How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

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 chat about relationship failures and a particular childhood incident involving birthday cake...

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...

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 more crucially - have changed the national discourse around our colonial past...

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...

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...

TW: coercive / controlling relationships and r*pe 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 and a loss of confidence...

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 well throughout personal and professional failures...

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...

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 set to storm Broadway as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard...

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 me - the only person who ‘never judges’ her...