±«Óãtv

What does it feel like when you win a prestigious award, reach a career goal or fulfil a dream? From the teacher who won a big comedy prize to the disability advocate who graced the cover of British Vogue, ±«Óãtv Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour is celebrating five women who had a very good year in 2019. Here Edna O’Brien, Sinéad Burke, Natasha Benjamin, Laura Smyth and Khadijah Mellah describe how success made them feel and how it has impacted their lives...

Laura Smyth

Laura Smyth is a teacher and mother-of-three who lives in east London. In September, she won the Funny Women Stage Award 2019, just five months after her first stand-up comedy gig.

I started 2019 just coming to the end of my maternity leave so I was going back to work.
I just kept having this niggling feeling that I needed to do something that I’ve always imagined doing. I love stand-up comedians, I love comedy, and all I ever thought was, ‘what if, what if, what if’ and never had the bravery. So just as I neared going back to work, I said to my husband, ‘I need to do something’. And I started a comedy course.
I filmed a showcase at the end and some girl said, ‘Oh well, in two days the Funny Women Awards - their entries close’, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll enter my video’.
In September, five months after my first gig, I won the 2019 final. I don’t quite believe it basically and it’s just like the most magical year of my life. And tiring.

The success feels, personally, like a reward for bravery.
It feels like I finally got to be a full cup that couldn’t hold it in anymore and then I spilt over and I just went for it, and it feels like I got a massive well done from the universe.
Everything is just so lovely and everyone says, ‘how did you do it with teaching, you’ve got three children?’. And I think, 'because I can’t not do it'. That’s how it feels. It’s such great success but the success is just being on the circuit... and just living such a fun and exciting life that I didn’t think I could have.

I hope 2020 brings much of the same, I hope that I can keep writing and that I enjoy gigging.
I’m just teetering onto the pro circuit where the number of women has gone down so you feel the pressure of representation. I’m now getting a taste of the next tier so I just hope to keep making my bid for world domination, I suppose. Just keep enjoying it.

Sometimes I see pictures of my younger self and I just want to take care of her.
I would just say [to her], not everyone is going to like you, and you don’t have to be liked by everyone, it really doesn’t matter. And I would advise her to forgive herself daily, or hourly if need be, and just to always keep going. You’re not going to please everyone [but] make it a priority to please yourself.

Sinéad Burke

Sinéad Burke is a writer and disability advocate who appeared on the cover of British Vogue’s September issue, guest edited by the Duchess of Sussex. She was also named one of the ±«Óãtv’s 100 Women 2019 - a list of the most inspiring and influential women of the year.

For me personally, 2019 has been a year of incredible opportunities.
But the moments that have meant the most to me have been the number of young people who look like me, who have a disability, who have dwarfism, who reach out and say, ‘Hey, I saw you on the cover of Vogue, do you know what, I want to work in fashion too’, or ‘I want to be a doctor’, or ‘I want to set up my own business’. For whatever reason, by seeing… somebody who looks like them on an institution like Vogue, they now think that’s possible.

My success has made me feel so moved.
I grew up so invested in fashion, primarily because we all wear clothes, yet as a disabled woman, I didn’t have access to the fashion industry in the way that my sisters and my friends did. And now to be on the cover of Vogue, not in spite of my disability, but because of it, I mean that’s what I wanted when I was 16. It just took a bit more time.

My vision for 2020 is probably, like myself, a bit over-ambitious.
I want it to be more equitable, I want it to be more inclusive, particularly through an intersectional lens. I want it to be more accessible. I want us to be constantly, not just asking the question of, 'who’s not in the room?', but instigating action so that different voices are represented. I don’t want us to be facilitating the same questions, debating whether or not trans people get to exist, at the end of 2020 in the way that we’re doing now. I want it to be understood that equality is a human right and not a topic for debate.

There’s enough people in the world who will erase your ambition and your drive - don’t do it to yourself.
If I could go back to my teenage years, I think the biggest piece of advice I would give myself is, ‘the monologue in your head that is constantly telling you that you are not good enough, you’re not tall enough, you’re not thin enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not beautiful enough - turn it off. Don’t listen to it.’

Edna O’Brien

Irish novelist, playwright and poet Edna O’Brien won the prestigious £40,000 David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Prix Femina special award in 2019.

The David Cohen award meant delight. Then it meant secrecy.
It was so funny, the girl who wrote to me, Clare, she said, ‘you must not tell anyone,’ and I thought, 'I’m bound to tell someone'. I love writing, I don’t always love the act of writing, but I love literature, reading it, or attempting to write it. I have in various moments of soul-searching, wondered why so few prizes came my way in 89 years. I look at the back of books in my favourite book shop and everybody seems to have won prizes. In short, I felt that it had come from heaven. I’m delighted to have got it and also I feel vindicated.

I had a will to write from the moment that I was born.
I had a cloth book that was lovely and soft. There were a few words written on it. It may have been the words of a fairytale, I do not know. I remember thinking that these words were luminous and magic. They were words that were there forever.

I have a seed of an idea but I would be reluctant to say it, because books are like babies.
They just have to start in that most unknown way. The gestation is long, but when it comes, it comes. Like I had written a version of Girl in a short story called Plunder. So that theme was on my mind 12 years when I wrote Plunder, before the book appeared.

Natasha Benjamin

Natasha Benjamin is the founder of Free Your Mind, a child domestic violence and trauma support service. In October, Natasha won Lorraine Kelly’s Inspirational Woman of the Year award for her work.

2019 has been an amazing year for me because so much has happened.
Free Your Mind opened its holistic clinic in January and we’ve opened our doors to so many children supporting them through the effects of domestic violence and trauma. Then the greatest surprise was when I won Lorraine’s Inspirational Woman of the Year award, which totally blew me away. It’s been an amazing experience.

The award has impacted my life in ways that I didn’t really imagine.
There’s been so much outpouring of support from the public, but then... it’s kind of shown me that the need is there for what Free Your Mind does. It’s also been a bit of extra pressure, I’m not going to lie, but for the most part it’s been very positive. But it’s also shown me how important it is to self-care because with the extra demand on me now, I have to make sure to take care of myself.
The support that we have now, I would love… for the momentum to keep going. For us to continue to help children, possibly build parts of our services in other parts of the country because domestic violence affects 1.8 million children across the country. It’s no small issue, so we need to get out there and help more children.

I would say to my younger self, you were always enough.
You are enough, you always have been. Everything is going to be OK. Trust yourself, trust your instinct. It’s OK to be you, it’s OK to be different and it’s OK not to follow crowds, it’s OK to just find yourself.

Khadijah Mellah

Khadijah Mellah won this year’s Magnolia Cup at Goodwood. The 19-year-old from Peckham in London was also named as the Sunday Times Young Sportswoman of the Year. She is the first British Muslim woman to win a horse race and first jockey to ride in a hijab.

I was fairly nervous on the day, for obvious reasons.
I’d only ridden a racehorse for about seven weeks prior to the race and I’d only galloped a horse twice before. Thankfully I had lots of confidence in my horse as I’d ridden him multiple times and I was pretty comfortable racing him. I felt really reassured that I would be safe for the race, but it was the whole atmosphere that really shook me. The amount of people I was talking to, the amount of advice people were throwing at me on the day to try and help me win, it was a very busy and crazy day.

I was very surprised to win.
Normally, I walk into most situations and I have an outlook that I’m there for first place because I’m naturally quite competitive. For that race, I did a lot of research and my horse was rated 66 and some of the other horses were rated much higher. In my mind, I thought the best I can do and the best my horse can do is sixth or fourth or fifth. So I was very, very surprised when I won.

Winning was amazing, but being at these events and hearing the stories of other women really brought everything together.
It really uplifted me. And also hearing the feedback from the documentary that was made about me called Riding A Dream, so many young girls have been contacting me and not only young girls, but young people in general, telling me about their inspiration, their motivation of getting into racing and horse riding and sports in general. That was it for me I think.

You can listen to the full ±«Óãtv Radio 4 Woman's Hour episode via ±«Óãtv Sounds. You'll also find Woman's Hour on and .