Meshel Laurie is a no-bullshit kind of interview.
She’s the woman who is not going to make you feel crappy because your kids ate baked beans for dinner (again) or you got halfway to work before you realised you were wearing your slippers.
Meshel is more the type of woman who would be sitting next to you, still doing her face.
Busy women are organised. But busy mothers get used to living in a level of chaos that would rattle the cage of your average A-type 20-something. Meshel Laurie knows that. As a result, she is warm, disarming company, to whom you could admit all of your parental failures.
She presents breakfast radio, and afternoon radio. She’s writing a book, and producing an excellent podcast and running a website and presenting on The Project…
And she’s a now-single mum to six-year-old twins, Dali and Louie.
“I let go of trying to perfect when [my kids] were really little,” says Meshel. “A lot of the women in radio… tend to not want to bring their family stuff to work. Some women in the corporate world compete by acting like men… Never ever would they go home because one of the kids is sick.
“If I need to cancel something because of the kids, I’ll do it. If I’m running late, I’m running late. It’s not the end of the world.
“I’m quite prepared for the fact that I’m the mother of small children to be out front. And we all know how chaotic that is.”
Meshel told us all this on the latest episode of I Don’t Know How She Does It, the podcast that ducks behind the facade of ‘having it all’.
Hear how Meshel does it….
And to keep a lid on the chaos, when you start work at 5.30am and your husband has moved out, you need to do one thing well – get help.
“Really and truly, how I do it is pay other women to help me… that’s the honest truth. I have a nanny slash housekeeper who cooks and cleans and picks the kids up from school three days a week. And I pay my sister to take care of them in the morning. And that’s the truth of how I do it.
“I never feel self-conscious about telling people I have help, because the last thing I want other women to think is that I do all of this alone.
“I don’t have endless energy… I need a nap and I have to buy one, basically.”
Right now, Meshel says, life is particularly challenging, but the sense of possibility is exhilarating. “My husband and I have finally decided to separate and get a divorce. At the moment he’s living next door, but we have decided we both need our space…
"I quite enjoy change. I'm getting a bit a buzz out of selling my house and having to find a place for the kids and I to live, and it will really just be us... I'm feeling exhilarated about it all."
The comedian has written a book about the experience, Buddhism for Break-ups, and says at least there is an upside to finding yourself suddenly single. "Choosing something to watch on TV when you're not compromising is so nice. If I want to watch a Selling Houses marathon, I can. And I do..."
Amen, Meshel. That's a silver lining.
Listen to Meshel talking about the reality of living through divorce, the one thing no detox could ever make her give up, and the truth she has learned about school mums, here: