know, like live it, be here in this moment and take that out there to them. Quite often I feel very sluggish just beforehand. And I think actually it's a sort of weird way of your body being nervous. You sort of feel exhausted. And that's scary. And this song makes you go, oh no, okay, now I'm too pumped up. Okay, now I feel like I'm going to go and have a fight with someone. And it's a good track for livening you. N.E.R.D. and rock star. So Sarah Paschal, you've used your own life as material quite a lot in your career and you've described yourself as an over-sharer. Is there anything that you've lived to regret saying or talking about? Not yet, but my children are still young. I think my fear would be one day them being embarrassed at school because of something I've said. And my husband is very cautious. So meeting my husband was good because he said, I really don't want you talking about me freely. Which means if ever I do want to mention him, I also have to check it with him. And even more, when we started trying for children doing IVF, I couldn't do stand-up about it because it was far too raw. And then I only really spoke about infertility once I had children and it was reflexing. And I also think that's because I couldn't be funny about it until I sort of knew the ending of it. Yeah, there's something in that, isn't there, where you're in the experience still. It's only once you're at the other side of it that actually you can look back. So at what point did you, with the IVF, did you start to think, OK, actually, I might want to talk about this, write about this? When Theo was eight months old. So it was really like, oh, I definitely have a son who's definitely, he survived, he's alive, he's here. I then felt I wanted to share things with people who I knew would be at different stages of it. The other thing with comedy is that people won't laugh unless they know you're OK. You can't tell them the stuff you're not OK about. You can definitely tell them all of your experiences once you are all right with it. But otherwise, they'll be worried about you. But the IVF thing, what I loved is that there were people in the audience who were about to start it or considering it or he wanted to, she didn't. And my husband was the reason we did IVF. I wanted to stop. I was 40 and I was like, lying in the sand. And my husband was like, please, please, can we at least look back and go, we really tried our best, we did everything. And then there was something about sharing that. It felt like a positive way to talk about something that people feel very isolated in. And what was that? What kind of response did you get from people? They must have been coming up to you, sending you messages. That's what I really love about stand-up is that you get the odd Instagram message of someone like, here's a picture of my six-month-old. I came to your show when we just found out our embryo hadn't taken. And you wrote back so nicely when we said, and it's like, now we've got this baby. And not that there has to be success stories. There were lots of people who try IVF and they have to stop because it's too expensive or it doesn't work or just their body doesn't respond. All of these really, really difficult things. But I think my main takeaway is like, it's so brave of people to try. It's such a big thing to put your body through. So it's like anyone who does it should be so proud of themselves. And that's what I tried to do when I was talking about it more on stage. So, I mean, you've also been writing books in more recent years. And, you know, you started out writing your own story. You wrote about the abortion that you had when you were 17, on your 17th birthday, in that book. And I know that some people who wanted the best for you advised you not to do that. Well, my agent at the time, who's a brilliant agent, and it was really good advice because you can't put things back in the box. It does become part of your research pack. It's in the public realm. Yeah, if you've said you've had mental health problems, if you've said you had something traumatic going on in your life, that's going to be a question every time you need to promote something. And I think the thing about me and the oversharing is that the sharing always feels like so much more important than any privacy. And actually, I'm not embarrassed. I've never really felt uncomfortable talking about a biographical detail, apart from sometimes when that book came out, when it would be a member of the public I didn't know. And that feels oddly, we're talking, there's people in another room, there's microphones, it feels public. But if we didn't know each other and you sat down and next week at a bus stop and went, actually, I just read your book. Oh, and you were 16 and you got pregnant that bit. Maybe that would feel like, oh, God, this lady knows something about me I haven't told her. So I did have a couple of moments of that, but it will not regret. Yeah. All right, Sarah, I think we'll go to the music now. You have a seventh choice today. So this is for my husband. So your husband's Australian? Yes, he's Australian. So how did you meet? We met at a comedy festival in Australia, but I don't remember. And then we got introduced in Edinburgh. And apparently I turned away to pet a dog when he was introduced to me. But then he. was still living in Australia but he had the same agent as me he was married I should say to somebody else his wife and then he and his wife divorced and he moved to England for his career he's a lot younger than me and we were really really good friends so I'm really surprised that we got married and had children but it turned out to be the love of my life so when we got married the night before we bought a bottle of champagne to drink in our hotel room and my husband had done like a mixtape of all of the songs that reminds him of me and us of each other and this is quite saucy song I think called best friend by 50 cent and he did send this to me before we sort of got together when we were still best friends so my best friend at this point we were both single he sent this song to me and I didn't really read between the lines but I listened to it again for this show and I was like oh my god this boy fancied me rich in subtext yes if I was your best friend I want you around all the time I want you around me all the time I'll be your best friend if you promise you'll be mine girl promise you'll be mine he said he's just a friend uh-huh now girl let's not pretend come on either he is or he ain't your man he said he's just a friend if I was your best friend I want you around all the time I want you around all the time could I be your best friend if you promise you'll be mine 50 cent and best friend Sarah Pascoe you and your husband's team now have two small boys has becoming a parent changed the way that you work yes um in that I have no time to work and the triangle needs to be right but sometimes my work feels so stressful that the balance is very hard so what's the triangle then where so the triangle so it should just be like okay the whole top of the pyramid should be my two children and then after that and I'm sorry to say this the dog and then it's my husband but and then the bit where I get to a really fast track into feeling who I am again which is so important for me to be able to go back to my family and be a good parent who is really available for them is stand-up comedy so when they were really little and I would go out and gig I remember Shepi Korsandi saying to me why are you here when your baby's so small and it's like this is better than a spa weekend 20 minutes on stage working through stuff that's happening that I find the most refreshing I'd rather have that than a massage I want I want to work you know and and you know your husband he's an actor and it's done stand-up in the past as well is there a sense when you're navigating day-to-day life obviously you know where the lines are and the boundaries are for both of you but it's like say something is there a yeah like you're at a family do someone says something do you ever like lock eyes like oh that's going in the show well this is this is what happens Lauren say someone says something his parents stayed with us for a month recently which was wonderful they live in Australia it's so amazing and it's so important to Steen he lives so far away from his family you know it's so great but there were a couple of times where one of his parents would say a thing and he would see the look in my eyes and he'd just go no and that means absolutely don't write that in the notes on your phone I don't want to see that regurgitated you were reaching for it yes he sees the minute that my eyes went he didn't even need to talk about it the facial expression like is that a thing is there something there I could do and it's like no it's good it's good to have boundaries and you're having the conversation yes and also I don't want to upset people and that's the other thing it would break my heart if I said something about his mum or dad in a funny way and people laughed and then it becomes a joke to you forget it's about a real person who might find out one day we talked a bit earlier about the self-doubt that you you know have experienced over your life and I know that you know there was a sense of continually reaching for a way to impress those unimpressable people for quite a while prove people wrong yeah where are you at with all that now you know do you think that that becoming successful has helped you feel more secure well the really wonderful journey that I had and I do think this is healthy is that I thought if I achieved certain things people at school would want to be my friend and I achieved those things and they still did not want to be my friend and the example I would give to you is that when I was on the programme would I lie to you I had a Facebook message from someone who went to my school saying can you stop going on my favourite programmes and ruining them so that's what happens the people who don't like you at school will probably never learn to love you and letting go of that I think is the journey is wise yeah well listen it's time to cast you away to the desert island you're not going to be bothering anyone there Sarah it'll just be you and the island how do you feel about the prospect you've sounded quite positive about it so far I'm really looking forward to this Lauren tell me about it even the noises you play at the beginning the seagulls I can just see me lying back reading the bible having a lovely time yeah so you're going to be fine I think so the problem I'm going to have is that I've got a plant based diet and I think I am going to have to probably learn how to for sustenance just find an animal I dislike and eat him yeah where would you start fish? I was thinking rats rats I don't know I was imagining some kind of like beach rat he's less idyllic when you say beach rat there's a beach rat but this is what I'm imagining he's fat he doesn't want to live anymore he's had enough yeah fine I put him out of his misery well one more tune before we put you on the horns of that dilemma Sarah Pasco to cheer everyone up after the depressed rat I just ate so I really like fangirl love self esteem when I had Theodore and I did experience such a complete destruction of self like complete ego death who am I who was I other than taking care of this person and people on the line kept talking about self esteem and the self esteem that was so good called prioritise pleasure and I started listening to it before on the way home from gigs because it felt like someone was reminding me about the whole life I'd lived beforehand in terms of dating and having feeders and having crushes and then having times where you don't want anyone anywhere near you and just being a young person living life navigating things felt like she kept plugging me back into what everyone else was doing who wasn't at home pumping milk in the night and I'm so grateful for her and then I went to see her at Brixton Academy I love every single song on this album but this one just makes me fizzy and it's Wizardry by Self Esteem we're still texting but I'm certainly not your friend I don't know where this book and but I know where it ends what could you possibly be getting in by asking how it is bending forward in things that you've seen I know you want me back I know I know but you you can't say that self esteem and wizardry so Sarah Pascoe I'm going to send you away to the island I'm giving you the bible the complete works of Shakespeare and you can take another book of your choice what are you going to go for I think I'm going to take a book because I'll be rereading all of these things I'm a big reader so I will be reading every day the bible will be read all of Shakespeare will be read and then in terms of a reread for me I'm thinking George Orwell's 1984 because it stands a reread there's a lot going on in that book but I also think it's a book that might make you feel grateful to be away from civilisation even though it was written such a long time ago it's such a terrifying read and lots of things going on in the modern world are really terrifying so me on my island reading it again doesn't affect me anymore you're not going to want to eat a rat after reading 1984 oh of course of course oh my god that's the only problem with that oh the end of 1984 is that his face the beach rat is going to look less appetising don't spoil the end for anyone who wants a magic book ok that beach rat will be like she's reading 1984 I'm getting out of here I'm good for another day yes leave me alone fire up the barbie you can also have a luxury item what would you like I think I'll take a typewriter because I think as long as I don't get sand in the works I would love to be able to write some things with complete absence of audience not for anyone else but for myself some terrible poems that I read to the sea really enjoying my sort of non-computer generated life no screens but just tip tap tap tap still enjoying words and saying things and writing up about my feelings oh lovely yeah yeah absolutely it's yours plenty of ribbon as well and finally which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you had to it's between my dad and take that which tells you how much I love it's difficult tells you how much I love to take that but I will save my dad's actually so this is Telemachus is getting saved because it's connected to somebody that I care about and inspired me but also because it's the longest yeah Sarah Paschal thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs thank you for asking about them hello I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sarah it sounds like she'll get on very well with those dolphins on the island but the beach rat had better watch out we've cast away many comedians including Harry Hill Joe Brand and Sarah Millican the studio manager for today's programme was Giles Aspin the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky the executive production coordinator was Susie Roilance the content editor was Mugabe Turia and the producer was Paula McGinley next time my guest will be the TV presenter cook and one half of the hairy bikers Cy King I do hope you'll join us *music* hi there i'm izzy judd and i'm so pleased to be back with the music and meditation podcast series six we'll be talking about everything from reframing anxiety to getting a good night's sleep so if you need to find some moments of calm in your day subscribe to the music and meditation podcast on bbc sounds you