Sophie Ellis-Bextor: “I’m a healthy amount of delusional!” How to sustain career success

Happy Place

Fearne Cotton

Society & Culture, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Relationships, Personal Journals

4.6 • 15.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How loud are the voices in your head that tell you you’re definitely going to screw up that big opportunity? Sophie Ellis-Bextor is trying to make a point of talking to herself more kindly.

In this chat, Fearne and Sophie talk about reminding yourself that your thoughts aren’t facts; sometimes you have to override the voice that says you’re not good enough and just get on with it to prove yourself wrong.

Sophie explains why being dropped by her label at 20 encouraged her to take responsibility for her own career, and offers advice on how not to get distracted by what other people are doing with their lives. What should you tell yourself when you think you’re going to give up on a passion?

They also chat about not worrying where an opportunity will lead you, instead enjoying it as an adventure in its own right. Plus, why was Sophie petrified her BAFTA performance would be awful?

Sophie has announced her biggest ever UK headline tour in May and June 2025!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that makes sure you're speaking to yourself kindly.
0:07.5	Today I'm chatting to Sophie Ellis Bexter.
0:10.4	In the morning of the day that I was doing the BAFTAs, I woke up and I thought I am not in the right headspace and I'm not going to do it right tonight.
0:17.9	I thought it through so much to the point where I pictured myself at the after party
0:22.2	and people not being sure if they should come over and say something reassuring or not.
0:26.4	And then we got to the bit where I was all doled up and Greg Williams takes one of those lovely black and white photos.
0:31.7	And I was like, this is me just before I screw it up.
0:34.3	And I got up on stage and murder started and I felt this wave of nausea and in my head
0:40.9	I went, will you get over yourself? I hope everyone's well and good. By the way, how are we still in
0:46.9	January? What's going? Why is January going on for a year? Why is it so slow? I don't understand.
0:52.9	Now I'm excited to talk to today's guest Sophie Sophie, for many reasons. And one of them is my current state of mind, which is just general overwhelm. It's January's a lot, as we all know. But also, I'm in one of those states where everything's just slightly, I'm dropping balls is what I'm doing, okay, left right and centre.
1:12.8	I'm forgetting things that the kids are meant to take to school. I'm a bit all over the shop.
1:17.2	There's a hell of a lot of laundry that I've not got around to doing. My head feels like it's sort of
1:22.4	generally exploding left, right and centre. And I'm not doing dry jam because of that, okay? I'm enjoying
1:31.0	the odd little nogroony here and there just to get me through it. And I think the main
1:35.8	theme of this episode is to not beat yourself up and to talk to yourself nicely. So I will be
1:41.6	continuing to enjoy those ngronies infrequently as a little treat, a little reward at the end of each day.
1:49.3	But I am going to siphon wisdom from today's guest like you've never seen before because she is, quite frankly, superwoman.
1:57.8	So let's talk more about Sophie. She needs no introduction. She's the glittering
2:02.0	disco pop woman of our dreams. Her musical career spans more than 25 years and of course
2:07.7	she's made everyone's lockdowns infinitely more sparkly with her live kitchen discos, which I loved
2:13.6	on Instagram, which have since turned into an album, a tour and a BBC Radio 2 show.
	...

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