SERIES 7: Better With Age. 

It takes courage to reinvent yourself professionally, yet it becomes a necessity for many people over 50. Bestselling author Kathy Lette and publishing exec Jane Curry share their hilarious experiences of pushing through career blocks and tiresome ageing stereotypes. 

Brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA.

Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The Time of Your Life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. 

Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts. 

This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead?

Kathy Lette is an internationally bestselling author of more than 20 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Her latest bestselling book, The Sisterhood Rules, takes readers on a rollercoaster ride that proves that from pain comes healing, from honesty comes forgiveness, and that nothing is more important than your sisters.

Jane Curry is a highly experienced publishing executive, and managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand. Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press, which she established to champion older female (and male) authors.

Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube   

Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts 

Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify 

For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast 

Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency

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TRANSCRIPT

Jean Kittson: Welcome to a new season of DARE: The Time of Your Life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA.

Hello I'm Jean Kittson, and this season is called Better With Age. We're flipping the script and showing how ageing is NOT a dirty word, rather it’s your time to live your life to its fullest.

Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts.

This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead?

To help us answer such questions is Jane Curry, a highly experienced publishing executive and newly-appointed managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand.

Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press, a company she started as a way of championing older female authors, many of whom only turned to writing later in life.

And joining Jane is the fabulous author and beloved friend Kathy Lette. Her career has pushed boundaries from the get go, when she left school at 16 to write her debut novel, Puberty Blues. It had parents wringing their hands while teens lapped it up. And it was later turned into a movie and a TV series.

She's gone on to pen more than 20 bestselling books, including her latest, the Sisterhood Rules, which has topped bestseller lists worldwide, and it's funny, fabulous and always empowering.

Jane, Kathy, it's wonderful to have you both in the studio to speak about yourselves and your work.

Kathy Lette: …and about you and your amazing work and your incredible life.

Jean Kittson: Oh, do go on!

Kathy Lette: My comic goddess right here before us, Jean. Jean's broken so many boundaries with her comedy.

Jean Kittson: Oh Kathy, you’re amazing, and she's a long, long time beloved friend. And as you, in your words, you are my human wonder bra…

Kathy Lette: …uplifting and supportive. I'd also say we are each other's big pair of knickers. We've got our asses covered.

Jean Kittson: Mm-hmm. That's right. I can always, I mean, Kathy's the best friend you could possibly have. And don’t we all need…

Kathy Lette: …Ditto.

Jane Curry: …Don’t we all need female friendships, they keep us all going.

Jean Kittson: You, Kathy.

Kathy Lette: Yes.

Jean Kittson: On a more serious note about, you have covered, you have written about all aspects of life from puberty to marriage, childbirth, menopause.

Often based on your own experiences, you've inspired and entertained and soothed millions of readers, including your latest book, the Sisterhood Rules, which I absolutely love and should be a manual for any woman breaking up or any older woman wanting a bit of spice in her life, really.

Kathy Lette: Haha, great, ha ha.

Jean Kittson: But, um, when your previous publishers said to you.

That nobody wants to read about middle-aged women. And they dropped you after 19 books in 17 languages.

Kathy Lette: Yes.

Jean Kittson: Bestsellers.

Kathy Lette: Mm-hmm.

Jean Kittson: And you went on to write the Revenge Club, another bestseller. I mean, how did you do that?

Kathy Lette: I went to see my agent and said, I wanna write a book about four middle-aged women who take revenge on the men who've sidelined them and ruined their careers.

And he was like, yeah, I dunno. Yeah, middle-aged women just aren't that sexy. And then I went to see my publisher at the time and my publisher was like, Hmm, middle-aged women. We know they exist, but nobody wants to go there.

Jane Curry: Oh my goodness.

Kathy Lette: And I looked at books written about women my age, like Anita Brooklyn novels, for example.

And there was about sad, depressed, lonely women who wilt away and die in their flats and get eaten by their cats. Now I don't know any women like that. All my women friends are like Jean. They're swinging off a chandelier with a cocktail between their teeth. But when they, when they first said that to me, then my publisher dropped me.

I thought, gosh, maybe I have passed my amuse-by date. And just for a moment, I did, I did have a real crisis of confidence. But then of course I'm an Aussie girl and we, Aussie girls are made of stern stuff

Jane Curry: Dig deep.

Kathy Lette: So I thought, nah, he's wrong. They're both wrong. So I got a new, I got a gay agent and I got a new publisher, Bloomsbury, and the book went to number-one on the bestseller list, which was the best revenge. It's called the Revenge Club – success! 

So yeah, it was so exciting. And also, I love writing about women this age because our hinterland is huge. You know, we've had the marriages, the divorces, the breakups, the promotions, the back stabs. We've raised the kids.

We've looked after our aged parents as Jean did so, so devotedly. We've got so much to talk about and so much to share, and so much wisdom. Just at the time, society hands us the old invisibility cloak and puts us out to career pasture. It's not just me imagining that we, women my age, are given the cloak of invisibility.

A few years ago, MI5 said they wanted to hire middle-aged women as spies because nobody sees us.

Jean Kittson: Oh.

Kathy Lette: Soak that up. And I remember the governor of the board of the Bank of England. He said, not long ago, that the economy was going through a menopausal phase. Sluggish.

Jean Kittson: Oh.

Kathy Lette: And I was like, tell that to Oprah Winfrey and Nicole Kidman, and Cate Blanchett…

Jane Curry: Michelle Obama…

Kathy Lette: …all the other people. Michelle Obama, all these other menopausal and postmenopausal women. So the sexism is sewn into our psyche. We really have to fight hard against that.

And thanks to Jean and others of our generation. We've taken the stigma out of menopause. But the next big feminist hurdle for us is sexist ageism, because we get treated in a different way to men our age and, and we really have to rail against it. Because we're now prime, we're in the peak of our productivity.

Jane Curry: But also we've all had to witness when the BAFTAs was on, every time we see these women who are completely transformed because they're not allowed to age in public.

Kathy Lette: Mm.

Jane Curry: So that's the standard. Yes. I mean, we are fortunate in where we're in the book business, so it's brain first in our business and always has been.

Kathy Lette: Better to be witty than pretty.

Jane Curry: Yeah, yeah – witty than pretty.

And I remember a friend of mine who is actually a cosmetic surgeon, he said to me that it, you know, it's the women who are, have always been beautiful, that have had that sense of power when they walk into a room and they turn heads because of their beauty, they're the ones that find it harder to age.

Kathy Lette: Well, it's a diminishing asset.

Jane Curry: Yes. So whereas, you know, when you're in the book business as I've been, and Kathy, the entertainment book, um, you know, women of letters, we do have that our brain is our superpower.

Kathy Lette: Yeah, yeah.

Jane Curry: And then what we look like comes after that. Yes.

Jean Kittson: It's hard to fight it though, isn't it?

Kathy Lette: It is hard to fight it,

Jean Kittson: …especially when you are performing and…

Jane Curry: Oh yes. Well, in this new job I've just got, I got tapped on the shoulder to run Simon Schuster. So the first thing I found was all the, the settings on Zoom and teams. Because I’m reporting to the UK and I'm having meetings in the US all the time and sometimes I first thing in the morning, like 7.30 in the morning.

So I'm like, where's the filter.

Jean Kittson: Where’s the sparkle wand!

Jane Curry: You know, we used to laugh when I worked at Macmillan. You know, we used, you know, there's fabulous filters that Jackie Collins had on all their photographs.

Kathy Lette: Oh my gosh, yes. In fact, I've had lunch with Jackie Collins a few times with Joan Collins. Joan and Jackie, I mean, the double whammy.

Jean Kittson: Yes.

Jane Curry: Talk about sisterhood.

Kathy Lette: Sensational broads. But, um, Joan Collins will move everybody around the table till she's got the right lighting. And isn't she clever? You know that when you do, when you're filming, they have that big silver thing that reflects the [light], why can't we have a dress made out of that?

Jean Kittson: Well, why can't we!

Kathy Lette: Or shoes?

Jean Kittson: Because we don't care, Kathy. We don't care.

Kathy Lette: We don't care.

Jane Curry: Often we’re rushing from one thing to the next.

Kathy Lette: Don't care. We don't care. But Jean, see, Jean and I don't do, don’t do any of that Botoxing stuff.

Jane Curry: No. Nor do I.

Kathy Lette: I think men should just read between my lines, the books, the babies, the hours of fun-loving flirtation.

But it does get hard to resist it whenever all the other women…

Jane Curry: …I think that's the thing when…

Kathy Lette: …look much younger

Jane Curry: that, right, what they call in the, you know, in data they call it benchmarking. So like any set of data figures in my world, you know, you benchmark against what was the bestseller. And so it's sort of benchmarking when you're talking about sales and all of that.

But it's benchmarking with what we look like. So you sort of benchmark against, we, I think we're very critical of ourselves, because you look at another woman who's the same age and they've had the facelift and they've had everything done. And then look, I momentarily worry about it. And then honestly, you, I look at my to-do list and I think, no.

Jean Kittson: Yeah, and I've got two daughters, so I don't want to be that role model. I've always said it's not what you look like, it's what you feel like, you know?

Kathy Lette: Yes. Keep the lights low. Greatest beauty aid known to woman for all time. You know, what's happened in Hollywood, the pediatric, um, technicians there. The doctors noticed that the babies were not hitting their developmental milestones.

And they were saying, is it because they're, they're having too much, um, carcinogens in their smoked salmon? I'm thinking, no, it's Botox. Because babies look at your face, like when you go, I love your little baby. The baby goes and you go, ah…

If you've had Botox and you're going, ‘I love you’, and the baby's going, ‘uh’, you’re going, ‘uh’. They're not learning anything.

Jean Kittson: Absolutely.

Jean Kittson: You should write a research paper on that. They should do it.

Kathy Lette: This is hysterical, isn't it? I know.

Jean Kittson: I was told not to go, I mean. Not to go grey because I wouldn't, in the gig economy, I wouldn't get work.

Apparently the research shows that if you, that men don't like actually working with women with grey hair.

Kathy Lette: …Because it reminds them of their mothers, is it?

Jean Kittson: …Maybe they feel that they…

Kathy Lette: …it's ageing them…

Jean Kittson: Have to defer or - No, not defer…

Kathy Lette: …but they can have grey hair.

Jean Kittson: They can have grey hair. So there are some interesting facts their.

Kathy Lette: I was gonna say, part of the problem is that we never see women who look like us. 85% of people on British and Australian television over 50 are men. So the women just get immediately sidelined and put out to career pasture when they get one grey hair and one wrinkle.

We should be saying, we wanna see ourselves reflected. Don't, don't disappear us.

Jean Kittson: You know, Jane, you would see, um, this in the industry. You've seen this before. What happened to Kathy? Have you?

Jane Curry: Oh, yes, because a lot of decisions are made on data. You know, they'll say, oh, and particularly I think people got very frightened when social media arrived.

They got very frightened that they had to chase people with massive Instagram following. Oh, yes. And then there was this sort of Sally Rooney phenomena where everybody wanted a ‘Normal People’. And that was that emerging, you know,

Kathy Lette: Irish writers…

Jane Curry: …Irish and, and all that sort of coming of age story that, and we are, we are just, we move as a pack, the publishing industry. So once there's one Normal People, you can guarantee the next year there'll be 10 Normal People. And that's a book for people that haven't read it, that was published by Sally Rooney. It was a debut novel and you know, it was one of the zeitgeist novels.

Kathy Lette: She became a publishing phenomenon.

Jean Kittson: In terms of ageism in comedy, it's just a general feeling that I think women, first of all, women in comedy has been really hard from the start and you really have to push and it's a much more sort of natural environment for men because they're confident and some, some comedians can go on and and not even have thought about what they're going to say, they're just so confident.

Kathy Lette: Yeah.

Jean Kittson: When I was starting out in comedy, I would be starting out with other, the few women that were around in the 80s and we'd be in pubs and we'd go on stage and everyone would be drinking and eating their pizza, and no one would listen and the women would come off and going, oh my God, I'm just not funny. I haven't got good material. I stink. I can't do this.

The men would go out there and they would get exactly the same reaction. People are just drinking and they'd come back and they'd go, that audience wouldn't know a joke if it was up them. They're just so freaking hopeless, and they'd just blame the audience and women would blame themselves, and I don't know where that comes from, but I think it can become more pronounced as you get older and there's slowly, more and more diminishing things that happen to you

Like walking into a butcher and the butcher saying, hello, young lady, and you think I'm too, I'm too young to be called a young lady. You know, I not old enough. That's something that they would say to your grandmother, Hello, young lady, and expect you to like that. Expect it to be a compli––

Jane Curry: …A pat on the head.

Jean Kittson: …Yeah, a pat. It's so patronising.

Kathy Lette: Yeah. There's also this, it's an inbuilt prejudice against women that were not funny, and I, I was at a dinner party in London once and, and the hostess made a really good joke and the husband and men didn't pay any attention. The husband just went, oh, you know, embarrassing women can't tell jokes.

And I was like, that's because we marry them. It made everybody laugh at him and that did take away his power.

So just lean into that, that verbal ability that women have, you know, we’re more verbally dexterous. So use it like, develop what I call the black belt and tongue-fu! Quiplash, you know!

Jean Kittson: Yeah, that's fantastic. Don't censor. Good comeback.

Kathy Lette: Yes. Yeah. Good comeback.

Jean Kittson: I know, I think we are getting stronger and we shouldn't, we shouldn't, um, suppress our strength as we probably have to keep peace, you know, with the family. That's right. With our work to balance everything. Yeah. You suppress a lot of who you are.

Jane Curry: My eldest always says to me. Mum, you're overthinking. And that's the best mental health advice or whatever we do. We do overthink,

Kathy Lette: But I think women should just or never go… You're underdressed if you go out at night without a couple of good one-liners tucked up your trouser leg.

Jane Curry: That's really good advice.

Kathy Lette: Because if, if you whack it back…

Jane Curry: yes,

Kathy Lette: …and make other people laugh at them, you completely take away their power.

Jean Kittson: Well, you've got so many good one-liners, so you're like a one-liner factory.

Jane Curry: I've got, I've gotta lift my game.

Jean Kittson: Ah, yeah, exactly. So do I. 

So when your publishers said that ridiculous thing that nobody wants to read about middle aged women…

Kathy Lette: …mm-hmm…

Jean Kittson: Did you ever doubt yourself and think that I might have to reinvent myself in any way?

Kathy Lette: I did. I, just for a moment, I lost confidence and I thought maybe I have passed my amuse-by-date. But then I looked around at my own female friends and I thought, they're so wonderful. They're all, you know, swinging off a chandelier with a toyboy between their teeth. I wanna write about these women.

But I think as a writer, I'm always reinventing because I cannibalise my own life. My mother's a teacher and I think I've got a bit of her teacher gene that I always write the book I wish I'd had when I was going through something. So from, to the girls in Puberty Blues, you know, to teach them that they were more than a life support system to, to a pair of breasts, you know, to girls dating and, and then to motherhood and, and marriage and divorce and menopause, and raising an autistic child, raising a teenager, you know, now this post-menopausal second act.

So I'm always reinventing because I'm, I'm changing. You know, women are used to change. We've got so much change going on in our lives. So, yeah, I think it comes naturally to women. So if you are reinventing yourself post menopause, you know, it's just, it's almost like situation normal. We're always constantly changing.

And even divorce, I don't see divorce as a failure. I just see it as a change.

Jean Kittson: Yes.

Kathy Lette: You know, life is long from honeymoon to tomb to be like 80 years so, just if you need to reinvent, you know it's okay, and it comes more naturally to women. So don't be afraid of change. Change is good. But I would say women this age, this is a coming of age time.

Jane Curry: Yes.

Kathy Lette: Because we're the first generation who are economically independent. We've got the, the rock of fuel of HRT, we've got the chutzpah and the the courage to say what we are thinking. We are reinventing ourselves, having a sensational second act.

Because I always say this time of your life, for women, is the best because post menopause, you know, you've, you've got no, you don't have to worry about period cramps or pregnancy scares. You've got all that tampon money to spend, you know…

Jean Kittson: …and kids are grown up. You've got all that crystallised experience, as they call it.

Kathy Lette: Yeah. I wanna know what you think of this, Jane. Because I accidentally invented – I hate the term – chick lit…

Jane Curry: …I know what you're going to say…

Kathy Lette: …I accidentally invented it in the 70s with Puberty Blues..

Jane Curry: Yes. Yes. Chook-lit.

Kathy Lette: And then, then when I wrote Mad Cows and Fetal Attraction, I sort of invented Mummy-Lit.

Jane Curry: Mm-hmm.

Kathy Lette: And then when I wrote Nip and Tuck, that was nip-lit. And I'm like, I need a new genre for women our age. And I, and I thought, well, post 50, you get that fabulous, ‘Oh, feck it I'm 50’ gene, where you no longer care what people think about you. So I was thinking. What about, I-don't-give-a-s***-lit? Mm-hmm.

Jane Curry: That's brilliant.

Jean Kittson: Oh, good. You got the tick from a publisher!

Kathy Lette: Wouldn't that be a good. And imagine we’re at Booker Prize and they go, ‘And now in the genre of I-don't-give-a -s***-lit. Yeah.

Jane Curry: You know, in Hollywood, all the entertainment [industry] is catching. If you think of the Thursday murder club, that was Richard Osmond, of course, he's an older man, so he can get away with it. But you know, the adaptation with Helen Mirren and you know, those amazing actors. So

Kathy Lette: Yes

Jane Curry: So there is starting to be balanced…

Kathy Lette: But that's even older.

That's, that's when they're in the retirement home. I'm talking about this moment. Yeah, just postmenopausal, where we're the publishers are saying it's not sexy, it's not attractive. It's right when you're older, for some reason there's a jump to the Judi Dench.

Jane Curry: It’s called the silver dollar then.

Kathy Lette: Yeah.

Jean Kittson: Oh yes. The silver dollar.

Kathy Lette: Well, what about the postmenopausal dollar? Yes. You know who thinks reading books? It's women our age.

Jane Curry: Well, actually, I always say to any publisher, go to a writer's festival. It's all women, of a certain age. Our age

Jean Kittson: Over 50.

Jane Curry: Over 50. Yeah, filling the audience.

Jean Kittson: Yes,

Kathy Lette: I'm on book tour right now for the sisterhood rules and I'm going around the country.

It's been to Perth. I've been doing them in Sydney and Melbourne, and I'm about to go up, up to Queensland and I meet, I get to meet the readers, which is so fabulous. It's my favorite thing. Wonderful. And they're, they're women of a certain age. They bring me up little, little kind of anecdotal, doggy bags, a little story they've saved up for me about who their husband had an affair with or how they got revenge or whatever it is.

And they're so funny and they sometimes they cry as well. Yeah. They'll have a cry and they'll tell me something very personal that's happened to them. And we have a hug and they're all so interesting. I wanna go out on a girl's night out with all of them all the time.

Jane Curry: Yes, we be…

Kathy Lette: …and yet they're written off.

Jane Curry: Yeah, I was thinking a lot about it getting ready this morning and yeah, as, as you get older, you look back at how society's structured and it is so sort of primally structured around power and money and…

Kathy Lette: …which has predominantly been male…

Jane Curry: …which is predominantly male. So I've, so then I thought, so you've got, as a woman, you've got two ways of doing that.

You can either become, marry into that and become the trophy wife and be terrified that they're going to leave you. So there's that way of attaching yourself to money or there's the other way of doing it, which is the way I did it, was to make it yourself.

Kathy Lette: Yes, exactly. So always a better option.

Jane Curry: So that was my option.

So that's why I've sort of admired those other women from afar because I've never been part of their world. Even at university, I was never part of that world. I, we as, women, have to decide very early on, I think it's innate, I don’t know whether you make an actual decision, how you're gonna fit around that, those two binaries, power and money.

But as women. It's not naturally given to us. So we have to decide. Even in the corporate world, that means we've got to constantly keep up with that.

Kathy Lette: …Appearances.

Jane Curry: …Appearances or…

Kathy Lette: …Trophy mustn't be tarnished.

Jean Kittson: Well, that's right. That's right. It's a big role to fill for the whole of your life.

Trying to live up to that. Yeah. Sorry. There was a billboard saying, um, many years ago, which was a brilliant billboard saying, which I had a picture of a young woman, don't marry a millionaire. Become a millionaire.

Kathy Lette: But when I, when I give talks in schools to girls, which I do often, I always say to them, choose your partner carefully.

Because if you wanna be an alpha, alpha female in having a big career, if you choose an alpha man, guess who's gonna be the one who has to pull back when the child's sick or whatever.

But if you choose a beta male, someone who'll adore you, not bore you and do all your chores for you, who wants to put you on a pedestal and will probably polish it while you're up there.

You know, you've gotta have a much bigger and better and more satisfying career. So just, I've, I've been married to two Alphas whom I adore, but I've, I've now gotta beta boyfriend and beta’s, beta’s better.

You know, like my fa— The women who are very successful in British television, for example, Sandy Toksvig, Sue Perkins, Claire Balding, are all gay.

What do they have wives? Yeah, wives, and I've kind of got a male wife now and it, and it's fabulous. I highly recommend it.

Jean Kittson: That's a really good,

Jane Curry: That's funny because Kathy's just in from Perth. I'm just in from Brisbane. My overnight bike from Brisbane is just on the floor of my bedroom, just and so yeah, that's, we don't have wives.

Kathy Lette: No, that's what need

Jane Curry: We need, we need the backup.

Jean Kittson: Yes. So what would you say to people or at who are already over 50 and who are confronting this ageism? I mean, how do, how do they manage it? What should, because the confidence… I'll tell you a quick story.

A friend of mine's a teacher and she retired. She was a brilliant teacher, still is. She was doing some casual work and she, uh, went to the person organising the casual work at the, at the secondary college. She'd been working. At for 20 years and said, I'm really liking the casual work. You know, any casual work you can throw my way, that'd be good because I'm finding it hard to live on the pension.

And he said, ‘Ah, I don't know. There's a lot of younger casual teachers around and they've got more longevity and productivity than you have.’ You don't need productivity and longevity to be a good teacher.

Kathy Lette: No.

Jean Kittson: For a developing mind.

Kathy Lette: She needs to teach him that lesson. I hope she got up on the table and tap danced.

Jean Kittson: You used to say, Kathy, in television, it doesn't matter what you, um, uh, what age you are, as long as it, you don't look at, that's what the producers used to say.

Kathy Lette: Oh, yes. They're saying you've passed your use by date. Well, guess what? Tesco, a big supermarket chain in Britain, just took use-by dates off the food, because they said, make up your own mind. And I think the same should be done for women.

Jean Kittson: Exactly.

Kathy Lette: Take our use-by date off, judge us on our performance and our enthusiasm and our flexibility and our knowledge and our…

Jean Kittson: Exactly.

Kathy Lette: …sense of humor. And we're, we're individuals. You know,. what you have to do to survive the second act is go a lot of girls' nights out, a lot of laughter and, and sisterly camaraderie and um, strength in numbers, you know, and just boost each other up, give each other work. Like really put the, put your hand down and, and pull women up behind you.

Jane Curry: Yeah.

Kathy Lette: But in this, in the Sisterhood Rules, I've put lots of rules in the beginning about sisterly solidarity, like love and loyalty and sticking to each other like a nylon dress in a heat wave.

And it also encouraging women to think big, like don't tell men you want their seats on the bus. You want their seats on the board. Like, think big. We're too, we don't have big enough ambitions for ourselves. Husbands come and go, but um, the sisterhood lasts forever.

That's the most important rule I will share with you.

Jean Kittson: I agree totally. It's really important to have people you can ring up when you're feeling really down and just have a chat with them and then they lift you up and that's so important. And I, I wonder if you'd want to talk about when you gave up publishing — I mean, when you left your job and opened your own publishing company, did you have a mentor then or, well, who was supporting you?

Jane Curry: Amazing timing to ask me that. because I'm just about to go to the London book Fair and I got my first job in publishing in London and my boss, who must be now in her eighties, is still an absolute mover and shaker.

Kathy Lette: What's her name?

Jane Curry: Kit Van Tulleken. She's the mother of the Van Tulleken twins.

Kathy Lette: Great name.

Jane Curry: The Van Tulleken twins. Who are those… They're doctors that sell millions of copies of their books. Twins, identical twins.

Jean Kittson: Oh, you've written about twins.

Kathy Lette: Yeah.

Jane Curry: Yeah. So they, she had the corner office when I was literally sitting in a corridor at about age 22 or 23, and there she was in the corner office and her two boys would come in after school. And I just looked up and thought she was my absolute role model.

Kathy Lette: Oh, great.

Jane Curry: And I'm seeing her in the London book fair.

Kathy Lette: Nice.

Jane Curry: And then I think it's important for other women who are, you know, working. I have a coach, I have a business coach, so I see her once a month and she sorts my head out – not a psychologist, but business wise.

So where we have our natural weaknesses and we, you know, she'll always say you've – she's the ones that send, sends me those texts when I'm saying, I've got this difficult discussion, or I, you know, or different, you know, different emotions that you're taking to meetings just to take the emotion out of it and rely on the business.

So I think that's important for people as who are working, because we are older, so we do have the capacity to sort of resource ourselves. So rather than have a cleaner, I'd rather have a business coach.

Jean Kittson: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's such a good…

Kathy Lette: …To clean out your, your, your brain. Yes. We do a lot of mentoring in England to younger women through the Women of the World Festival.

We mentor young girls at school. We go in the wheel, we go, you know, the, you know the millennial wheel?

Jane Curry: Oh yes.

Kathy Lette: And we're in different pods and we go around in a pod with a group of girls, and then the next time we get off and get in another pod. So it's, we make it fun, but it's also very helpful for them

And it's good for me. I learn a lot from them as well.

Jane Curry: Yeah. One of the things I've learned going back into corporate after about 10 years of running my own business is, you know, the young women that we employ, you know how they're much more in their power than I ever was at that age.

Jean Kittson: Oh, definitely.

Jane Curry: When I was getting divorced, my lawyer turned around and said, are you okay?

And I said, yes. I think looking at the kangaroo and the emu on the coat of arms thinking, how on earth did I end up here? Um, but then I said afterwards, I said, how do you do that every day? And he said, take the emotion. There's no emotion in it for me, Jane. I take the emotion out of it.

And I've always remembered that advice.

So take the emotion out of things. Even the most difficult business transaction, you know, when you've, particularly in publishing, you're dealing with creative people, you know, but take the emotion out of it. Look at the bare bones of the business transaction. Put the emotion in at the beginning and the end.

But when it comes to actually achieving an outcome that is to the satisfaction of both parties, take the emotion out of it. So, channeling my divorce lawyer!

Kathy Lette: When I got divorced, I remember saying – I knew they charged by the hour – so I used to go in and say, no adjectives, no adverbs, no anecdotes. Just get straight to the facts!

But getting back to the mental thing, I just like to say that I, I do wanna encourage all women to always help other women. And when I published, when I wrote Puberty Blues as a teenager, that was rejected by about 10 publishers. Then I saw Anne Summers had written a piece in the paper about, um, gang rapes in Queensland or something.

I thought she'll get this surfy brutality that goes on, and I sent her some of the manuscript and she sent it to a small feminist publishing group called McPhee Gribble in Melbourne. And the rest is history. So that was an absolute perfect example of the sisterhood supporting each other.

Jean Kittson: And getting it, understanding each other.

Kathy Lette: Understanding each other. That's right.

Jean Kittson: And what they're going through and the importance of talking about it.

Kathy Lette: We just need more women in power. Why can't, why can't women just run the world just for a year? We say to the men, go play golf. Do whatever you like. Just go for a year, just let us take over. We can't do a worse job than you've done and see what we could achieve.

Jane Curry: Well, fortunately COVID has given us flexible work conditions. We couldn't get it beforehand, but most of my staff now, we've got nearly a hundred people and it's fantastic. So we've got lots of young mothers on the payroll.

Jean Kittson: Oh that's great

Jane Curry: And they work, you know, it's great. I've re and I think it took COVID to allow the bosses…

Kathy Lette: Yes.

Jane Curry: …the patriarchy, to see that working from home is, it can work.

Kathy Lette: Because that's another big sexist trope. You know, that society expects women to raise children as though we don't work as well.

Jane Curry: That's why I started my own business. Yes. Because when I told my boss I was expecting. The very first thing he said to me was, well, you can't work part-time.

That's what he said to me. And I was the managing director at the time, and I actually miscarried that baby. So it gave me a little window to get out from under. So that's when I went to Macmillan because Ross Gibb, who's just retired from publishing, he said over lunch at Machiavelli's – because publishing still has a few lunches – I told him the story and he said, Jane, you can work part-time for me. He's lovely any day.

Kathy Lette: He lovely. He was my publisher for a while.

Jane Curry: So that's why I went to Macmillan. Because people say, why did you go from being a managing director to being a publisher? And I did that because Ross said, you can work for me any day.

He saw the value of female talent.

Kathy Lette: Yeah. Yes.

Jane Curry: So I had a fantastic year, few years. What about seven years at Macmillan whilst I had my two boys. I'm like,

Kathy Lette: See, revenge, revenge! Fabulous. I think the reason women are drawn, I've them…

Jean Kittson: …outlive them!

Kathy Lette: I think the reason women are drawn to revenge is it's sweet, but totally non fattening – fabulous.

Jane Curry: It is, it is. So Ross Gibbs – we do have our allies.

Kathy Lette: We do, we do. And it's been important to say that…

Jane Curry: …yes…

Kathy Lette: …that of course there are great men who do support us and want the best for us. But we need more, we need more men, at the barricades. I've been saying the same feminist things – Jean and I have been saying the same thing through our comedy since we were teenagers, and we still don’t have equal pay.

So we need men to get on the barricades with us and say, enough, you know, we, we need equality, we need it now. And I often say, some men challenge me when I'm on tour and they'll say, you know, you feminists are asking for too much. And I'm like, are we, are we really asking for too much equal pay?

We'd like men to help us more around the house, which is in their interest. Is it scientifically proven? No woman ever shot a husband while he's vacuuming. We'd like them to do the odd sensitive thing with snow peas in the kitchen, because the weight to a woman's heart through her stomach. Not aiming too high.

Jane Curry: Because I've got boys who are now in their 20s, so I've looked at it through that, you know, men's mental health, they don't want to always be the strong and the tough ones.

Kathy Lette: No. Feminism works for men as well.

Jane Curry: Yes. That's the thing. Exactly. They're allowed to have emotions…

Kathy Lette: …and not have the pressure to be the breadwinner and all of that.

Jane Curry: Yeah. So I see it, you know, having raised boys as a feminist, you know, to make sure that we can have open discussions. And, yeah, I'd like to think that they're well on the way to being good allies.

But yeah, it is a brutal world out there. So I just think we do have to look out for each other and I'm really thrilled to be working with young women, again.

Jean Kittson: To sum up this fantastic conversation, which could go on for hours, um, how would you, uh, what is the main message you like to say to people over 50 who are confronted by ageism or sexism, and how do they find it in them, the courage to stop that voice going, maybe I am too old.

Kathy Lette: Well, I would say carpe diem, like there's no tomorrow. You know, tempus is fugiting – if not now, when, and you know.

One of my mottoes is adventure before dementia. Not that I'm making light of that terrible disease, but you never know what's around the corner. So there's no time to waste. Be… have as much fun and frivolity. Be as outrageous as you can possibly be because you know, this is your last big hurrah. You know…

Jean Kittson: Be assertive now!

Kathy Lette: Yes, don't have any qualms. Just, you know, tap dance on that tabletop.

Jane Curry: When I've had moments of self-doubt, I get moving.

Not necessarily tap dancing, but get active, lift weights, go to the gym, run, walk the dog – dark clouds, gather. That's what I'd say if I was in that frame of mind and wondering how the world was going to greet me, I'd take the world on and get active, get those endorphins flowing. Because then you feel so much better.

Kathy Lette: And also lean into the sisterly comradery.

Jane Curry: Yes.

Kathy Lette: Go out with your girlfriend as often. Which Jean and I do.

Jean Kittson: Yes. Find beautiful women like yourselves and ring them up or have a glass of champagne.

Kathy Lette: Yes. The human wonder bras uplifting, supportive, and make each other look bigger and better. Which is what Jean has done for us today. Thank you.

Jean Kittson: Oh no, you two have, you've both been fantastic been great fun.

Thank you so much. What a great conversation.

Kathy Lette: Thank you Jean.

Jean Kittson: Thanks.

Kathy Lette: Sisterhood rules.

ALL: Sisterhood Rules!

Jean Kittson: Thank you to Kathy Lette and Jane Curry.

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I’m Jean Kittson. Thank you.