EP. 179 — London Hughes Returns

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame. I hope you’re well and I hope you’re ready for the dynamite explosion that is London Hughes. She’s back on the podcast, she was here a few years ago when she and I were kind of just getting to know each other and you loved her so much you sent her and me loads of lovely messages and now she’s back because she’s got a book out and it’s called Living My Best Life, Hun which kind of documents the last 30 something years of her life in which she had had so many huge highs and at times devastating lows, all of which she chronicles with exceptional detail in this book in order to remind people that you get to be the master of your own fate and that you shouldn’t give up just because other people tell you to.

She is currently living her dream. I mean, she has a Netflix special called To Catch a Dick. She is a great writer, she’s a great screen and film writer, she’s an actress, she was in Fleabag, like, [00:01:00] no one can ever say that that girl has not done above and beyond what she ever set out to, and it’s fascinating to see how long, how much of her life she has known exactly who she is and who she’s going to be and she’s fucking doing it and it wasn’t easy and I think that’s also an important story to tell is to remind people that it’s not easy. So much of our culture is all about immediate wins or immediate food or immediate belongings everything is quick quick quick I need 200 channels we have too much fucking choice and everything happens too fucking fast and everything we see on social media makes it feel like everything good happens overnight and that’s you really dangerous in my opinion. And so what I love about this book and what I love about her story and this episode is the fact that we get into the nitty gritty of the relentless self belief and determination and stubbornness you have to have in order to make your wildest dreams come true. And that doesn’t just apply to show business. It’s anything. And London is a dark skinned black woman from [00:02:00] England, which is a tiny place which has very little diversity in it. And so for her to make it out of there through so much racism and misogyny and so many people undermining her or undercutting her, for her to make it out there to what she’s doing now is truly inspiring in my opinion.

We also have a lovely chat about how success also doesn’t fill the void of happiness, so it has to be something you do out of true love because it’s not going to be the thing that replaces all the important things in your life. We talk about where her drive comes from, we talk about resilience, we talk about how we became friends, we talk about her experience being cancelled on Twitter, and how sometimes our own can be unkinder to us even than the people that we expect to be our enemies. It’s just such an open personal chat, and she’s an open book, and that’s exactly what this actual book is, is London’s love letter to determination and following your dreams, especially [00:03:00] as a woman, especially as a Black woman. And so I hope you love the book, and I hope you love her. I’m sure you will. You loved her last time. But for now, this is the excellent London Hughes.

London fucking Hughes. Welcome to I Weigh. Hello!

London: Hey, baby! London fucking Hughes. Is that my name? I love it.

Jameela: It is. Is fucking not your middle name?

Listener: No, but now it should be, you know, let’s change it up. London Fucking Hughes is my full name. Great.

Jameela: How are you, my friend?

London: I’m hungover, babes. I’m not going to lie to y’all, I was at Beyonce’s house last night, might as well have been, uh, at her concert and I got drunk. I got too drunk in love with Beyonce.

Jameela: Was it fun?

London: It [00:04:00] was fun. I have never seen her properly like at an arena, like I’ve seen her at Glastonbury, that doesn’t really count, but at an arena, there’s so many people there. And I just, I didn’t take that into consideration that I was going to be standing with like a hundred thousand people, but our seats were amazing. We were right at the front. I could see her sweat and she was dancing. I wanted her to dance a bit more, but she was dancing and we didn’t, we failed the mute test. I mean, people were screaming. It was just, it was a crazy time. I can’t even remember it because I got so drunk, but I filmed it all, so I’m watching all my videos back, and I had a good time. I had a good time.

Jameela: As self proclaimed comedy’s Beyonce,

London: Yes.

Jameela: Was it aspirational for you to be there?

London: Yeah, it was. It really was. Honestly, I was like, I love Beyonce. I live in LA. I’m watching Beyonce on a Saturday. I’m drunk in love. I’m having a good time. This is my life. It was lovely.

Jameela: That’s good.

London: One day that will be me. Not obviously, like levitating through the sky, which was what she was doing.

Jameela: Honestly, London, the [00:05:00] amount of shit you’ve already done in your life, I wouldn’t put it past you.

London: That’s true. One day I shall, I shall levitate through the sky.

Jameela: It’s nice to have you back. You were on this podcast back when we didn’t know each other very well and we’d sort of just, we were early days of friendship compared to where we’re at now.

London: Now we’re life partners.

Jameela: I think actually it was on that episode that people can still go back and listen to that we really knew that we were in love because we learned a lot about each other in a new context as to how similar we were. We trauma bonded in that episode.

London: We did. I fully fell in love with you. Fully. Fully. Like head over heels.

Jameela: And back then you’d just got to America and it was chaos. There was a race war. We were in a pandemic. You just had a Netflix special come out of kind of nowhere. And I think you were just finding your feet. Now, a few years later, you’re still in Los Angeles, everything’s great, you’ve got a book out now called Living My Best Life, Hun, and you are a beloved [00:06:00] member of my life and my circle, and I’m just thrilled to have you back here. How are you feeling other than hungover from Beyonce? How is life?

London: I’m so happy. I cried this morning when you, when you told me you read the book and you loved the book, what you said touched me so much that I cried in bed. And I don’t know if it was because I’m hungover or because I’m happy or a bit of both. And I’m just so happy. I’m happy that the book’s coming out. I’m happy where I am in my life, despite the fact that it’s the craziest time to be living in LA and working in entertainment, the double strikes, everybody’s wondering what’s going to happen with Hollywood, if Hollywood’s still going to be the same. And all my projects have been halted, but I’m so happy. I’m grateful.

Jameela: Oh, that makes me so happy to hear.

London: Yeah, I’m good. I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been right now. I think I’m the happiest. Yeah, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been since moving to LA. It’s been crazy, as you know, like.

Jameela: Yeah.

London: When I [00:07:00] moved here,

Jameela: It’s been a journey.

London: Yeah. Like, you know, Jan always makes fun of me. She says I have the worst luck. You say I have the worst luck because I moved here two weeks before a global pandemic, a race war and now these strikes. And I think there was never a part since I’ve, since living here where I’ve just exhaled and gone, it will be okay because I was always worrying about things. As you would moving to a brand new country, but now I think I’ve exhaled.

Jameela: Good. This is what I always wanted for you. And also, like, I think you have great luck in so many ways. It’s just that every time you’re about to get started on your projects, another huge, like, global or industry wide, like, historical catastrophe happens. And it is unbelievable as your friend to watch this go on again and again and again. But I would say overall, you have great luck. It’s something I’ve always wanted for you. And I think something we’ve spoken about a lot in our friendship is wanting you to like stop and smell the flowers, which I think is really hard for people in this industry to do and in this world to do because we’re on this kind of like rat race of hustle culture and get the [00:08:00] bag and fucking win and I’ll sleep when I’m dead. And I think that, that Los Angeles is even more intense for that than England is much more intense. And I think it’s something that people are much more open about here, and it doesn’t always make for the happiest now, you know, because you’re so hard working towards a happy later that you don’t actually stop and go like, oh, actually, you know what? Things are great or things that I took for granted, like health or friendship, all these little things that are actually the biggest things in the world.

London: Yeah.

Jameela: And so it’s really great to hear that even in a moment where it’s like, life isn’t perfect and the industry is on strike and there is uncertainty that you are getting to a place of genuine joy because that’s what I want for you.

London: I’m always a positive person. You know this. I’m a happy girl, but I’m hard on myself. I’m my own worst enemy. I’m my own worst critic. And I think even like you said, the thieving of joy, the culture in LA is definitely, look at, look at everybody. Like I’m watching my friends literally like go from zero to hero every day. You know, like this town [00:09:00] makes actual stars. And before when I lived in England and I was watching things like the Emmys or the Oscars, I would feel like, oh, I can’t wait to one day be in Hollywood and be a part of it. And it would make me happy to watch these kinds of shows. I’d sit at home and watch it and have a good time and aspire to be there. Now I’m in LA, I can’t watch the Oscars or Emmys without feeling like, I don’t know if it’s jealousy because it’s not real, but it’s kind of like, I’m so close to it, but I’m not there. Like I’m not at the Oscars, I’m not at the Emmys, but I’m close. Like my friends are winning awards. My friends are nominated. My friends are giving out awards and I’m not there. And it’s, it made me unhappy. And I was like, this is something that would normally bring me so much joy. And now I’m closer to it, it is, I’m unhappy. And the same thing happened with my special. I thought that like, once I had a Netflix special, I’d be set. And then I got one. And instead of like focusing on the fact that I’ve got one, I’m now going, oh, what are people saying about it? What are the reviews? And it’s just like that.

Jameela: Yeah, it’s just the constant moving of the goalposts. [00:10:00]

London: I don’t know. I’m so hard on myself. And you remind me of this all the time that I just have to like, let it go. It’s okay. And I finally, I think it may, may come with age because I’ve turned 34 now. I’m in a different era, but I definitely feel like I’ve exhaled. I’ve calmed down. I’m going with the flow. I’m happy.

Jameela: Yeah. It’s really, it’s really exhausting to swim against the tide. Like, I feel, I feel like I jumped off the treadmill in my twenties because it was killing me. And because I actually was able to at 26, kind of get everything that a lot of people my age, where I was wanted, right? I was the it girl. I was on the cover of magazines. I was on the billboards for like, Maybelline. I was doing all this, this shit. And I’ve never been more suicidal or more lonely or more devastated or lost in my life. And so I got at 26, that lesson of like, oh, you were lied to. You were told this would make you happy and it really doesn’t. Are there some lovely fun things that come with it? Sure.

London: Yes.

Jameela: But [00:11:00] it’s like, it’s got to be the cherry on top of the cake that you build yourself out of things that last forever, which is friendship and like meaningful change, like mental health, all these things. And so it doesn’t mean I’m so wise. It took me fucking everything up for me to realize that, uh, I was looking in the wrong place for my joy.

London: But you were, yeah, you were seeking it.

Jameela: But now I feel like it’s like, I feel like I’ve got to, like, warn everyone about the basement that is this industry of like

London: No, don’t warn, let us figure it out, man.

Jameela: No, I’d like to, I’d like to warn you, I’d like to be like, don’t go down there in your underwear.

And obviously you can’t, you know, download that in someone’s brain, but you, it’s fun to now watch a lot of my friends start to come to that realization without having to have made the devastating mistakes that I’d made. I’m so thrilled to see you happy. And you’ve written an appropriately incredibly positive book that takes stock of everything that [00:12:00] you have achieved. And I think that that’s really great. Uh, it’s called Living My Best Life, Hun. And this book is really important for young kids, especially for young black kids, especially for young black women. Like it’s an important book about perseverance and resilience, and it’s like a manifesto of not fucking stopping just because other people tell you to slow down. And I think that’s really cool of knowing your own worth and going after your own adventures and not being deterred by other people projecting their own insecurities and their own limitations onto you, so describe the book in your own words.

London: I would say it’s Beyonce in book form is what I would say. It’s, it’s a book about dreamers. It’s a book about aspirational, inspirational. It’s tragedy. It’s hilarious. It’s, I mean, I put everything into it. Like, honestly, there’s nothing that I didn’t leave out about my life, and I’ve been through a lot at my 34 years of age. And the book is just [00:13:00] a book for the type of people that believe in their gut and believe that they were meant to do something in this world, whatever it is, and have had so many setbacks and knockbacks and slam doors. And people usually, when you get, you know, like if you fail a lot, you might go, hey, you know what, maybe this isn’t for me, but for whatever reason, you shouldn’t, you should stick at it. And I did. And I won in the end. So this is a book for the dreamers who start off losers and end up winners.

Jameela: Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the reasons it’s so important is because it’s very rare that we see someone’s working out, you know, because by the time we normally become aware of a public figure, especially it’s when they’ve already reached the pinnacle. And now we’re watching how they maintain or grow from already a, like a high up place of privilege. We rarely, I think TikTok is the first era where we’re literally watching someone go from their like kitchen to now like, or singing in their bathtub to now singing at massive shows. But before this, and even then you don’t really, no one ever gives you a glimpse into the humiliating parts or the [00:14:00] hardships or the rejections because they want to be, you know, inspiring and aspirational. But actually I can’t think of anything more inspiring than hearing someone’s harder stories. For me, speaking of Beyonce, like learning about the fact that the reason that woman can outperform literally anyone on this planet is because she used to sing on a treadmill. So she would run while singing and trained her lungs at an Olympic level to be able to do things that no one can even, no one can even mime as well as Beyonce can sing live. I don’t know of anyone who’s ever worked harder than her. And so we, we see her just win and win and win and win, but like no one was really fully documenting.

London: No.

Jameela: No, no, they were documenting it, but they didn’t really talk a lot about how hard she’s fucking worked.

London: Oh no, not at all. True Beyonce fans would just be like, oh yeah, you know, you know, she started in Destiny’s Child and it’s like, no honey, she was in Girl’s Time before that. Baby girl was on Star Search at like 12? [00:15:00] 11? 10?

Jameela: Yeah.

London: It’s just like, honey, that’s that’s why I say that me and Beyonce are very similar, so I call myself comedy Beyonce because I work with, I think people just think, I don’t know if you don’t know me or if you’ve only heard bits and bobs about me or see me on various things all over the world, you would probably assume that like, you know, she’s just like a funny girl that was like popped up here and popped up there. No, I had to work so hard, like just to get crumbs. I was in England. I was fighting for crumbs and I didn’t realize it until I wrote the book and read it. And I was like, at any point in this book, you could have quit. Like literally you could have quit there. You could have quit that because there was so much, not back to so much failing and I was failing, failing all the time. But there was something in me that was just like, it’s fine. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to do it. You’re going to do it. And I don’t know what that was, but it was just, like, this feeling that even, like, whenever I got rejected or when any time things didn’t go my way, I just worked harder. I never [00:16:00] stopped. I never went, oh, oh, it’s never gonna happen for me.

Jameela: Where did that come from? Because it wasn’t even like your family were going, yeah, keep going.

London: No. Nobody told me to keep going. Nobody. Like, at one point, even my agent was a bit like, this is, we’re not sure. We’re not sure that this, this can happen for you, the way you, you are saying it will.

Jameela: Where does that voice come from? Especially as a young black woman, a young dark skinned black woman in England, which has an industry that is the size of a tiny, tiny arsehole.

London: Literally.

Jameela: Where does this come from?

London: Black people are 3 percent of the UK.

Jameela: We need to bottle it and give it out.

London: Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve always felt it about this. There’s a lot of things I’ve given up on. Like I can’t cook. I tried to cook, didn’t do it well. It was terrible. Never cooked again. Do you know what I mean?

Jameela: Mothering?

London: Mothering, not doing it. It’s not happening. So like there’s things I’m

Jameela: What did you say? No babies, no cry.

London: No babies, no cry. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. This is the only thing I’m [00:17:00] passionate about where I know that I’m right. Everything else, I’ll be like, no. I’ll give up on, I’ll give up on cooking. It’s not my thing. This was my thing. And I just, even though people couldn’t see it, I was like, you’ll see it one day. Like I’ll make you see it. And like when, you know, I did auditions and wouldn’t get the part or I try and do this and people would tell me no or I remember like, or I had to audition for this show in the UK called 8 Out of 10 Cats, a comedy panel show. And I think I talk about it in the book and essentially they would say, I’d kill the auditions, but then the producers would just say, oh, we love London. We love London. We just don’t think our audience would get her. And the audience is just human beings from Britain, so what, who like comedy? So what they’re telling me is they like me, but they don’t think their audience, who are comedy people, would like me.

Jameela: Well, this is, this brings up, it’s linked to something you talk about in the book, which I thought was really interesting about what constitutes Black comedy in the UK. You know, like, you were pigeonholed a lot just because of the color of your skin, and [00:18:00] none of your jokes were actually specifically, and comedy that focuses on race is great, but comedy that also doesn’t focus on race is great, and yours was never really supposed to be specifically about your experience just as a black person. You were just talking about the world and talking about, you know, I remember your comedy back then, like none of it felt like it was beyond really much beyond being just a young woman.

London: Yeah. That’s it.

Jameela: Experiencing the world.

London: Because I was black though

Jameela: It was like considered black comedy.

London: It’s a black, it’s black jokes. I had a producer tell me like, don’t do any of your black material tonight. And I was like, it’s just material, and I happen to be black. It’s not black material. Like I’m talking about my life and my family and me and I’m black. So that’s what, I feel like being a black woman, basically trying to show up in a British white male comedy space and be like, accept me was what people found hard. People didn’t get me. The producers were saying the audience wouldn’t get you. It’s basically because I’m a black woman. I knew it. And because [00:19:00] of that, I was like, well, then I have to work even harder. I’m a woman and I’m black, so let’s go. So pick up your boots, put them on. Get hustling. And I kept going. I can’t even think what I’d be doing now if I wasn’t doing comedy. I have no skills.

Jameela: You wouldn’t be cooking.

London: Yeah. The last job I had was TGI Fridays when I was 19. That was the last job I ever had. I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself if I quit and didn’t follow my gut. And I’m so glad it paid off and it worked out and I’m here now.

Jameela: And also, like, I think it’s important for people who don’t know you to know that this is because nothing lights you up from the inside the way that making people laugh does. Like, it’s, it’s genuinely, it’s not just because you want the trappings of the fame or the awards or this, that and the other, it’s like, that stuff’s all fun, but you genuinely come at, like, I see you come alive when I introduce you to people and you have that connection through laughter, and I think, you know, anyone who listened to the first episode we ever did together a few years ago, and you write about this in the book, there was a lot of loneliness and a lot of bullying, like, in your [00:20:00] childhood, and I think that you and I both seek connection via making people laugh. And we seek that acceptance that we know you can get faster when you make people laugh. Like it’s, it’s a survival skill that also brings us and other people joy because there’s also something amazing about when you can laugh with another person. It’s a very specific wavelength that you’re both on in that moment. And I think you and I didn’t really find a lot of connection when we were younger. And so it’s a place that we find now that means a lot to us.

London: 100%. And you’re right. I just had to think, like, that’s deep. We definitely do use humour. It’s how we fell in love really as well. When we were cracking each other up, you’re the funniest, you’re such a funny bitch, you make me laugh all the time. Sometimes I’ll just think about something you said and just crack up. I can’t say it now because you’ll get cancelled if I, if I, if I repeat it, but you say some funny things that make me laugh.

Jameela: Speaking of being cancelled and speaking of how we met, for anyone who doesn’t know, we met because I slid [00:21:00] into London’s DMs when London was being cancelled on British Twitter, uh, for having said something that in retrospect now has been said by loads of other people with no controversy. Uh, the same exact point has been made by other people and no one’s freaked out over it. But when London did, it was a backlash in which you were commenting on the fact that you felt like there wasn’t enough, uh, Black representation of, of kids who weren’t just in kind of violent or kind of criminal, uh, existences, you know, within like council estates, you were like, where’s our kind of, you know, like in America, they had Moesha, they had My Wife and Kids, they had a Sister, Sister, and One on One. We didn’t have any of those shows. And so we used to have to look to American culture to see kids with melanin in their skin, just do, just do regular innocent kid stuff and not having to have like any kind of job or go through any hardship or see a dead body. You know, it was, it was trauma free.

London: Yes.

Jameela: It was just about homework and kissing boys and this that and the other and like lying to your [00:22:00] parents.

London: Yes.

Jameela: And so you were not saying there shouldn’t be any programming that was about, uh, kids who live below the poverty line or live in circumstances that are incredibly difficult. You were just like, where’s the broadening? Why is that the only stereotype of us shown? What is it? Where’s Keisha? Why don’t we have Keisha go to uni?

London: Yes. Yeah, why is it that, you know, we are bringing back a show like this? We shouldn’t be having shows like Top Boy, what about Keisha Goes to Uni? Like, just a positive, black show. And I got hate for it. It’s all in the book as well. I call it the Blacklash. I got, uh, there’s a black British Twitter. And then there’s some prominent blue tick people, blue check people, uh, that say a lot and have opinions, big opinions. And they, they usually go viral on Twitter whenever they speak. And yeah, they, they piled up for me. They came for me and, uh, the only person to save me was Jameela Jamil.

Jameela: Which is amazing because there’s a whole Gossip Girl [00:23:00] meme about me that says, it just got worse. Jameela Jamil just tweeted you. Which I think is fucking hilarious.

London: Yes.

Jameela: Uh, and doesn’t matter at all. Uh, but I am still glad, even if Gossip Girl don’t like that about me, that I am someone who steps in when someone’s in trouble, because it is the loneliest, scariest feeling where everyone you love even distances themselves from you and you start to feel completely hopeless. Your mental health takes such a battering. And I specifically jump in when it’s a woman specifically, specifically when it’s a woman of color, because I’m just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re not leaving our own for dead. That’s not what we’re doing. We can criticize them. I get criticized all the time and often it’s fair, but we can’t annihilate someone’s entire existence because they said, especially if they’ve said something that actually has a nugget of truth in it and has been said before and since and get shit. That’s how we met is that I, out of nowhere, [00:24:00] we’d never met, never spoken,

London: Never spoken.

Jameela: Like, not like never had anything to do with each other.

London: Did you even follow me? You didn’t even follow me.

Jameela: No, I didn’t follow you. I just saw your name trending on Twitter. And I was like, oh, what’s this about? And then I saw a young woman of color being eaten up. And I was like, oh, there’s still a human in there, like, come on, man. And, and I reached out to you and, uh, and then we became friends. And that’s just how we met.

London: Just thinking of that day, like if it was probably one of the best days, the day before was one of the best days of my life. The day before it happened, I went to the Emmys, like an Emmy party that NBC were throwing and the head of NBC was introducing me to like all my heroes and just saying that I’m the future of comedy that introduced me to Adam Sandler and Dave Chappelle and, and, and Lorne Michaels. And I was just like, this is my life. Oh my God. I’m in Hollywood at a fancy party. And then this interview came out the next day and the UK is eight hours ahead and I went to bed happy [00:25:00] knowing that like I’d wake up in the morning and my interview would be out and I’d get all the love and I wake up in the morning and yeah, the hate. And the hard part was back then Twitter had an algorithm where if people you follow like things though they come up on your feed. So I was seeing negative comments about me that my friends had liked coming up on, negative tweets coming up on my, on my, on my timeline. And I just remember just seeing the worst things. I got, I got called a coon. I got called, um, something like that, I was dancing for the white man, dancing for the white man. I was anti black. I was all these things just because I said that this black show that depicts negative stereotypes, I personally believe that we don’t need it to come back. And that’s all I said, really. And I still stand by what I said, because people, like you said,

Jameela: I personally think, like I said, I think it’s okay to have that show. It just can’t be the main or only representation of Black culture in the UK. Like, I think that show’s fine, but like, we haven’t heard anything since [00:26:00] Desmond, you know, when I was a kid that showed, like, regular Black families.

London: It’s just happy Black people! Black people are so happy! We’re not, obviously like we go through hardships, but everyone does, but it’s just like white women can be happy. White men can be happy. Uh, black people just have to be struggling in everything that I just like, I don’t want to watch that. That’s not my vibe. And it’s okay to exist, but it feels like it’s the only form of British, in America, much more, much more, uh, diverse options of black, black entertainment, but in the UK, I don’t know what it is. We have this black trauma porn obsession with this, with this, with this black struggle narrative. And, uh, I just, I didn’t want, I didn’t feel like we needed the show to come back. That’s all I said. And I wrote a perfectly great article about it and I cited my reasons. I gave examples and also the show is created by a white guy. We have the same agent. I don’t know him, but he’s this old white guy and it was written as a piece of fiction, [00:27:00] but black people just, I guess, resonated with the story so much it became their show. But it really isn’t. It isn’t. A rich white guy is getting rich off of black struggle. And I’m just like, we have had black creators make up, make their own TV shows, so why is it that we’re bringing this show back now? And it’s just, yeah. So anyway,

Jameela: But, but anyway,

London: It was hard. It was hard because I fight for black women a lot and black women were the ones that came for me the most. And it was really, you know, I’ve had like been attacked by racist Trump supporters and said stuff and it doesn’t hurt, but when your own people come for you, I don’t know why, but it just hits. And it felt like back at school when I used to get bullied, it was the same thing. It was like triggering because I got bullied by black girls in school. And now 20 years later, I’m on the internet getting bullied by black women. And it’s just like,

Jameela: And it’s also that you’ve just gone so far out of your way, like with a lot of the, the social political stances you’ve taken in media, a lot of your comedy, what’s in this book is so much [00:28:00] advocacy and love. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to speak out of turn. It doesn’t mean that you’re like infallible therefore just, and it doesn’t mean that you’re beyond criticism because your heart’s in the right place, but there’s no benefit of the doubt in spite of how many times you’ve been speaking out for black women to be noticed more, to be given the same opportunities, to be recognized as special and more than what they’ve been reduced to or erased from. Like dark skinned black women in particular, like you’ve been calling this shit out from the beginning. And so I remember talking to you about the hardship of of that. It wasn’t it wasn’t necessarily betrayal that you felt I’m sure there was a bit of that, but it was mostly just like god, every, every other thing that I got right has been erased because the one thing I said wasn’t, was either taken out of context because also, like, there were so many headlines that were misleading and people don’t read beyond the headlines, you just felt like you weren’t being given the benefit of the doubt in spite of how much you’d done and, and how pure your intentions were, even in that statement.[00:29:00]

London: Yeah, I felt sad for all the, it’s like all the years I’ve put into supporting and lifting up. There’s so many people that have careers, me and Jameela are not these people, but there’s so many people that have perfectly fine careers by shutting up. They don’t say anything. They don’t call out injustices. They don’t say anything. They just shut up. They might think it, they don’t, they don’t allude to it. They just shut up and do what they do. I am not that person. I have to say something. I don’t know what it is in me, but I will feel worse shutting up and playing along even though my career might have been easier or a lot smoother if I did that. But I just, if I feel something passionately and I think there’s an injustice for whatever it is, and I have a right to talk on it, I will speak on it. So when it comes to women in entertainment, when it comes to black women, when it comes to women in comedy, every platform I use, Twitter, interviews, everything, videos, I would talk on it. I would [00:30:00] speak on it and I would bring light to injustice. I would talk about the sexism in British comedy. I would talk about the systemic racism in British comedy and in British entertainment. I went in and it’s just like, And just like that, it’s like, I didn’t do any of that because some people like this show that I don’t like, that I feel like we don’t need. And instead of like saying, oh, she has an opinion. They then formed that into what they thought of me. They were like, she’s this type of person. She’s anti black.

Jameela: Well, this is what we’ve been talking about on the podcast recently is like the inability to separate identity from opinion, right? It’s like, she’s got an opinion I don’t like, so she, like, she doesn’t like the show I like, so therefore she doesn’t like me, so now I don’t like her.

London: Exactly.

Jameela: It’s really tricky.

London: The show’s about black people. She doesn’t like this show, so she doesn’t like black people. Huh?

Jameela: Michaela Cole once said, like, I got off Twitter because it was flattening my brain and I, now, more than ever, have understood what she meant. And that was years ago, before like, all of our brains had been turned into pancakes.

London: I will be [00:31:00] off of it as soon as this book comes out, because it’s not even Twitter anymore, it’s X and it’s terrible, so I am gonna have to leave at some point. But, yeah, it is, it’s just, it’s, it’s so, it’s crazy to me that, like, you’ll do good and, like, that goes unnoticed. Like, all the good you do goes unnoticed. And then you do something that people don’t agree with and it’s pow.

Jameela: It’s a weird balance, right? Because I think we get it where, like, I certainly have been, like, somewhat party to this, where we feel extra betrayed when our own does something that we consider harmful. Whether it’s harmful or not, we consider something harmful and we feel extra betrayed. And then we feel like we have to call them out the same, if not harder, than the people we expect to do something that’s disappointing. Um, so that no one can say that we’re picking and choosing. So I know we’re as hard on our own, but we’re actually harder on our own. And, and it’s something that worries me because then we end up getting rid of all the people who are gonna try their best, even if they don’t word it in exactly the right way.

London: Yeah because they don’t want to mess up, so they’ll just keep quiet.

Jameela: Yeah. [00:32:00] Totally. Everyone’s becoming quiet again.

London: Are you? Are you becoming quiet again?

Jameela: I don’t, have you seen my Instagram? Clearly not.

London: Clearly not.

Jameela: Did you see the Met Gala moment? No. But some of us were not born to learn our lesson. All right, London? I still have this podcast because I have not yet learned.

London: What should we call out next? Let’s call out some injustices. We should have our own podcast where we just call out shit.

Jameela: Oh God.

London: Jam and London on issues.

Jameela: Uniting the left and right and being hated by both. Um, haha!

London: That’s the thing. Cause even when you came to my defense, you got called out for defending me. I saw you get some, you caught, you caught some stray bullets off the back of defending me.

Jameela: That’s fine. That’s fine.

London: I remember just being like, oh, people just, I don’t know. There’s some people that also love being angry, like that’s their whole thing. Their whole thing is complaining about injustices. So, you know, I try not to take it too seriously, but yeah, that, that, that part of the book was the hardest part to write because when I, when I, when I wrote this book, I decided to really immerse myself in everything. So I found all [00:33:00] my old diaries and anytime I was speaking about a subject, even if I didn’t think that way now, I wrote it as if exactly how I felt at the time. So, I was true, I had to really be true to myself and go in it. So when this, all the hate stuff came online, I was like, you know what? Let me go back onto Twitter and find the tweets. So I did. I went on Twitter and I found all the tweets and everything. I, and someone, this, uh, uh, Black magazine that’s now been, I think it’s closed down now, but it was like this Black online magazine called Gal-dem. They wrote this piece about me and how I was problematic and I had to reread the piece and I hadn’t read it since, you know, since

Jameela: You had to kind of re traumatize yourself.

London: Re traumatize myself to write this book and I was crying and it was a lot but I had to say my piece, I’m glad it’s in the book and yeah, so, oh, the book, oh, there’s a few times in the book where I had to re traumatize, like, the bullying. Oh god, like, the bullying stories, um, [00:34:00] the worst one that’s in the book, I, yeah, cried writing that, um, and then when I did the audio book and I had to say, say it out loud what happened again, I had to, like, take a moment, cause, it was, ugh, life, but there’s so much good in the book.

Jameela: There’s so much good in the book.

London: It sounds like it’s a sad book. It’s a comedy book as well.

Jameela: A) the book is hilarious, but B) like, it’s about the ebbs and flows, right? This is what I was saying earlier, is that we don’t get to see the ebbs, you know, and the difficult parts. We don’t get to see the mess and the chaos, and you’ve put it all out there, so that anyone reading this who’s had, like, humiliating moments, as I was saying earlier, like, anyone out there who’s faced hardship knows that, like, these these things happen and they are character building and they, you know, again, another thing we’ve been talking about the podcast a lot is resilience and how, you know, young people these days aren’t really being encouraged towards resilience. They’re being encouraged towards self preservation. And I think there’s like a happy balance to split between how we were, where we’re just like, hey, it’s me. I love it. [00:35:00] And where we’re at now, where it’s like, don’t touch me. And don’t upset me in any way and don’t make me work beyond my limit. So there’s a happy balance to be struck between the two to get to a realistic place of what it takes to achieve something extraordinary, especially when you’re a minority, especially when things are going to be much harder for you. But it’s a very naked portrayal of that with the funny and also you make the sad funny in the book.

London: Do I?

Jameela: Which I think is, yeah. And I think that’s important. And I think that’s therapeutic. It is, it is how we survive a lot of the bad stuff is learning to laugh through it and not allow us to feel too victimized by it because otherwise it will just break, it will break you. Life will break you. Life is hard. And it’s not just in the entertainment industry. It’s, if you are a young, especially a young woman of color trying to make it in science or STEM.

London: Exactly.

Jameela: You know what I mean, in any kind of male dominated industry.

London: It’s hard to be a successful woman. I don’t feel like we talk about that [00:36:00] enough. Like any woman that has got a good job, she worked hard for it. There’s not a single woman in the world that is successful even even Kim Kardashian, even Kim Kardashian. I didn’t like what she said about the women don’t want to work anymore because she doesn’t really work as hard as some women, but the girl did have to work hard to get to where she was in her own way. We’re so hard on ourselves as women anyway, that it’s just like, why don’t you just give a woman, if you see a woman who’s successful in doing her thing, just know that she had to move mountains to get there and just give her some grace.

Jameela: Yeah, and the more melanin, the more grace.

London: The more melanin, the more grace.

Jameela: The darker the skin, the more grace.

London: The darker the skin, the more grace, honey! If she’s melanating, let her be free!

Jameela: One of my favorite parts of the book is when you talk about the fact that when you were an audience [00:37:00] member in like Alan Carr’s show, the fact that you clocked very quickly, that the harder you laugh as an audience member, the more likely the camera is to come to you. So you started deliberately laughing so that the camera would come to you. Like you were always thinking. Always.

London: Literally. Always. I was

Jameela: Such a young age, always maneuvering. And it’s something that it’s always on the like borderline of what especially English, an English person might think of as obnoxious, right? Where, like the, the way that you were just going after it with this tenacity that like British people have been told we’re not allowed to do. And yet now on the other side of it, now that I’m older, now that I’ve lived in other countries, and now that I know you and I know the hardship that you’ve faced to get to where you are. I so much more like admire it and understand it and think that we do need more of a dose of people being allowed to be persistent and to push themselves forward and be calculated in an innocent way where you’ve never hurt another person ever in your career. [00:38:00] You’ve never stepped over anyone. And I’m so proud of you for that because I know so many people who are where we are, who just, who really hurt other people to get there. But you, you are calculated in a good way, like calculated is always seen as a bad thing, but you have always been planning. This shit is always planned out. It’s so rarely an accident. It’s so rarely, I’d say that I’m the closest to an accident ever because my career has been such a fucking mess and it shows, but to do something like that as a craft, like I’ve done 800 jobs, but you, you do something that’s an actual craft, like you’ve had to go at it and go at it and go at it and go at it in an industry where most people end up falling to the sides and that, that takes like an insane amount of resilience and self belief and you brag in the book. And I love that. I love that for you because I think it forces us all also to like, go, why do I find that jarring when we see a woman brag?

London: Bragging. Yeah. Yeah.

Jameela: Why do we find it? Why do we find it so jarring when we see anyone brag?

London: It’s a you problem.

Jameela: But especially women. Yeah, exactly.

London: It’s not a me problem, it’s a [00:39:00] you problem.

Jameela: I’m not intimidating, you are intimidated, right?

London: Yes. 100%. I think that that’s what I get a lot because how dare I be so braggadocious? And it’s just like, why wouldn’t I? Do you know, women get humbled in this life. Like Black women are humbled every day. Women are humbled every day. Why would I be humble now? In my, I’ve done something, I’ve achieved something. I’ve been, I’ve broken down barriers. I’ve come out the other side and I’m winning. Why can’t I say yay and pat myself on the back when men do it all the time? When men brag, no one cares. But when, I don’t know what it is about a woman.

Jameela: But also it’s almost impossible for anyone to pat, especially a black woman, on the back when she’s made it. It’s just like, oh, well done. See how long that lasts.

London: Exactly! Or, she was a, she was a diversity hire. There’s always some excuses to, like, oh yeah, like she was a diversity hire

Jameela: Or rumors about how you’ve gotten to where you are in your career.

London: I’ve heard, I’ve slept with all these comedians. I mean, I have, but [00:40:00] I’ve had, haha!

Jameela: Yeah. But if anything, the people that you chose would have slept, like you would have made your way down the industry.

London: Exactly. Yeah. I was, it was charity work when I was doing it, but like,

Jameela: Make a wish.

London: I hear that, like, you know, I’ve heard that I was dating Kevin Hart, like these comics, I did a gig at the Laugh Factory and these comics, male comics tried to insinuate that Kevin, like, Kevin Hart produced my Netflix special because, because he flew me out to Vegas and they were like, oh yeah? Wow. What did you and Kevin do in Vegas? I was like, we had a busy, a 24 hour business meeting, like we literally were working. And I don’t know cause I’m a cute girl. I don’t know. People just assume, yeah, no, she must’ve, she must’ve done something. And it’s like, no, I’m just talented. I’m really hardworking and really nice.

Jameela: The thing you say about the world trying to humble Black women every day, it’s so easy for them to be torn down. And I so appreciate the fact that you’re trying to lead by example in this book of just like, no, no, no, no, no. Because it’s not like you don’t also own up to the things that are hard or embarrassing or that you have [00:41:00] to check yourself on. This book is full of both. We don’t even blink at the bits that are self deprecating whenever, oh no, you’re being too hard on yourself.

London: Oh no.

Jameela: But as soon as you turn that around to, actually I did this one thing that I was incredibly proud of and actually I was the best at this thing and I deserved to get the call back, suddenly that’s a problem. Why? It’s forced me to investigate what it is when I see other people brag like and I’ve had to learn how to actually say actually you know what I did this thing where it helped a lot of people. And I’m really glad about that.

London: This is the thing, we’re women and we always just go, like, if I say, hey babe, you look nice today, they’ll be like, in Britain, they’ll be like, oh no, this old thing, you know? And I’m like, no, you look nice, take the compliment. Owning your greatness is also a thing that we have to work on as, as British people, as women, because we’ve been taught the British way is keep calm and carry on. That is our phrase, that is our motto. Well, there’s no such thing as the, uh, British dream. There is an American dream. There’s no British dream. Don’t give up your day job is something that like we say [00:42:00] often to people.

Jameela: Do you reckon we have a nightmare? We have the American dream and then we have a British nightmare.

London: We have a British nightmare. To be fair, it is right now. Jesus Christ, poor UK, bless them. But essentially, I feel like, as someone who goes on stage and, you know, puts my life on stage for you guys to make fun of, and that’s totally fine. Why can’t, when something goes well, why can’t I turn around and be like, yeah, I fucking killed that shit. Yeah, I did that. I’m proud of myself, you know? So, I don’t know. I think we have, we need to have a bit of both in life. And I think I have a happy balance of it. I’m also really hard on myself as well, so when I do do well, I really take it in because listen, I’ll, I can come off stage and kill it. And I’ll think of that one joke that like, I should have tweeted that joke there. And then, and other people would be just be like, Oh my God, you did amazing. But in brain, I’m thinking, no, I could have done this, but I could have done that better. So when I tell you I killed it and I’m happy and I’m proud of myself, that means I really killed it. I’m really proud of myself.

Jameela: I remember once [00:43:00] meeting one of The Pussycat Dolls and I won’t say which one, but

London: Oh my gosh, say which one.

Jameela: No, I’m not going to say which one. Um,

Was it

London: Nicole? It was Nicole.

Jameela: No, no, no. I’m not saying which one, but, uh, but they performed and I went up to one of them who’d like been especially amazing, and I was like, that was incredible. She was like, honey, I know I’ve done a good job when after a performance, my pussy is wet and girl, this pussy is wet.

London: Oh, wow. Oh my God. It has to be Nicole. I love that.

Jameela: I will not, I will not respond with who it was, but it was one of the most formative moments of my life.

London: I love that.

Jameela: I was like, good for you. I don’t even know what to do with that at the time, but

London: I love how she gets a wet pussy when she does well. I wish, my pussy’s never wet when I do well, it’s quite balanced. I don’t think my pussy really has a say in it, really.

Jameela: Do you think part of why the extra need to kind of like loudly and publicly affirm yourself is also for 12 year old London, who was so brutal to herself and who everyone was so brutal [00:44:00] for? Do you reckon it’s also like a way of going back and going like, no, I’m not going to listen to this demon in my head. I’m going to go further to like silence the demon and pour some positivity into me because that’s the strongest place it’s ever going to come from.

London: Yes, I like to talk to myself like I’m my own best friend whenever I’m feeling weird or sad or just defeated. I give myself a pep talk. And so, then when I brag, I brag like I’m my own best friend. Like, if you did well, I would do a post about you going, This, you are so amazing. Look how I’m so proud of her. So, I just talk, I just do that for me.

Jameela: That’s just it, is that in the same way that you affirm yourself or congratulate yourself, you are so affirming and congratulating and supportive to your friends.

London: Uh huh. Thanks, baby.

Jameela: You just naturally like, someone can’t even finish a sentence before you are bigging us up or getting excited or announcing things that you’re proud of about us. Uh, you’re announcing it to other people or introducing us [00:45:00] that way. Like that love comes in every direction and I’m really glad to hear that it comes back and it’s something that we all kind of need to work on. We need to work on, are we being nice enough to ourselves and are we being nice enough to other women?

London: Yeah.

Jameela: And those who are struggling and are we allowing for our own wins? And not just focusing on our mistakes, and are we allowing for the wins and not just the mistakes of other women? Which kind of takes us back to the kind of Twitter thing, right? It’s like, and how hard we are on each other, specifically women, like most of the people who’ve broken my heart on the internet have been other women. It’s mostly been, for me, it’s been white women who’ve mostly like made my life a lot harder sometimes on the internet. And that’s no specific shade to white people that just happens to be the demographic.

London: No, it is a shade. It’s shade to white women.

Jameela: No, but my point is, is that that’s, that’s the demographic who tend to harm me the most. And yeah. And it’s liberal, it’s liberal women.

London: Liberal women.

Jameela: And they’re the people that I, that I couldn’t have aligned with more was liberal women because I was fighting for liberal causes, but it turned out to be liberal people who’ve been the meanest to me. Like I, and so it is very [00:46:00] hard, but what it was is that you expect someone to, give you a tiny bit of grace because you feel so much love towards them and you’re so excited about them.

London: Yeah.

Jameela: But we don’t return that love. We’re not always as excited about another woman as we should be. Like she has to be in this sweet spot of successful, but very grateful and surprised.

London: Look at what’s happening with Lizzo right now. Same thing. Like it’s just like, what is it? I’m just going back to Beyonce. That song, Flawless, the beginning bit with the like, what was?

Jameela: With Amanda?

London: Yeah.

Jameela: Yeah.

London: Everything she says in that applies in this situation, because I feel like we love women until they’re so successful that essentially, then we take, that turns to hate. Like, it’s like, we like an underdog, but then we don’t like it when they’re on top or then they can’t brag too much when they’re on top. But then like, it’s just they’re overrated, then they’re underrated. It’s just like, I don’t know. I just feel like there’s so much. We put so much pressure on each other.

Jameela: It’s just exhausting. It’s not just exhausting for the woman. It’s not just [00:47:00] exhausting for the woman. And we do this at school. We do this in the workplace. We do this with like, we call it tall poppy syndrome in England, where, where anyone who puts their head above the parapet, even if it was by accident, um, we, we persecute them in a way that we have to become better at really understanding, like, I know that we’ve been like, oh, girls are such bitches, but this is actually like a deep systemic issue that I would love to end with our generation. And I do think that in some ways Gen Z are better than us at this. But then you see TikTok, like TikTok go viral with people just dragging a girl by her pubes for the same thing that a man never gets into trouble for. And it, it really, it really hurts my heart because we need each other so much. We need each other. This shit is already so hard. And we, and, and part of the reason why we find it so hard to be generous towards other women is when we find it hard to be generous towards ourselves. And I think the reason you have so much space to love others is because it’s pouring over from the love that you have for yourself. And I think that’s really great.

London: Thanks, babes. What I’m [00:48:00] hearing anyway from you is that we should all be a bit more like London Hughes is what, basically to sum up.

Jameela: Is that what you took from that?

London: Yeah. That’s what I took from everything you just said. Like, don’t shrink yourself. Yeah, like it was, what’s the, what’s that lady called?

Jameela: It’s um, Chimamanda Ngozi adichie.

London: Yes. So she says we teach girls to shrink themselves. And I think that is exactly the thing that we’re doing. Like, we are literally telling women, don’t shine, don’t be big, don’t get too big for your boots, shrink, shrink down, be a smaller version.

Jameela: And I feel like you love to subvert everything, right? Anything you’ve ever been told to be ashamed of is the thing that you have then led with. And so, if you’re like, ashamed of being proud of yourself, you lead with that. Ashamed of having had sex with lots of people, you lead with that. You name your show To Catch A Dick, you get a Netflix special of it, and you’re like, get nominated for the biggest prize at Edinburgh Festival with it. You run towards the thing that people tell you to feel ashamed of and hide yourself for in like quite a perverse and scary way, but [00:49:00] it’s appreciated. One of the things you said in the book that made me laugh so much is when you were like, things I learned during my time on children’s television as a TV presenter, and it’s just blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, and then gets to the end of the lesson is I think that puppeteers are weirdly good at fingering.

London: Hahaha!

Jameela: I woke James up because I was cackling in bed reading that last night.

London: I got fingered by a puppeteer and it was the best fingering, I’ve ever had, ever had, Olympian style strength in those fingers and they just, sort of strong fingers. And it was like touching all the buttons and it was vibrating and it was doing two different directions.

Jameela: Well they’re, cause they’re like, they’re, it’s not ambidextrous, it’s that they’re able to do several things.

London: Yeah, they’re able to do stuff. So they were just, it was just the best, literally the best. [00:50:00] Puppeteers are the best at fingering. Yes. Haha!

Jameela: You know what? And justice for puppeteers.

London: Justice for puppeteers!

Jameela: I don’t feel like that’s something that someone puts on their dating profile on Hinge and then gets loads of likes and hits for. I think they’re seen as like, you know, as, as lesser. And actually, again, look at you, taking something that people think people should be ashamed of and putting it to the top of the pride list.

London: Exactly. No, puppeteers are number one on my foreplay list. Like, listen, they are the best at foreplay. Yes.

Jameela: Yes. This is great PR for puppeteers. If we learned anything from London’s book, it’s to at least one time go home with a puppeteer.

London: Yeah. Get fingered by a puppeteer just once in your life.

Jameela: Puppeteer classes are about to go through the fucking roof.

London: They, it’s just so, the fingers! That’s their job! They’re so good at it. Oh God.

Jameela: It’s such a silly book. It’s such a sweet book. There’s so much heart and soul in it. It’s the [00:51:00] spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, right? So you are talking about loads of really real things, but always with, through the lens of someone who’s looking back on it, like kindly and through a funny lens.

London: Yes.

Jameela: Of someone who’s looking back through it with an ability to see A, how funny it was sometimes in hindsight, not the bullying maybe, but also B, what you’ve been able to turn it into, right? This whole book is about recycling. It’s really an eco friendly book. It’s about recycling. It’s about taking all of that pain and using it as a motivator or using it as a learning lesson or using it to shape you.

You know, some of the trouble you and I have gotten to in our lives or some of the mess that we’ve made has been necessary humbling, where we’ve needed to learn things about ourselves.

London: Yeah, 100%.

Jameela: And I’m so grateful for every embarrassing moment I’ve ever had, because It’s helped me know that A, embarrassing moments are survivable and that this shit does blow over and, and comes back around in a way that is often much [00:52:00] better than the first time, and

London: It’s the best thing you can do is just live and fail.

Jameela: And mistakes are how we learn. Mistakes are how we learn the best. And so I think that it’s a much needed way of processing what happened and, and turning it into your strength and your superpower. And I think in that way you are quite superhuman and I’m glad that people get to see your workings out.

London: I can’t believe I’m an author. I feel like the, what I like about reading books is I like reading books from perspectives that I would never live through myself. And I feel like I have a very unique specific view on being a Black British woman in comedy at this time. And you’re not going to get another book like it. You can’t read another book like this because it’s only me. What I’ve done is I’ve created my own lane and written about this lane. So there might be books that are similar. They’ve compared it already to Tina Fey’s book and Mindy Kaling’s book and Tiffany Haddish’s book, but they are all American women. This is a Black British girl’s story that ends in America.

Jameela: And hopefully, this will be, you know, something that helps [00:53:00] charge forward other young Black comedians experiences of success.

London: Yeah, anyone. Writers, actors, I don’t want anyone to have to, I had to leave England to make it. Like, I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want any young, I used to grow up watching American TV. The first black women I saw on TV was Aunt Viv in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. So from a young age, I already knew that to be on TV, the thing I loved, I had to be American. That is what, that’s what you’re telling me because if I don’t see black British women on TV and all I’m seeing is black American women on TV, I’m obviously going to assume that I should go to America. So it’s no surprise that I live here now and I work here now because it was ingrained in me at a very young age that to get on TV, I have to be American. But essentially, I feel like I don’t want to have to do this anymore. I don’t want a young girl who looks like me to feel that they have to leave their own country to be successful and to feel like their, their audience isn’t just normal regular people.

Jameela: Yeah, growing all this amazing talent in the UK and [00:54:00] the UK should be smart enough to know now it’s time to benefit from it. Like, we’re creating all these amazing kids and then they leave. Like, I left partially because of the glass ceiling that was right above my head, so many of us did. And I hoped that there would be loads of Indian girls who would come in after me. And there haven’t really been very many.

London: Wait, is that, I don’t think that apart from Anita Rani, there’s actually not Indian girls on British TV anymore.

Jameela: I haven’t been home long enough to be able to say that with any authority, but I

London: I’m thinking.

Jameela: I wanted to see more when I got home. Like when I go home and I do British press, like I, I, I would love to have been able to have seen more, more

London: Where are the Indian girls on British TV?

Jameela: More South Asian faces, given that we’re such a big part of like, the culture over there.

London: We’re the national dish.

Jameela: I’ve definitely been sad. Yeah, exactly. The national dish is curry. Um, but you know, it is, we still have a way to go and I think it’s good that we call it out while still maintaining that we love England [00:55:00] and we see its potential and England needs to just stop, you know, like fucking itself over by denying itself.

London: Yeah.

Jameela: The diversity of talent.

London: England’s like that kid that you think has like promise in school. It’s just like, you’re really hard on it because you’ve got good potential. It’s like, I want better for you, England, okay? You’ve let me down.

Jameela: We were rooting for you.

London: We were rooting for you, England. And that’s what it is. Me and Jameela Jamilare rooting for you, England. Do better, okay? And you can help by reading my book. Live My Best Life.

Jameela: Well, no plug is going to come better than that. An extraordinary segue. Well done on writing a book. Well done on everything you’ve survived. Well done on bringing puppeteers up in this world.

London: Yes, let’s go. Let’s go. Justice for puppeteers. Puppeteers need more pussy. I’m going to start, I’m going to start a club.

Jameela: And I look forward, and I look forward to the next book about what the journey in America is [00:56:00] like.

London: Yes, I’m currently living through it. Oh, Jam, this is great. Thank you so much for speaking with me. And I’m hungover. We did it. We had a really important conversation that was deep and honest. I’m hungover and it’s helped my hangover, like my headache is gone now, babe. You’re magical. Thank you, honey.

Jameela: Love you.

London: Love you too. Buy my book!

Jameela: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. It is edited by Andrew Carson 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. It’s such a great way to show your support 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 iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to [00:57:00] one of our listeners.

Listener: I weigh being a good friend to the people in my life and being a kind stranger to those that I do not know. I weigh my eating disorder recovery, my healthy boundaries, my strength in removing myself from abusive relationships. I weigh my intelligence and my empathy. I weigh being a psychology major so that I can be a therapist. And I weigh my love for my dog.