Like This, Love This

This week I really have a treat in store for you as I speak to Director of Tate Maria Balshaw CBE. Maria was the first woman to take on the role back in 2015 and for the last ten years she has used her position to introduce a broader range of artists to Tate’s various galleries as well as attracting a younger audience through the introduction of Tate Collective which offered free membership to 16-25 year olds and the creation of a £150m endowment fund to secure the group’s financial future. Prior to joining Tate, Balshaw was director of the Whitworth Gallery in the University of Manchester for over a decade after starting her career in academia.  She recently announced that she will stand down from her role at Tate in Spring 2026 so it is a real privilege to speak to her about her career, her achievements and the stories that have resonated with her throughout her life. Maria’s book choice is a searingly honest and raw account of love in the time of the AIDs epidemic in the UK, the film she chose was made in 1993 but set in the mid-1800s and tells the story of a woman faced with cruelty from all of those around her, the TV show is set on a popular computer game and her podcast choice is a complete departure from the earlier serious themes of the previous titles, ending our chat with some laughter and levity.Find out more about the Lee Miller at Tate Britain & how to book tickets by clicking this link: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/lee-miller  Enjoy the episode and don’t forget to share & review!

Aurie Styla is not just a comedian: he’s also an actor, a broadcaster, a podcaster, an event host & producer and a designer. As well as creating several of his own award-winning stand-up shows, he also wrote on the BAFTA winning series of The Lateish Show with Mo Gilligan, appeared on Radio 4 shows like Newsjack, The Now Show & The Infinite Monkey Cage and even Richard Osman’s House of Games. He is an avid gamer, hosted his own show on BBC Radio London as well as several of his own podcasts - so he is no stranger to a podcast studio!In this week’s episode Aurie talks about the work ethic he has picked up from his mum and how he is now actually trying to unlearn some of it so he can do a better job of unwinding. We also delved into his love of the hip hop legend Busta Rhymes, how he thinks he could have withstood life in Shawshank prison in the Forties & Fifties and his love of the Star Trek universe. He also explained how important his faith is to him and how he came to love Christianity in his own way as an adult - independent of his mother’s influence and not just going to church because she brought him. Head to https://www.auriestyla.co.uk/ to find out Aurie’s upcoming live show dates

Desiree Burch is an American comedian who has called London home for over a decade. Having studied in Yale, she worked in New York whilst trying to get her comedy career going, she worked as a phone sex operator and even a dominatrix - whilst still a virgin.After moving to the UK, Desiree worked herself silly and got her comedy career going - particularly after winning the Funny Women award in 2015. Since then, she has appeared on QI, Have I Got News For You, Richard Osman’s House of Games, Live at the Apollo and Would I Lie to You? She has tried her hand at acting with a turn in supernatural fiction podcast Welcome to Night Vale and even a role in Netflix Christmas film alongside Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes. Desiree’s choices are magical and fantastical, gripping and energising - each with their own sense of community and purpose. She loves witches and women and the magic of life. All of the stories are, at their core, a journey of self-discovery with the ultimate destination of people finding their voices and telling their own stories on their own terms. Enjoy the episode!And Desiree has the second leg of her tour, The Golden Wrath, kicking off at the start of February - so get your tickets here before they’re gone! 

Diana Vickers first rose to prominence when she auditioned for The X Factor at the age of just sixteen. With Cheryl Cole as her mentor she finished the show in fourth place. She landed a record deal with RCA once the show had finished, released two albums and finished up 2010 as the label’s biggest-selling domestic artist. After The X Factor, Diana landed the lead role in Jim Cartwright’s The Rise & Fall of Little Voice kickstarting a career in acting which has seen her play Janet in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, star in The Duck House in the West End (a drama about the parliamentary expenses scandal) and appear in multiple other television shows, on the big screen and numerous other stage productions.Diana revealed herself to be a total romantic - though not a hopeless one! Her choices focus on all kinds of love: the platonic to the romantic, passions to obsessions and everything in between. It’s a whirlwind trip of an episode, starting off in 1920s Paris before a batch of love stories from all over the world followed by a jaunt to modern day New York finishing up back in the 1980s Big Apple. Diana is a truly wonderful, positive, lovely person who manages to warm even the most cynical of hearts - so enjoy the episode!Don’t forget to check out Diana’s latest single Pretty Boys wherever you listen to music - as we say in the show: it’s a bop!

Pearl Lowe is a creative to her core: she started her career in music as singer and songwriter fronting the bands Powder and Lodger before switching to fashion, textile & homewares design. She has set trends for decades from her tea dresses that exploded in popularity from the Nineties all the way through her signature interiors style which she has dubbed ‘faded glamour’ and now written three books under the title - even down to where she lives. Back in the early Nineties, as a young single mother, Pearl moved to Primrose Hill with her best friend years before it became synonymous with the likes of Sadie Frost and Kate Moss. Later she moved to Somerset, only to find her local town named as the best place to live and one of the UK’s coolest locales. Now back in London for the first time in two decades, Pearl joined us to talk about some of her favourite stories: we started off with a classic sitcom that embodies the hedonism and acerbic humour of the Nineties, a podcast hosted by one of Britain’s best-loved presenters, a visually sumptuous but macabre film that tells a story of a woman’s journey to enlightenment and a book that taught helped Pearl to understand herself better than ever before. Enjoy!🔗 LINKSCheck out Pearl’s new book here: https://www.pearllowe.co.uk/products/faded-glamour-in-the-city

Alex Lawther is an actor who began his career in a David Hare play which saw the London Critics Circle name him Young British Performer of the Year as well as being selected by BAFTA as one of 2015’s Breakthrough Brits. He has appeared in films such as The Imitation Game, Goodbye Christopher Robin and The French Dispatch. He’s no stranger to the small screen having starred in The End of the F*cking World, Black Mirror, AndOr and Alien:Earth.Alex has also written and directed his own films - the most recent of which, Rhoda starring Emma Darcy and Juliet Stevenson, was selected for the BFI London Film Festival in 2024. Alex’s title choices take us from a film that inspires his own filmmaking ambitions, a podcast that shared an insight into other artists, a TV show about a Spanish tour-de-force and a book that tells a life story in an entirely new and innovative way.Enjoy!

Beth Rigby was the first woman to be appointed as Political Editor of Sky News back in 2019. She has interviewed everyone from the current prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and many of his predecessors to the former England footballer Gary Neville, Hillary Clinton and Dame Kelly Holmes. But this time, she’s on the other side of the microphone as she sits down with Lucie McInerney to discuss her favourite stories. Beth’s story choices start off in Naples with a dark, addictive TV show that won’t allow for double-screening - unless you speak fluent Neapolitan. We are back in London for her book choice which again tells a dark tale of psychological manipulation set in the Victorian era. Her preferred podcast was a global sensation when released almost ten years ago and dives into the real life story of a clockmaker from Alabama whilst her movie choice is a previously-discussed British classic which again tells a story about men. Over the course of our conversation, Beth did reassure us that she is a feminist but that perhaps her choices reflect her ongoing pursuit of understanding of the opposite sex. As well as her regular appearances in person on TV and through the medium of the written word on the Sky News website, Beth also hosts the political podcast Electoral Dysfunction with former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, and Labour grandee Harriet Harman. It’s a wonder she gets a chance to sit down - never mind get through the amount of box sets she seems to!Enjoy! 

On this week’s episode of Like This, Love This, Lucie McInerney is joined by actor, comedian and Amy Poehler devotee, Hayley Morris. After a childhood spent writing and filming sketches with comedy heroes: her dad & her brother, Hayley started her own YouTube channel in 2009. At first it didn’t exactly attract big numbers…and by at first, we mean for about a decade. But she stuck at it and finally she cracked it. Starting with her first sketch about intrusive thoughts, Morris started to build her online audience and hasn’t looked back since. Now she has more than 9 million subscribers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram and she is going from strength to strength, writing and starring in her own short films and she even wrote a book: Me vs Brain: An Overthinker’s Guide to Life. Hayley’s choices took us right across the United States, from Los Angeles and Las Vegas to Upstate New York with a stop off in Texas as we talked about a pair of funny women in an unusual working partnership, a podcast from her hero, a film about impact the arts can have in the most unexpected of places and a book about women making it in man’s world. Her dedication and perseverance is echoed in the stories that appeal to her and we had a great time learning about just how similar to her hero, Amy Poehler, Hayley actually is in real life.Enjoy!