It takes courage to lay yourself bare on the page the way today’s guest does. Journalist Clover Stroud has written three memoirs - The Wild Other, My Wild and Sleepless Nights and, now, The Red of My Blood. Each more visceral, more exposing, than the last. But then Clover has lived no ordinary life (whatever that is). Hers features adventure, divorce, trauma, lots of sex, depression and five kids aged between 21 and 5. But before that, when Clover was 16, her mother suffered a catastrophic fall ...
Mar 08, 2022•55 min•Season 7Ep. 67
My guest today is the Jamaican author, journalist, film maker and (no exaggeration) living legend Barbara Blake Hannah. Already an experienced journalist when she arrived in London in 1964, Barbara was shocked to discover her achievements counted for nothing because of the colour of her skin. But she made headlines anyway, in 1968, when she became the first Black TV journalist in the UK. She lasted nine months before being dismissed - almost certainly as a result of a racist backlash, in which h...
Mar 01, 2022•48 min•Season 7Ep. 66
By the time we hit our 50s, most of us have… let’s just say… lived a little. But few have been through the mill to quite the extent that Christina Patterson has. Christina was 49 and recovering from breast cancer when she lost the job that she not just loved but that defined her. Rebuilding her life and career in her 50s formed the basis for her first book - memoir-come-survival manual, The Art of Not Falling Apart. As if that wasn’t enough for one person to cope with, on top of this crushing lo...
Feb 22, 2022•39 min•Season 7Ep. 65
This week’s guest needs zero introduction - and not just because she’s been here before. Marian Keyes was one of the first guests on The Shift and her episode [episode 2 if you’re interested!] is still one of the most popular. So I’m delighted that she’s agreed to come back to chat about her new book - the long awaited sequel to her smash hit Rachel’s Holiday. The wonderful Again, Rachel revisits Rachel Walsh, the Walsh family and everybody’s favourite fictional fantasy, LUKE COSTELLO, 25 years ...
Feb 15, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 64
We all tackle ageing in different ways but very few of us do it the way this week’s guest did - by packing up her entire life and moving thousands of miles to a new city and a new life. Until her mid-forties, writer Jami Attenberg sofa-surfed her way around America - the year she turned 40 she slept in 26 different beds in seven months! Even for the daughter of a travelling salesman, Jami’s litany of sofas, spare beds and floors is enough to give even the most nomadic back ache! The author of se...
Feb 08, 2022•38 min•Season 7Ep. 63
My guest today is the international bestseller Dorothy Koomson. She started young - she had her first stab at writing a book at 13 - and, like me, worked on Just Seventeen, amongst many other magazines, before actually publishing her first novel at 30. She has now written 16 Sunday Times bestsellers and is the biggest selling Black author of adult fiction in the UK - not bad for a woman whose debut novel was turned down for, amongst other things, having a Black character but not being about “the...
Feb 01, 2022•39 min•Season 7Ep. 62
I’m really thrilled to launch this season with one of my long time fantasy guests. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland since 2015, has been dubbed one of the most powerful women in British politics, if not in Britain, and she shows no sign of stopping. Now 51, she grew up the eldest of two in an ordinary working class family in Ayrshire. Her mum was a dental nurse, her dad an electrician, she went to a state school and was the first in her family to go to university. In the 1970s and 80s...
Jan 25, 2022•40 min•Season 7Ep. 61
It's season finale time. And have I got a festive special for you! There is no child of the 80s who won’t remember today’s guests. For a decade, Pepsi Demacque-Crockett and Shirlie Kemp - better known as Pepsi and Shirlie - were a fixture of the charts. First as part of Wham! With Shirlie’s school friends George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, then as a duo - their first single, Heartache, reached number 2 - only being beaten to number one by their good friend George. Even now they enter most of ou...
Dec 14, 2021•51 min•Season 6Ep. 60
My guest this week is a woman who - to coin a bit of 1980s jargon - punched through the glass ceiling for women in TV, creating not just one but a series of female lead characters who broke the mould. And not just any old female lead but OLDER female leads. There would be no Happy Valley or Scott & Bailey if it wasn’t for Lynda La Plante’s groundbreaking creation, detective Jane Tennison, brought to life by Helen Mirren. The BAFTA and Emmy award winning screenwriter of Prime Suspect, Widows ...
Dec 07, 2021•53 min•Season 6Ep. 59
What do you do if the person you love turns out to hold the seeds to your own destruction? My guest this week has lived through it and discovered the answer to that question the hard way. Writer and broadcaster Liz Fraser was a divorced mother of three in her 40s when she met and fell in love with M. They moved in together, she became pregnant, and when they had a daughter they decided to move to Venice. So far, so idyllic. But M was an alcoholic and Liz’s life was about to descend into a hell w...
Nov 30, 2021•47 min•Season 6Ep. 58
My guest this week was known for her willingness for say it like it is even before she made a TV show about the menopause. No, not THAT one. The one BEFORE. Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup was banging the menopause drum back in 2018 when her own ignorance about her symptoms at first shocked her and then prompted her to do something bout it. The resulting documentary, The Truth About Menopause, was a smash hit. And she’s now followed that up with a book, Cracking The Menopause, written with her fri...
Nov 23, 2021•47 min•Season 6Ep. 57
If you, like me, have lived most of your life in fear of foundation, this week’s guest is your saviour. Because this woman saved us no-make-up girls’ lives. Back in 1991, Bobbi Brown was a makeup artist frustrated by the fact that most makeup looked like a mask so she produced a range of 10 lipsticks that actually matched people’s lips. Shocker! Those lipsticks were the start of something huge: the first eponymous make up artist led beauty brand. A brand that Bobbi sold to Estee Lauder just four...
Nov 16, 2021•47 min•Season 6Ep. 56
My guest this week is a novelist, film-maker - and Zen Buddhist priest. Ruth Ozeki was born in Conneticut in the 1950s to a Japanese mother and, as she puts it, caucasian anthropologist father. Despite always wanting to write, she didn’t publish her first novel until she was 40, because, in part, she “didn’t feel entitled to”. She needn’t have worried. That novel, My Year Of Meats, won the Kiriyama Prize and the American Book Award, and her third A Tale For The Time Being, was shortlisted for th...
Nov 09, 2021•41 min•Season 6Ep. 55
How do two sensible middle aged broadcasters become the voices of a generation of pissed off older women? My guests today can tell you aaallll about that. Fi Glover and Jane Garvey were off-air colleagues who turned their on-air sensible reputations (as hosts of The Listening Project and Woman’s Hour respectively) on their heads when they launched a weeny little podcast called Fortunately. Described as “two friends chuntering waspishly” - or as Fi and Jane put it “talking complete s**t!”, it’s n...
Nov 02, 2021•44 min•Season 6Ep. 54
Today’s guest is former fashion journalist turned interiors blogger, Paula Sutton. For twenty years Paula lived a typical busy busy busy 9-to-9 London life. But the birth of her third child made her question everything. Ditching her glamorous job, she and her husband and three kids decamped to rural Norfolk. There, jobless, cash-less and identity-less, she began documenting the boot-strapped doing up of their new house on Instagram, as Hill House Vintage. And that might have been that until Paul...
Oct 26, 2021•45 min•Season 6Ep. 53
Dubbed the Queen of Crime, Val McDermid has written 35 books (she thinks, but she’s stopped counting), sold over 17million copies and been translated into 40 languages. At the vanguard of female crimewriters, she’s created countless female sleuths but is probably best known for one of her male ones - Dr Tony Hill of the TV series Wire In The Blood. She also created Traces the BBC series aired earlier this year starring Martin (Line of Duty) Compston. Now 65, she’s gone back to her youth. In her ...
Oct 19, 2021•39 min•Season 6Ep. 52
My guest this week has always been a self-starter. From flogging Blue Peter badges in the playground to earn a few extra quid to joining theaudience while she was still at school (famously telling her mum, ‘Sod school I’m going on a tour with NME’), Sophie Ellis Bextor has been doing it her own way for a very long time. Famous almost before she was born – thanks to her mum, Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis – she’s made seven albums, aced Strictly, had five children (all boys, aged 2-17) and give...
Oct 12, 2021•40 min•Season 6Ep. 51
The Shift has so many new listeners that it seemed like time to say hello, welcome and thank you for your support. It's been SO gratifying to see how many of you agreed with my hunch that there was a big appetite to hear older women talking about their lives, loves, losses and learnings. This is a replay of the first episode I ever recorded. We weren't even sure it *would* be an episode - we just recorded it as a test pilot to see how it went down. Over a year, almost 50 episodes and hundreds of...
Sep 28, 2021•56 min•Season 5Ep. 50
This is the second episode I ever recorded and the most popular episode of The Shift bar none. Marian Keyes has a legion of fans and for good reason. I thought I'd replay it in preparation for the upcoming 25th anniversary of her greatest hit, Rachel's Holiday, and its long-awaited sequel, Again, Rachel, coming February 2022. * Ask any group of women to name a woman they love and I guarantee you someone will name this week’s guest, because Marian Keyes is beloved of women the world over. (She wo...
Sep 21, 2021•45 min•Season 5Ep. 49
This is a replay of an episode from earlier this year. If I had to choose one episode as my favourite - tough call, like choosing a favourite child! - this would probably be it. If you've heard it before, give it another listen - Isabel Allende is iconic, truly. If you haven't, you are about to meet your old bird role model.... The main word I can think of to describe this week’s guest is wise. (Well there are other words - fabulous and no-bull for starters - but wise is the biggie.) Bestselling...
Sep 14, 2021•37 min•Season 5Ep. 48
This is a replay of an episode first broadcast last autumn. I'm replaying it now to coincide with the publication of Denise's new novella, Rizzio, a gripping contemporary reimagining of the 1566 murder of Mary Queen of Scots' right hand man. (And also because Denise is a total legend (not to mention extremely straight-talking) and I'm pretty sure that the new devotees The Shift has acquired over the last year will love her.) This week’s episode comes to you from the Glasgow kitchen of straight t...
Sep 07, 2021•50 min•Season 5Ep. 47
My guest today has been MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. Jess Phillips still lives in Birmingham, with her husband and two sons, not far from where she grew up with her activist parents, going to women’s liberation playgroup and hanging out with her nan who listened to Prime Ministers Questions while ironing. Before becoming an MP, Jess worked for Women’s Aid - and is currently Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding. She has also written four books (because she’s obv got so ...
Aug 31, 2021•46 min•Season 5Ep. 46
Ever wanted to chuck it all in? I mean ALL of it? My guest today did just that - baby, bathwater AND bath. For 30 years, journalist Lucy Kellaway was a columnist on the Financial Times. Then, in the space of just a couple of years she ditched not only that but her home of 15 years, her husband of 25 years - and even her hair! (Not in that order.) In her new book, Re-educated, she talks about the overwhelming urge to remake our lives that often hits women in our 40s and 50s and why she decided to...
Aug 23, 2021•41 min•Season 5Ep. 45
My guest today is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful people I’ve ever interviewed - and I’ve interviewed A LOT. Writer and academic, Elif Shafak has written 19 books and 12 novels and been shortlisted for countless literary prizes, including the Booker Prize. Known for her bravery and outspokenness in the face of oppressive regimes, she has almost 2million followers on social media and is the best-selling female novelist in Turkey - a country to which she has been unable to return for the p...
Aug 17, 2021•46 min•Season 5Ep. 44
My guest today is a woman who I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of, but you may not think you have. Her name is Paula Hawkins, but you probably know her as the author of the global bestseller The Girl On The Train. A book she wrote in her early 40s after - I’m sure she won’t mind me saying - an awful lot of also-rans. The girl on the train went on to sell 23 million copies, be published in 50 countries and is one of the top 5 selling hardbacks since records began. It was also turned into a film starr...
Aug 10, 2021•35 min•Season 5Ep. 43
How does it feel to have your life turned upside down in your mid 40s? That’s what happened to Laura Friedman Williams when, after 27 years with her husband, she discovered he was having an affair. It was something Laura had always thought they’d somehow get past but, confronted with the reality that he was in love with someone else, she knew this was it. They. Their marriage. Life as she knew it, was gone. Faced with the choice of going through the motions or getting back in the saddle, Laura r...
Aug 03, 2021•52 min•Season 5Ep. 42
My guest this week has spent a fair part of this year at the eye of a storm. Torrey Peters’ novel Detransition, Baby - a gloriously gossipy comedy of manners - was rapturously received when it was published in January, chosen for bookclubs by everyone from Oprah to Roxane Gay, and TV rights were optioned by the team behind Grey’s Anatomy. It was lauded as “the first great trans realist novel” in one review and has been called the true heir to Sex And The City. Then Torrey became the first trans ...
Jul 27, 2021•41 min•Season 5Ep. 41
My guest this week has come a hell of a long way - from the Derbyshire village where she grew up, to London and the editor's seat of Empire magazine, by way of New York where she was one of Folio magazine’s top women in American media. Ostensibly Terri White was living the 'single woman in Manhattan' dream. But, uber-competent at work, she was clinging by a thread in her personal life, struggling with chronic depression, self-harming and self-medicating with alcohol and prescription pills. When ...
Jul 20, 2021•48 min•Season 5Ep. 40
Hello, and welcome to season 5 of The Shift, and I could not be happier to kick off this season with this very special guest. What even is the “right sort of girl?” That’s a question my guest this week has long struggled to answer. Growing up in Yorkshire, TV presenter and self-proclaimed misfit Anita Rani always felt that she was somehow *wrong* - a feeling that was exacerbated when she moved to London to break into the media - and found herself too brown, too northern, too female. Oh, and too ...
Jul 13, 2021•45 min•Season 5Ep. 39
The best way I can think of to describe this week’s guest is that she’s a women’s health vigilante. (A vagina vigilante if you will!) Dubbed twitter’s resident gynaecologist, and the nemesis of snake oil salesmen everywhere, Dr Jen Gunter is the living embodiment of “information is power”. She has made it her life’s mission to give you the information you need to make life better for you - and for your vagina. Best known for her book The Vagina Bible, and publicly taking Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifest...
Jun 15, 2021•47 min•Season 4Ep. 38
