Podcast
Katy Balls speaks to women at the top of their respective games, about their passions, their battles, and what makes them tick. Katy is Political Editor of The Spectator.
Katy Balls speaks to women at the top of their respective games, about their passions, their battles, and what makes them tick. Katy is Political Editor of The Spectator.
Women With Balls
Nikki da Costa is the former director of legislative affairs at No 10 Downing Street. She served under Theresa May and Boris Johnson and was pivotal in the government’s wrangles with Parliament over Brexit. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about why she and David Davis didn’t quite get on; why she quit May’s
Play 43 mins
Women With Balls
Dehenna Davison is the MP for Bishop Auckland, and a rising star in Boris Johnson’s 2019 ‘red wall’ intake. On this episode, recorded just after Conservative party conference, Dehenna tells Katy about what it was like to lose her father to a pub brawl so young, getting her work marked in Latin by Jacob Rees-Mogg
Play 31 mins
Women With Balls
Sarah Rainsford was a BBC foreign correspondent stationed in Moscow for 20 years until August when the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) declared Rainsford a national security threat. They expelled her from Russia and gave her only three weeks to pack up her things, bring home her husband and their dog. On the podcast, Sarah
Play 35 mins
Women With Balls
Joanna Scanlan, an actress best known for her role of Terri in the The Thick of It, had a long and winding road before becoming a star of stage and screen. Born in Cheshire and moved to Wales aged three, she went to two convent schools before an Anglican school where she broke every possible
Play 14 mins
Women With Balls
Trudy Harrison is the Conservative MP for Copeland and currently works as the Prime Minster’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. On the podcast, she talks about how when she was younger she always thought she’d be a nanny and how that maternal nature developed into her own childcare business, then local politics and finally the House of
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
Katie Perrior is a public relations expert who co-founded inHouse Communications. She’s worked for two prime ministers and several senior Tory MPs, and today her clients include the spiritsmaker Diageo and the football Super League. On the podcast, she talks about leaning into Boris Johnson’s rambunctious style on the London mayoralty campaign; coming into blows
Play 35 mins
Women With Balls
Polly Morgan is an artist whose trade is taxidermy. She recently won the First Plinth Award, and in her time has sold to celebrity clients including Kate Moss and Courtney Love. On the podcast, she tells Katy about her unusual childhood growing up on a farm with ostriches, goats and llamas; why she got fired
Play 34 mins
Women With Balls
The past year has served as a reminder how quickly one’s personal circumstances can change. In uncertain times such as these, financial resilience is more important than ever. But whilst savings for some Brits have surged in the pandemic, it’s not been the case for everyone. 41pc of UK households could not last more than
Play 38 mins
Women With Balls
Katy Searle is the Executive Editor of Politics at BBC News. She is known for overseeing numerous blockbuster political moments, including the infamous kitchen interviews with Ed Miliband and David Cameron, where the Labour leader showed off his two kitchens. On the podcast, she talks to Katy Balls about leaving school at 16, working with
Play 30 mins
Women With Balls
Over the last year of intermittent lockdowns, most of us have spent more time staring at the four walls of our living room than we ever thought possible. One of the biggest factors affecting someone’s pandemic experience is the type of accommodation they’re in, and 8.4 million people in England are living in unaffordable, insecure
Play 28 mins
Women With Balls
Nusrat Ghani is the Conservative MP for Wealden, having previously served as a transport minister under the May then Johnson governments. On the podcast, she tells Katy Balls about her upbringing under a father who was a headteacher; how she narrowly escaped arranged marriage through university; and how it feels to be one of nine
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
The pandemic has changed many aspects of our lives but one of the biggest is the way we work– with 46% of people working from home last year. Perhaps no group has been more impacted by this than the young – from unemployment to the mental health pressures of working from small homes and a
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
Elif Shafak is an award-winning Turkish-British novellist, essayist and activist. On the episode, she talks to Katy about what it was like to grow up in conservative Ankara under the strong women in her family; her prosecution by the Turkish government; and why she thinks too much information is not necessarily a virtue.
Play 39 mins
Women With Balls
Rachel Reeves is the Labour MP for Leeds West and the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about being a teen chess champion (pictured playing), going to a school where her mum worked and what Labour needs to do to turn its losing streak.
Play 40 mins
Women With Balls
Suzanne Moore is a journalist. On the podcast, she tells Katy about interviewing to work for Marxism Today, feeling out of place at The Guardian, and standing to be an independent MP.
Play 44 mins
Women With Balls
Mims Davies is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Employment and the MP for Mid Sussex. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about how her family became lifelong carers when her dad was attacked at work, about why she didn’t come out as a Tory in her student days at Swansea University and why her change
Play 36 mins
Women With Balls
Claire Williams OBE is the former Deputy Team Principal of Williams, family-run the Formula One racing team set up by her father, Frank Williams. On the podcast, she talks about what it was like to be seen as ‘Frank’s daughter’, the struggles of trying to turn around an ailing F1 team and how none of
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
Christina Lamb is an award-winning journalist who has reported on conflicts and politics across the world for more than three decades. Her latest book is Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, highlighting especially the treatment of women in war.
Play 55 mins
Women With Balls
Barbara Amiel, Baroness Black, is a journalist, writer and socialite. She’s been married four times – her fourth to the newspaper proprietor Conrad Black. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about her difficult childhood (which she describes as ‘slightly unorthodox’), establishing her journalistic career in Toronto and London, comparing bathrooms with Ghislaine Maxwell, her
Play 59 mins
Women With Balls
Gillian Keegan is the minister for apprenticeships and skills, and Conservative MP for Chichester. She previously worked at Natwest, Mastercard, Travelport and Amadeus. On the podcast, she tells Katy about growing up in a Labour stronghold, working in a car factory, pitching to be apprenticeships minister, and having her social life ruined by a friend’s advice
Play 41 mins
Women With Balls
Alice Bunn is a scientist and international director at the UK Space Agency. She tells Katy about falling in love with the stars, finding the right career and the threat of space debris.
Play 28 mins
Women With Balls
Anneliese Dodds is the shadow chancellor. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about protesting tuition fees in a university exams hall, life before politics, forcing Rishi Sunak into the Commons on his birthday, and whether the Conservatives are spending too much money.
Play 40 mins
Women With Balls
Rachel Johnson is a journalist, author and broadcaster. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about what it was like to go to a boys’ boarding school, why university had been so eye-opening after her childhood, her brief foray into politics for Change UK, and the worst pieces of advice she’s ever got (both from
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
Louise Haigh is the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland. On the podcast, she talks to Katy Balls about her family’s political roots; quitting university after not fitting in; her reflections on nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Party leader; and being offered a job with a spider on her shoulder.
Play 32 mins
Women With Balls
Emily Sheffield is the editor of the Evening Standard. She was formerly deputy editor at Vogue, and has started her own journalistic venture at This Much I Know. She also happens to be sister of Samantha Cameron. On the podcast, she talks about the real story behind why she was kicked out of Marlborough as
Play 39 mins
Women With Balls
Sarah Sands is the former editor of the Today programme. On the podcast, she talks to Katy Balls about her departure from the Sunday Telegraph after just nine months as Editor; giving John Humphreys a pay cut; and what it was like to find out on election night that the Boris Johnson government intended to
Play 37 mins
Women With Balls
Chloe Smith is the Conservative MP for Norwich North and minister at the Cabinet Office. She entered parliament at the age of 27 and rose through the ranks quickly. In 2012, she was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman in what has been described as a ‘car crash interview’ when she was sent out to defend then-Chancellor
Play 27 mins
Women With Balls
Joanna Trollope is an award-winning novelist, whose books have sold more than eight million copies worldwide. She’s known best for her novel, The Rector’s Wife, which was adapted into a TV series. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about the expectations on her as a girl growing up in the 40s, how stay at
Play 29 mins
Women With Balls
Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. An expert in the fight against infectious diseases, she is the lead scientist behind the Oxford study that disputed Imperial College’s dire coronavirus predictions. She is also a novelist and translator. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about her writing and how
Play 30 mins
Women With Balls
Kate Forbes is an SNP MP and the Scottish Finance Secretary. She stepped in at the last minute when her predecessor, Derek MacKay, was suspended from the party on the day of the Budget. On the podcast, she talks about her international upbringing and how that relates to her nationalism, what it was like to
Play 37 mins