EP. 232 — Joanne McNally – LIVE

 

[00:00:00] Jameela: Hi everyone! Hello! Are you well? Thank you for coming to what is my last ever live of this podcast. I know it is slowly coming to an end at some point this year. But I couldn’t not see you one last time in the context of this podcast that has changed my life. It has meant so much to me. It’s how I’ve got to learn so much from people who actually went to school, not me, um, and from all of you.

[00:00:57] And so thank you for supporting us this long. Uh, I am. So excited about today’s guest. She’s so excellent and funny and you just want to be her as soon as you meet her. She is a comedian, she is an icon, and she’s just a generational legend. Everyone give it up for the exceptional and stunning. Joanne McNally.

[00:01:27] So how have you been?

[00:01:29] Joanne: I’m good. Yeah.

[00:01:30] Jameela: Great. Podcast done. Done. Sorted. Easy.

[00:01:33] Joanne: We’ve covered everything. Um, I’m fine. I’m writing a book. I’m stressed. I wish I hadn’t said I’d do it. Um, I want the legacy of a book without doing any of the work.

[00:01:44] Jameela: And you’re not getting a ghostwriter, you’re doing?

[00:01:46] Joanne: No, no, no, no, because it’s not a memoir.

[00:01:49] Jameela: No.

[00:01:49] Joanne: So it’s like, well, I used to write volumes.

[00:01:50] Jameela: Would you let a ghostwriter write a memoir?

[00:01:52] Joanne: It’s not what they do, no.

[00:01:53] Jameela: That’s what they do, but they’re not like us.

[00:01:55] Joanne: See, I, I am a writer. So we really need to get a ghostwriter.

[00:02:00] Jameela: I know. No, I could never imagine. I think that would be so awful. No, I want to, if I, when I, when I, my book comes out, I want it to be that I take Um, both the credit but sadly also the blame.

[00:02:11] And that’s the problem. That’s the only problem. No, good for you.

[00:02:14] Joanne: Just put people into your acknowledgments and be like, if it’s shit

[00:02:17] Jameela: But you seem really well. Are you feeling well at the moment?

[00:02:20] Joanne: I mean, yeah, I’m well. Why, what have you heard?

[00:02:24] Jameela: No.

[00:02:24] Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Well you never know. It’s trying times. But you seem

[00:02:30] well.

[00:02:30] Joanne: I know. Yeah, I’m well. I’m well!

[00:02:33] Sure.

[00:02:34] Jameela: Yeah, good.

[00:02:35] Joanne: I’m good. Yeah.

[00:02:36] Jameela: I’m not trying to like, psych you out.

[00:02:38] Joanne: Yeah, I’m like, what am

[00:02:39] I? I started pottery. I know it’s /suspicious. Um, I actually did think, I gave up booze for a while and, um, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Really genuinely. I was like, I running at 6am on the weekends and all.

[00:02:52] Jameela: Oh Christ. Yeah.

[00:02:53] I once broke up with someone for that.

[00:02:56] Joanne: Running or giving up booze?

[00:02:57] Jameela: Running.

[00:03:00] Joanne: Do they wear a little harness?

[00:03:01] Jameela: No, but he just got up at 6 a. m. every day to go for a run and that gave me the ick. Yeah. Really badly.

[00:03:07] Joanne: You’re like trying to batter your body. Yeah. Disgusting.

[00:03:10] Jameela: Yeah, just

[00:03:10] fuck off.

[00:03:11] Joanne: One of the funniest icks I ever read was someone, a woman wrote in to us at some stage saying that her boyfriend broke his leg, no he got hit by a car, that was it, he ran across the road and he ran, he tried to, the lights weren’t in his favor and a car beeped or something and she’s like disgusting.

[00:03:29] Disgusting. She’s like hyping.

[00:03:31] Jameela: This is terrible. This is just

[00:03:34] terrible. We’re all terrible.

[00:03:36] Joanne: I know. But I started running because for health reasons and blah, I’m 41 and I was like I should really start kind of moving. And, uh, so, and I live in Clapham Common and it’s like a racetrack. So like every morning you, like they’re all, they’re just fucking, if you’re walking, you look broken in Clapham.

[00:03:53] Everyone’s just running all the time. So I was like, okay, I better fucking run like after one. So I bought like a little harness and everything because I was delaying the physical running by buying the gear I needed to run.

[00:04:05] Mm what

[00:04:06] I mean? So what I can’t do until the harness gets here. Mm hmm. And it was like during lockdown.

[00:04:10] Jameela: Wait, sorry,

[00:04:10] where does that, is it for the, what is it?

[00:04:13] Joanne: So I’m sure you’ve seen It’s like it’s for people running like marathons and all like I’m doing the cage to 5k And I’m like, I’m like a drill sergeant with all the gear. It’s basically where you put your keys on maybe like a bottle of water. It’s like an army You know what I’m talking about?

[00:04:32] It’s like a little jacket. It’s like a little jacket A sleeveless jacket with loads of pockets.

[00:04:37] Jameela: Right, right, right. Like a drug

[00:04:39] dealer.

[00:04:40] Joanne: Yes!

[00:04:40] Jameela: Lovely.

[00:04:41] Joanne: It’s like Snickers pants but for the top. Love it. Yeah. So I bought one of them. And then I was slagged mercilessly for using it. So I was shamed into a bum bag.

[00:04:53] Yeah, but I was trying to run. I was

[00:04:55] trying to fucking.

[00:04:55] Jameela: I’m trying to get moving at the moment. I won’t run unless I’m being chased. As a rule, like, come on, I’m not Megan Thee Stallion. I don’t have super knees.

[00:05:04] Joanne: Have you seen the TikTok going around about the woman who, she’s in bed and this man breaks into her house.

[00:05:11] And he’s like in a balaclava with a machete and all, have you seen this?

[00:05:14] Jameela: Oh my god, yes!

[00:05:15] Joanne: Yeah, I was gonna say it’s really funny, but it doesn’t sound funny yet, but it gets there. And she’s like, get the f and she’s like, aah! And it looks like she’s being, like assaulted or whatever. And then she runs out into the street and he’s got a chainsaw and he’s chasing after her.

[00:05:29] And then he stops and he goes, alright Sharon, that was your personal best. Like, whatever, your speed, whatever, and it’s her trainer, and I just thought it was really funny. That’s what we need.

[00:05:37] Jameela: That is the only way I could be trained. You have had one of the most exceptional life stories, like it’s, it’s, it’s out there.

[00:05:45] I think so.

[00:05:46] Joanne: Thank you.

[00:05:46] Jameela: I find, I find your life story to be from where you started to where you are and everything that you’ve been through and how incredibly open you’ve been about it, while somehow at the same time being funny. Which is potentially a self defense mechanism.

[00:06:04] Joanne: You should have seen my dad’s funeral. I pissing myself all day.

[00:06:08] Jameela: But you’re, wait, why?

[00:06:11] Joanne: Because firstly, I think laughter releases tension, right?

[00:06:14] Jameela: Yeah, yeah,

[00:06:14] yeah. My friend had to have a wank at his grandmother’s. Funeral. Yeah, it was just too stressful.

[00:06:20] Joanne: There you go.

[00:06:23] Where?

[00:06:24] Jameela: In the bathroom, not like over the casket.

[00:06:30] Joanne: The mortician’s like, I’ve done her makeup. What? You’re ruining it.

[00:06:34] Jameela: No, it was on the tits. It’s fine. Um,

[00:06:43] Joanne: yeah, it’s releases tension, sometimes some of the like biggest bursts that like when you can’t stop laughing. It’s like we’re in school or funerals because it’s kind of, you don’t know what to do, you know?

[00:06:53] Yeah. But I’ve never had like, you’ve got a wicked sense of humor. It’s like that thing of humor. They say comedy is just, um, what is a trauma time or time trauma or whatever. It’s like, whatever. sadness and then multiply it by time. And my time was always quite short, really.

[00:07:09] And then

[00:07:09] I find stuff funny very quickly after it was not funny.

[00:07:13] I find it funny pretty quick. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like a defect or something.

[00:07:16] Jameela: What set you

[00:07:17] off at the funeral?

[00:07:18] Joanne: Anything, like tension or nerves or like you’re trying to kind of remove yourself, I guess, from the awkwardness of someone being fucking dead in front of you, really. So me and my cousins, like at relative, like at aunts and uncles funerals, we’d always be laughing.

[00:07:31] And then, of course, there’s the free bar after.

[00:07:33] Jameela: Yeah. Yeah. The best bit .

[00:07:35] Joanne: Okay.

[00:07:35] That’s

[00:07:35] why we all go.

[00:07:37] Jameela: So when it comes to, uh, other than this self-defense mechanism Yeah. When it comes,

[00:07:43] Joanne: but it’s, sorry. It’s,

[00:07:43] it’s really not. It’s just there.

[00:07:45] Jameela: No, I know. Yeah. It’s delightful. I’m exactly the same. Yeah. I have, I’ve found every terrible, horrific thing but ever happened to me.

[00:07:53] Joanne: Hilarious.

[00:07:53] Jameela: Funny. Yeah. Yeah. Like in the moment, which is really dark and upsets the person who’s trying to upset you. Uh, it like doesn’t make anything better. It makes everything significantly worse.

[00:08:04] Joanne: But it makes it better for you because it, like, it, it, like, it kind of bursts the, like, it disempowers whatever is there.

[00:08:11] It’s happening.

[00:08:11] Jameela: Yeah, totally.

[00:08:12] Joanne: Unless you’re laughing like a maniac. Do you know what I mean? Like Patrick Bateman.

[00:08:16] Jameela: I think that’s good because I think that’s quite scary. Once being mugged, I, uh, started to, I pretended I was, I’d been invaded by the ghost of a little Victorian girl. And then I sang, I feel pretty from West Side Story and then they left.

[00:08:32] Joanne: Are you joking?

[00:08:33] Jameela: And I kept my wallet. Seems like she’s so insane. Yeah. Yeah. I just did a thousand yard stare. I was like, I feel pretty. That’s hilarious. I’m so pretty. I started walking towards him, at which point I’m now the attacker. Um, and I took his wallet. No, I didn’t. But yeah.

[00:08:51] Joanne: The chorus was Fiat Punto.

[00:08:53] You’re like, fuck you. Good luck.

[00:08:54] Jameela: Yeah. When did you find out that you were lols?

[00:08:59] Joanne: Um, so well, firstly, I would say. I, I have very funny friends and I’m not like, I’m not just saying that I really do have very funny friends. Uh, so I wasn’t particularly, I wasn’t like the funniest, you know, that kind of way. But like we, I was in a funny gang of girls and we laughed and we were always laughing and I had this problem in secondary school, which is whatever the school here is.

[00:09:24] Jameela: Secondary school.

[00:09:24] Joanne: Is it secondary?

[00:09:25] Jameela: Yeah. We’re not America.

[00:09:27] Joanne: The differences are wild. It’s like we’re speaking a different language. The second school before the, after the first school.

[00:09:38] Jameela: Thanks for clarifying.

[00:09:40] Joanne: Say like kind of 16 years of age kind of rules, whatever that is here. Yeah. And um, an education and uh.

[00:09:47] Jameela: Shut up Joanne, just get on with the point.

[00:09:51] Joanne: I get confused between GCSEs and A levels a lot, so that’s what I, I don’t know. And so I would laugh so much that I would um, wet myself. I’d very, I had no pelvic floor. Genuinely, when I was a teen, I really didn’t. Even to the point where, even as an adult, I do a podcast with a woman called Vogue, and she has three kids, and when she had her third kid, she asked me to go in to do this postpartum physiotherapy session with her.

[00:10:17] And, um, I went in and they test, like, your pelvic floor. Have you ever had this done?

[00:10:22] Jameela: I actually just recently had this done. Shut up. Just because, well, I was just, it was just getting everything checked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To make sure everything is fine. But yeah, terrifying.

[00:10:30] Joanne: Yeah, well, they, you have to kind of sit on this seat and you have to, like, clench and stuff.

[00:10:35] And Vogue thought it’d be funny if we both went together. But Vogue did the test and they were like, Ping, ping, ping. Your vagina’s perfect. Um, not a problem. Like, and she’s three kids and she’s like,

[00:10:45] Jameela: I also love the idea of a doctor going, ping, ping, ping,

[00:10:47] Joanne: he’s like, tick,

[00:10:50] tick, boom, you win. You’re through to the next round.

[00:10:54] And then I sat on the set and this is no word of a lie. She was like, there’s no, there’s nothing reading. So you’ve to clench, true story, you have to clench and it goes up like a heartbeat. And she thought I just didn’t understand what she was asking me to do. I swear to God. And I was like, I am. I am.

[00:11:12] She’s like, Oh my God. So that had been obviously my issue. I didn’t realize, but that was my issue in school. So I would laugh so much and I would wet myself. And it was like a whole thing. And I’d be having to borrow someone else’s jumper. And, But yeah, I had a really good time, but yeah, there was physical consequences.

[00:11:30] Jameela: Oh, I think that’s, I think that’s fine and lovely. I think it’s fine and lovely. It’s amazing that there are some women I know who feel ashamed of things like that. Like one of my friends had a baby and

[00:11:41] Joanne: that’s the right feeling

[00:11:44] Jameela: she and she pushed her baby out in two pumps. Like, two, like a friend of mine, one of my best friends, she had a baby, popped out, truly, like, the epitome of, like, it was insane, like, two hours from beginning, oh, from, from beginning to end, just two pumps, and like, the nurses were like, Oh my god, that was the fastest we’ve ever seen, and now she’s really ashamed and she keeps telling everyone how baggy her fanny is.

[00:12:09] And I really don’t think that’s what it is, I think that was just an eager baby, but

[00:12:13] Joanne: But it’s fitness, I think it’s fitness as well, it’s like I actually don’t fucking know, I have no idea.

[00:12:17] Jameela: There’s just

[00:12:18] nothing that we can’t find a way to feel ashamed of ourselves over, like even having your baby too fast.

[00:12:23] That’s the perfect example of it.

[00:12:25] Joanne: But I have a friend who every

[00:12:26] time she gets pissed, and she’s like, hey, she’s like, not a single stitch. Like, that’s like her thing. That’s like, that’s like her. She’s so proud of herself. She’s like, not a single stitch. Yeah, she’s like, yeah. I mean, even labor is quite competitive, it would seem.

[00:12:43] Jameela: I mean, any way that we can. I know. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:12:47] Joanne: yeah, yeah.

[00:12:48] Jameela: So I want to talk about mental health because it is a mental health podcast and, uh, and it would be really weird if we didn’t, especially for the last live one. Um, you are so open about your mental health. Can you tell me what some of the big struggles you have had with your mental health in your life?

[00:13:08] Joanne: Well.

[00:13:10] Jameela: And I’ll pick the best one, and then we’ll talk about it.

[00:13:14] Here it all is.

[00:13:16] Joanne: Um, I would identify as a little bit mental.

[00:13:19] Jameela: Okay. I mean, that’s, that’s, hands up if you’re also, yeah, there we go. It’s the full room.

[00:13:26] Joanne: Who the fuck isn’t at this stage?

[00:13:28] Jameela: Yeah. Also, who are these neurotypical people? Where are they?

[00:13:32] Are they in Sweden? Like, where are they? I’ve never met one. In what way would you say that you are a little bit mental?

[00:13:40] Joanne: Well, I was always a bit, um,

[00:13:41] I’m not going to say, I was always a bit, um, loose mentally. I don’t know how else to describe it.

[00:13:48] Jameela: Not just mentally it sounds like. Loose.

[00:13:49] Joanne: I should have been sexier, I should have been looser.

[00:13:52] It’s one of my biggest regrets. I never had that serious slaggy stage.

[00:13:57] Jameela: Same!

[00:13:57] Joanne: I never had it!

[00:13:59] Jameela: Same!

[00:13:59] Joanne: Did you not?

[00:14:00] Jameela: No.

[00:14:00] Joanne: Fucking raging.

[00:14:01] Jameela: Yeah. Well, like I say, I’ve kissed six people.

[00:14:05] I try and tell people at seven, but Manny Jacinto, who had to kiss me on the good place because he was contracted to, has asked me to stop saying that.

[00:14:12] He’s like, he’s, he’s asked me to stop saying I’m his seventh kiss. He was like, we were paid to do that. Like it doesn’t count.

[00:14:19] Joanne: He was your seventh kiss?

[00:14:20] Jameela: He was my seventh kiss. Yeah. So I’ve had six other than that.

[00:14:23] Joanne: That’s quite chaste.

[00:14:24] Jameela: I mean, it’s, no, but I was chasing. I was, I was chasing and no one chased me back.

[00:14:30] Joanne: I just can’t, I just find that hard to believe.

[00:14:33] Jameela: Well, I told you I met Harvey Weinstein and he didn’t try anything with me, so like, I just. I lack a vibe, you know, I, uh, I’m a serial erection killer. I’ll have my own Netflix series one day.

[00:14:48] Joanne: Maybe his plate was just full.

[00:14:50] Jameela: Anyway, okay, so

[00:14:51] you didn’t get your slaggy, you didn’t get your slaggy phaze.

[00:14:53] Joanne: I never had

[00:14:53] the slaggy stage, but I was always a bit loose mentally, I would say, and then it first presented itself, um, with a very, with a, well, what I thought was a very, um, kind of, Right on detox, which of course was obviously a very deranged eating disorder. Um, which no more than yourself, probably half the people in here.

[00:15:13] My take on it is that everyone has an eating disorder and you just work back from there. Because I think most people have some, some version of disordered eating. I really, really do. I do, like even the ones that claim to not, I’m like really, anyway, so that kind of really kicked in, that was an issue, but then that’s how I ended up getting into comedy, because I was like, I would say functioning eating disorders, whatever, in my 20s, and still was like, it’s fine, like it’s grand.

[00:15:39] Jameela: Well, also for context, like this was the 90s heroine chic-y time where

[00:15:46] Joanne: it not completely

[00:15:47] Jameela: Alright, sorry. I was a teenager in the 90s then, fine. Um, yeah, but it was a time where it was so hyper normalized that there was a line at my school where girls would take turns patiently to go and vomit after lunch.

[00:16:04] Yeah, it wasn’t something that was secretive. It was, there was a girl who I sat next to in class who would bring her weighing scales into school and weigh herself, like, while she was eating her lunch. Which is also just not science. And

[00:16:18] the teachers let that happen. Yeah. Weighing yourself as you eat is like, that’s kind of next, that’s next step.

[00:16:25] It’s really

[00:16:25] intense, but like, it was so accepted in my school that I remember when my English teacher took over for my maths teacher just for like, to sub. She, um, was teaching us about how to collect data for pie charts. And she decided it would be a great idea in an all girls school to weigh all of us in front of each other to, to figure out the average of like what the weight is in the class.

[00:16:46] I’m five foot 11 and was, you know, like curvy and was obviously the heaviest girl in the, in the class or the school or something. And that, that day the bullying started and that was the first moment I ever realized there was any link to, between my worth. and my weight. So it was so hyper normalized.

[00:17:05] Joanne: Yeah.

[00:17:06] Jameela: And the teachers totally, the teachers started it for fuck’s sake. That’s

[00:17:09] very strange.

[00:17:10] Very strange. So tell me. Okay.

[00:17:12] Joanne: So

[00:17:12] I was like, so similar to yourself, I’m tall, but I was told I’m not that tall now. I’m kind of normal tall. I’m five, nine, five, 10, but I was taller for my, like, I was one of the first of my friends to kind of shoot up.

[00:17:25] Yeah. So when you’re tall, As a girl, you feel big. And then you feel gross. And like, I know this sounds so pathetic. But I remember feeling really sad. When we’d play mummies and daddies in school, I was always the daddy.

[00:17:39] Jameela: Same.

[00:17:39] Joanne: It’s terrible.

[00:17:40] Jameela: I was always the groom, always the daddy.

[00:17:43] Joanne: We did, sorry, I was Rolf the Telegram Boy.

[00:17:46] We did The Sound of Music for our first show. play in school when we were 15 and I was cast as Rolf the telegram boy. But I wanted to be Liesl and they were like, you’re too big to be Liesl. I had to be Rolf. So I’m not saying that I got a need disorder because I was Rolf the telegram boy. That would be deranged.

[00:18:05] But I just mean there’s something about when you’re You’re a girl, you’re, you wanna be small and petite and cute and all that stuff and I wasn’t. I was like chunky and I was tall and I was big and then I think my mum had her own issues like she was a product of something else and so then I was, you know, I was kind of chubby and then she had me in with a dietician when I was way too young to be in with one and all these things, they kind of imprint themselves on

[00:18:28] you.

[00:18:28] Jameela: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My parents put me on a cuppa soup diet where that’s all I ate. At the age of 11. It is actually child abuse when I think of it.

[00:18:39] Joanne: But they wore their own shit, you see.

[00:18:40] Jameela: Oh totally, they thought they were helping. Yeah, it was really mad. I’ve actually always enjoyed being taller and bigger than other people.

[00:18:47] I wanted to have, you know, to emulate the look that would get me not bullied. But I loved being tall and I think it’s because I’ve always really identified with the T Rex. In Jurassic Park, and I’ve just always seen myself that way. Anyone else? No. No, that’s fine. That’s fine. I so, but I’ve loved towering over, I’ve loved the idea of a ripple in water.

[00:19:08] Yeah. When I walk onto the stage, but it’s presence. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:19:11] Joanne: But like, I, I only got okay with that when I was older. When I was younger, I didn’t want it at all. I remember my mother did. She was like, you’re gonna love it when you’re older. You’ll love being. the time, I didn’t, I just wanted to be.

[00:19:21] Jameela: You don’t want to stand out when you’re young.

[00:19:22] Joanne: Don’t want to physically, particularly don’t want to stand out.

[00:19:33] Jameela: Tell everyone what you named your eating disorder.

[00:19:36] Joanne: Oh

[00:19:37] yeah, um, well at the time, um, Britain’s Got Talent was huge. And um, Louis Walsh, uh, Louis Walsh was what I named it. But he, because at the time he It’s my favorite thing ever! Because So when you go into your therapist, they say to, to separate that voice from your own voice because they’re like, you don’t, you can’t trust that, you can’t trust that voice.

[00:20:04] So if it sounds like you, if it sounds like a 41 year old Irish woman, I’d be like, yeah, that’s makes sense. That’s just me talking to myself and I know me and I make sense. Put that voice into someone else.

[00:20:14] Jameela: And

[00:20:14] he is the most judgmental little bitch, isn’t he?

[00:20:18] Joanne: But he’s

[00:20:18] also quite encouraging, which was why, when at the time he was like, you’re the best, everyone’s jealous of you.

[00:20:24] You’re just really thin. Everyone wants to be you. Do you remember when he judged, like everyone wants to be you? No, in fairness, he did have one direction, I think it was that Simon Cowell. He’s someone really good. No, Jedward. We were actually very good as well, but he was really encouraging. So I wrote this show.

[00:20:40] This was like my first like one woman show.

[00:20:42] Jameela: Where are you going on the stage? Like,

[00:20:44] Joanne: I know. I’m so fidgety.

[00:20:46] I’m just going back to the dressing room. Yeah. I’ve shared enough. Um, so I put, so anyway, I made it Louis Walsh cause then it kind of disempowers it a little bit and it’s, he sounds a bit silly, you know, but also weirdly encouraging and a bit bitchy.

[00:21:03] Yeah.

[00:21:03] Jameela: I realized the voice in my head was probably Simon Cowell just bullying me. Yeah. Mine was not encouraging at all. Mine was just bullying me. Yeah.

[00:21:12] Yeah.

[00:21:12] Joanne: My mine was trying to make, mine was trying to make me make sense of what didn’t make sense. Yeah. Mine was like, no, this is totally. This is, of course, you should be forced down and people call you male, obviously, of course, everyone else is doing it.

[00:21:24] They’re just not telling you they’re doing it, but they are, they’re doing it. You just don’t see them because they’re hiding it from you. That was what my voice was saying.

[00:21:30] Jameela: Yeah, totally. And how long would you say this went on?

[00:21:33] Joanne: Oh, years. Like it was, I was always a bit funny about my body. I was always, like I say, just being big and coming up during the heroin chic stuff and everything.

[00:21:41] And I was like, there was no such thing as too thin. Like there was no such thing. Like there’s, I’m sure there’s younger women in here who didn’t say that. See or didn’t grow up with it. But like when you look back now, it’s shocking what we were being served on magazines Like they were like dying like they were so thin.

[00:21:59] Jameela: Yeah, you couldn’t imagine that With the ozempic crisis. No, you can’t imagine what that

[00:22:05] would feel or look like

[00:22:07] Joanne: the body positivity thing Which we’ve spoken about before Uh, you do see, whether it works for you or not, but you do see different bodies now. But, like, you just didn’t. There were just no other bodies.

[00:22:18] Jameela: No, and if there were, I remember, like, I remember some certain examples that really fucked me up that I think back on now, like, Gemma Arterton, size 8, uh, Bond girl, and she’s laughing and has a slight double chin while laughing and the headline is who ate all the spies, which is a good pun.

[00:22:36] Joanne: It’s great pun actually.

[00:22:37] Yeah.

[00:22:39] That’s great.

[00:22:39] Jameela: Fucking unbelievable. And then a picture of, um, and then a picture of Renee Zellweger. Size 10. Yeah, with too fat for love written across her body. Yeah, and just generally Bridget Jones diary. Yeah I know. Oh my

[00:22:54] god. Yeah, I know

[00:22:55] great film, but still

[00:22:57] Joanne: I loved that book though. I loved it so much.

[00:22:59] Jameela: Yeah, totally But it shows how insane the times are and can you believe? The it’s back.

[00:23:07] Joanne: I

[00:23:07] know but didn’t she didn’t Renee say?

[00:23:08] Jameela: No, I don’t mean Bridget Jones. I’m sorry. We’re not talking about that God bless you I’m bosom. I’m talking about I’m talking about finally talking Talking about the insanity and the gaslighting and the craze of like, I was sure like I came in hot or, you know, body neutrality and there was the body positivity moment and we had Lizzo and we had all these like wonderful activists in this moment where it was almost like, you know, you spoke about this, like there was a while where a lot of us felt guilty and like failures for not loving our bodies as they were, where you’re like, shit, I’m failing at this as well.

[00:23:50] I’m not only failing at the body type, but now I’m failing at body positivity. I’m not being positive enough. Fuck another thing that I’m getting wrong. Like that’s how far it went. And now it’s just cycled back around so fast. What do

[00:24:04] you mean?

[00:24:05] Joanne: As in the, so, cause my understanding is that the body positivity thing, that’s still where we are at.

[00:24:10] Are we not?

[00:24:11] Jameela: Where have you been? Am I crazy?

[00:24:15] Joanne: I’m writing a book

[00:24:16] that I don’t want to write. That’s where I am.

[00:24:18] Jameela: Listen, it’s not as bad yet as it was. But it’s the diabetes injections in Hollywood that have led to the image that we see in Hollywood being smaller. The image we see in the magazine being smaller again, it’s gone back to being uniform.

[00:24:31] Even the plus size girls are smaller than they’ve ever been before. And that means the samples have gotten smaller, and that means the clothes have become smaller. That’s, I think, part of why everything is now cropped in fashion. I think that’s just because they don’t want to use the material because they don’t have to.

[00:24:46] Like, there’s a huge, crazy shift. Who needs a cropped cardigan? Who? Who wants that in their fucking lives? Who wants the Miu Miu skirt or whatever the fuck that brand is that’s got the like one inch tampon skirt? You know what I mean? Like, no one asked for that.

[00:25:01] Joanne: I do remember years ago being in, like not that long ago, going into Topshop, rest in peace, and, uh, and picking up tops and it was like, I was like, no, I’m sorry, you know.

[00:25:11] Who is this? This is a child’s talk. Like, what the fuck is this? You’ve just reminded me, when I was a kid, I did some modeling. Now, when I say modeling, I mean our neighbor booked like a daytime TV show. I’d be like a child on this morning. Like, it was very, but I was a child model technically, so I’ll take it.

[00:25:31] But anyway, she was like, just your mom want to model these communion dresses. And I went in.

[00:25:39] So tiny I was 43 at the time. No, I’m joking. I know. I was modeling these communion dresses and I got a couple of jobs under my belt and I cannot explain how not modeling it was but like that’s the only term for it because you’d put clothes on and there was a camera on you. Anyway I put on a couple of pounds because I was like growing and I went in one day and there was all this drama and the reason I laugh because you’d swear it was British Vogue they’re like she doesn’t fit into the dress and they sellotaped the back across Because the button, like the zip wouldn’t go, and I had to walk, and I say catwalk, it was a carpet, like, it was like this.

[00:26:15] But I had to walk back, like I couldn’t turn around.

[00:26:19] Jameela: By the way, that was me every season of The Good Place.

[00:26:22] Joanne: I was like ten or something! But it was, and then it was never booked again.

[00:26:28] Jameela: That’s so fucking fucked. I know. Hilarious. Then you’ve entered into an industry where you are in front of the camera and you have photo shoots, and you’ve had to kind of make your way through a recovery, and we’re in the time that we’re in now.

[00:26:43] Joanne: Yeah.

[00:26:44] Jameela: How have you like, I know it’s always a work in progress for everyone.

[00:26:47] Joanne: Yeah,

[00:26:48] Jameela: but how may I ask how you’re doing? Yeah, with all of this.

[00:26:52] Joanne: So I’m fine. Now It’s like a glass cracked

[00:26:57] Jameela: Said every woman yeah ever

[00:26:59] Joanne: there’s like a cat No, I am fine, but I like like that you’re working progress also we know like so as a I didn’t realize that there would be so much filming.

[00:27:14] So, I’m, like, even doing radio now, there’s a lot of film, I’ve never been so faced with myself as I have been since I got into this job. And, um, I do a podcast with The Next Model and we film clips every week and we put them online. And most of me and Vogue’s fights are about that I’m like, you can’t put that up.

[00:27:33] I look like I’ve got gout. Uh, I don’t want that on the internet. She’s like, we have to post clips. I’m like, I know. Like, but you get, I am very, I am still very Self conscious which can come across as vanity, but it’s not actually it’s insecurity. Do you know what I mean? It’s like it’s I don’t I I don’t like seeing this much of myself.

[00:27:50] We’re not supposed to see this much of ourselves physically, we’re not supposed to, you just become so too self conscious, you know.

[00:27:58] Jameela: And so during your recovery, have you found a way to snap yourself out of that?

[00:28:04] Joanne: I definitely, so when I was, okay, so when I was unwell and I, I, I spiraled and I was in control, I was never in control, obviously, but in my mind I was in control, um, because no one knew.

[00:28:15] And then it became very clear that there was something off because it was just clear that I was. Unwell. Like you get to a point physically where I remember a therapist saying, she was like, you’re trying to let people tell, you’re trying to tell people you’re unwell. And I was like, as if like, Scarlet, I don’t want anyone to know.

[00:28:30] And she’s like, but they know now look at you. Like they know. Right? So then of course I denied it for ages and then eventually I cracked. I wasn’t able to stay and my mum, mum, my mum wouldn’t let me back into the house. I was sleeping in my office at the time. I was a publicist, sleeping in the office because like, I had nowhere to go.

[00:28:47] And then eventually I cracked and I had my moment, my rock bottom moment. I went down to my mum’s and broke in and ate all the food. It was really dark. Anyway, I know it’s fucking terrible. Anyway, whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Lol. And then, then I was like, I’m bulimic guys. So my mum let me move home then when I admitted I was bulimic she let me move home but I was still bulimic so it’s not she thought that I would just stop being bulimic but I didn’t know how to stop that was all I knew.

[00:29:15] I’ve been doing it for years. How did you stop? Heavily medicated and loads of therapy and about five years and even still like you’re like if I sometimes like I posted a video the other day and someone was like oh you look Small. And I was like, fuck, do I look small? Am I small? First year I thought recovery just meant getting fat.

[00:29:33] I genuinely saw no joy in life if I wasn’t this, like this. So I, I saw, like, I went into treatment as an outpatient. So I was, I was never like in overnight. I’d go in three days a week. Kind of like a course and a part time course. a part time course in getting fat as far as I was concerned. But it was during that time, so it was all, it was, it’s so slow.

[00:29:59] You know yourself, you don’t click out of it. You have to rewire your whole relationship with food. I couldn’t feel full. I, like, for years, I couldn’t feel full. If you felt full, I would just fucking panic. Like, it took ages. It took so, so long. And I wish I’d started it sooner. But there was nothing I could do.

[00:30:17] I kind of had to spiral out.

[00:30:20] Jameela: Well, this is why I’m so annoying. I mean, it’s not the only reason I’m so annoying. Obviously, there’s a lot of things that have made me this irritating, but, um, it’s because this is what it is, right? It just drags you down in this kind of undercurrent that no one else can see and just keeps dragging you and dragging you and dragging you and everything I do is to stop.

[00:30:40] that from happening to someone because it is so fucking hard to get off that journey and you judge yourself for it. I don’t know if anyone else here feels that way, but you judge yourself for feeling these things because you know, intellectually that this is wrong. You know, intellectually, this has been something that’s specifically been designed, especially towards women to distract them and disempower them and weaken them so that they don’t have the energy to fight for the things that they actually need to have the happiness that they deserve to have it.

[00:31:07] orgasms that they want. They’re too tired. I was so tired. I couldn’t have any sex. My brother’s here. I’m so sorry. Just remembered. Just remembered. I have never had sex. I am a virgin. Um, goodnight everyone. Goodbye. Um, but you know, it’s just, it’s by, it’s fucking by design and yet it still can be so insidious.

[00:31:29] Ways that I have found personally, uh, to fight my way out of my eating disorder has just been to literally imagine the boardroom of men who are, and I know it’s not all men, I know it’s not all men. I’m talking about like 12 men, 12 specific men who own diet and detox and drug companies. Um, and I imagine them enjoying the fact that I’m self conscious.

[00:31:52] No, wanting, seeking out my most hateful thoughts about myself and knowing that they’re going to make money from it. I imagine this boardroom. in my head anytime I have a bad thought and then the spite takes over and then the bad feeling goes away and I cannot recommend that highly enough is remembering the system because it is a it’s a fucking system and knowing that someone’s making fucking money every time you have that thought it’s like ka ching ka ching Ka ching, ka ching, all of the ways in which we’ve been told to change our bodies and do all these different things and inject ourself with something and then that’s going to make something else fall and then you’re going to have to inject that and then you’re going to have to cut that and then you’re going to have to fucking do whatever.

[00:32:39] It’s all by design and they’re making so much money.

[00:32:52] I do want you to maintain these, these rebellious thoughts. Remember the system, think about the system or never just stay in the moment. Think about the, take it all the way to the end of the rainbow of what it is that, what is this journey you’re on? What part of this system are you in? Your self hatred funds their fucking yachts and their lifestyles.

[00:33:15] And they’re laughing at us. They’re laughing at us, imagining, they, they, like, they’re there enjoying their meals, enjoying their time on their yachts, enjoying their wonderful lives, probably keeping their kids off of social media and not giving their children and their wives and their daughters the diet and detox products that they’re selling to the rest of us.

[00:33:33] Like, just, I cannot tell you the power of spite. It is honestly the thing that drives me in this world and it has saved my life making sure, thank you. But making sure that my story is written by me, and not written by a bunch of cunts at a table. And I think that that’s just something that’s very important.

[00:33:57] Joanne: Yeah, I wish I had had that thought.

[00:34:00] That wasn’t really my, I just felt very unimportant. That was my thing. And I thought being thin would make me more important. That was really what my thing was.

[00:34:08] Jameela: Do you think that’s linked at all to your childhood having gone through,

[00:34:12] you

[00:34:13] know, like you, you were, you were adopted and you knew you were adopted the whole time?

[00:34:18] Joanne: The whole time. So I was adopted, like, okay, so I would describe it as this, as an adopted person, I don’t, I don’t know what it’s like to not be adopted. Okay, so I don’t know. what that experience is like. I only know how I feel. So, yes, there is studies that suggest that adoption is linked to, like, kind of identity issues, I would say.

[00:34:39] Because, I don’t know if anyone here has adopted, but um, you’re kind of just spat into a different family who don’t share any of your DNA, or, and you don’t know anything about where you, you don’t know, now I think it’s kind of different, now I think.

[00:34:51] Jameela: You also said once on a show

[00:34:53] that, You have to, there’s more checks to adopt a dog than to adopt a child.

[00:34:58] Joanne: That’s true, yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:59] In Ireland, bearing in mind, I’m not shitting on Ireland, but in Ireland, adoption was very popular in the 80s. There was a lot of adoption, um, we weren’t into kids out of wedlock, blah, blah, blah. And I was adopted out of Roscommon, which is probably, I don’t know if anyone’s in from Roscommon.

[00:35:14] Anyone from Roscommon? Oh good. Donegal. That’s not Roscommon, we’re grand. Don’t tell them I said this! Roscommon, we know. It’s a pretty fragile county. It’s a frigid county. They were the only one that voted against the same sex marriage referendum in Ireland. They’re a frigid county. And I was born in Roscommon, out of wedlock, in 1983.

[00:35:35] Like, there was no, it wasn’t going any other way than adoption, right? So I was, I always say up cycled to Dublin. So I was sent off to Dublin. And it’s, and it’s grand and adoption is quite, it’s not that unusual in Ireland for my generation. That’s my experience. That’s all I know. But yeah, it is fucking weird because you arrive, you are like four months old, you arrive with a pamphlet on like your sleeping habits and it’s got like this clip art, 80s bird on the front.

[00:36:04] And um, that’s all you have. And my parents don’t know anything about my birth parents. And they don’t know anything about talent or skills or anything. And I was adopted into quite a conservative family I would say. And I definitely had a little show pony in me from a young age. I just did. It was there. And I was always trying to figure out what I’d inherited and what I had learned, like what my learned behaviors were and what my inherited behaviors were.

[00:36:29] But I knew I could, I loved performing and my family, my parents would have been quite shy. My brother’s quite shy. He’s an accountant now. We’re like, Yeah, like, you know, and my mum was a nurse, and my dad was a draftsman, and it was all just very normal. And, um, so there was definitely a part of me that I could, I was confused by.

[00:36:50] If I’d been in a more arty house, I probably mightn’t have struggled with that side of myself so much. But my mum, um, would have been, and she’d kill me if she’s not in, is she? Thank God.

[00:36:59] Jameela: No, it’s just my brother when I was talking about orgasms.

[00:37:03] Joanne: Um, I suppose the arts and performance and stuff for her would have been, you know, that’s just not a thing.

[00:37:10] That’s like, it’s just, it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing. That it’s showing off. That’s what she would have thought it was. Um, so I think between the jigs and the rails and the adoption and you know yourself, things kind of led to an eating disorder or led to, I would say in a more general sense, And I, and an identity crisis, I would say, and that then fed into different things and made me quite unsure of myself and sad at times and made me do some stupid shit.

[00:37:36] So then when I was unwell, I had to leave my job as a publicist and then I was back in my mum’s and then I had to kind of, everything had to shift. Um, so it kind of worked out in the end and it’s that thing of like it all works out really because I had to leave my job and then that’s how I ended up getting into comedy because I started dating this comic.

[00:37:57] I mean, why the fuck I even had to, it’s so crazy. Even at my lowest point in my life, I was like, y’all go on a date. Insane. Anyway, because of that, then I had to kind of reassess. And then I started dating this comic and I was, and he was like, I think you should do standup comedy. And I was like, Okay, because I had nothing else to lose.

[00:38:16] I had nothing to lose, really. I had nothing to do. And that’s how I got into it. So if I hadn’t kind of had that little break, “Menty B”, um, I wouldn’t have gotten into comedy. And then comedy gave me a reason to recover. Suddenly I was like, I’ve got value outside of being a fucking, being three stone. Do you know what I mean?

[00:38:31] It’s not about that anymore. I’m valuable doing something else. Like I have, status in something else, not just being super thin, which was my problem. I thought that being thin was the only thing I had to offer.

[00:38:44] Jameela: Well, that’s what we’re fucking taught. That’s what we’re taught is as quiet and as small and as appropriate as you are, is the thing that you are supposed to be.

[00:38:54] And I think that that’s so incredibly sad. And you hit on it with the fact that it’s a lack of, you other things that define your identity that make you so vulnerable to this demon that is the diet industry or the media industry or social media is that they confuse you with so many different things that you’re supposed to fucking be and do and look like and you’re supposed to have the big bum but with somehow the thin thighs which doesn’t make any fucking sense that’s not possible or the big tits but with thin arms or the this that and the other thin face but it’s supposed to look young Which is the opposite of how that works, by the way.

[00:39:29] I know. The more gaunt you are, the older you look. Um, and so we set all of these ridiculous ideals so that we never find out who we are. We never, so that we never get a chance to work out that actually I’m amazing at this, or I’m an incredible friend, or I’m an incredible contributor to society. It’s by design.

[00:39:46] So that you never develop the self esteem that will make you realize, Oh, I don’t need all this shit. I don’t need to spend 18 of my waking hours thinking about this stuff. Cause then you never get to find out who you fucking are. And again, that’s the spite, the spite and the rebellion. Like purely just from a nasty place.

[00:40:07] You should just find what it is that makes you special. Find what makes you important to other people, what makes you important to yourself. It has been the foundation of my recovery. And I would say that I am recovered now. I’m always on the cusp. We’re always, always on the cusp.

[00:40:24] Joanne: Oh yeah, there’s always a relapse on the horizon somewhere.

[00:40:26] Jameela: I’m one influence.

[00:40:27] Joanne: Christmas day or whatever.

[00:40:29] Jameela: I’m one Instagram ad away from like falling to pieces, but I am in full recovery and it has come purely from a place of rebellion, of the fact that I refuse. This isn’t just, this isn’t, it’s not about self love. It’s about hatred of them.

[00:40:46] Yeah. And

[00:40:47] that is, far more fueling for me.

[00:40:50] I don’t know about you. It’s so fueling. Revenge. really keeps me going. It really does. I don’t use serums or retinoids. This is all revenge. It really like keeps my pores tight. Um, and I, and, and I think that that’s, it’s, it’s, it makes perfect sense that once you start to learn that there are things that boost yourself the same outside of that, you start to realize, and may we all find the things and cling onto them that make us valuable.

[00:41:19] Joanne: Mine as well was about regulating my. Mine was about, a lot about, like, kind of, I don’t know how to regulate my feelings, apparently. Um, so it was like anxiety, like I’d feel, like, like binge purging, it was like a break from being stressed.

[00:41:36] Jameela: Completely.

[00:41:37] It’s avoidance. It’s a fee. It’s it’s also it in a world that is consistently making you feel so out of control in every way.

[00:41:45] So afraid for your safety or so afraid for your life or this that and the other, or you can’t make your friends happy. You can’t make your family happy. You can’t do this. It’s a cost of living crisis. It’s a, it’s a really quick way to feel like I have some semblance of control. I have a control of the way to be accepted.

[00:42:00] And, and it’s. It’s just an endless prison. It’s an endless prison unless you spite your way out of it until you really find the thing that makes you valuable to you.

[00:42:13] Joanne: I wonder, like, I’m so lucky. I don’t know how I would have got out of it. Like, getting a career as a stand up is quite an extreme, um, recovery program.

[00:42:26] Do you know, like, if I, if that hadn’t happened, I don’t know. I really don’t know. Like, I really went big on the value. For myself, I was like, put me on a stage, that’ll fucking do it. But if that hadn’t happened, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I hope I would have figured it out eventually. But it is very, very hard because it’s, it’s a way of thinking.

[00:42:45] You’re kind of, you’ve kind of brainwashed yourself.

[00:42:47] Jameela: Totally.

[00:42:49] I think as someone who’s now become so sick because of everything that I did to myself in order to be thin, to be accepted. And I’ve spent literally sometimes seven or eight months in bed. Whenever I start just writing words on Instagram, I’m like, Oh, know that that is a secret code for I’m in bed and I can’t see and I’m really fucked.

[00:43:12] It’s all because of what I did during this eating disorder and all I do is long to have those years back and long to have found my value sooner. And I beg of you, because I’m looking at some very, very young faces in this room, I beg of you, whatever age you are, grab any opportunity to salvage your health and, and do it for your old lady self and your old man self and your old themself.

[00:43:38] I really, really want you to just plan for old age. We are never told ever, ever told to think about anything other than right now and getting thin or looking young or being impressive or getting an A star or getting the girl boss job or winning this award right now. It’s like, no one ever by design tells you, we do tell men much more so than women to plan for later.

[00:44:02] What is your third act going to look like? Who are you going to be one day? What’s your legacy going to be? Women are never encouraged to figure out our legacy. We’re kind of conditioned to believe that my legacy will be, she was very thin.

[00:44:16] No one

[00:44:17] wants that as a fucking legacy. Yeah.

[00:44:20] Joanne: Tiny coffin.

[00:44:20] Jameela: Totally.

[00:44:23] Fair play to her. I desperately want you to think, really think about your 50 year old, 60 year old, and 70 year old self. Like, build that coffin as big as it has to be and fill it with dreams and memories and life experiences. I urge you, because it is, it is a fucking conspiracy against all, all of you.

[00:44:46] Just, just you in this room, no one else. Um, this is a intervention. Um, but it is something that I feel very passionately about.

[00:44:54] Joanne: You know

[00:44:54] this book I read recently, I say read. It was an audio book. No shame in the audio game. Yeah. I love listening. I love it. Maria Bamford’s book is, has anyone read it? I’ll join your cult.

[00:45:07] It’s fucking hilarious. And she is, she also struggled with eating. I mean, I mean, Jesus, like her struggles with mental health are like wild. Like how she’s still with us is a fucking miracle to be honest. But the book is, Fantastic. But she talks about, she, she, so she’s joined over Readers Anonymous. She’s joined Gambling Anonymous Debt.

[00:45:28] Debt, like she’s joined every single something anonymous group. And each chapter is about a different one, but her ones about, um, eating disorders and the over reading anonymous. I’m gonna say it’s some of the darkest, funniest shit. I’ve ever read with my ears and I would encourage you to do so. It is so funny.

[00:45:45] She talks about her whole family, like they do jazzercise for like five hours a day and all. Whatever. I thought it was hilarious.

[00:45:51] Jameela: I did a, I did a pussycat dolls workout video for a while and I think that was my real low point. I think that’s when I knew I needed to go to therapy, was when I found myself.

[00:46:02] Why the

[00:46:03] fuck would I even do this? It was a

[00:46:04] really weird moment. I found, because Nicole Scherzinger was just everything, you know, back then. And I, uh, I found myself alone in a room that I hadn’t seen anyone in several months. I’d just been hiding in my room, hadn’t left my room. My flatmate Dave would just leave like food and water outside, like sort of Miss Havisham, um, vibes.

[00:46:23] And I was just in my In my pajamas, but with a feather boa.

[00:46:29] Joanne: Nice!

[00:46:29] Jameela: And heels.

[00:46:30] Joanne: That’s the spirit.

[00:46:31] Jameela: Uh, doing, cause you have to, cause that’s the props for the dance routines. Doing, uh, Pussycat Dolls dance video. Celebrities, they’re just like us. Um, uh, dance video on my own. And I looked across the, the way, across the street.

[00:46:45] And it’s London, so all the flats, all the windows are looking into each others. And I realized that the, the guy. He, who was married to Rachel Stevens from, um, yeah, yeah, what’s his face? From Hollyoaks. Jeremy, from Hollyoaks, was watching me.

[00:47:03] No.

[00:47:04] And I was like, this is my rock bottom. I later shit myself on the street in the middle of the day, which turned out to be my actual rock bottom.

[00:47:13] That was bad.

[00:47:16] Joanne: Why did you do that?

[00:47:17] Jameela: What do you mean, why did I do it? It wasn’t a fucking choice.

[00:47:22] Joanne: What made you decide to do that?

[00:47:26] Jameela: And this is the victim shaming I’ve been speaking about on Instagram. I was shit shamed. I just shit myself in the middle of the road in Santa Monica, which is in Los Angeles and it’s densely packed.

[00:47:39] Um, and I had to wait until the sun went down. Until no one was around and then I abandoned all of my clothes. There was also a rogue lettuce on the road that I tried to pull towards me and peel bits off and then clean, try to clean myself. Which, um, lettuce has no absorbent qualities. Um, and made it significantly worse.

[00:48:03] And then I, um, took all of my clothes off apart from my bra. And then I had my room key and my, um, Credit card and I put them in between my teeth and I ran home seven Santa Monica blocks, which is not like streets in London That’s about 400 miles With my pussy out covered in my own Shit, I had no plan to tell this story ever Never mind today But now it’s happened and I can’t take it.

[00:48:40] I can’t roll it back and someone over there’s videoing it. And that’s sad. But yeah, um, that was

[00:48:49] Joanne: what’s the lesson? What’s the lesson? What’s the lesson here?

[00:48:54] Jameela: Um, don’t use lettuce to try to clean up. We’re trying to heal. Yeah, but can you believe I’m not on the sex offenders register? I had to run through a lit up five star, five star, um, no, a lit up lobby of a nice hotel and then I had to run up like 30 flights of stairs because obviously I wasn’t going to wait for the lift.

[00:49:15] Joanne: Poor thing. That’s terrible.

[00:49:18] Jameela: And so all of the times I regret having gone viral, I believe in God and thank you for not. Putting that on the internet.

[00:49:30] Joanne: Remember the one? I think about her often. Did you see your one who she zoomed into a funeral? Did anyone see this? She rang in to pay her respects via zoom and they had this say this was like where the coffin was the screens exactly like where your screen is there and she the camera how why no one knows she left the camera on.

[00:49:56] And she had it pointed at the bathroom where she was in, visibly, she had her leg up, shaving herself, like, did you not see it? Did no one see it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can Google it, like, I’m not making this up.

[00:50:09] Jameela: That has to be deliberate.

[00:50:11] Joanne: Well, she went viral, obviously. Because they’re all just looking at her, like, there.

[00:50:17] And your man’s like, the coffin’s there, and the priest is doing his bits and bobs.

[00:50:20] Jameela: Did she think her camera was off? Is that what it was?

[00:50:21] Joanne: She thought her camera was off. What I want to know is, and she went to the afters, she turned up to the afters.

[00:50:27] Jameela: Wait, did she not know?

[00:50:29] Joanne: She didn’t know. Apparently, look, I’m only reading this on the Daily Mail.

[00:50:33] Okay? I can only go on the facts I have. She didn’t know, she turned up to the afters, and everyone was like, you were shaving your “gee” on a fucking screen in the funeral. On the main stage, and she was like, what? And at that stage it was too late, she’d gone viral. But it was so funny because the other boxes were just old people kind of looking on, paying their respects.

[00:50:53] And she’s like that. Now, I don’t know who she was getting ready for, who she fancied at the afters, I know nothing. But like when you talk about that, can you actually imagine that poor woman, just assuming it wasn’t done on purpose. Can you imagine?

[00:51:10] Jameela: No, I can’t. No, it’s like that man who got caught wanking on a zoom who worked at like, like the Atlantic or something like a huge publication.

[00:51:19] Anyway, this has gone to a weirder place than anyone had anticipated. We’re going to wrap it up because I would love to have some questions from the audience. But before we do, given you’ve had a mad life, had a mad life, been through a lot, done a lot of therapy, done a lot of self reflection, done a lot of inward thinking,

[00:51:38] Joanne: done some journaling.

[00:51:40] That was a real low point.

[00:51:40] Jameela: Done a lot of

[00:51:41] journaling.

[00:51:43] Joanne: That’s when you know shit’s going down.

[00:51:44] Jameela: Do you reread your journals?

[00:51:46] Joanne: No! Oh my god, no. And even when I did journal, like it’s all about men. It’s always about men or weight. Like when I, When I get to the journaling phase, when you know, like you’re practically like walking into a straitjacket, because I would never, I don’t keep a diary.

[00:52:02] My diaries are like, rang Sarah today. Like they’re, I don’t, I don’t, because I write for a living. I’m like, I’m not going to waste my time writing about my own shit life when I have to write about other shit. Do you know what I mean? So when I journal, it was about men or weight and that’s really embarrassing.

[00:52:19] That’s embarrassing. When I really start keeping a diary, it’s always. Because I’m in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like me very much. And the only way I can figure, like, think it through for myself is to write about it. And that’s, that’s actually my most shameful confession. I’ve no interest in my own life, development, career, nothing.

[00:52:43] I could have done, I remember when I was doing Prosecco, this tour that I did. And like I was doing, I didn’t get it like five London Apollos. And my diary was like, Alan didn’t ring me back today. Who gives a shit? Do you know what I mean? Who gives a shit? I did. That was a bigger concern to me.

[00:52:59] Jameela: I reread one of my journals from when I was like 14.

[00:53:02] And it’s written honestly in like Shakespearean language. Oh great. I, I now completely understand why I had no friends. I had every sign of being a school shooter. Like I, I just every time, never, ever. Never, ever reread mine or your journals. Just leave it, leave it there. You don’t need to go back. You think it’ll be really cute.

[00:53:24] It’s not cute. It’s just full of cringe. Never read it back. Just burn to

[00:53:28] write their books and stuff. Bastards.

[00:53:30] Yeah,

[00:53:31] I know.

[00:53:31] Joanne: Some people write really interesting ones.

[00:53:34] Jameela: But what I was going to say, just to kind of bring this to an elegant close, is from all that you’ve seen and all that you’ve learned, do you have any words of sage wisdom?

[00:53:45] You might not. You might not, but do you have anything you want? People to know that you’ve learned from your life, something that you hope people give themselves a fucking break about, or something that you hope people take with them.

[00:53:58] Joanne: I wish there was some cute wise wrap up, like,

[00:54:03] I still

[00:54:03] don’t,

[00:54:03] like

[00:54:04] I’m not, I

[00:54:04] really.

[00:54:05] Jameela: We just can’t leave it on that I shat myself and tried to clean myself with the lettuce. I tried to finish with the shaving. I’m really trying to throw it

[00:54:11] to you.

[00:54:11] Joanne: I tried the crescendo. What I, what I wish I had, what I wish I’d known when I was younger, I don’t know why I was so obsessed with, that “thin” was the only thing to offer.

[00:54:23] I don’t know why, and it ate into so much. Like you were saying, I could have been doing interesting shit. I could have been fucking reading. Do you know what I mean? And I wouldn’t go ages. It was such a waste of time. That’s what I would say. It was such a fucking waste of time. Now it did end up with whoever the journey got me into stand up, but it was such a waste of time.

[00:54:43] And if I had a daughter now, I’d love a little girl. I’d love a

[00:54:45] kid. I wouldn’t mind a boy. I’d get through it. I’d do it. But I’d love a little girl. I suppose it’s like an act of narcissism. I’d love a little me. Dressed exactly like this. And I’d like, grew, I think, I wish I’d been encouraged more, and that’s not to put blame on anyone else, but, I think I’d love to build her up into an absolute flaming megalomaniac.

[00:55:10] With, I’d give her so much confidence. That’s what I’d like to do.

[00:55:14] Jameela: Yeah.

[00:55:14] Joanne: I’d love to have a little me and just feel her and tell her she can do anything, which probably will turn her into a fucking serial killer or something, but that’s what I’d like to do. If I could do anything. Yes. I want a child. Thank you for asking.

[00:55:24] Yeah. I’d like to have a baby.

[00:55:31] Jameela: And until that day, you can pour all of that love and wisdom into your fucking self.

[00:55:37] Joanne: It’s not as fun.

[00:55:38] Jameela: We’ve got like 15 or 20 minutes. I would love to have some questions asked. There’s someone standing up. Hello.

[00:55:46] Audience 1: It’s hyper normalized for um, body shaming and people talking about their bodies in a negative way and other people’s bodies in a negative way.

[00:55:55] What is your response, to other people when they’re talking about other women’s bodies or they’re talking about their own bodies. ’cause sometimes I feel like I’m kind of fighting a losing battle and I found myself almost agreeing with what they’re saying. I wondered if you guys had a better response.

[00:56:11] Jameela: My, so I’m trying to, um, work on nonviolent communication after having called Lawrence Fox, a freshly wanked cock. So I realised I needed to take a shift. But no, not doing it. I’m good now. Um, what I choose to say in order to immediately diffuse the moment is Please don’t talk about my body or please don’t talk about other people’s bodies because when you do that You make me think about mine And that’s really bad for my brain and it might be bad for other people’s brains and you don’t realize that You may mean no harm by what you’re doing.

[00:56:51] But when you start doing that you only poison me And so please don’t do that. And it will make them not just stop in the moment, but also they will never be able to unhear that. The next time they do it, they’re gonna, they’re naturally going to start thinking about it. And it is something that we all have to work on.

[00:57:10] We all can’t help but sort of like, you know, try and make a, you know, comment. And or we think we’re being helpful or we don’t mean to or we just blur out an observation. But it is something that I always on Instagram, I’m just like, please don’t fucking tell me about my size. I’m trying my best to not think about it.

[00:57:24] I’m trying to think about. anything other than my size because it is the least interesting thing about me and it is the least interesting thing about anyone and so that is my response is just with empathy to say you are harming me even if you’re not directing it at me i don’t want to think about this because it’s nonsense okay

[00:57:46] Audience 2: so i’m super blessed i have amazing men in my life and my dad, my brother, Megan’s boyfriend, Paddy, who’s definitely stood up for her in the Devonshire on a night, and I really want to know how men have more power.

[00:58:02] How do we? How do we get men on side? How do we educate men to help us better?

[00:58:10] Jameela: First thing is it’s not going to happen from the current wave of men are trash. Men are all inherently evil and awful and violent. That’s not going to work. It’s also not true. It’s about opening up a conversation. And I think even though this means we have to do extra labor and it pisses people off when I say this is understanding that men are also brutalized by society just in very different ways to us.

[00:58:31] They end up with more power than us, which is so unfair, but ultimately they go through terrible things and they have no safe space to talk about it. Whenever I talk about ways in which men hurt women, men come into my page and shout me down and just like, not all men or we also get hurt by men and we have to deal with it.

[00:58:48] So why should you not have to deal with it? Why, you know, why are you complaining when it’s something we also face? At higher rates even and what I realized is that the reason they only talk about the violence that they receive from other men is when women talk about the violence that we receive from men and that’s because they have no other safe space to fucking talk about it.

[00:59:10] They don’t feel they feel like it’s not masculine to say I feel afraid when I’m walking home at night or I’m afraid or I was beaten the shit out of or bullied at school. I have experienced so many violence from men. We have no space for men. And they don’t seem to have the social, uh, set up to be able to talk about it.

[00:59:28] And so if we have that gift innately, maybe because of the way that our brains work, or maybe because the way that we’re socialized, I believe it is opening up the conversation and saying to men, and I did that on Instagram. I was like, men, tell me who hurt you. Tell me, not like show me on the doll, but like, tell me this is a safe space.

[00:59:46] for you to tell me you hurt you and so many men wrote me the most extraordinary letters of the most heinous shit that happened to them at the hands of other men when women hurt men as well women hurt children women hurt other women i know this i’m aware of this but right now the biggest epidemic is men’s violence and men’s overpowering of women and i genuinely believe it is by talking to each other and unraveling each other’s trauma that we can that we are going to be able to come together.

[01:00:09] We are so much more similar than we are different. And these fucking manosphere podcasts and like neo feminism podcasts that hate men that speak the misandry, not necessarily neo feminism, but misandrist podcasts are all they’re doing is destroying our society and pushing us further and further apart.

[01:00:27] which only leads to more emotional and physical violence. So my opinion is talking to each other, getting into it and recognizing that we are not the only ones who have suffered. They’ve suffered, but they have no way or place to talk about it. So let’s make that place together so that we can understand them and they can fucking finally start to understand us.

[01:00:45] Joanne: Great answer.

[01:00:48] Jameela: That’s my answer. Do you have anything you wish to add? Oh, Becks has got a question. This is my former flatmate. Hiya. She can confirm I am insane.

[01:01:01] Audience 3: Hiya. As a good friend of Jameela, I can be secure enough to say I came here for Joanne.

[01:01:09] Yeah, so my question is it’s for Joanne. Right. Um, you, uh, have a podcast plug for Joanne and you also have merch and that merch includes like your bags, right? That say anxious, preoccupied. Yes. Which is your attachment style. No, I believe

[01:01:25] Joanne: it was my ex. It was my ex boyfriend’s attachment style. Oh God, I’m such a bad fan.

[01:01:29] I’m fearful avoidance. Karma. Oh,

[01:01:31] Audience 3: oh, hang on. Fearful avoidance. Yeah.

[01:01:34] Joanne: He was anxious, preoccupied. Yeah.

[01:01:36] Audience 3: Yes. I know. Can you, uh, tell us more about that? Tell us about those styles.

[01:01:40] Joanne: So I didn’t realize how kind of helpful it would be to know your attachment style. There’s, so there’s fearful, avoidant, secure, which I don’t know who, I’ve never, I don’t know anyone who identifies as secure.

[01:01:55] There’s anxious, preoccupied, and maybe fearful, preoccupied, or something like this. And it’s so helpful. I don’t know if anyone’s ever, do you know your attachment style?

[01:02:03] Jameela: No, no.

[01:02:05] Joanne: And it’s, but it also varies in certain. So I went out with the comic who got me into stand up. It was like, I mean, toxic. I mean like Chernobyl toxic.

[01:02:14] Right. So in that relationship I was very anxious, preoccupied because I was in a constant state of fear that he was going to leave because he was always trying to leave. Then the next relationship I was fearful of avoiding because. Your mom was always trying to fucking dig his heels into me. So I think your attachment style switches in different relationships.

[01:02:32] But we’re so, it’s like what you were saying about the lads and men and women thing. We’re so similar. There’s only so many ways to be in love or attach. So if you find out which one you are, it’s so helpful. It’s honestly, I could not recommend it. Enough. Do your little test online, find out what you are, and it explains why you behave in certain, in certain ways in relationships, and it can be really helpful, and if your partner does it as well, it’s like mwah, it’s like chef’s kiss.

[01:03:01] Suddenly you’re like healing and growing, and I haven’t had that.

[01:03:04] Jameela: But what if you both, what if you both do it and then after 10 years of being together it turns out you’re really incompatible?

[01:03:10] Joanne: Well, but, but the truth is

[01:03:11] Jameela: I can’t

[01:03:12] go back on the market, okay?

[01:03:14] Joanne: I just found it really, really helpful. And then I thought it was a fun name to call the merch line.

[01:03:21] So I called it Anxious Preoccupied and then he asked for a royalty. And then we broke up.

[01:03:26] Jameela: My attachment style, Bex, is finding a new best friend. Thank you very much. Any other questions? We have someone over here in purple. Hello.

[01:03:36] Audience 4: Hello, babes. Hiya. I’m a huge fan of both of you. Thanks. I’m here with my friend, Dina.

[01:03:41] She had a question about what the future of I Weigh It’s going to be like, and I had a question that’s a bit more self serving because I’ve recently started a podcast about a month ago, and I want to know what keeps you both going with your very successful podcasts.

[01:03:54] Jameela: My podcast that I’m ending soon.

[01:03:56] Audience 4: Yes.

[01:03:56] Yeah. But it was still very successful. It went beyond just someone famous.

[01:04:00] Jameela: And there will be other

[01:04:01] podcasts. Yeah. This is, this is, uh, eventually coming to its own natural close. Um, uh, okay. Uh, the first question was. What’s the future of I Weigh? Yes. The future of I Weigh is very exciting and it’s happening very soon.

[01:04:14] Um, I have been working on a way to get people moving, but it’s not about weight loss. It’s not about calories in, calories out. It is democratizing exercise. Exercise has become interlinked. It is fucking. It’s literally penetrating the diet industry. They are shagging, they’re in an exclusive relationship now, and they have not only excluded all of us, but they’ve priced everyone out of being able to exercise.

[01:04:36] They’ve made people feel ashamed that they’re not even fit enough yet to start exercising. There are pictures of people with 18 abs. 18! On, on the walls of the gymnasiums, and I’m fucking sick of it. Am I gonna be able to beat this Ozempic wave? No. Um, but I, what I can do is always work to try to make your mental health better.

[01:05:01] To put your mental health in a better place. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to give you a feeling of empowerment and agency. And nothing has done that more for me than just moving my body any way I can. I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome. That means that sometimes I don’t always have the movement that I wish I could have.

[01:05:17] But I find different ways to move my body all of the time. So I’m building an accessible include like fully inclusive movement. We had our first event in London. It was the most beautiful day of my life. It’s the first time I’ve cried in public. Um, and as an English person, you can appreciate quite a lot, uh, where we have people of all genders, all ages, all backgrounds, uh, doing all kinds of classes, people in wheelchairs, all, doing twerk sessions together, having amazing classes.

[01:05:46] And so we’re going to be coming out in live events around the country and building stuff online and building content to get everyone moving and remove the weight loss element from fucking exercise. It is a basic, right? It is something we’re all supposed to be doing every single day. And another part of that is the fact that Women do not feel safe at night and at the end of the fucking day, it gets dark here at like 2 pm And we need to go for a walk at the end of the day So I’m trying to work out ways give me a minute to get all of us together to go on night walks as one in groups and learn self defense as a form of exercise. And, and I know that that doesn’t go along with my whole non violent new self, but while we talk to men and try to help them, um, find a better way of expressing their feelings and rage against us, um, we’re going to learn how to physically defend ourselves.

[01:06:44] And that could be our form of cardio. That’ll also make us feel very empowered, but it’s, we’re moving towards, Purely being about the brain and how I can get you to sleep better, feel better, and please wait. No, I’m joking. Obviously not. So that’s where we’re moving and regarding podcasting. I’ll just say very quickly.

[01:07:02] What drives me is the fact that I am a very simple and uneducated person and I am infinitely gifted in the experience of learning from amazing talented people. And so that’s what keeps me going

[01:07:16] Joanne: You’re not fucking looking at me, are you? Let’s stop, stop now.

[01:07:22] Jameela: What about you?

[01:07:23] Joanne: I was listening to Jamila’s response, I was like, it’s so noble.

[01:07:25] Um, I’m about to start a new tour. The show’s called Pinophile. It’s about, I love Pinot Grigio, and um, It starts in February, so. That’s what’s next for me.

[01:07:40] Jameela: That’s what’s next for you. And genuinely what keeps me going is all of you. And so, thank you for being the most amazing audiences and thanks for joining me on this four and a half year journey.

[01:07:53] Joanne: Thank you.

[01:07:53] Jameela: Thank you for joining Joanne and thanks for being here tonight at 9. 30 on a school day. Um, I have greatly enjoyed being here. I’m sorry this is the last time we’ll be doing this but I will find my way back to you in other ways, other really fun ways where we can go and shake our arses together and say fuck you to the fucking diet industry as one.

[01:08:16] Lots of love. Get home safe. Thank you. Do we bow?

[01:08:22] Joanne: Yeah.

[01:08:30] You’re like

[01:08:30] Jameela: Love you all lots. Bye. See

[01:08:33] you later. Bye. Bye.

[01:08:34] Joanne: Don’t forget your bag. You’re a fucking handbag. Bye!

[01:08:47] Jameela: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode, I Weigh With Jameela Jamil, produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show.

[01:09:03] It’s such a great way to show your support. Poor and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh at I Weigh podcast@gmail.com.