Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver are bickering affectionately, like sisters. ‘Miquita, can you not do this!’ says Allen, pointing at a biscuit Oliver has pecked at and then discarded.
‘I know…’
‘It’s pathetic.’
‘I’m so nibbly.’
‘No, I’m serious. Just eat the fucking biscuit!’
‘It’s too much sugar for me at once.’
Allen: mock snore. Oliver: ‘See!’
It’s the playful squabbling unique to tight friendships and the kind of playful, easy interaction that fans will recognise from the pair’s hugely successful BBC podcast, Miss Me? and accompanying question-and-answer show, Listen, Bitch! In the year since they launched Miss Me?, it has made an impact in an oversaturated market (and won a British Podcast Award), thanks to a mix of the pair’s money-can’t-buy chemistry and ability to jump between the high and low, serious and silly, personal and global with agility, curiosity, honesty and humour. It’s not unusual for an episode to make you cry and then crease up laughing – sometimes in the span of a single anecdote.
Outwardly their lives may look very different to most, but the surprising thing about Miss Me? is its relatability; the comforting familiarity and intimacy a result of their lifelong friendship. They grew up together, as their mothers – film producer Alison Owen and TV chef Andi Oliver – are friends. ‘We’re family,’ says Oliver. It’s struck a chord with listeners, a tribute to the enduring power of female friendship, with a glint of impishness. ‘I think it reminds people of their own relationships with their best friends,’ says Allen. ‘It’s like a form of nostalgia, not necessarily for a period of time, but for long-term, platonic relationships.’
Up for discussion? Pretty much anything. A random assortment of topics they’ve covered include, in no particular order: Demi Moore, nipples, mental health, lube, kids, Glastonbury, Donald Trump, sexual assault, pets – and potatoes. ‘Bullying and punching down’ are the only no-goes, says Allen.
Yes, they plan episodes – or try to – but conversations inevitably spin off in all directions. ‘[With] too much preparation, things just become contrived,’ says Allen, who takes the same approach to her songwriting. ‘You have to have confidence in yourself that you’ve got enough going on upstairs in your brain to be entertaining for an hour.’
Unabashedly opinionated, the pair (and their producer) deftly navigate the BBC’s impartiality rules, which is to say, their fire and spirit still come through. Speaking about a recent suggestion that something be edited out lest it offend people, Allen says, ‘We don’t have a right to walk through life without being offended by things. You’re meant to be offended by some things, like, that’s life experience.’
In an era of tightly choreographed publicity and the ever-present threat of cancellation, that kind of frankness feels not just refreshing, but fearless. ‘People are still so surprised to find something really honest,’ Oliver observes. ‘And because we’ve had quite long careers and it’s like, what are we going to do? Get into trouble? Who with at this point? I don’t think there’s any more trouble me and Lily could get into, together or separately. We’ve sort of done that.’
She’s right. Both came to fame young; Oliver got her gig presenting Pop World in 2001 when she was 16, while Allen’s debut album – Alright, Still – was released in 2006 when she’d just turned 21. They were boisterous, bolshy, hedonistic; in other words, perfect tabloid fodder. But life has expanded and shifted monumentally since those days. ‘Suddenly, I’m 40, Lily’s 40 [this year] and it’s like, oh, we’re about to do something quite different, which is become older women together. It’s kind of nuts,’ says Oliver.
Although many of their external circumstances have changed since their nascent days of fame, both are still put through the ringer by the press – particularly Allen, something that unleashes Oliver’s furiously protective side. ‘Look at the way they’ve treated Lily over the podcast. It’s absolute, total fucking bollocks,’ she says. Lines from the show regularly get picked up, repackaged, taken out of context. ‘I had a horrible time [in the press], but nothing like Lil. And to be doing this with her and seeing it firsthand properly, it’s unfathomable because it’s so silly, but it incites something so real, which is hate… And all that vitriol and all that incensed anger comes straight to Lily’s poor little heart.’
Still, having Miss Me? as a platform has given the pair a degree of autonomy, an ability to tell their stories in their own words. ‘What I’m hoping is that, throughout this process, people start to see the ludicrousness in it,’ says Oliver, adding they get a lot of support from listeners, ‘Because people can actually hear Lil.’ A few weeks after we meet, amid intense scrutiny over her personal life, Allen makes a moving admission on the podcast: ‘I’m finding it hard to be interested in anything. I’m really not in a good place,’ she said. ‘I know I’ve been talking about it for months, but I’ve been spiralling and spiralling and spiralling, and it’s got out of control. I’ve tried.’
That vulnerability isn’t surprising to regular listeners. Allen has been sober for a few years and talks openly and humbly about recovery. Sobriety has made her a better friend, she thinks; she’s nicer now, having more fun. ‘I think I’m just a completely different person. When I was drinking and taking drugs, I could be quite mean. I spent the best part of my twenties being publicly humiliated and vilified the whole time and sort of having to absorb all of that. And I think when I drank and when I took drugs, it was like, “Now it’s your turn. I’m going to turn it around on everyone else.”’
‘We were all a bit of a fucking mess then,’ says Oliver reassuringly. ‘We had a great time. I loved partying and I love going out and I still drink, I still go out, but it’s not part of our friendship any more and it doesn’t feel like a loss. It hasn’t been for so long. I don’t really want to do that right now.’
I wonder how Oliver has found the arrival of kids has shifted her friendships (Allen is mum to two girls, Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, with first husband Sam Cooper). ‘For me, the way my life looks, I’d love to be a mother in my forties and I wouldn’t have wanted to have been a mother in my twenties or thirties. So, if it happens in my forties, that’s fantastic. But if it doesn’t, I didn’t want that [back] then. It wasn’t what I was looking for.’
They are each other’s biggest cheerleaders. ‘Miquita’s approach to reconnecting with her dad over the past few years has been really powerful and inspirational for me,’ says Allen. Oliver also salutes her friend’s courage. ‘She’s very good at, not asking for what she needs, but going for what she needs. There are things that I want but I can be quite a scaredy cat in some places. She has a kind of courage in just being able to live a certain way and do things for herself.’
And what’s next? ‘She’s more of a long-term planner. I’m a, you know, in-the-day person,’ laughs Allen. ‘Actually, I’m in-the-minute!’ There are the first Miss Me? live shows this March (which sold out in three minutes). They might stick around and become the Ant and Dec of podcasting, jokes Allen (although, it could be very possible – just with better clothes). Either way, their story will continue unfurling in its own unique, touching, messy, moving way – and, for now, that will continue keeping millions of strangers company twice a week.
Listen to Miss Me?, a Persephonica production, on BBC Sounds
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELLIOT JAMES KENNEDY. STYLING BY JESSICA SKEETE-CROSS.
MIQUITA’S MAKE-UP: NAT MINKIE. MIQUITA’S HAIR: SHAMARA ROPER.
LILY’S MAKE-UP: FLORRIE WHITE. LILY’S HAIR: KEIICHIRO HIRANO.