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Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

My guest today is a journalist, author, broadcaster and editor of over 30 years,

who became the first female graduate trainee at the Financial Times when she joined in 1989.

This was after editing the student paper ISIS at Oxford University where she read classics.

It was Atlas magazine where she gave her

then housemate, fellow Oxford undergrad Hugh Fernley Whittingstill, his first weekly food column,

something she claims has greatly influenced his career. After a stint at the Financial Times,

she moved to a year on Sir Conman at the Foreign Office before going to the BBC for three years

and then hopping across the pond to Washington, D.C.

She went on to become the ninth editor of The Lady magazine in 2009, also writing weekly columns for the Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and She magazine.

Her books range from Notting Hell trilogy to The Mummy Diaries. Her latest, Rakes Progress, My Political Midlife

Crisis, has been described as remarkable for its radical honesty about her own failings.

It is in this book that she recalls a fierce childhood competition between her and her older brother

Boris Johnson, a trait which has continued throughout adulthood. My guest today is

Rachel Johnson. And we should point

out that we don't just have you today. You brought another special guest, Ziggy. Do you want to

introduce us? Yes, Ziggy is my new love object and she's a seven-month-old cockapoo puppy.

But we're calling her pussy cat because she's already lost at least two of her nine lives.

Once when I ran her over during lockdown, or as I like to say it, she ran under the wheels of my car.

...