Helen Lederer on anxiety, failure & living an “alarmingly truthful” life

My guest today is the writer, actress and comedian Helen Lederer. Helen began as a stand-up comedian in the “comedy swamp” of the 1980s, where women were like hen’s teeth and rose to fame with her sloaney girl at the bar in the BBC Comedy ‘Naked video’. Then came Saturday Night Live, The Young Ones, French and Saunders and Bottom with Rik Mayall. But she’s probably best known as Catriona the dippy journalist in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous.

It was after writing her first novel, Losing It, that Helen set up the Comedy Women In Print prize to put funny women’s writing on the map and help ensure the next generation wouldn’t have to put up with the lack of recognition she endured. (Also, she was pissed off!)

Now the woman Dawn French calls “the third funniest woman in the world” has written a hilarious and frequently painful memoir about surviving that swamp, Not That I’m Bitter. She tells truths, she names names and she gives herself an absolute hiding!

Helen and I got together over a Zoom cuppa to discuss life as the lone woman on the 80s comedy circuit and why being a pioneer is all very well, but she’d rather have had mainstream success! She also talked about professional jealousy, not “being in the A team”, fear of authority, why she’s spent her life on a diet (remember Limmits biscuits?!) And being tougher on herself than anyone else.

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Not That I'm Bitter by Helen Lederer and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

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