Andy Coulson: Welcome back to Crisis What Crisis, the podcast where we explore life's most challenging moments with those who have lived through them and who have emerged not just unscathed but changed. Sometimes wiser, sometimes bruised, often both.

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Cally Beaton: I would leave the house in my nice clothes, go to the psychiatric hospital, come home, help them with their revision, go back in the next day. Like a sort of reverse One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I was sneaking in and out of the asylum.

Andy Coulson: My guest today is someone who knows what it means to lose control and to take it back loudly, publicly, and with sharp and brilliant humour.

Cally Beaton is a stand-up comedian, writer, podcaster and former media executive, but behind the laughter is a series of personal crises that have defined and, in many ways, liberated her life. From being the only girl at an all-boys school in the ‘70s, to raising an autistic son as a single parent. From navigating mental health breakdown in mid-life, misdiagnosed and misunderstood, to walking away from a high-powered career at Viacom CBS to pursue stand-up comedy in her 40s.

Cally Beaton But the one that changed everything was the late great Joan Rivers, we got quite close, and we had dinner together just the two of us, not long before she died. And she said to me, “You should think about doing stand-up. What you've been doing for me is kind of warm up. I've seen you do it, you could do it.”

But at the time I was 45 and I just said, “Well it's too late for that, Joan. I don't know if you've noticed, and she just looked at me and said, “I'm 81, Cally, what's stopping you?” And then she died a couple of weeks after that conversation, very unexpectedly as you'll remember, from complications to surgery. And then two weeks after that I found myself on stage at an open mic gig, doing a sort of down and dirty bit of stand up.

Andy Colson: Cally’s story is one of resilience through radical reinvention. And in this conversation we talk about breakdowns, boundaries and the brutal honesty required to actually start again. We look at what happens when the mask comes off and how humour, not as a defence but as a tool can help us sit with pain rather than run away from it.

All this and much more you will find between the covers of Cally’s superb new book Namaste Motherfuckers. It's not a bad title, either. This is not a story of tidy recovery or bulletproof optimism, it's about what happens when the coping strategies that worked for years suddenly stop working, and what it takes to build new ones from the ground up. So if you're struggling to find your voice, your footing or just your breath in the middle of a storm this one is for you.

Cally Beaton, welcome to Crisis What Crisis.

Cally Beaton: Thank you. I think you've made me sound far better than I see myself in that introduction, so thank you for that.

Andy Coulson: I have underplayed it. Thanks for joining us Cally, it's great to have you with us. My first question is I think probably a pretty obvious one. I've listed some of the achievements there. You are someone who's able to sell out The Apollo. You run your own hugely successful podcast, you write books, the latest one is just superb. You smash it on TV shows like QI and The Apprentice, You're Fired. You have got, let's just say, a very sharp grip of how social media works. You are a presentation coach. You are a single mother of two brilliant kids.

So my first question is, how on earth do you do all this? I want to know what the Cally Beaton operating system is, please.

Cally Beaton: Well, do you know what a bit of a revelation has been for me? So I very much drank the 1990s Kool-Aid which was, do you remember? We thought we'd solved feminism and we could be the have it all people, or particularly women, we all thought that was what we were supposed to be doing. And I tried to do everything perfectly, I was a real workaholic. And one gets rewarded in society for high achieving and effectively what's another addiction, workaholism.

So that was kind of how I lived my life. Really high octane, addicted to adrenaline, doing too much, way too much. And it's only more recently, I write about it in the book, that I met somebody at an event that I was doing. I do lots of corporate events, as you do, we swim in those waters. And there was this woman who I was chatting to, my age, and she just kept talking about things she tried, but hadn't turned into something amazing, just things she wanted to try and she'd done them. She was just a fascinating woman who just kept doing these things because they were interesting and they fulfilled her.

And I said, “How do you stay so curious and try so many things? And why- you don’t seem to be encumbered by a need to succeed.” And she said, “My mum always used to say to me if a job's worth doing it's worth doing badly.” And I thought, what an amazing liberating way to let us try things. Because what really holds us back is thinking that we need to be perfect and achieve lots, and everyone else is doing better than we are.

So I sort of- much as it's lovely for you to say that I do all those things and I've- but I’ve done lots of them badly, I've not always felt that I'm doing- I've always felt I'm not doing things very well, I've been plagued with all the usual nonsense that most of us have of being impostors. So I guess it's not drinking the Kool-Aid anymore, and thinking yes it's great to try lots of things, but the bits where we weren't achieving much and that aren't on our CV are quite fascinating as well.

Andy Coulson: You’ve said that you think your superpower is the ability to connect.

Cally Beaton: Yes.

Andy Coulson: Just explain that a bit more for me.

Cally Beaton: All the things I've done. So, as we go through life, we take everything with us that we've done before. So if we decide we want to reinvent at whatever age and stage in life, everything you've ever done has come with you to make you do what you're doing right now well. It's not a coincidence that you can reinvent and jump to the next lily pad.

And when we look at bottling up the things we know we're good at and love doing, if they're at the essence of everything we do, then it's amazing how the sort of fairy dust just starts to get sprinkled on those things.

So the one thing I think that's united everything I've done from being in boardrooms at the commercial, the tough edge of business, I was driving multi-millions of dollars of revenue for big, aggressive companies. But I don't think I was commercially particularly outstanding, but I did know how to make people want to do a deal with me. And I know as a comedian how to make people want to do a deal with me. And hopefully the readers of my books have to want to do a deal with me.

So it's not about conning anyone, it's wanting to make it easy for them to step in.

Andy Coulson: So, what are the components of that then? If we were to try and make that a transferable skill for the people watching or listening here, what is it?

I mean, I could- I think it might be useful to say that on the kind of journey into this studio where we're now sat, you had a conversation with Rex who works on this podcast, also happens to be my godson, and by the time you got here you had a fair summary of Rax's very impressive life.

Cally Beaton: It’s a very impressive life, I think he should be on this show, not me.

Andy Coulson: But that's part of it, is just being interested right?

Cally Beaton: Yes, I mean, you know this from- you could write the book on this as well. I think it's about- if we think about what empathy is, and we're increasingly lacking in empathy aren't we, in the world? We're looking at people across the political divide, across the social divide, who are not like us, and we're demonising them, and we're encouraged to do so. We live in our sort of echo chambers and I'll hear the things I want to hear and hate the things I don't.

But actually empathy is putting ourselves in other people's shoes. And part of the reason we are so divided is we are increasingly not willing to do that. There will be people who voted for things that I or you don't agree with, who have very valid reasons for such things and who we should be listening to, not demonising and pushing away from us.

So I think it's empathy which starts from a genuine interest, and therefore also humility. So if I'm entering into a conversation, so if I meet someone like Rex, who is probably the same age as my children, and instead of thinking, “Well, he's like one of my children, what's he got to say that's interesting?” if I am thinking, “Oh this is interesting. He's not at all like me, I wonder what might come out of this conversation.” If you actually listen to learn before you listen to respond, that's how I'd sum it up, it's amazing what the world will throw at you.

And isn't it a relief to know that we're not the most interesting person in the room? It takes the heat right off to know that the people that we're talking to, every time I give a speech or I'm on stage I'm so aware of the fact that every single person in that room's story would be absolutely as interesting as my story if it were them that were on stage.

Andy Coulson: So, there’s the listening, but what about the connection bit then?

Cally Beaton: Well, I think listening is part of connection. I think if people feel fully listened to, it's like a kind of love, isn't it? If anyone's ever really listened to, they feel so valued and cared for, it's a lovely thing. It's eye contact, it's letting that person step into your world. It's what mothers do with babies. I mean, it's a wonderful thing to be unconditionally listened to without an agenda.

And I also think it's about making it a sort of mutual thing. So, when people think about what it is to get what they want in life, it's sometimes tempting to think of it as winning or losing, you know, the art of the deal, how can I win? I never really thought about winning in business. I thought, how am I going to do deals where somebody's going to not just have done this one deal with me, but want me to be the person that they'll come to the next time they need something because it was a valuable experience for them, not just what they did commercially.

So, I think it's about not being quite as cynical and win-lose about things and realising that it's all about connections. You know, there is no- I don't think there's any commercial, professional or indeed maybe personal excellence without human connection.

That's how we've evolved as a species haven't we, by connecting with other humans, and that lack of connection is what's causing part of our mental health crisis.

Andy Coulson: That's exactly right. Let's try and work out then, or explain for our audience how this superpower developed. I touched on it in the intro, you were the only girl at an all-boys school in the ‘70s. What did that sort of early experience teach you about sort of coping, long before you had the language for it I suppose, or the understanding?

Cally Beaton: Well to add some colour to that story as well, because my parents taught at a boys’ prep school, that's why- and we lived in the grounds. That's why I was educated there at the age just turned 8. I went there from 8 to 13 and some girls did join over the five years, but not many girls. We had enough for a game of netball at the end of the five years.

And to add to being the wrong gender for that school, I was ginger, I was overweight, I wore glasses, I had knock knees, I had corrective footwear for knock knees, and I was a teacher's child. So that's a heck of a little package of things to take into a school. And I think what it taught me was- I definitely got my humour from it. So I had to be quick witted, you know, that's kind of how I survived, with sort of a quick turn of phrase and quick wit and the boys’ sort of banter, I was part of it.

But it was only quite recently, actually, within the last five to ten years, that I realised that in all my male dominated environments, so boardrooms were male dominated from the start, stand-up is still quite male dominated, less so thankfully, but still quite male. And I think for many years it didn't occur to me if I was in a room full of loud male confident voices, that I should not be as loud and confident as them. Because I think deep down, I sort of probably thought I was a bloke. I was like, well. I remember describing my childhood to somebody in a therapeutic context, and I was referring to myself as a child as ‘it’. And they said, “Why aren't you calling yourself she?” And I thought, do you know, because I don't think I thought of myself as she. Not in a way of saying that I identify as not being female, but I just had a sort of androgynous feeling about myself.

And I think it meant that some of the sort of imposterism that you sometimes can have when you're in the minority, up against the privileged majority, sort of didn't speak very loudly to me because I think I just was like, well I've always been in these environments, and I didn't really question it. It was just what I was doing it Maybe yes, I was in a sort of fool's paradise.

Andy Coulson: You describe in the book that at one stage you were sort of sent to Coventry though, that you had this, as you describe it, you had period of time where you're just completely silent.

Cally Beaton: For a year, yes.

Andy Coulson: That must have been a very difficult period for you as a child. It mirrors something actually that we heard from another one of our guests, Aasmah Mir who is a journalist.

Cally Beaton: Yes, I know Aasmah.

Andy Coulson: You know Aasmah. She had exactly the same thing happen to her, for very different reasons, at school. And she describes that sort of period of total silence in her life as one of the most difficult periods that she had. But then she had that moment when she realised, hang on, it’s going to go one way or the other. It's either going to become darker, or you were going to realise, “Hang on a second, I'm not the problem here, they're the problem.” When did that sort of moment of realisation come for you?

Cally Beaton: I don't think I had those kind of big wow, light bulb moments at the time. I think I was just head down, survive. My coping mechanism at the time, I was a pianist and I used to just play the piano at the boys' school for hours and hours a day because it meant I didn't have to interact with anyone. It meant those non-structured times outside lessons were populated by something where human interaction wasn't needed. And so I became a good pianist, and it was actually at my next school where- I'd got a music scholarship to go to the next school, and it was at that school I was sent to Coventry.

So ironically, finally I'm in a mixed school, a co-ed school, but again I didn't fit in because I was a scholarship child, we had no money, I was the child of parents, we didn't have two pennies to rub together so I couldn't have gone to that school without a scholarship, and most of the other children were from great privilege and wealth.

So I was again really- I was a scholarship kid. I was like the sort of Oliver Twist figure there. So again, actually, I probably got through that year with music, with just playing music and going to the music block and just playing and playing. But it did- I ended up not eating that year, the way I got out of that school, and this is not to try at home, kids, but I just stopped eating.

I went on a sort of- because I was so miserable, and in the end, my parents took me out of the school because I was so unhappy that- I didn't consciously go, “I won't eat and that'll stop me having to be here,” but I just was too unhappy to eat. So I stopped eating-

Andy Coulson: You are what age at this stage?

Cally Beaton: 14.

Andy Coulson: Which is a very important stage in anybody’s life.

Cally Beaton: And quite a good age to eat, I would say. Good, important to give one's body some fuel.

Andy Coulson: So, when you look at the kind of resilience element which you write about a lot in the book, brilliantly, how much of that do you kind of track back to your childhood?

Cally Beaton: I definitely think self-reliance is something I track back to my childhood. So I was very independent very young, and I always thought if no one's going to save me, I'm going to have to save myself, which was a very good thing in terms of me earning a living and being- I have always had quite entrepreneurial ways of getting out and making some money, and no one's helped me with that, I've done that myself.

So self-reliance I think came from that, and a capacity- I guess, thereby you are resilient because I was living my life and looking after myself. But in later life, in the last ten years, I've realised that what would have been a very helpful thing that was entirely missing from all of those years was any sense that chinks in the armour are not just okay, but they're inevitable. And that when we talk about vulnerability and the importance of vulnerability, I think people can mistake that for not being strong, or for crying in meetings, or not being able to get out of bed in the morning. And it might be that, and if it is that, absolutely fair play to you.

But above all, I think it's having a conversation with yourself about what's actually going on. So nowadays, as opposed to then I would propel myself through on sheer survival, instinct, grit, determination, I can't drop the ball, now I propel myself forward by taking whatever I'm feeling with me.

So if I've had some bad news or I'm feeling a bit ropey before I go and give a big speech to thousands of people or do a stand-up show, I don't try and tell myself not to feel it. I just notice what I'm feeling and sort of think, “Well, I'll just turn up on stage, I'll turn up, and if part of the turning up today is I'm a bit wobbly, I'm just going to let that be within me.” I won't need to say it to people, but I'm not going to fight with it.

And I think I became a loads better speaker and performer once that was the case. Because I don't know about you, but I've seen loads of corporate keynotes, inspirational speakers who are quite alienatingly pleased with themselves about what they've done. And they're kind of like, “Well, I've done it, you could do it, too.” And I'm like, oh really? Whereas mine's much more like, “If I can do it, anyone can do it. And guys, I'm still a hot mess. Don't you worry about that. This is not a redemptive story, but it is my story.” And I find that a much more interesting story to tell, I think I would find it a more interesting story to hear.

So I think resilience really, I do now feel much more resilient, I'm not faking resilience. And it's because the days that I really struggle, of which there are many, I don't think I let it blow my skirt up as much. I think now I'm like, well it's not going to collapse me, it’s just a tough day. And today I'm a bit wobbly, or I had a big old cry when I was walking the dog. That's okay, I can still go off and talk at this thing. It’s alright, it’s all part of it.

So it's just lowering the pressure I think, you know. You mentioned social media in the introduction, and even though social media can be a negative thing, I on social media just do my little things each day of what's really going on. They're not at all cleverly edited or curated, it’s just 30 seconds of my day or 60 seconds. I'm like, “This is what's happened,” and that's what people step into, it’s this thing that they're like, “Alright yes, me too, that happened to me. I forgot that you can't, you know, open the fridge with your car key,” or whatever happens in midlife.

So I think I'm all for just the absolute joy of the imperfection of it all, and the mess and the failure And I think that sort of enables us to succeed as well in a weird way. It's connected.

Andy Coulson: But what seems to drive it all is this connection thing, with you. Your social media is a good example, right? Because people could look at that- I'm interested in comms as you know, I'm interested in what sits behind the curtain and all the rest of it, and you can look at that and you could say, “Oh there's a lot of work that gone into that.”

Cally Beaton: I wish that were true.

Andy Coulson: No, but my point is it's entirely authentic,

Cally Beaton: Yes, and people could smell it though, people are wise. People are wise.

Andy Coulson: You can absolutely feel it when it's been played with, or it's manufactured in some way.

Cally Beaton: Yes. I try not to even-

Andy Coulson: Yours just isn’t.

Cally Beaton: It isn’t, and even not only is it what I've just thought of, but I really try not to even record it twice. So, if I've got an idea or something has just happened, even if I look absolutely horrible or something weird happens behind me with someone having a row about a Lime bike, I try to just let that be the thing I've done, Because I am just trying to- and I consciously don't always look good on them. If I’ve had my makeup done for a show or something and I'm looking nice, I look nice. If I've been crying with the dog in the woods, I look like I've been crying with the dog in the woods. And what a relief as well, you don't have to be curated all the time.

But I do also feel guilty because lots of people I admire on social media, people like Richard Franks who does the mum stuff, I think he's a genius. And his stuff is so incredibly beautifully written and filmed and thought about, and I feel guilty that I get any traction compared to somebody like Richard who's properly putting the hours in and is such a talent. But you know, mine is not curated.

Andy Coulson: Are you torn at all over social media? Because as the mother of two kids as well, you’ve come up through that sort of, that first era of technology in that sense. My kids are the same. Are you worried about where we're heading on all that? I mean, they are also anxiety machines aren't they? They are why me machines, they are definitely FOMO machines as well as the other areas of madness that they sort of perpetuate.

Cally Beaton: I think the frightening thing is that whereas if we all go into the cinema and we all watch a film together, all different generations, we might perceive the film differently, but we’re all sat in the same cinema watching the same film. The problem with any social media platform is- so my experience of Instagram is I go on, I put up a reel most days, I engage a bit with the comments, and 90% of the comments are absolutely brilliant from women whose stories I hear, other people I now follow, and it's a community that I absolutely love and it emboldens and empowers me.

The other 10% are not such nice comments, and I have various different ways of dealing or not bothering to deal with those. That's my experience of say, Instagram. My daughter's experience of Instagram could be going on, seeing a mate from school who's got the dream job and looks great in a bikini, and her going, “Oh god, why have I not done this?” We're all having different experiences on the same platform.

So for me, social media has been the biggest game changer. I've had more- I wouldn't have a book deal without social media, that's what got me noticed in a way that doing Live at The Apollo ten times wouldn't have done. So that's the world I live in, and like it or don't like it, if you're a newish comic you need it. You need social media.

I like it, but I would be very glib and naïve to say that I don't think it can be quite a pernicious influence on people as well. So I'm- just as when I used to work in reality TV, you know, I've been on the production side of reality TV shows since the ones that predated Big Brother, and they've paid for me to have a lovely house to live in. But have they also done some terrible things in society? Yes, they have. So I'm a hypocrite. You know, I'm inhabiting worlds that are definitely two-sided.

Andy Coulson: It’s not hypocrisy, it's living a life, isn't it?

Cally Beaton It’s living a life, but I think having awareness of it and realising- and also noticing, you know. I wrote a piece for the Financial Times a few years ago about my role in reality TV, on the back of there had been yet another suicide of someone who'd been on I think it might be Love Island, one of the reality shows. And I wrote a piece about safeguarding and what we need to do and how we need to do more of it, but from the perspective of someone who was part of those very unregulated reality TV shows. And again, nobody from a show I've directly worked on has come to any harm, but I was part of propping up a genre that as well as doing great things for people and making celebrities of people and giving people great entertainment, has ruined some people's lives.

I think it's the same with social media. For me it's an essential marketing platform and I happen to love what I do on it. Lots of my book got written through the reels I was recording on Instagram and I would be like, “Oh, there's something in that idea, I'll write that up.” My stand-up gets written from what I'm trailing out on social media. Not cynically, but if I put something out that's funny and suddenly 5 million people have viewed it and 2 million of them have liked it, I'm like, “Well, there's definitely something in that for my standup.”

So for me, it's a lovely test bed, but of course it's not always a benevolent influence on people’s lives.

Andy Coulson: It sounds like you've got control of it, and that is the key.

Cally Beaton: I am trying to use it as a force for good, definitely.

Andy Coulson: Let's talk about the move into comedy, if that's okay.

You left your job at Viacom, you were a very big noise. At MTV you were responsible for bringing shows like South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, thank you for that by the way, which became a fundamental part of my life.

Cally Beaton: Did that become a babysitting facility?

Andy Coulson: Yes. You know, turning left on planes, rubbing shoulders with A-listers, seemingly the perfect job. And yet you decided to chuck it all in and become a comedian.

Cally Beaton: Join the circus.

Andy Coulson: So just tell us the story please if you don't mind, Cally. What kind of led to it and then how did you actually make the decision?

Cally Beaton: So, I did work in some great companies. I worked for ITV, then I was on the board of Viacom CBS who own Paramount Pictures, MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, crucially for this story. And my job was very much at the boring business side of things. I was there to generate revenue and I had aggressive commercial targets, big teams around the world, you know, it wasn't a- essentially it was an extremely glamorous seeming sales job really was what I was doing.

But I did get to meet some incredible A-list names during those years, mainly because I was monetising the content that they were fronting. So whoever the front of our new big priority shows were, we would fly them out to Cannes or wherever we were in the world at trade events, we would host events for drunken jaded TV executives where the A-lister would go and do a turn and we would hope that said executives would part with their hard-earned cash and invest in the show.

And I used to be the business lead, so I would host those events and I would be the person who would intro them. And of course, in the beginning, as you'll know coming from a comms background, I was always given clear sort of points by our comms team, make sure you get these business messages across to these executives from around the world. And I soon realised after hosting many of these, I was like well, no one cares about whatever our business priorities are. I've just got to think of some things to say that keep people- a bit like a wedding speech, that mean people are vaguely interested enough to actually see the bride and groom who they're interested in, you know.

So I was like the sort of least sexy fluffer ever, I guess, for these A-listers that would come on. So I met lots of interesting people during those years and had many fascinating formative conversations.

But the one that changed everything was the late great Joan Rivers, who I had the privilege of working with during those years. I'd never really thought of her as a kind of feminist icon, but she was busting through the glass ceilings of Hollywood in the ‘60s and ‘70s when no women were doing what she was doing. When you think about what happened to her on the American talk show circuit, how sort of penalised and ostracised she was, you know. She was a pretty phenomenal force really, in entertainment and also societally when women were getting judged very differently from men for what they were saying on stages as comics.

So when I got to meet her and got to know her, I was like, God, I’ve just never thought of her as like this incredible role model, never thought of her like that. We got quite close and we had dinner together just the two of us, not long before she died. And she said to me, “You should think about doing stand-up. What you've been doing for me is kind of warm up. I've seen you do it, you could do it.”

But at the time I was 45, I was a single parent of two kids, one of my kids has special needs. I was on the board of a massive Hollywood studio and I just said, “Well it's too late for that, Joan. I don't know if you've noticed, for these reasons.” I listed them to her and she just looked at me and said, “I'm 81, Cally, what's stopping you?” And it was- it's lovely that it's a showbizzy anecdote, it's lovely that it was Joan Rivers who said it to me, that makes for a nice bit of the book.

But do you know what actually made that a relevant story? And this could happen to any of us at any bus stop or train station or supermarket queue, was an 81 year old woman looking at me as a 45 year old woman saying, “You're in the thick of it. Do it now. You can.” That's actually what was so life changing to me. And it was lovely, of course, that someone was believing in something I might be able to do.

And then she died a couple of weeks after that conversation, very unexpectedly as you'll remember, from complications to surgery. And then two weeks after that I found myself on stage at an open mic gig, doing a sort of down and dirty bit of stand up. Not doing it well, of course, because not many comedians are spat out of the womb as brilliant comedians. So I was pretty- I mean, I had a bit of stagecraft, I knew how to hold a microphone, but I wasn't very funny or very particularly talented at it to begin with. I was alright.

And then I did what everyone else does when they become a comedian, or virtually everyone. I just hoofed around the open mic circuit night in, night out, put in my however many hundreds of gigs until I started to know how to be a better comedian.

Andy Coulson: When did you make the decision and tell your employers, “I'm off.”

Cally Beaton: So, people who've loved me have always called me Cally, boyfriends have called me Cally, people who know me well. But my corporate name was Caroline. So when I started in stand-up, I thought I'll call myself Cally, it keeps it a bit different. And also, it means I'm probably less Googleable that I'm doing this stand-up, I'll keep it quiet.

And then in my- it was my second year as a stand-up, I used to be in New York a lot for board meetings. And I got through to the final of the Gotham Comedy New Act competition, so I was in town anyway, and then I had to come back two days or three days later for the final.

And the chairman of Viacom sort of saw me in there, and he said, “You've only just been in last week.” And I said, “Oh yeah, I've come back for a couple of things.” And you know, he said, “Oh, great to see you.”

And then a couple of hours later he came back again, he said, “I've just seen a poster on Times Square for the final of the-” and he said, “It's got a Cally Beaton on it, with a face that looks remarkably like yours. Is that you? And is that why you're here?” And I said, “Yes, it is.” And he said, “Give me five minutes.” And he went off, and I was like, oh my God, what's going happen? And then he called me into his epic corner office at 1515 Broadway where the MTV offices were, Viacom offices, and he said, “Two questions. Are you going stay here for another 18 months?” Because that was the budgetary cycle, so I was on the hook for a lot of money to generate. He said you know, “Are you in for the long haul with this for at least 18 months of this job?” I said I am. And he said, “Second question, can I come along with my family and watch you tonight?”

And so the cat was out of the bag, and he came along. I didn't win, but I did well to get to the final and yes.

Andy Coulson: A great bit of leadership.

Cally Beaton: Yes, a great bit of leadership.

And then the tipping point was, I got my first bit of telly quite early on. I got an episode of QI when I'd only been going about 18 months. And again, that was luck that John Lloyd had seen me do some standup. Then I'd done The Museum of Curiosity on Radio 4 which then led to QI, a lot of the same people involved. So I was already starting to do telly and obviously that's quite a big show, and work were brilliant about it. I've got not a bad word to say about Viacom.

However, I was thinking, well we own Channel 5, and we own Comedy Central. This is going get weird pretty blooming quickly, because the channels I would be on at this stage as a stand-up are the channels we own and the other channels I'll be on are our competition. No one ever did give me any grief about it but I was thinking that something has got to change, this isn't a normal way to be.

So nothing ever got tricky because I decided to pull the plug and go full steam ahead as a performer and writer and comedian, and I don't know if it ever would have got tricky but it started to feel weird to me. I was like, “I don't know, what am I? The poacher, the gamekeeper, what am I doing here?”

Andy Coulson: There was something else significant going on. I hope I'm right with my chronology here Cally, you’ll correct me if I'm not. But earlier in the story you'd had a very difficult time. I mean, you'd had a breakdown which you describe.

Cally Beaton: Yes, breakdown is the right word.

Andy Coulson: As you describe it in the book. That presumably, and tell us if you're comfortable to, what kind of happened, what caused it, what was around it? But that is also a very important part of your mindset at this stage, right, in terms of the decisions that you're making to give up on the job and leave and move on.

Cally Beaton: Yes.

Andy Coulson: What had happened?

Cally Beaton: It all kind of coincided with becoming a stand-up. So the year- again, I write about this in the book. So my 44th birthday, the sort of then love of my life, not the father of my children with whom I have a wonderful relationship, but a sort of subsequent partner, he had left me on my 44th birthday. And that next year I went on to do my first ever stand-up gig and ran my first ever marathon, some amazing things happened that wouldn't have happened if that man had not left that day.

But it probably sowed a seed of something that was pretty miserable that I was coping with, that I wasn't particularly trying to think about. I was trying to literally outrun it. I'll literally run a marathon to not think about it.

At the same time, anybody listening who either is a woman in their 40s, has been a woman in their 40s, or knows a woman in their 40s, will know that much as it's brilliant we talk about menopause in our 50s and the hormonal upheaval of that, I still think the absolute rock the boat years of your 40s as a woman, I think peri-menopause is one hell of a thing to contend with, and we still don't talk about that enough.

So I was also in the grip of perimenopause but there was no one talking about that, this is twelve years ago, ten years ago. So I was in the grip of hormonal upheaval, I was single, it had been me and my kids- I split up with my children's dad twenty years ago, so I'd been a single mum to all intents and purposes for a long time, and I'm very close to my children and I always have been. And they were getting to the point where they were going to be leaving home.

And I'd been working really hard since I was 16, I'd been supporting myself financially. So by this time I'm thirty years into relentless, you know, commercial, entrepreneurial, get it done, sole breadwinner days.

And just one day I just absolutely fell apart. And ironically it was after I'd just given a speech at a sort of, it was an empowering women, 5,000 people at an empowered women's breakfast at the O2 and I did this amazing speech and then I just couldn't stop crying. And it was actually, you know, we all need allies and it was a male ally at work, a friend who for some reason I had asked if I could have a kind of cup of coffee with him that day. And the minute he walked in to have a coffee with me, I just fell apart. He had had a crisis the year before, a full-on mental health crisis in his big corporate job, and he just said, “You need some help. You're not well at the moment, you need some help. I'm going to help you get help.”

It would be disingenuous of me to tell this story without acknowledging the fact I had private health insurance. I had a massive job and I was very lucky that I had great private health insurance. And then literally that day, he got me in front of a private psychiatrist and I had six weeks treatment in a psychiatric hospital. I wasn't sectioned, I wasn't there residentially, but as a day patient, sort of my own volition. But it was pretty life- certainly life changing and probably life saving. And I had six weeks doing intensive therapy in a psychiatric hospital.

My kids were doing their GCSEs and their A-levels respectively at the time, and I didn't tell them, they thought I was going to work. So I would leave the house in my nice clothes, go to the psychiatric hospital, come home, help them with their revision, go back in the next day. Like a sort of reverse One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest I was sneaking in and out of the asylum.

I'm very mindful telling this story, because if I hadn't had that help, and pretty much everyone listening hasn't got that help, I right now would not also have that help available if it happened again, I have no recourse to it now. And goodness knows the system isn't resourced for us all to have that help.

So that for me changed everything, really. And I had to dig pretty deep in that time and it was a leveller, the people you meet and what you do in there. It was mostly therapeutic, you know, tons of group therapy.

And I remember talking to one of the people in there who is still my therapist. So I now- and again, I know I'm very privileged that I can pay to have a therapist. I've not had her round the clock. for the last however many years but I do see her still as a therapist. And I remember saying to her- I call her Yoda, that is not her actual name although I say in the book once I did call her it for real by mistake as I was leaving a session, I was like, “Thanks Yoda.” I said, “You don't even look like Yoda,” which made it worse.

But I said to her I'm really scared about going back into the real world, and she said, “What do you mean by the real world?” I said, “You know, work, home, responsibilities, no help from you guys, and I don't know how to do it.” And she said, “Well, what usually keeps people on the right track is profound change.” I said, “What does profound change even look like or mean?” and she said, “You'll know.” And I think her words, saying those two words profound change, probably that and the fact that I was really in quite- sort of had been in quite a desperate place, I mean, what I was doing wasn't working and you know, the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It was time to do something differently. And I also at that point was diagnosed, erroneously as it turns out, with bipolar disorder. Loads of perimenopausal and menopausal women are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, sometimes correctly, they’ve masked it up to that point and the mask has fallen because of their hormonal shifts. But in many cases it's hormonal disruption being mistaken for bipolar disorder. So I also was in possession of an erroneous as I now know bipolar diagnosis.

So yes, and a couple of other quite big things happened at that time including me nearly dying in a car crash in Iceland. Some big things were happening and everything just pointed to the fact of kind of, if not now, then when? So I sort of took the leap in a kind of messy, “Oh I don't know, I'm going to have to take this leap,” way, rather than a-

Andy Coulson: But there are leaps and there are leaps.

Cally Beaton: Yes, it was a leap, and it was a leap just before a global pandemic.

Andy Coulson: This was an exposing leap.

Cally Beaton: It was an exposing leap, and I literally leapt off the corporate hamster wheel with a well-paid job and share options a matter of months before the pandemic shut every live venue in the world. So I'd literally backed a horse that was then put in a stable for 18 months.

Andy Coulson: Timing being the key to comedy.

Cally Beaton: Yes exactly, and they say don't they, tragedy plus time equals comedy, and enough time has passed for that to now feel funny. But at the time it did not feel funny. But yes, I definitely have no regrets about the timing or the decision. I've never regretted it even for an afternoon.

Andy Coulson: But you emerge from that very difficult period obviously with a much deeper understanding of yourself, a much deeper understanding of what you wanted, of what's gone before and what might be ahead of you. It sounds as though you got brilliant help and you were-

Cally Beaton: Yes, I got amazing help.

Andy Coulson: And you were able to find the way forward. If we were to try and distil some of that down then, if we were try to extract from that very dark period some of the kind of useful pieces for somebody who might be going through something similar, perhaps not as extreme, perhaps more extreme, who knows.

Cally Beaton: Most people I think have gone through something as extreme as that actually or will do. I remember a friend of mine when I was working MTV, she was the daughter of a preacher. I remember her saying that her dad had said to her when she was in her teenage years, he was like, “If life hasn't given you a kicking, you just ain't lived long enough.” And it's like yes, life does give you a kicking. I think that it happens to everybody actually and we've all had- even if not a full-on breakdown for weeks, I think every one of us has had a day where we're like, “I actually feel like I'm losing my grip here and I don't know how I'm getting through today,” and isn't it a relief to know that's a collective experience and we're not- and that's not us that's not us being insane or weird. That's us being humans.

Andy Coulson: It's part of being human.

Cally Beaton: It’s part of being human yes, what a relief.

Andy Coulson: So, what were the- if I were to say give me a couple of the lessons that you still carry from that from that period in terms of the sort of commentary that you still have from that period?

Cally Beaton: Well, a couple of things I think I mentioned earlier, not trying to chase out the imposter but trying to make friends with it, like noticing it and going, you know, yes, I am feeling quite nervous or inadequate, and instead of thinking I need something to make me bulletproof, thinking maybe knowing- noticing that. If I have a tough day now, I just notice what I’m feeling and what the thoughts are. I don't try and solve them, I'm just like, “Okay, that seems to be what we're working with today. That's a relief.”

I think the idea of- I write about it in the book, I think I call that bit I'm not a Buddhist but… because I was always very cynical about serenity and mindfulness and anything which meant sitting on a mat, you know, being quiet for a bit. But I did quite a lot of meditation and mindfulness and I do think that's immensely helpful. Just even brief bits of meditation and mindfulness, so that was quite a transformation for me.

And realising if you sit with your feelings rather than drowning them out they lose their power. I used to think if I let them in they'll kill me. I think I literally thought they'd kill me, and they don't. You can look them in the eye and they'll pass like clouds in the sky So that's a very helpful thing. I'm not always as great at doing it as I am at talking about it, but it definitely works.

And I remember one of the things that came up, one of the things that we all had in common in that hospital, and we were all very different people from very different walks of life, was that we all thought we fundamentally weren't enough and weren't lovable, and that if anyone could really know us they'd see right through us. And I think just allowing we without being sort of arrogant about it, but to like ourselves a bit more, and have a bit of a kinder narrative towards ourselves. We're not always very kind to others and we're certainly not always very kind to ourselves. So just trying to turn that beam in on ourselves, and just all that sort of really negative self-talk, it's so difficult to live with that in our heads. And why should we? We just sort of need to get out of our own way and be a bit nicer to ourselves.

So yes. I remember they talked in the hospital about self-care, and what were we all doing for self-care? I did not understand what those two words together could even mean, I was like, self-care? I didn't understand it because none of my life was going into caring for myself. Not because I'm some great altruist and amazing woman, but I just wasn't ever fitting my own life belt, ever. It's like, I was the one doing-

Andy Coulson: Well, you were a provider.

Cally Beaton: I was a provider, but actually it's quite a selfish act to not provide for yourself, because you can't keep pouring out of a cup that's empty. I mean, you're going to at a certain point not be able to do anything for anyone. So, it's actually not at all selfish to look after yourself.

Andy Coulson: You said that being a comedian is the closest you've come to a proper sense of belonging.

Cally Beaton: Yes.

Andy Coulson: Tell me what you mean by that.

Cally Beaton: Well, we're a sort of band of rogues, aren't we? I don't know what it is about comics, but as soon as I started going into, well I'd say green rooms, they weren't green rooms at the time. They were a bench at the back of a crappy pub, was what we were sitting in. And I thought, isn't this amazing that I'm here, a woman in my late forties with two kids, a board level career, and no one here gives a shit about any of that. All they care about is, am I going to be funny? That's immensely liberating and-

Andy Coulson: And terrifying.

Cally Beaton: Well, terrifying, but also how nice to get a proper- when do you get a proper blank sheet of paper at our age? And there would be a, Tom Lucy at the time was starting out and he was, I think he was like 17. So I'd be working with Tom, I might be on a bill with somebody- very rarely anyone older than me, there are a couple of people like Jeff Innocent, I might be working with who is a bit older than me, mainly younger than me people.

And I just- I don't know what it is about comedians, but we've all had a bit of an odd paper round. It’s an unnatural thing. Why are we- why would you stand in a room facing the wrong way, trying to make people laugh? They say that comedians are egomaniacs with intense self-loathing, and I think that sums up. We're sort of like, “Look at me, look at me, don't look at me, I hate myself, but look at me.” We're a mess, you know, we're a bit of a mess.

But I do- I don't know what it is. I really have a lot of time for comedians, as with all industries there are a couple of less charming people but it's very much the minority.

Andy Coulson: Try and describe for me the feeling that you have when it when it's really working.

Cally Beaton: When it's working it is- I don't believe you know there's- I think I say in the book, you know, I don't believe Renton in Trainspotting on one of his highs was having a better time. It's amazing when it's working, and it's- I suppose if you were to compare it to being an athlete, you're in your flow state. You're not you're not even thinking about what you're doing, you're just completely in the moment with the audience and they’re with you.

Andy Coulson: And the ultimate connection.

Cally Beaton: Yes, a massive connection, massive connection. And connecting with a group of people, and also you've thereby- because the worst nightmare for a comedian is when the audience aren't hunting as a pack, so you've got someone over there likes it, people over there are having a chat, someone's at the bar . You need to unite them even if you unite them in something that's happening with a heckler, but you sort of want them together. So if they're together, you're with them, and you don't really feel like you're leading them, you’re just all in it together and it's the best fun ever.

But nothing gets you over how hard it is if you get the opposite of that, and you're never far away from a bad one. I mean, your words won't save you. It's like alchemy, stand-up. I've seen every comedian I know have a bad gig as well as all the good ones, even the comedians who I think are the best in the world. I've seen them stink out a room even when they're very experienced.

And then you just have to remember, you're never as good as your best gig and you're never as bad as your worst gig. So not to let the big ones really- you know, if you come off stage from The Apollo, to remember you're not actually a rock star, you just had a nice gig at The Apollo. If you can keep that right sized, you'll probably survive the rugby club gig where you virtually got bottled off stage. You know, they're all part of it.

Andy Coulson: Given the story that you’ve told us, when it has gone wrong, or when you've been heckled effectively, or just for whatever reason you're not connecting, your sense of vulnerability at that moment, you've got that in a- you haven't allowed that to derail the work that you've done on yourself, the confidence that you've built, the ability to- it's in a separate box, is it?

Cally Beaton: It sort of is. I mean, you are- it's extremely tough on your mental health. Well, being a stand-up is quite tough on your mental health, because it's also so whimsical, like who's getting the work, who's- you're always seeing your competitors. You can drive yourself mad with the jobs you're not getting, that might not have made you happy if you'd got them. But you're still like, why did that person get that? You know, you can drive yourself into a frenzy. I've never felt professional envy until I became a standup, and I really have to keep it in check. I could drive myself nuts with worrying about what others are doing. And I really try to run my own race and just not worry about it.

That's why Edinburgh is so tough for us all, because we're in a goldfish bowl of being hard up against the competition. It's unignorable up there. You walk past a poster, they've got five stars, you've got three stars, you know?

Andy Coulson: Brutal.

Cally Beaton: It’s brutal. They've sold out, you haven’t. It's really hard. But no, there's a bit of a compulsion in being a stand-up. It's probably my healthiest addiction I've ever had, being addicted to the adrenaline of stand-up, but most of us are quite compulsive. It's a weird thing to do.

Andy Coulson: You describe it as an addiction, absolutely with a straight face.

Cally Beaton: I'm not saying it is for everyone at all, there might be comedians listening going, “I don't feel like that at all.” But for me, I've got an addictive personality, and stand-up has scratched that itch better than and in a more healthy way than anything else I've tried to scratch it with. So yes, but it is quite compulsive.

Loads of comedians fall by the wayside quite early on, maybe do it for a year or a couple of years, not many of us just keep ploughing on in a foolhardy impervious manner. So yes, it's a lot of driving around and a lot of rejection and a lot of- but it’s also no two days are the same, and what a privilege, you know, what a privilege to do it.

Andy Coulson: Unrelenting, though.

Cally Beaton: Well, it sort of is, but no more than, you know, honestly really, I don't want to get into sort of my diamond shoes are too tight territory, because there'll be people listening to this who’ll go, “Sorry, I've just put in a twelve-hour shift with the Fire Brigade, Cally. Pipe down.” So, I don't think it's the most tough, relentless profession anyone's ever done, to be fair.

Andy Coulson: Yes. No, fair enough. You describe resilience, we talked about it a bit, but you describe it not as stoicism but as flexibility. And we've talked a lot about stoicism on this podcast.

So it strikes me, and you will now cut me off at the knees, but it strikes me that you are a stoic, because you have absolutely worked out what you have control of and what you don't have control of, through a lot of ups and downs. And you are fully focused on what you have control of and absolutely maximizing it, and that is a sort of central tenet of stoicism. You're not a fan of the word.

Cally Beaton: Well, I'm not not a fan of it, but whenever I read- I love anything Oliver Berkman ever writes, and he's written brilliantly on the kind of stoics and what we can extrapolate from stoicism in the present day. So I get it, and I'm not against anyone who would sort of subscribe to that, but it feels a bit bloody miserable to me. Like, I feel like you've got the stoics and you've got the hedonists, and I'm hope I'm somewhere between the two. So I don't think I manage things quite as well as a stoic would. I think I'm quite-

Andy Coulson: It's a push to say that the stoics are a great laugh.

Cally Beaton: They're not a laugh.

Andy Coulson: You wouldn't necessarily want to go out for a drink.

Cally Beaton: I don't think I want to- I don't want to meet one of them on Tinder, it's not what I'm after. I think there's more- there's more mayhem in my life than perhaps that would indicate, and I'm probably quite emotional, I'm quite led by emotion, and I'm not sure that would make me fit very neatly with the stoics either. But some of my best friends are stoics.

Andy Coulson: But the control bit is right, isn't it? I mean, you are focused on what you- you feel you've absolutely worked out what you have control of in your life.

Cally Beaton: It doesn't feel like that. So if you think about the things- so right now, the things that I'm thinking about as we sit here recording this on a sunny afternoon, the things I'm thinking about right now are who's going to read my book and buy my book? I've got no control over that. I mean I've got a bit of control, I can turn up and do things like this and hope this helps, and I get to do something I enjoy and it means people- so I can control saying yes to things and turning up. But I can't control what else happens with it.

I'm thinking about writing a tour show. I can't control if everyone's going to come to that or like it. I'm thinking about who's going to help my dad with his health stuff he's going through at the moment. I can't control that, I can advocate for him.

So the things that are on my list of things to do today, I don't think I've got much control over.

I do know that I will give the bit I can control my best shot. I will write the best book I can write. I will write the best show I can write. I'll turn up for my dad in the best way I can. But there's a large element of surrender I think, as well.

Andy Coulson: Like stoicism.

Cally Beaton: Imagine if I came away going, “Oh, I am a stoic.” What a revelation, I’d have to rip the book up or at least change three chapters of it. It’s very inconvenient, it’s very bad timing. I can't start doing reels on Instagram from a stoic's perspective, it's totally going to alienate my fan base. So move on.

Andy Coulson: Let’s move on, move on. The book is also full of very useful life hacks. There’s one in particular, The Non-Wankers Guide to Networking is one I'd just like to focus on for a second.

Cally Beaton: Yes, a snappy title.

Andy Coulson: It’s a snappy title. Just give us a short summary. Because I think it’s of practical use to anyone who's sitting there worrying about what it is to network.

Cally Beaton: Well, it's based on a couple of things. So I hate networking, and people assume I like it because I had a long sort of business career and spent a lot of time in schmoozy environments. But I always hated it, never felt comfortable in it.

A couple of things. It sounds like it's trite to say it, but if you think about an outstanding network, it's not the people you know, it's the people you don't know yet. So absolutely let's safeguard people who matter to us and we care about, but really it's the people we haven't met that are going to be the interesting new parts of our human connections. That's all a network is, it's our human connections.

And there was a book written a few years ago about having your own personal boardroom I think it might have been called Personal Boardroom, that we need allyship and we need cheerleaders.

So in the book I give some tips about how one might do that. And one of the tips is breaking down your network into- so we all focus on our on our sort of strong ties, you know, the people we’re tied strongly to in the world. We sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convert our weak ties, the people who really don't give much of a shit about us but we really wish they were in our network, and sometimes it's good to know when not to be a tryhard and go, “Do you know what, the ground is not soft there.”

But the two interesting areas are dormant connections, so where are the people in our lives where we just haven't put the effort into keeping that relationship alive. Friendship, professional engagement, you know, who is it and why have we not put the effort into that? And the other one is lateral connections, which you don't have much control over because they're lateral connections, which is why it's interesting- if I come into a building like this today to be recording this face to face, it's lovely for us to meet. We've never met, we may become part of each other's network through this. What a nice thing.

But who else might we speak to, you know? It could be the person who gave me my tea at your canteen who has a fascinating story and is going to be the next Kylie Minogue and I met her serve me a cup of tea. Or she might say something to me that changes my day because she's so wise and she's got a thing that is the thing I need to hear.

So I really think networking, it's not a cynical, “Oh, who can I call because I need a job or I need something?” It's being willing to surround ourselves with people who may not be like us.

I used to say to people, if you’re trying to approach somebody or keep a network alive, don't always be asking them for something. Also tell them things, give them things. There might be a thing you've seen in the press that you think they'd like and say, “I saw this, I thought of you because you inspired me to do that. And I read about it and I wanted to send you this article because it's exactly what you did for me.” Give them something, not cynically, just give them something nice and keep the connection going.

So if we see a network as how can something help me, that's quite cynical. But if we see it as the fairy lights of human contact, then that's a really lovely, warm, fuzzy thing, isn't it?

Andy Coulson: Exactly right. So Cally, just over a decade since you made the leap into comedy.

Cally Beaton: The full leap less than a decade. I did my first gig ten years ago, but I've only been fully on it for six years.

Andy Coulson: Almost a decade in then. Are you getting itchy about something else or are you sold now? Having sat with Joan Rivers who was still making people laugh in her 80s, do you think this is this is this is going to be the kind of core of what you do now?

Cally Beaton: It's definitely not my last reinvention and you know, bringing out a first book at 56 is obviously another reinvention. One of the things I say in the book is, because it is, it's a manifesto for unapologetic reinvention, and it's lovely that people say to me, “Aren't you amazing that you got into stand-up in your 40s?” and I think well, that won't be the last reinvention. So, author.

I got back into playing the piano after a chance conversation with Alastair McGowan who traded in his stand-up years He still does his stand-up and his impressions, but he's now a concert pianist. And through talking to him at a charity benefit we were both performing out he convinced me to take the piano up after a hiatus of forty years, and I now play- I've played in his piano festival in Ludlow this year and I now play the piano again and have a teacher and I'm properly back into classical piano.

So I think there'll be lots of new things, and everything I'm doing this year is new. I've not done a tour in a long time, I've never had a book out, I've never been playing classical piano on stages. And I'm so glad that at 56 my world is keeping getting bigger. Because I could be much less fortunate and it could be getting smaller and smaller, I could not be able to get out the house for whatever reason.

And here I am sort of living life, and you know life's short isn't it, and at our age where we've all lost people, and we're losing people increasingly. You know, we're at an age where that's not- it's a given that that will be happening, and It reminds me that even if things might feel a bit hard, or I might not be the best at everything I do, it doesn't matter. I'll keep having a go while I'm able to, and I'm very grateful I'm still able to.

Andy Coulson: Cally, that’s amazing. You are amazing. Thank you for giving us your time. Congratulations on the book.

Cally Beaton: My pleasure, thanks for having me.

Andy Coulson: It’s a real cracker. I just want to say Namaste Motherfucker, I don’t know. It's got a ring to it.

Cally Beaton: And it means promoting it on network television has been a bit hard. They keep sticking masking tape across the whole blooming title.

Andy Coulson: Not an issue on this show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Cally Beaton: Thanks for having me.