Discover more from My Goodness! From Jo Elvin
It was a year ago today that I did a really stupid thing.
I’d been invited to a charity fundraising evening by the great Helen Addis.
You might know her better as Instagram’s @thetittygritty. She’s one of the bosses at Lorraine and she’s also faced down breast cancer and uses her platform to campaign for awareness of the disease, particularly in young women. I think she’s wonderful and I was delighted to be included in this very special event she was hosting at, of all places, Hampton Court Palace! I had to be there. She’d told me there’d be plenty of the ITV gang there. I don’t tend to talk about my Lorraine work much, as I have such a teeny role in that juggernaut of a show. But one of my favourite things about working there is just how utterly lovely everyone is. It’s a well-oiled machine and I’m sure they have their share of live TV-related nervous breakdowns. But there’s never any shouting or screaming or anything remotely resembling aggro. Everyone is so nice. I roll in there at 7ish, leave at 10am and the atmosphere always puts me in a great mood for the rest of my day. So… an actual party with these guys instead of work? And one that’s aimed at raising money for Helen’s amazing cause? Hell to the yes.
I decided to dress up. I had splurged some time ago on a 16 Arlington dress for an evening at the British Fashion Awards and that ‘wise investment piece’ of mine has barely had a night out since. She was so ready for the ball. It took me more than an hour in a taxi to get there, but still, my party pants were firmly ON. As the car rolled up to the imposing wrought iron gates of Henry VIII’s magnificent old gaff. I wound down my window to address the security guard and announced myself as if I was the fricking Queen.
‘Hi! I’m here for the fundraiser!’
‘Yes madam, welcome!’ said the lovely security guard and then she explained I would have to walk down the very long pathway to the palace entrance. It took me a good five minutes, tottering in my heels, to get to the point where another palace staffer greeted me warmly and ushered me through. A few meanderings down cobblestone hallways and finally I could hear what I’d come for: laughter and clinking glasses.
I took a glass of Champagne from the rows of trays brandished by waiters. A woman I didn’t know smiled and told me she liked my dress. I smiled and thanked her and made my way into the crowd. I couldn’t yet see anyone I knew, but that was OK. I walked the length of the long room to see if I could find Helen, or any of the others I knew from Lorraine - producers Paul or Sam, green room boss Michelle, maybe. Or Helen, who does Lorraine’s make-up or even, in fact, Lorraine Kelly herself was here somewhere. I texted Paul: “What time do you think you’ll get here?”
By the time I made my way back through the crowd and near the entrance of the room again, I suddenly thought: Actually, I don’t recognise one face here. I pulled my phone back out and re-read my invitation.
Oh.
It turns out that this would be the very first time I noticed words beyond ‘Hampton Court’. My invitation did not, in fact, say Hampton Court Palace, but The Mitre, Hampton Court. That’s the pub across the road from the palace.
Oh my god. What a melt I am. It seems I wasn’t being paranoid: A lot of these people had been looking at me with puzzlement in their eyes. Actually, now I thought about it, there were a lot of men in kilts, which should have been a great clunking clue that this gang was far too highbrow for the likes of me. Of course my place was the pub across the road from the palace.
I calmly placed my glass on a table. Important to style this out, I thought to myself. Just calmly leave the room, not exit in a flapping panic.
But I did have to retrieve my coat. The coat attendant looked confused when I gave him my ticket so soon after my arrival. I immediately grinned and cheerily said, ‘Yeah I’ve come to the wrong party!’ Turns out I’m supposed to be across the road, I’m so stupid, read my emails too quickly, ha ha, ho ho.’
He did not laugh.
Nor did any of the three other staff members I gave my explanation to, laughing, shaking my head and rolling my eyes skyward in exaggerated fashion as I walked back up the length of that million-mile pathway. My phone pinged. Paul’s reply: ‘I’m here. Where are you? Can’t see you.’
The lovely security guard stared at me for the entire length of my awkward, stiletto-heeled tiptoe back up to the entrance. When I finally got near her, I trotted out the same laughing, eye-rolling panto I’d given everyone back at the other end. She looked so confused. And pointed, witheringly, to the pub across the dual carriageway. As I waited an eternity for a break in the traffic, I could feel her eyes on me, clearly dumbfounded by a woman who could look so together and confident but was too dim to properly finish reading an email.
So by now I was pretty damn late to the thing I was actually invited to. Now in the right room, I knew everyone’s face. I took a seat between the boss of Lorraine, Victoria Kennedy and Christine Lampard and told the whole table what I’d done. Jane Moore threw a bread roll at my head, presumably to confirm it was a numb and hollow vessel. And Lorraine was still laughing about it when I was back on the show four days later.
I wasn’t embarrassed. It was funny. I Instagrammed and Tweeted about it immediately and it got a few thousand likes.
One of my favourites of the Lorraine gang is Michelle, who oversees all the logistics to do with guests and presenters on the show - everything from the cars, to who needs to be where and when. She is kind and smart and also cheeky and hilarious and bloody loud. But even she said to me that what I’d done is her idea of hell. ‘I said to Lorraine, I’d have died if that had been me!’ she laughed before adding, ‘But Lorraine said, “Well… Jo’s very confident.”’
And well, yes, I suppose I am. I did not want to die. I was just dying to tell everyone, because it was funny.
I thought about this because last weekend a friend of mine told me that going anywhere where she might have to walk into a crowded room on her own is her number one terror. I can’t understand that and I think it’s because I’m so used to fronting up to things on my own.
I haven’t always had that much confidence around it. I remember one low point, when the husband and I were really not getting on and I took myself for a week away to Cyprus. I should have researched a less ‘honeymoony’ hotel: being surrounded by all those doe-eyed couples made me paranoid that I just looked pitiful at my solo dining table. Especially when I sat there with my head buried in a book. But I realised pretty quickly that the doe-eyed couples only had eyes for each other and probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d started choking right there in the restaurant. That weird holiday was the most intimidated I felt as a loner in a crowd. And I realised that if I can be in that space on my own, I can handle anything.
Of course, over the years my work has also forced me to be good at doing crowds alone. It was a real thing at the fashion shows for me. As a magazine, Glamour presented a slight irritation to some fashion PRs, in that they didn’t deem the title fashionable or cool enough for their luxury brands, but we were part of the luxury magazine stable Conde Nast (home to Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair). So in order not to insult anyone important at the company, they would often bestow us with one ticket to the important fashion show or party, on the condition that it was for the editor, me. And, as they had deigned to invite me, I was obliged to go.
Strutting into scary, snobby parties on my own, where everyone else seemed to belong to the club, became a regular Saturday night thing for me in Milan and Paris. I will never forget the time I was standing outside waiting to get into an event for Dolce and Gabbana. The editor and fashion director of a major American magazine were standing next to me. One looked me up and down and said, ‘Is it just me or…’ and then whispered in his colleague’s ear the rest. She turned to look at me, was deliberately unsubtle about looking me up and down and said, ‘I have no idea who any of these people are.’ If they’d wanted this blatant Mean Girl play to make me crumble, it hadn't worked. Instead I loved that I had something outrageous to bitch about with my crew as soon as possible.
Moments like that really built up my ‘confident loner’ muscle and eventually made me immune to embarrassment. And I strongly encourage everyone to force themselves to build that muscle.
I no longer feel as if I’m being regarded with pity if I sit in a cinema, or at a restaurant table, or a hotel sunlounger, by myself. And it might be that ease I have in my own company, which helps my body language give off confidence, rather than someone vulnerable who can be approached to be annoyed. It means I don’t hesitate to accept invitations that in one way or another have changed my life for the better. Younger me would never have gone to The Body Camp on my own, which means I’d have never met a group of people who - no exaggeration - have helped me through the hardest two work years I’ve ever known. (I’ll talk about it one day, but it’s still too soon.)
One valuable insight from that evening is this: If you look and act like you’re supposed to be in the room, you will generally be permitted into the room. At no point on my way in to that room full of strangers at Hampton Court, did anyone ask to see an invitation, let alone ask me to identify myself in any way. As I made my merry way in, I greeted everyone with a smile and a big cheery hello. My friend Sarah calls it ‘golden retriever energy’. I guess I can turn that on when I want to, yes.
So my tip for fronting up to something on your own? Own it. I’m not saying you need to give it this energy…
But I am saying, don’t skulk in. Head up, eyes ready to engage, smile. If you need a comfort blanket, looking at your phone for a bit is a useful tool for easing yourself in. But genuinely, no one is looking at you and thinking, ‘Why is that person alone?’
Then, my next tip is - and I know this will be a lot for some - just say hi to someone. ‘Hi, I don’t know anyone here so I thought I’d introduce myself!’ Smile. It really is that easy. Don’t forget: You have been invited for who you are, so others will find it enjoyable - and useful - to know you. If I ever have regretted just walking up to someone and starting a conversation, I can’t remember. In fact, I regret not doing it at Hampton Court. I would love to know what those people were celebrating at the party I wasn’t supposed to be at. Because I bet whatever it was, it would have made the fact that I ended up in there even funnier.
I did have a legitimate invitation to a palace once - Buckingham Palace. In 2011, The Queen and Prince Philip were heading for a royal tour of Australia and kicked it off with a party for Australians. I walked into that grand hall not knowing a soul, and came out having met a woman who’s one of my dearest, most special friends: Kathy Lette. I just walked up to her and introduced myself. She has the confidence to pull off one of my other tips for when you’re flying solo: Make yourself a conversation starter, as she did by wearing this suit covered in jewel-eyed Corgis.
Turns out we have a lot of people in common - Kathy calls the Aussie connections The Gumleaf Mafia. I’ll always be pro the monarchy for bringing that friendship into my life, and I’ll always be proud of myself for having the courage to simply start a conversation. The memory of that motivates me to try it, over and over again.
I wonder if my example is why my daughter, nearly 19, is already so good at it. She often takes herself off to sit in tiny, (gross) independent cinemas in central London to watch some obscure film. She’s passionate about cinema, and finds that sometimes her friends aren’t as enthused about that weird 1950s French film, thanks very much. She shrugs and goes on her own. There was an online news piece a few weeks ago about a concert she’d been to - AG Cook (don’t ask me, I had to Google him). The accompanying photo just happens to feature her, right at the front of the crowd, beaming with joy and happy to be there. On her own. Her friend had to drop out last minute. She shrugged, sold her extra ticket to someone on the internet and took herself anyway. What a great way to be at such a young age. At 18, I’d denied myself so many experiences, accepting without question that I couldn’t go unaccompanied. I find it inspiring and I hope you do too.
What about you? Do you need to challenge yourself in this way? Can you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Having grown up all over the world with diplomat parents I was always having to get to know new people. I'm a weirdo in that I love turning up to events where I don't know anyone, as my son's says it's a chance to reinvent yourself....often to comedic ends...but we all love the hilarious stories. My father was instrumental in my lack of fear of going anywhere alone. As a young adult he made me go to cinemas and restaurants on my own which really dispelled my fear and encouraged independence. After all if men can eat alone why shouldn't we be able to. It's often a matter of maintaining a resting bitch face so no one bothers you!!
Love this! I’m often uneasy about spending time with myself and self conscious in lots of scenarios. I can go to the cinema on my own no probs, and I’ve walked into parties on my own and managed fine - but somehow have a profound fear of eating alone in a restaurant?? I find it helps to put on a journalist’s head and regard the world with curiosity, but my inner confident loner is very much a work in progress! But well done for raising a daughter who can go to gigs on her own at 18 - that’s amazing work x