Biological Age Results

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And that's where the Pilot TV Podcast comes in, your essential guide to every show that matters. Each week we sift through the very best in Prestige TV to help you decide what's worth spending your time on and what isn't. So join me, James Dyer, as well as venerable TV critics Boyd Hilton and Kay Rivero, and let us help take the stress out of your downtime, the Pilot TV Podcast. Because you can't watch ever ything. You can't do much in under five minutes. Boil an egg? Sure. Cook a roast dinner? No chance. But comparing car insurance prices with mustard.co.uk ? Easy. See what you could save in just a few minutes. Click mustard.co.uk. Authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. See website for details. Arrayo Original Podcast. Baroness Lola Young, your chronological age is 75 . Your biological age is Oh my god . Welcome to What's My Age Again, the podcast where we test your biological age against the number of years you have lived on this earth in this life anyway. I am so excited for this week's guest. At eight weeks old, she was handed from her Nigerian parents to a 64-year-old white war widow in North London. By 14, that foster mother had died. By 18, the state was done with her. Today she walks through the gilded corridors of the House of Lords as Baroness Lola Young, actor, professor, cultural critic, cross-bench peer, anti-slavery campaigner, chancellor of the University of Nottingham, and one of the most outspoken voices on modern slavery and ethical fashion in Britain. She has spent a lifetime looking directly at injustice, racism, exploitation, the trauma of children in care, and the brutal truth of who makes our clothes. So the question is, what has all of that done, Baroness, to your body? Has a life of carrying other people's pain sped up her biological clock, or has purpose, intellect, and a refusal to fear aging kept her younger than her years. She's seventy-five, which is already astounding. But what is her real age? Baroness Lola Young, welcome. Thank you . Seventy-five. People don't think you're seventy-five. Are people surprised? Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Very much so. And uh it becomes slightly embarrassing because you don't want to be like, oh yes, well of course everybody tells me I'm looking lots younger than that. I don't want to be like that, but by the same token I don't want to pretend like, ooh, really? You know, because even sometimes I look at myself and think, what's what's going on here? So it usually comes out, you know, in the conversation about children, and I say, Well, I have a son, and they say, Oh, how old and I say, Yeah, he's 42. Yeah, yeah. And then and then 'cause I have the same. My daughter's sixteen and now I look like I could have a sixteen year old daughter. But for a time when I would tell them her age, I could see their brain being like old or slag. And I'd be like, both. Both . It's the age old game, old or slag. But don't you think it's funny when we say that, when we say, oh, you don't look your age? Because what does that mean about what you should look like when you're that age? Who's telling us how we should look when we're seventy-five or sixty-five or twenty-five? Well, can I say to you, I don't often speak ill of the dead, especially a a wonderful woman who fostered children , but when I saw your new book, Eight Weeks, the woman who took you in is on this cover. It's only 64. Now we know white women age like milk, but this is ridiculous. A sixty four year old isn't Elizabeth Hurley sixty four in a bikini. And what has happened to this lady? But it's the time, isn't it? It's the period. That was so that would have been well, I wasn't a year old then on the on the cover of the book, so what would that be? 195 0. So uh no, nineteen fifty one, I beg your pardon, fifty one, fifty two. So when did the the Second World War ended in nineteen forty five? So we're talking about minimal amount of time to have been through all of those traumas and it's entirely different time. She was born in the nineteenth century in 1886. That's right. The days of empire. You know, so yeah, she and she didn't look out of place. There weren't other people going round saying, oh my God, she looks so old. No. That was the kind of norm. It's only from my long, long perspective, things have changed dramatically over the years. You're absolutely right. Even so recently as the Golden Girls, which is one of my favorite shows on TV, they would speak about being past their prime and Blanche would say, Well, I'm thirty-six, I'll never meet a man now. I'm forty-two. It was I think the hair styles that these older women had. And the clothes. And the clothes. Definitely the clothes. The lack of skincare. Yeah, exactly. So what d did you know about that woman's life and her trauma and what did she talk to you as a foster mother about the war? No, she didn't. She she would often say, Oh, I've just got my widow's pension. That's all I've got to look after you. Because the situation was that although they were meant to be paying her, my parents were meant to be paying her to look after me, or my mother was, she very um very rarely did. It was irregular and it was like again to put the time in perspective it was, two pounds a week was considered a pretty fair whack for looking after a child, you know, in those in those days. So yeah, it was this this situation where she didn't divulge much of her private life. But looking back, I can deduce certain things, particularly as I have my care records. So if I can just explain the house that we lived in belonged to her biological daughter. I didn't know it belonged to her at the time, but so her her biolog ical daughter lived on the second floor of the house, big Victorian terrace. Then Daisy's biological granddaughter lived on the next floor with her great great her great grandchildren. So there were these generations of Daisy's um uh daughters and granddaughters and grandsons, great grandsons. Oh god, I get lost in all those great things, but you know you know what I'm saying is like that generational thing. The descendants, the house of descendants Interrupted as I like to think of it by on the f on the ground floor, the upper ground floor , what was called in those days a sp inster couple. Ah. A spinster couple just would be lesbians today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. That would it would almost be assumed today, but nobody would care at the same time. Yeah. Um but yeah, so it was an extraordinary house and so her her her history as it were, or her yeah, her history was kind of mapped out with the generations, but she would never really tell us any personal uh details. I I found out quite a lot when I was writing the book. So eventually you accessed your care records and we'll get back to that. But at the time I think it would have been emblematic of that generation not to be extremely forthcoming and to button it up, keep calm, carry on, and not to share. But was she a loving foster mother? Yeah, this is a question b that people ask me, and I try to be honest about it because at the time I never felt loved. So, but then she looked after me without being paid, and this caused huge ructions with her daughter, who, if you remember that sort of topography of the house, lived on the first or second floor. Um huge rows, which I didn't really know what they were about, but subsequently my sort of suspicions were confirmed is about me because what her daughter was saying was, Why are you using your money on this Nigerian girl? Um, and actually, she uh went to the Nigerian embassy, the daughter went to the Nigerian embassy to try and get them to take me back, as it were. So that's w they but I just used to see these huge flare-ups and then they wouldn't talk to each other for about three weeks afterwards. Pass each other, you know, in the hallway to the garden when they're hanging out, the washing and not speak to each other. I knew that would probably set you up for a very comfortable um job in the House of Lords because that's really the sentiment over there. No, no. Was like observing people's behavior, observing the tone of what people say, observing their facial expressions and what we'd now call body language, because it that was a matter of survival anyway. You know, you had to try and read people because you weren't in an expressive um society or communities. And I was very sort of inwardly turned. I would read and read and read, and I always say that's what kind of helped me really save my life, if you like, in some respects. Yeah. So do you know what went on with your parents that you were turned over to care at eight weeks? Mm. Oh my gosh, it's so complicated, Catherine. I mean, it's just ridiculously complicated. So basically, they weren't married to each other, mother-father in Nigeria, both bright , you know, eventually professional people. Um my mother came over to study nursing. She they'd been in a relationship. She was a she was a widow by the way, my mother was a widow. And so it was widely expected that they would get married. But then so my father was still in Nigeria whilst my mother was here. Unbeknownst to her, he got another woman pregnant and So I had this half-sister who's two years older than me on that side. And then my mother had two sons by her husband that had died. So I have these two half or had these two half brothers too. My father comes over to London to study, but actually shacks up with my mother. And then his wife back in Lagos is like, okay, what's going on over there? Because everybody had known that they were, you know, lovers before. So she says I'm going over there. So she comes over to London and then my father goes back to her, s leaving my mother with me . So I'm not clear about at what stage exactly these things happened. And part of my desire to see my care records was to find out. You know, everybody wants to know their origins, don't they? No matter how sort of troubled they might be. And I wanted to know, but um di wasn't really revealed in the care notes. Other things were which were quite um interesting, let's say, but but not that. Suffice to say, you had really smart, really accomplished, good, loving parents, but it was complicated as it is in many relationships today. And your mother was probably had everything that it would take to be a sound mother , but these complications meant she decided to put you into care. I as you might imagine I kind of vacillate between different positions on that. You know, there's a part me that as a mother, so how could you give away your eight-week-old baby, you know, to this stranger effectively? She didn't, you know, she was recomm uh Daisy was recommended, but you know, didn't know her personally. How could you do that to an eight-week-old baby? And the thing is you say about loving parents, but the they came to see me I probably saw my mother th maybe four times before she left when I was seven and my father few more than that and actually stayed a weekend with him and his wife who knew about me. She was very kind actually. But um I would never s uh identify them as being loving because to me y you even if you felt forced to give away your child because you were mentally incapacitated or something, you would want to have a connection. And there was and this was vindicated um my memories were vindicated in the care notes. There'd be a little thing in handwriting, of course, because no computers, that that says um mother visited, baby cried , um uh or father sent box of chocolates for her fifth birthday, you know, and it's like, what's that about? You know, there was no expression. I never felt that I was loved by anybody going back to your original question. But yeah. I was trying to find some love, but no. Like your your conclusion is I never felt that I was love. No. Did you think that led you to feel that you weren't worthy of love? Did you have tumultuous romantic relationships or friendships or any other choice later on that was geared towards like I'm not worthy of love? Yes, I think so. And I think again, it's a pattern that gets repeated with a lot of people who feel that they've been abandoned in childhood. I'm in this strange demographic, if you like. So that you'll be aware that lots of adults came over from Jamaica and the Caribbean in the late 40s, early 50s, and people from Indian subcontinent and so on came over a bit later than that in in in greater numbers. And then there was this kind of population of mainly West African students like my parents who studying medicine, law, whatever. Um, and so they were adults. So the children weren't that so I was like I was often like I was the one. So at my primary school, I think I was the second black child there in North London. And then at secondary school, which was a girls comprehensive, eleven hundred students, well I I think I could have counted all of the black girls that were there on on one hand. So and so if you translate that into the possibility of romantic relationships, especially during that period, I mean white boys to me were the ones who would shout at me, call me names, spit at me, throw money at me as on my way to school. Yeah. And and black boys weren't you know, were few and far between. And also I was very kind of awkward and this kind of I'm not worthy of I'm you know, I'm unloved because I deserve to be unloved. And I think I as I say a lot of kids who are in the care system feel like that. Feel like it's their fault that um things haven't worked out. And what kind of mother are you? Oh like when because I'm sure that it brings a lot of it back when you have a small baby, when they reach that milestone of eight weeks and every milestone thereafter, you know, probably brings up a lot of things for you. Yeah. It does. I mean I guess in my in my mid twenties I sort of vowed I was never gonna have children 'cause I didn't want them to you know, I read all of this material. Sometimes I think I read too much, but there was a load of material which said, Oh, if you've been in a care system, you're likely to replic ate that situation. You know, a lot of kids are in care. I've had parents that have been in care, and I thought, well, that, you know, that is like um some kind of genetic stain, you know, that I'd never get rid of. Yeah. There's literature like that. Well, because it's you know, I'm gonna say it's true. I mean obviously I could have I had a let's say not an in-depth reading of that material, but there is plenty of research which suggests a lot of children and people who've been in care parti,cularly women who've been in care, often end up having to have their children taken away. So you know that that's something that's something that happens, yeah still. So I I didn't think that um it was a good idea, and maybe I recogni zed something in myself that maybe I thought because I felt unloved I wouldn't be able to love. Because love involves trust, right? And that was a you know, when you've been again when you've been in that situation, you don't really trust a lot of people because there's this sort of continually your letdown people who, you know, people are paid to look after you. So what what kind of investment have they got in your welfare or your intellectual development? On the contrary, some of them would be like, you know, oh, you think you're above us kind of attitude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of that made it quite difficult. But then I for some reason, for some strange reason, it came into my head I was going to go to drama school. So um I when I was in my early 20s, I decided to go into acting. And there it's like the world is your oyster, right? Especially in terms of boyfriends. And I think we'll have to skate over a lot of those um uh details, let's say. Famous boyfriends? No, no, no, no, no. But lots of bad decisions. Oh fine, yeah. I appreciate your discretion. You skate over those details. I make those details the body of my work. Well yeah. I'm like, well let me tell you about him. I think that's a generational thing as well because it it it that's a logical development of a society which is more able to be more expressive and more honest. So of course people are going to go out there and sort of test the limits of that. Yeah. Why not? I certainly do. But also in the thespian world um I think you'd find some really interesting boys to go out with. Yeah. Mostly gay. Yes, they were. We've all had gay boyfriends in the U.S. Yeah, I've been there, done that. Yeah. Um But there was also this thing of being a little bit on the exotic. I d I suppose I'd look back now and in fact even one person referred to me and my life as being exotic. And I said, well that's not how I experienced it, but you know because of a lot of very very white, very middle class people, a lot of privately educated. I'd not come across this thing before, you know, as I've been brought up on the mean streets of well, I say mean streets of hybrid 'cause that's what it was then. I mean you don't think of that now in Islington and the Angel and all that's very shishi, but it wasn't in the fifties and sixties. So this this this privately educated, what did that even mean? You know, I didn't understand. So hang on, how did you get into a drama school with all these privately educated white boys? I don't know. What did you have to do? Well in the drama school, uh funnily enough, with a huge majority were women. Yeah. You know, but um it it wasn't like what you'd call top tier. So I did audition for I think I auditioned for Lambda as well as the London Academy but I didn't get in there. But I got into this new College of Speech and Drama, which offered the safety net of a teaching diploma or degree or no well not not a degree, a teaching diploma. So that if I failed totally at acting I could have gone on to teach English, drama, whatever. So um yeah . And who is cheering you on to do something like this? 'Cause if you if you couldn't everybody my friends are looking at me, I think they must have been saying, What the heck is she g on? You know, because it's like it's it must have come out of the blue to them 'cause it kind of came out of the blue to me, you know. I sort of thought, uh I'd been doing some amateur dramatics and found a quite liked it. And because you believe it or not, I was quite shy and introverted and I didn't like being in sort of big social occasion well, not that I had m many, but I I, you know, I found it I was awk ward. So um a friend and I decided we'd go to Am dram . And it that was hilarious in in so many ways, because again, the director didn't know what to do with these two black girls, you know, he had to kind of write special pieces for us and you know, all of this. Yeah. It that scene has changed so much in so many different and interesting ways. I love that you had the confidence and fortitude, even feeling unloved, not worthy of love, being introverted, that you and your friend just went out there and did that. Well, I think it's because and I think this relates to later life, and it'd be interesting when we get to the blood work. Um because I think what I've done is to make myself entirely independent and resilient, in a way that sometimes does, you know, exclude people because I that that kind of taken to its extreme, that's what it can do. So my feeling was, well, look, I don't have my Nigerian parents telling me I've got to go and study accountancy or law or medicine. I can do what I like. And so let's give it a go. Because I didn't want to be in a position where by, you know, a bitter and twisted old woman saying, Oh, if only I'd gone into theatre I could have been a movie star or anything like that. So which I wasn't of course. But you know Not yet No, but I had a great I can't complain about my career in Rhett Theatre. And you worked on the BBC and you had a long stint in this amazing children's show and you did loads of Metal Mickey. Yeah . Do you think you had a desire to be someone else? Is that part of acting I think there must always be an element of that. yourself in a different way. And maybe that's particularly acute for people who've been in similar situations. Don't doesn't always mean you have to have been in care, but in a situation where you feel yourself isn't acceptable who you are. So let's see if we can be somebody else and get that um acceptance or or respect or whatever in doing that work. But I also think and this carries on to much later as well, I think into my career . Um that it's it's that thing of wanting to be visible. Because I did in fact my initial sort of um draft title for the book was Invisible, because that's how I felt when I when I was young. So, you know, then I wanted to be visible. Now I want to have that that that visibility is now now I'm totally visible. Yeah. And so now it's about legacy, you know, what am I leaving behind? Um so yeah, and I think acting that that acting thing was I can do what I want because I'm completely free, where's my friends, yeah, on the university track and v great people, you know, in public service and all of that. Maybe the first generation of women who felt that they um it wasn't something unusual to go into a career as opposed to getting married and settling down , so going to university from a comprehensive school, you know, was a great thing to do. Um, but I didn't get enough good grades in in uh my A levels. explained to people I was studying, trying to study in a room where kids were running around, you know, I was in I was in a children's home, uh the first first one was about fourteen kids, the second one was about the same num ber. The the the last one was uh fewer kids, it was only seven. But it's like, you know, I was studying in the playroom there because there isn't a place for people to study. And so was this with Daisy, the aforementioned foster mother that you had, she fostered other children as well. Oh yes, sorry, yes, I left all of that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well yeah, actually you didn't but let's go back to the notes because I think we can't avoid them because there are lots of gaps without it. So what year did you access your notes, 20 to 12? Yes, it was around uh 2012. It took me it was a combination of Islington Council um having difficulty in finding them, which I kind of, you know, to be honest with you, I'm totally amazed because I, you know, I've got a thick folder from the nineteen fifties, from from when I was eight weeks old until I was eighteen, with lots of detail. So yeah, it took a while, but it also took a while for me to face that reality. Because I didn't even know you could get your notes, even though I was by then I'd been in the House of Lords for several years, but I didn't even know that and it was a friend who was a probation officer, somebody I'd known who was still great friends with from school. Yeah. And she said, Oh, you know, you can get your notes. She said, You may not because you know it was a long time ago and things happen, but g give it a go. This is who you gotta contact. So but it took me a long while to say yes I'm gonna do this. I really am going to do this. Are you original podcast ? This episode of What's My Age Again is sponsored by MedExpress, the UK online pharmacy. If you've been trying to manage your weight but feel like nothing's really working, MedExpress connects you with UK registered clinicians who assess your situation and create a treatment plan to support your weight management goals. 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Price review based on the off-gen price cap after twelve months see Britishgas.co.uk slash verify for more. The people of Britain love their fancy blenders. They've bought loads of them. And luckily, if they bought them with Barclay Card, they earned rewards. In fact, they'll earn rewards on all their el igible purchases. It's a more convenient way to consume your fruit and veg. What you buy is your business. Giving you rewards on purchases is ours. Barclay Card. Backing your future.. 28 9% APR representative variables subject to application, financial circumstances, and borrowing history. T's and C's apply. What were your fears about reading the details of your time and care? Yeah, I was I was afraid there might be material about my parents that would be even more difficult to absorb, you know. I thought maybe I don't know whether I don't know what I thought might be in there. Um I thought there might be as as my friend warned me and I kind of sussed myself, some of the language would be difficult because we don't use that kind of language about people today. So lots of times in my notes, when I did finally get them, the social workers referred to me as a large Nigerian girl. And there's this whole thing about big muscles and you know the, which is one of those kind of mythological things about or stereotypical things about black people. You know, big and hefty and so on. And um yeah, and like Nigerian, I guess to them I was Nigerian, but I didn't feel like that. So yeah, I was a bit afraid. I didn't know what was going to be in there. And also I'd been a bit naughty in some of the children's homes. I wasn't a saint by any means. And um I thought, oh maybe what did I do there? What did I do at that home? Because I know they didn't like me, you know. But anyway, it wasn't it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be in some respects. But by the same token, there's one thing that's outstanding in there, and that's a letter which I reproduce, just redact the name and the address and everything. Because I wasn't expecting to find like original um documents in the folder. So although I've got phot ocopies obviously, but um there there's even there's a postcard that I sent to my social worker. There's a letter that I sent to my social wor ker saying how depressed I was and I I was told that I was a burden on the people who ran the children's homes. What age is this? About oh what, f fifteen, fourteen, fifteen, very difficult age.. Ye Yeah.ah So piecing together your memories and now details from your file, what can you tell us about living in care? Like in a nutshell. I know you really go into it in the book. But um Well, I think what I would say, and obviously with the benefit of hindsight and reflection and being a great old age full of wisdom, I what I can say is that if you look at the context we're in the 1950s and 1960s, so thankfully I'm sort of you know pretty well educated on that on that period in terms of lots of different things. So I can look back on that and say, that was a horrible experience. And it was being in care was made worse, if you like, by being black at a time when there were so few uh black people around um on television, nothing like that. I mean, you know, it was completely barren landscape as far as that goes. So the thing was about being black, about being in care, and um but also being quite clever and able to read and read books far in advance of what I should have been reading. So all of that's a kind of big jumble. But the main thing, when I speak to young people today and I say to them, for example, I say, Oh my gosh, it was awful, when you're eighteen, that's it, you're out of care, off you go. You know, and unless you've got a really good foster parent that wants you you to keep and you want to stay with them if you're lucky that might happen but often it doesn't so you're on your own kind of thing. And um you know and y if you think about things that your parents or whoever's caring for you would normally do, they would sort of inherently you'd learn how to cook a little bit, how to um save money or or spend money or or whatever, look after yourself, but you're thrust into this adult world. So now what the kids call it is the care cliff. You fall off the cliff. So in that respect, what that's taught me is that the emotional landscape is very similar to what it was when I was in the care system, but it's just that some of the contextual details have changed. And your little handwriting is in here too. I was just trying to look back at the letters and stuff. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. That is amazing. That is so much det like my fifteen year old self. I mean that's it was a real kind of um trying to say it without using four less words, but you know, it's like a real kind of oh my gosh, what's going on here? You're allowed to say mind fuck on this show. That's what it was was. It a mind fuck. Because it was like, oh, you know, when people ask you that question, what would you say to your 15-year-old self? And here was my 15-year-old self telling me uh whatever it was, 60, or whenever it was I first read them. So um, yeah, that was um weird. But also seeing this letter from this woman who didn't even look after me in the end, but I Yes. I went to another foster home, then um I was taken into a children's home in Hertfordshire, but I was still going to school not far from here. I used to come down here all the time, Parliament Hill School. Okay. So that journey involved um I guess it's 20 minutes, but it felt like 20 hours. A t a 20 minute walk from the children's home. It's in Hertfordshire, it's in a village in in the Hertfordshire uh countryside to the station in the dark in the winter because it started too early. And um with no paving either side and cars all whizzing by, you know, on my own, no lighting. Um and so that was like a living nightmare and I the way I got over that was to invent this this person, this being who hated light. Okay. So I would have to revel in the darkness and be very upset if I saw a car coming towards me with lights because I didn't want to see any lights. Or if the moon was out, I didn't . So it was a way of trying to deal with that situation , but fundamentally it kind of nearly broke me actually. And so they kept trying to find places nearer to my school because I refused to leave school. They wanted me to go to a local school, said no, I'm not going, my friends are there, it's the only thing I've got, the only stable thing I've got. So um so this um this woman I went to see. I mean I I was gonna say I don't know how to describe it, but I do, it's in there but she is it another four letter word Lola no no it isn't it is it's beyond it's beyond all of that it was it's more I'd kind of resort to literature like I always felt it was like going to see the fall of the house of Usher. So it's like a big terraced house in Highbury, near Highbury Fields. I went to see it the other day, still there, the house. And um and the family was was this woman who allegedly wanted to be a foster mother to me, and her husband, a s a grown up son in his mid-twenties, and um a daughter. Now the daughter had cerebral palsy, but so that this woman, the mother of this twenty-year-old, nineteen year old uh young woman, um just said, Oh, that's my daughter, she's a Murr, and um and just kind of left her sweeping. So it felt like she was kind of like doing all the housework in this kind of slightly awkward way that she had because of her muscle spasm. Anyway, it was so there was all of this and all of these things happened. I was there for about 45 minutes or an hour on my own, no social worker accompanying me. And you know, to me, that was kind of the end of it. I I looking back, I thought, no, I didn't like that place, didn't want to go. And then in there, there's a letter from that woman a character assassination of me. Yeah. It's it it was shocking. I I I lit I did find it so shocking that I had to I really did that classic thing of scrubbing myself in very hot water. Oh. Cause it was so it brought so many things back, you know, so many feelings back of that nobody wants , you know, and it's like it was horrible. It's the power of words. And it was a it was like a two or three-page handwritten letter. As I say, it's it is in there. And um uh it's quite shocking the the assessment she makes of me on the basis of that very short meeting. Yeah. Yeah. So you have loads of coping mechanisms for all of this trauma , um, pretending to be someone who reveled in the darkness and this hyper-independence is absolutely a trauma response. And it's amazing how accessing your records, even all those years later, reading a rejection from a woman that you didn't want to live with anyway, takes you right back to being like a rejected child. Well, in fact, you say I didn't want to live with anyway. That's how I f thought I felt at the time, right? That's my memory of it. Yeah. But when I looked in the notes, what the the people at the children's home said was that after that meeting I went back to the home and started packing my suitcase and saying I was gonna go and live with them. So , you know, that again was kind of like what is going on, what was going on. And you know, there's an extent to which it's impossible to remember. Because you you're in a way, you know, even as I tell you, I'm telling you the memory of a memory of a memory of a memory of the memory. One thing that jumps out to me , um, just as a mother, really being hyper aware of how vulnerable these children are in the system, even though I've never experienced it myself. I'm glad that you talk about it so often in your advocacy and of course in your book, is as soon as you said to me, I went to this house and they had an adult son who was 20, that scares me a little bit because I don't like the idea. I just don't know how safe children are. If you take a young woman who would have been fourteen, fifteen and put her with a twenty year old man He was twenty seven actually. Twenty seven. Yeah, yeah. No. Like how I I won't even let my sixteen year old daughter sleep anywhere that there is an adult man. And I know that that might sound crazy to a lot of people, but how much of a risk is that in the system? Well, I mean, even then when we you know, you say that now, and I would say that now, but um that's now and that the again there's a particular context around that because we're so aware of now of the abuse that's been going on and we're much more not so much aware because I think we as women have always been aware of the amount of misogyny and violence against women, but it's much more open about that. But even then, I was surprised, and looking back, I was surprised that the social worker let me go on my own to that house anyway. I think things are m uh are better because there is that aw they're better because there is that awareness, but that doesn't doesn't mean that things, you know, are okay because you can read there's so many times I read stories about not just you, know, we think of sexual abuse particularly because that's so kind of current today, but it's not just about that. It's about emotional abuse. It's about telling people, telling kids they're stupid. Yeah. Why are you bothering? Don't do this. Ripping up their homework because you don't want them to be cleverer than you are. You know, all of these things that kind of go on. And this because children obviously are the most vulnerable. Yeah. Not only do they have very in theory they have rights, but they're not they're not able to exercise those rights without the help of and support of an adult. And so you've got to get a trusted adult, and it's really, really difficult. So you know, I do feel for children and young people in the system and when they first leave, because in some respects at eighteen, well, you know, you know, you know what sixteen to eighty 'cause you can leave care at sixteen actually. Can you imagine your daughter , you know, you know, with even now with your support and your husband's support and everything, just kind of leaving and going, being left on her own more or less to sort out her life? Well she'll be falling off a care cliff because I have not taught her to cook and I have not taught her about finances. And um I think modern parenting is is not great, actually. I need to step it up. I need to be a lot more Nigerian in many areas of my life. But don't don't give them away. No. I just need to have some like smart books around the house, really prioritized, like science and law. Um is this how you pivoted into advocacy for modern slavery? Because when you spoke about the daughter who had a physical disability basically being a a cleaner for the house is that all linked that's really interesting because I hadn't made that direct connection and that's one of the fascinating things about talking about this stuff is that people bring these other insights into it. So I hadn't made that direct connection, but now I think about it. You're right, because we were talking about yesterday how this the first time I got really involved in this was I was asked to to make an amendment to a law in 2009 to criminalize domestic um domestic servitude and forced labour. And most people most, people, even in the House of Lords, said, well, surely that's already a criminal offence. No, it wasn't. It was a civil tort. So if we wanted to make that a crime, which brings up all kinds of other things like the possibility of compensation , et cetera, et cetera. You know, we really need to nail this law. The then Labour government weren't very happy about it for various reasons, but we tested them and in the end they they gave in and we got this on the statute book. So that was in 2009. And that was then so anti-slavery international, great charity, oldest human rights advocacy in the country, I think, if not the world. And they they said, would I be patrons? So then I got to learn more about it. Then people started talking about supply chains. I'm going, what's what's a supply chain? You know, this is in 2010. And then um people saying, look, you know, there's this whole area of ethical fashion, but people in Parliament aren't really paying much attention to it. MPs and peers aren't paying much. And I've always loved clothes and fashion, so I thought, right, let's get in there. And I was very fortunate, great group of women who said, look, you know, we'll tell you what we're doing, and we'll tell you how you can help us via parliament. So that's how I got into all of that and then realised what was going on in supply chains with again mainly women being uh in situations of forced labour, not only working extremely long hours, being locked into buildings, not being allowed to go to the toilet without permission, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But also with the additional threat very often of sexual abuse and harassment in those factories. So, you know, it's a huge field, a vast field, and I still I still um engage with a lot of people from the fashion world, although I'm not primarily um concentrating on that quite so much. That's not to say job done, because it will never be done. But there are other areas that people have um persuaded me to get interested in . Which has been quite difficult, very different world of construction. So don't start asking me about brick kilns and sand trapping And at seventy five you're still evolving and growing and maybe going into that stuff and still fighting for it. I think people would be shocked to to know how much modern slavery goes on in the UK. Definitely. And that supply chain stuff that's in the UK. Definitely as well, yeah. I mean, yesterday, not to show off or anything, but you know, one of my roles you read out was uh Chancellor of Nottingham University. And we were at St St James's Palace um because um we'd been awarded amongst I think there were 19 universities and and colleges had the Queen's Anniversary Award for in higher and further education to give it its full title. And Nottingham University received that award because of the Wrights Lab and the Wrights Lab uh got the award because they've been doing this absolutely pioneering work using satellite technology to identify sites where there is trafficking and forced labour and child labour around the world, so that people can't then say, oh, well, we haven't got anything like that going on in our area because they can pick this up. Please don't ask me about the technology because I couldn't I couldn't speak to that at all. But I do know that that data that they're producing and that the knowledge that's being generated through that work can help to transform the way in which we approach these issues, particularly, you know, around the world. So that was a great moment to have that work rec ognized. That is wild. I won't ask you about the technology. I'm not I would I would assume it's like heat and they could see like loads of people. Just don't go there, you know, I did just Proton It might as well be magic as far as I'm concerned. Don't forget I was born in the last century, you know. So Well, I know we're not supposed to say it, but you don't look it. And you've done so much. So how did you become a baroness? You've you're the last we left you, we were at drama school. Oh gosh. You have a lot of coping mechanisms for your traumatic upbringing. You're advocating for change in that department, but you don't think that a lot is different. And then how do you pivot from acting to Lordshi p? Yes, well, um quite. How do you do that? Okay, so there is a kind of continuity. I can I can see the thread. So from um acting I was very involved in in the politics of representation. So there weren't enough black ac actors. In what year were you involved in the politics of representation and acting? Um sevent y eight, nine. I think once I'd left college in seventy six then I went to rep theatres, as I said before, and I got involved with Equity, the Actors Union. And so did all of that. So I did a lot of committee work as I as I was involved in that. When I stopped acting, um I then what did I do? Then I went to into kind of arts admin development training locally in Harringay , then got more known because of the committee work that I was doing for arts council, heritage lottery fund and all those kinds of bod ies. Then I decided that having missed out on university, I wanted to know everything in the whole world there was to know. And so I I I registered for a degree, uh uh an undergraduate degree, I did that, did well in that, then did a Ph D , then started looking at areas of black history at a time when that was relative I'm not gonna say new, but relatively low profile. And then all of a sudden, these museums and cultural institutions were ringing up Lola Young, who I think by then was a professor, got to be a professor, one of the first black women professors in the country, got all of that work under my belt. And then then I went to the GLA, headed up the culture team there when Ken Livingston was mayor during the Olympics and all of that. And then oh yeah, okay, what so happened, Tony Blair's government in ninety, whatever it was, had set up this thing, the people's peers. So you could get nominated or apply or both or whatever, and you would uh you know if, you got through it you would become uh a member of the House of Lords. And they did a big group and the first time I went for it I didn't get it. And they said that thing they always say, Oh, p we'll keep your records on file just in case blah and I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then a few months later I did get the call. And uh so I said, Oh all right then, why not? Yeah. And there's this great thing I have to tell you that my son said, which is when I knew I'd done the right, I'd brought him up properly. When I told him he was I just got this phone call and ran up the stairs and said to him, Oh God, I'm going to be a member of the House of Lords. And he said, that's great, mum, congratulations, big hug and a kiss. And then he said, you do know now that you're part of the problem, right? So like to kind of keep me grounded and sort of realize that and obviously I kind of knew that, but it's it's been a great thing. It's been sort of like in my head. And he was only like 16 or so, I think, at the time. So like he got all the political stuff. He's great. Um, which was great. So yeah, I can't believe that's 21 years I've been in the House of Lords now. I think it's interesting to hear you condense that story because you minimize it so much. You're like, well, decided to pick up a university degree on the way home, then casually got a Ph D, and then applied , you say it like it's the national like postcode lottery. Like then I just put my name in the hat to become a baroness and I got it. I think it was probably a lot more difficult and premium and hard to be given that title than the way you tell the story. Yeah, no, of yeah, you're right. And I mean it's amazing. Yeah. And and yeah, there are moments like um even like yesterday as I say, we're at the palace in the morning, then there's a big dinner in the evening at Guildhall, and each time I had to wear these university robes which are incredible, very heavy, lots of gold, real gold and you know very grand, the Chancellor's robes. And I said to one of the my fellow uh colleagues last night, I said, you know, I'd still find it a bit weird, here I am in Guildhall as Baroness Young and Chancellor of the University. So it's not like I take it for granted or think, you know, I know in my head that the the kind of wobbly moments that I've had where I thought I d I hate that term imposter um syndrome, because don't wanna do that. But there have been moments when I thought, has this really happened to me? To you know, and how how did this happen? Because there's a sense in which I still feel the same. And as I've kind of suggested, even you know, my son and other friends would keep me grounded. I've still got I've still got four friends from school from when I was eleven. The reason why I wanted to stay at that school and not change school. And that was probably the biggest decision that I was able to make and and and did make um that kind of kept me uh sane in some very, very difficult moments. Yeah, I had a lots of depression and um yeah, yeah. It's good that they honored that, like the one constant, especially in a young woman's life. They've done these studies um about how young women connect and how their brains work. And it's really important that they talk to other girls their age. And that's why they say if you've got a teenage daughter who's upstairs on the telephone or or interacting with her friends, that is so important for her neuroplasty to do that. And so thank goodness they didn't take those friends. That's really interesting because one of the things um when my son was in his teens there was all this kind of big panic about video nasties and and video games. And he used to play a lot of video games when he was in his teens. But what I observed was that his his friends, his his male friends, would come around and they'd do it collectively then. It wasn't like I know it's not so much well it's collective in a different way now because the c collectivity is online, but this is in person and and he and they would have phone conversations and he would have conversations with girls of his age that weren't sort of sexually motivated, they were friends. So I I sort of took heart from that because I always thought it's gonna be difficult to bring up a boy then, let alone now, but in a way that meant that they could they they needn't feel constrained about having a sensitive emotional side and and so on. And that was that was difficult then, I think it's even more difficult now. So uh yeah, I'm glad he's approaching middle age. Thank me for saying that. And you'll be a grandmother before you know it. I'm worried I'm gonna be a grandmother while I still have small kids because I have a sixteen year old she's not gonna have kids anytime soon, but soon, even ten years is soon. Ten years is soon. And I will have a ten year old daughter in ten years. And if I have grandkids on top of it, I'm gonna look like this. This will be me on the second floor of Victorian home . So, Baroness, Lola Young, you have had, I mean, as detailed beautifully in your new book, Eight Weeks, a lot of trauma. Develop some coping mechanisms, but continue to push forward and be like really hyper-independent and effective and successful in your work anyway. How old do you feel most days? So when I hit 70, I thought, Oh that's beginning to sound old, you know, because I never sort of thought of myself. And now so I'm seventy five this year and I'm thinking, Ah now that's beginning to sound really old 'cause Daisy died when she was seventy-eight. Well, I but yeah, but look. This you're not living this life. No, no, no, no, I'm living that life. You're out of the steel bath. Yeah. And I'm grateful, you know, for that and I'm able to um, you know, eat well , you know, and my independence allows me to do whatever I want to do. So it's all on me. So I t I I don't know about my I sort of I suppose what I think more in terms of 'cause when I was younger I almost never expected to live you know, so I did have uh I I wasn't I wasn't ever suicidal as such, but I did sort of think, oh God, you know, I wish this would all end, you know, because it's just I'm just f ed up with all of this. And um uh that was at the peak of um uh when I was in the third children's home and trying to struggle with exams and not doing so well and all the rest of it, and then when I got my exam results and afterwards, and there was a a few moments in my sort of early twenties when I thought, oh, this is just rubbish. And then and then it wasn't, you know, so um it's not that I tr y not to think about age and I'm sort of sort of resigned to the fact that I've not got another seventy five years, right? Unless something miraculous happens in the world of science. You might. If anyone does, you might. You eat really well. Tell me about your diet. Well, I've been vegetarian not eating meat since the late seventies , and um I haven't eaten fish since the the uh eighties and I haven't drunk alcohol since mm probably oh well um maybe nineties, early nineties or something like that. I was never a big drinker. You know, I'm I'm not I don't know whether that means I am an addictive personality or not and that and that fear stops me from in indulging in these things. But no I never I don't miss I don't sort of feel. I smoked very briefly when I thought it was cool to smoke, you know Sograni coloured, you know, cigarette papers and everything. But yeah. And what about exercise? Exercise my body loves exercise, right? So when I had um this sciatica, before I had sciatica, I was playing walking football, I'd done netball, I'd learned how to fence . And I always walked, you know, you know that when they used to say ten thousand steps, ah well if I can't get 15,000 steps a day, what's going on here? Then the sciatica really , I don't know if you've ever had it or know anybody's had it. I hope you never have it. Thank you. It's excruciating. So that sort of pushed me back a lot. And now my osteopath says, oh, it's better you don't do football because the motion of kicking a ball. So I don't do that. But I'm I'm still I'm walking, gradually building up my steps again. Walking and I'd probably average about eight or nine thousand steps a day. With sciatica? No. Well it the underlying condition is still there, but it doesn't hurt. So I'm not on any medication. No., No no, no, no. Why doesn't it hurt? So I got an osteopath, a very good osteopath. Yeah. I went to a woman who does um Pilates for people in pain. Wow. And and also is a trained osteopath, and I did therapeutic massages and I had loads of very heavy duty painkillers for a year or so to to to quell it. And then what the further down it goes, the more exercise you can do, the better it is. So the situation is that I don't have to have these treatments every week now as I was doing, but maybe once every two months or so just to keep yeah. So you feel well, you're living well. Yeah, yeah. You look young. You're tackling something in construction. next Yes. TBC. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Would you like to find out what your biological age is? Yeah, I'm I'm really interested and I I will be questioning Nikki. Well let's bring her out. Let's have Dr. Nicola Conlin on hand to interpret the results of your biological age test . This episode of What's My Age Again is sponsored by F . F and F gives you the composure to style it out, which we all do need sometimes. On the show, we talk a lot about aging. That shouldn't be a surprise. The clue is kind of in the name. One thing that fascinates me is how what we wear impacts how we and others perceive our age. It's particularly pertinent to me right now because as you know, I am in the midst of my hottest year ever, and I would like to keep that going. So I've had to recruit some help. I'm joined by actual fashion expert Rebecca Lothorpe from Grazia, who's going to share her tips on how I can keep looking and feeling great? Rebecca, I have gone on record as a warning to my enemies to say that this is gonna be my hottest year ever . But I've been a bit busy and I don't know if I'm gonna make the deadline. Okay. So what would you say that you could give me in terms of tips about looking great, feeling great, achieving that very realistic goal I've set for myself, age forty three. Wow, wow. What's your deadline? Just cr New Year's Eve, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I think you look great anyway. Thanks. I think like for anyone, f inding their their true self in style, I think you know, that's the key, isn't it? So you f then you feel completely you in your clothes, but also turned up, switched up a notch. Yeah. And I guess you want to dial that dial really high up if you're going for your big glow up yeah. Yes. Like we said before, I think it's about finding your innate style outside of being on on camera and because you do on camera so well that's probably second nature to you. You probably don't even realise how well you do it because it's just easy and it's what you do. But I guess it's that like you were saying before about finding yourself outside of those moments and how on earth do you use fashion for that? And I think we spoke about having a good look at re-look at your c loset and having a good look at new things to say within that like what are the new neutrals, the khaki , the chocolate, the caramel colours that will work with your skin tone, that kind of thing. I love the idea of something new to say within some of what's already in my wardrobe, and then get some new neutral basic pieces, add it to that. I just want my husband to come down the stairs in the morning and not find a woman who looks on the edge of a mental breakdown. Like I would love to look a little bit intentional, polished. Those are words I'm going for. And I can achieve that with new neutrals. I think so. Thank you. For sure. Now, armed with knowledge, it's time to get to F and F in store or online to get the looks that are going to make this your hottest year ever as well. Now back to the show. Baroness Lilla Young, we took your blood, and the people at Glycon Age tested it. And now we're joined by Dr. Nicola Conlin, science woman, to reveal your biological age. Nicola is more than just a science woman. She's dedicated her entire career to human longevity and has over a decade of research in cellular aging. So there is no one better to interpret these results. Baroness Lola Young, your chronological age is 75. Your biological age is 79. Seventy-nine. That's not bad. Whoa. That's not bad. Oh my god . What's your initial reaction? Oh wow. I better go out and do all the things I need to do before I pop my clogs. Well, Nicola, what can you tell us about this result? So it is slightly higher, but it's it's definitely not dramatic. And obviously I,'ve been sitting listening to the incredible conversation that you've had with Catherine. And you've been through a lot, like a lot in your life, so much. And we do know that people that have experienced things like trauma, you know, stress throughout life, it does leave an imprint on the body. So to be quite honest, I r I really think this is this is qu ite a a good result actually. Um have you ever done any kind of therapy for any of okay, very interesting. No. And 'cause you you speak with such you know, you're so optimisti c, you don't it you don't speak like you've been through a hard time. But sometimes what this what we know is the body almost can remember some of this. Yeah, the body keeps us calling. Exactly that, exactly that. And what this test is actually measuring s is the amount of inflammation in the body. So we know that inflammation or higher levels of inflammation t technically will make us age faster at the cellular level. And everything to do with aging starts in our cells, a bit deeper in our body than you know what we see, feel and experience on the outside. And we know that stress is one of the primary drivers and of the ageing process And I think what's interesting, and there's been some interesting data recently when it comes to therapy, is not the traditional types of therapies like you know, talking therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy, but more like somatic -based therapies where your body is almost holding onto the tension. And what that means is that your sort of stress system is almost recalibrated to a higher level of resilience, which might seem like a good thing as to be more resilient, but at the body level it's kind of like your body's operating at this higher level of stress constantly. So I just think it'd be really interesting, maybe like to think about some sort of like doing some sort of what are somatic therapies. So somatic therapies is it's very different. So you know, traditional types of therapy would be talking about the trauma and going through it and things like that. Because that bit that sounds like you know how to do that yourself. You have reconciled a lot of this, you've turned it around, you're an advocate, you're helping people. So yeah, talking therapy, you you do it on your walks. Probably. Yeah, you you know, and this is much more thing about when you have that emotional response to things, where do you hold it in your body? Yes. You know, and different people hold the tension in different parts of the body. So I'm by no means a a trained therapist in this way, but the sort of idea behind it is that it's a lot more a lot less about talking through it but more having small amounts of exposure and bringing up some of the memories and thoughts and then actually almost listening to your body of like where is this why are you feeling this is this uh you know in your throat is it tight here is it is it in your back is it you know some people it's in their gut they're really holding the side of that yeah you've done it you know it could be but But it's very interesting and we do see that when people do this they get meaningful reductions in inflammation. So I think it's very interesting to look at that link. 'Cause that's sciatica is, isn't it it's inflammation of the sciatic nerve. Yeah. And that runs all the way down the the the both sides of the body. And that that I mean I attributed it first starting to lockdown. It was all the sitting down, I thought was for very bad. But later I have had I mean, you know, talking about traumatic um experiences, there there's, you know, one or two that I wouldn't go into or tell you off mic or whatever, but you know, that's um again and tr and you I think you referred earlier to absorbing other people's um pain. I literally I do sometimes have a physical feeling when I'm talking to people or even hearing over the phone of something. I've always thought it was like just a high degree of empathy so that, you know, somebody telling me about a physical pain or mental anguish will produce that response. But that's really interesting. Cause you you hear about people saying they get in their heads. So some people the way they respond to, you know, whether that's negative thoughts or they're replaying things in the mind. Other people, they have a reaction that's very different where they almost are like shutting it out the mind, but it's in the body. So you've kind of you can't quite say why you've got that lower level anxiety all the time, but then you kind of become used to it and that's your normal kind of stress operating system. And we do know that in p studies of people that are kind of have that elevated stress response, it does tend to push the biological age up. But I think what surprised me is that it's not higher than it it is, just given the amount. And I think that really goes back to everything else that you are doing right. You know, your diet you were talking about. So we look at different patterns of different markers and one of them that did stand out was the one that usually looks good in people with a good diet and lifestyle. So having the the good diet in terms of being, you know, vegetarian, eating lots of plants, we know that that does help bring inflammation down, exercise, it sounds like you're doing everything right there. So I think those things are definitely pulling it back in the right direction. Um yeah. Yeah. So that's that's weird. Oh, that is interesting. So