Elizabeth Day: ‘Failing is human’

Failure is something most, if not all, of us have experienced. But Elizabeth Day wants you to know that failing just makes you human and can ultimately help you succeed.

Because it’s not the failure that’s important – it’s how you respond to it.

Journalist and broadcaster Day, who’s presented the How To Fail podcast since 2018, explains: “There can be so much pride attached to failure, and it’s why a lot of people are unwilling to admit they’ve made mistakes, because they feel that’s going to make them a lesser person. It doesn’t.

“It makes you human and it actually makes you easier to connect with, because failure is the one thing that happens to us all. You can’t hope to avoid it. So really, the true test of character is not if you failed, it’s how you respond to it – learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better.”

Day, who’s written five novels and three non-fiction books, as well as presenting shows on both TV and radio, has learned about every kind of failure over the seven years of the podcast, on which she invites celebrities ranging from Simon Callow and Dame Arlene Phillips to Kate Hudson and Miranda Hart to share three of their own failures and discuss them.

And she’s about to take the How To Fail podcast on a live nationwide tour, where she’ll be joined by special guests including Sir Tony Robinson and Charlotte Church who, by revealing their own failures, will help teach audiences how to turn setbacks into success and make vulnerability a superpower.

“If you’ve ever failed and you’ve felt like a failure yourself, this live show is for you, because you’ll be in an auditorium full of people who’ve experienced failure,” says Day, 46.

“You’ll see people who you’ve probably looked up to, who you’ve seen on TV, and you’ve always thought seem to have it all together, these shimmering Gods on the red carpet. And they’re going to open up about some really difficult points in their lives, about the times they failed, whether it’s profound or funny.

“It’s for us to share as a community of like-minded failures who ultimately understand that our failures don’t define us. It’s how we respond to it that defines us.”

Particularly memorable difficult moments that have been revealed to Day on the podcast include the singer Bonnie Tyler’s, who talked candidly about having a miscarriage,

“She spoke so openly and movingly about a miscarriage she suffered,” says Day, “and Bonnie was crying, I was crying, the production team were crying.

“And it’s at that moment that sharing those stories that historically have caused women so much misplaced shame is such an act of generosity for people who listen, who’ve been through something similar, who maybe never shared it themselves. They see themselves in that story.”

Another ‘failure’ Day picks out was revealed by Dame Arlene Phillips. “She spoke about her dad having Alzheimer’s and again, these are just really, really important stories,” observes Day. “It’s that idea that we forge strengths through the connections of our vulnerability.”

And the Irish actor Andrew Scott picked out his failure to be heteronormative. Day explains: “Of course he doesn’t consider it a failure to be queer, but he felt he was letting his family down by being gay. And I think those sort of ‘failures’ are just so interesting to talk about.”

And a very relatable failure came from the author Marian Keyes. “She was so brave and interesting when she spoke about her failure to lose weight,” recalls Day. “Marian Keyes is obviously this extraordinary writer and feminist voice, and she understood that caring about it was in and of itself a failure – but so many people related to that conversation.”

But it’s not just profound or life-changing failures that celebrities reveal – one of the Big Brother presenter AJ Odudu’s failures was being unable to stop biting her nails. “Again, that had a huge reaction,” says Day. “There are lots of nail biters out there.”

She felt it wouldn’t be fair to ask so many celebrities to openly reveal their failures and vulnerabilities without doing it herself, so – interviewed by the journalist and author Dolly Alderton – she too has been a guest on her own show.

“I fail every day,” she admits, “and my failures were the failure of my first marriage – I got divorced in my mid-30s – failure to have children – I went through a 12-year fertility journey and it didn’t work out for me in the way that I’d hoped, and I still don’t have the biological child I thought I yearned for.

“And then the third failure was my failure to be good at tennis.”

Failing to be good at tennis seems rather humdrum compared to a failed marriage and being unable to have children, but Day explains: “Guests sometimes have two really profound failures and one slightly lighter-hearted one.”

But she’s more interested in discussing the “interesting one” about her failure to have children. “I understand now that’s not really my failure – it’s a sort of biological fact, sadly, that I couldn’t conceive and carry a pregnancy to term, and I experienced fertility treatment and recurrent miscarriage,” she says.

“But of course, a large part of that is social conditioning – it’s what I’d grown up with society telling me I should want as a woman, and it’s caused me a great deal of sadness having to let go of that dream.”

But she’s keen to point out that even her ‘failure’ to have children has a positive slant. “On the other side of letting go of it, I’m really at peace with it now, and I’m so aware of my great good fortune that I have all this time now to use my creativity in different ways, and to take How To Fail on tour, and to have really thought about life and where meaning comes from.

“So that’s a good example of a failure that I’ll always be sad about, but I can live alongside, and it’s taught me some really meaningful things along the way.”

That sounds a lot like therapy, and Day says some guests have indeed admitted that revealing their failures has been like a therapy session. “It’s a huge compliment to me if someone says at the end of the interview – which they sometimes do – this has felt like therapy,” she says, stressing that she’s not a licensed therapist, but pointing out: “I’m a huge advocate of therapy – I go to therapy myself, and I think it’s really important to invest in our mental health in the same way that we invest financially in a pension.”

She adds: “Failure is part of life, and so many of us live in fear of it. We live in fear of taking a risk and it going wrong. But actually the greater failure is not taking the risk in the first place and not finding out what might have happened.”

The UK and Ireland tour of How To Fail with Elizabeth Day starts on March 19. Tickets are available from Fane.