Essex Truth Motherhood: Sara Pascoe Tells Lucy Kaufman And Michelle Sutton Why ‘Keeping It Real’ Matters

When we meet Sara Pascoe, she is already familiar. Yes, she’s a ‘face’ on TV, a super-successful stand-up comedian who frequents panel shows and has presented The Great British Sewing Bee but the familiarity runs deeper. It’s true Sara is from Dagenham and Romford – our neck of the woods –and shares our estuary accent, but there is still something further connecting us. The answer lies in her raw honesty and openness about her personal life, and her courage to tell the truth of who she is, that runs throughout her TV appearances, her stand-up, her non-fiction books Animal and Sex Power Money, and her new début novel Weirdo.

This authenticity is not a deliberate, political act but an extension of her true self. She can’t help it, it’s a compulsive thing, she says, and something you have to be comfortable with as a performer or a writer, if you want to connect to the ‘universal’ in people. For her, the intimacy of human connection involves being as truthful as possible.

“People don’t have to have gone through the same thing as you to have experienced very similar emotions. It’s just the most wonderful, calming, reassuring thing, especially with live work, to have people nodding at you and going, ‘Yeah, I’ve done that’, or laughing with recognition.”

When Sara emerged on the scene, we were relieved to see someone who represented us. As Essex women, we are keen to discover Sara’s view of the Essex stereotype, permeated by the Essex Girl jokes of the early 90s and further entrenched via reality TV show TOWIE. Touring her shows around Britain has brought Essex humour sharper into focus as something very special. Essex people have an ability to laugh about themselves, and each other, she says, and perhaps this is why they don’t wear their intelligence on their sleeve.

“No one is allowed to take themselves too seriously, and if anyone ever gets a little bit above their station, they are instantly taken down, but in a loving way. When people think that we’re stupid, or dim, or just vain and vapid, then it’s like, ‘Right, think what you like.’ Some of the most contrarian thinkers I know are from Essex, because they question everything. I love that they question authority, they question the status quo, they don’t believe politicians, and there’s an emotional intelligence.”

Part of the Essex, working-class psyche is knowing where we have come from, she explains, and we nod along in agreement. Previous generations moved out from inner-city slums to leafier parts, each generation doing slightly better than the one before.

“That’s not because you inherited stuff but because you worked really hard and the importance of hard work and education are really drummed in.”

Weirdo is set in Essex and follows a young woman navigating the realities of womanhood. For Sara, the Essex Girl stereotype as ‘slutty’, rather than limiting, was empowering and authentic, and a massive compliment!

“I was quite proud of it, because I thought women from Essex, if they liked sex they went out and had sex, if they felt great, and they looked sexy. And I thought, ‘All you’re proving is Essex women are strong, they aren’t ashamed of being sexual,’ and that was hugely influential on me, and really positive.”

The sexual politics in Weirdo have moved on from Sara’s well-researched non-fiction exploration of gender in Animal. In our post-Sarah Everard/ #MeToo/ true-crime podcast world, anxieties about being murdered, mistrust of police and consent issues have seeped into Weirdo main character Sophie’s world. Sara tells us Animal would be significantly different if she were writing it now.

“Everyone has experiences and opinions that are absolutely unlike anyone else’s.”

Much would no longer need to be written. Conversations around sex and feminism have developed and become mainstream to the point where feminist views are the default position.

With Sophie, Sara explains how she wanted the first-person narrative to feel like being in our own heads. She compares the character’s disjointed thought process, where random thoughts and memories pop up, with what she calls ‘stand-up brain’.

“Stand-up brain is the opposite. It’s writing and rehearsing something to make it look to an audience like they can see where your thoughts are going, ordering stuff in a way that either emotionally or logically makes sense. It’s not how I would think it but I present it as if I’m presently thinking it, rather than ‘I wrote this three months ago’.”

At this year’s Hay Festival, a young audience member asked, “If you could tell 14-year-old you what you’ve achieved, what would you tell her and why?” Sara provided a raw, emotional response, where she revealed that, at 14, she wouldn’t have believed anything positive although, she admits, she doesn’t remember her exact words. Hay subsequently released a video on Instagram that went viral.

“What’s amazing is I’ve had parents writing to me saying, ‘My 16-year-old’s having a hard time,’ ‘My 13-year-old’s having a hard time,’ ‘We had a chat the other day and I was trying to say what you’re saying in your video.’ So, they’ve shown it to their teenage kids. I hadn’t realised it was still such a raw thing for me but I’m glad it happened, because so many other people are going through that raw state.”

Sara is no longer 14 and is a mother now to two boys, the oldest being two and a half. We move on to her insights around motherhood. “It’s changed absolutely everything,” she tells us, not least having no time or sleep and being permanently exhausted from the relentlessness of childcare. Writing stand-up is challenging, as her brain “has been in a blender.” She’s thinking of ideas at three in the morning when alone with a baby and has to make it work.

“I’m having to say to the audience, ‘This is what we’re talking about now. This is what’s going through my brain.’ I have no adult conversation, no social life; the only time I get away from my kids is work, and that means I have double the work at home to make up for it.”

Along with her tiredness, her respect for parents has now grown, realising what people have always been juggling but remained silent about; their voicelessness due to exhaustion rather than not wanting to speak. Sara is characteristically honest about her far-from-ideal writing process:

“The only time I had away from the baby would be a gig after he’d gone to bed, so I would go in an Uber rather than the train so I could write on my laptop. People are writing novels now on their phones, on their commutes, and I think that’s the compulsion with writing. If you want to write you will find a way.”

Being a mother is not the only barrier to writing. As we delve deeper into class and gender, Sara shares how being a working-class female starkly contrasts with being a wealthy male, heterosexual writer with the benefits of a wife who reads their work, bolsters their ego, washes their clothes and brings them coffee. Just as we’re joking about how we could all do with a wife, Sara’s husband interrupts proceedings to bring her a coffee, proving someone was listening and taking notes!

Becoming a mum of boys has given her new insight, too. Before, if she met a grown man who didn’t clean after himself, she judged his mother for not training him in the art of taking responsibility. Now, she realises it’s a slippery slope. “The love expresses itself in duty and caring, it’s about loving them so much you say, ‘No, no, I’ll do it for you.’” She reminds herself that teaching her boys independence helps them in the future, which is also love.

Sara has a second novel in the works and recently took her Work In Progress show to Edinburgh, meaning she will be touring again. We ask her if she has any advice for our readers to help with their writing aspirations and time-management obstacles. Sara suggests setting tiny, realistic goals:

“A sentence a week is fine. Small achievable goals because, if you set yourself 800, or 500, words a day then you miss a day, then two days, you think, ‘That’s it, I’ve ruined it.’”

She emphasises how it is vital to not be discouraged but to keep writing:

“Everyone has experiences and opinions that are absolutely unlike anyone else’s. If you’ve got things to say but you don’t have the confidence that you’re able to write very well, you need to make your peace with that. The thing that stops people is perfectionism. Accept you’re not going to be Hilary Mantel, you’re going to be you, and at the beginning you’re a beginner and that’s absolutely fine. Do it, then re-read it, be your own editor, make it better.”

We could easily chat for another hour but, alas, time’s flown and we have to say goodbye to Sara. Whether writing books or performing stand-up, having the confidence and awareness to be true to yourself is ultimately something we could, and should, all try.

*****

Issue 22 is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.

You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.

*****

If you or someone you know has been affected by issues covered in our pages, please see the relevant link below for ​information, advice and support​: https://pentoprint.org/about/advice-support/