Sara Pascoe, 45, is a comedian, actor and writer, known for her stand-up, television appearances and books including Animal and Sex Power Money. She also wrote and starred in the BBC sitcom Out of Her Mind. She lives in London with her husband, Australian comedian and actor Steen Raskopoulos, and their sons Theo, four, and Albie, three.
Here, she talks about the moments that made her, from getting into debt after university to having children in her 40s, and being FaceTimed by Robbie Williams.
I’m good with money now, but I didn’t used to be. When I left university, I had a student loan, two overdrafts and a credit card. You had to earn more than about £18,000 before repaying the student loan and I thought: well, I’ll never earn that because I’m trying to be an actor. I was earning £300 or £400 a month and paying about £90 in interest. But if I got paid and found myself £100 in credit, I’d insist on buying everyone a round because I hadn’t been able to buy anything all month – then put myself straight back into my overdraft.
I waited too long for therapy because I thought I should cope. I grew up in a working-class family where nobody I knew got professional help. I feel very mentally healthy at the moment, but I’ve been on a journey. I had therapy in my 30s and it was hugely useful. During infertility, miscarriage and fertility treatment, I saw a specialist therapist, which meant I wasn’t relying entirely on my partner.
I found infertility very difficult to talk about. At the time, my stand-up was very spiky about not wanting children. I was very defensive because I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on with me or to feel sorry for me. On stage, I would say the exact opposite of how I felt.
My husband told me he wanted to have a family with me before we’d ever kissed. When I first met him at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, he was married to somebody else and we were only very distantly friends. After he separated from his wife, he moved to London and we fell in love. He was really instrumental in making that happen. Now we’ve got two boys, a dog and a house.
Somehow IVF felt too privileged at first, so I didn’t want to do it – almost as if the world was trying to tell me that perhaps I shouldn’t be a parent. When I turned 40 during lockdown, my husband said: “I don’t want us to look back and wish we’d tried everything. Let’s give it another two years and involve medical professionals.” We started treatment on the NHS, but Covid cancelled it. By the time things resumed, I was too old to qualify, so we went privately.
My mum calls me a medical miracle. We were incredibly lucky with fertility treatment. We had ICSI rather than IVF, where a sperm is injected directly into an egg. One egg collection gave us Theo, who’s now four, and one of our frozen embryos became Albie after another transfer when Theo was 10 months old. In fertility treatment terms, we had about the best outcome possible.
What has surprised me about motherhood is how completely it has taken over my life. I imagined I would be this ball-breaking successful career woman who also had children. But it hasn’t felt like a choice. Unless I’m working, I’m with my kids. There’s no me time, social time or friends time. I didn’t expect that because I had children in my 40s and my life was already so established. I didn’t realise children would just cannibalise it and take all of it. They have more of me than I knew I had to give. There’s nothing left.
I have an embarrassing level of fame – where most people don’t know who you are, but somebody might tell them. At the school gates, most parents wouldn’t look twice at me. One person might go: “That person is a comedian.” Then everyone goes home and Googles you. People don’t come up and say: “Hi, I’m a big fan of your work.” They’ll say something like: “How do you think Josh is doing on Strictly?” I’m thinking: “Are we pretending we all know Josh, or are you trying to get gossip?”
One woman came up to me and said: “Have you tried lucid dreaming?” I thought: OK, this woman is just insane, she goes up to strangers and asks them if they lucid dream. Then she referenced something I’d said in my stand-up a couple of years earlier and I realised she was just continuing a conversation she thought we’d already started.
I have a lot of invisibility. I travel on public transport and have a very normal life. But if I didn’t wash my hands after going to the toilet, somebody might tell somebody. If I was rude in a restaurant or shouted at my kids on the bus, someone might say: “I saw Sara Pascoe having a meltdown.”
If I’d known Robbie Williams was about to FaceTime me, I’d probably have died. I’ve always been a Take That fan. He’d got my number from Jimmy Carr after hearing me on a podcast and thinking another comedian hadn’t been very nice to me. Apparently Robbie sometimes reaches out to people if he thinks they’ve been publicly embarrassed or attacked. He left me a voice note, then FaceTimed me while I was getting ready to walk the dog.
The thing I dislike most about the modern world is AI. Since U2 put their album into everyone’s iTunes libraries in 2014, it feels as if technology companies have increasingly decided we don’t get to opt in. AI is basically mansplaining. I know AI probably has exciting uses, but everyone seems so excited about what it can do that nobody stops to ask whether we actually need it.
Sara has partnered with Bupa to encourage people to “read between the reels” by looking beyond humour and memes for signs someone may be struggling with stress or anxiety, and to seek professional support through Bupa Mindplace centres.