'I do not feel for one single second that my life is missing anything by not having a child'
A moment of honesty with DJ Paulette
Hello! And welcome to The Honesty Box. This is a little later than usual as I’ve had a dodgy stomach for a few days.
Drumroll for a NEW, monthly (ish) feature, which I’m calling A Moment of Honesty.
I’ve wanted to feature interviews in this newsletter for a while and I’ve been beavering away to bring you some super interesting people talking about their moment of honesty - a time when they had to be really true to themselves, or to someone else.
Why is this important? Because being honest is tough. We all tell white lies or gloss over things to make life smoother in the moment, but ultimately honesty (especially with ourselves) is usually the best policy. And, if we can be more honest, open and vulnerable with each other, I think the world will be a happier place.
My first interviewee is the pioneering, talented and fabulous DJ Paulette.
Pioneering because she was one of the first women to have a residency at Manchester’s infamous nightclub The Hacienda, and because she has “scaled the heights of the music industry,” as she says in her new book: Welcome to the Club – The Life and Lessons of a Black Woman DJ.
Paulette has been DJing for 30 years and has played at numerous Ibiza clubs and festivals all over the world, as well as being a radio host and events curator.
I was so happy when Paulette said yes to being interviewed, because she’s one of the people who represents a new era for me – it might seem grand, but I really am ‘finding myself’ again through going clubbing in midlife.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Lucy: Can you describe a moment of honesty you’ve had in your life?
Paulette: There are many. All of those moments of honesty… for whatever emotion passed at that time, all of them have been really useful in helping me to recalibrate, be honest with myself more than anything, and kind of look at life in a way that was going to be in some ways less damaging to me.
Let’s take this event. It’s that kind of comment, which is a throwaway comment from a friend who is exasperated with me, because I'm moaning. And it was around probably 2000, 2001. And there's been a kind of a shift with DJing and bookings, and the kind of women who are getting a lot of press attention.
I'm still only in my 30s [at the time] but I've realised that my work started to slow down a bit, and other DJs who are younger than me, who are white, long hair… and have big boobs and you know, can play the game, and they just seem to be getting on a lot quicker and faster and better than I am.
So, I'm complaining about this, I've been to dinner with my friend [and] we're walking back to my flat through Notting Hill. We're walking past [housing block] Trellick Tower. And my friend, exasperated with me moaning says: You know what, Paulette, you're just not famous anymore.
It was like getting a bullet through the head because I had never actually even thought about it in those terms before. It brought an awareness of how other people were perceiving my status in this industry within this culture as in, she's just not famous anymore. That's why we don't want her.
So, what do I do if I'm just not famous anymore, how can I correct this? And there was a lot of frantic peddling, because I was also in between booking agents. So, then it was like, so how do I get back on the getting work kind of circuit?
Lucy: What had shifted?
Paulette: It’s like the explosion of the lads’ mags, FHM, Loaded, Uncut, that kind of real of testosterone-heavy attitude in terms of marketing music. The things that were getting attention were the things that guys were interested in - it was the first time ever since I'd started DJing that I realised that music was being marketed to straight, white, cis, men.
Dance music had never really been marketed to any one group before, it was just open to all: come one, come all. I looked around and [realised] actually, it’s not just me that doesn't fit. But it's certain of my black female DJ peers as well. All of us dropped out.
There was a couple of years of doing probably more radio, then events work, presenting and I did a lot more TV, I did a lot more radio. And I had to find different people to work with, smaller clubs. I was working for the Ministry of Sound, but I was working internationally, I wasn't working with the London club so much. I did a lot more corporate stuff, so I was working for Diesel, I was working with athletes. I remember I was playing at Harrods at one point.
I started working in France a lot for the Ministry of Sound and I was working in Paris. And then it was like ah, I'm doing really well over there. In 2004, I sold my [London] flat and made quite a lot of money. And I'd met somebody in Paris, who I had been dating for I think two years. And I thought well, you know, I could make a commitment and just have a go and see.
There was also that sense of time running out if I wanted to have a kid and you know, there's still that thing about get married, have a kid, settle down… It was like, oh, you know, maybe there's still a chance that I could have that thing as well. So, I made the commitment to move to Paris. And, interestingly, professionally, it's one of the best decisions I ever made. But personally, it's one of the worst decisions I've ever made. But there's the honesty. That the result of the that moment of honesty kind of kicked off a series of events that led to me moving to Paris.
Lucy: We don’t have to talk about this, if you don’t want to, but how do you feel about not having kids?
Paulette: I’m quite happy to talk about it. Even though as a mature woman, I had the plan in the back of my head [in Paris] that maybe this would be a right time to have kids, but now here's the honesty moment. When I was 14, I actually prayed to God that I would not have kids and I remember it very clearly. I prayed because I had quite a difficult upbringing. I'm the youngest of eight, and my mum, God bless her, you know, she did her absolute best to bring us up mainly on her own.
She was holding down three jobs and studying… and she's got three degrees. I was brought up by my elder sisters. I love my sisters… and it didn’t do me a huge amount of harm, but it meant that I didn’t want to bring up a kid like I’d been brought up.
And you know, I've been through various pregnancies with various sisters and been involved to the most incredible degree in the lives of the products of those pregnancies. I'm really really close to all my nephews and nieces. But I do not feel for one single second that my life is missing anything at all by not having a child.
Lucy: But when you went to Paris, you had a partner [and you thought about having kids]?
Paulette: I said to my therapist, you know, I have realised that every single relationship I've been in, not maliciously, but maybe I've calculated it, that the person I put in there [as a partner] is actually fucking useless. And I knew kind of, yeah, I've got with this person [in Paris] and the plan is like, I'm gonna get married and you know, we're gonna have a kid. But I knew in the back of my mind that we weren't.
And I knew at the back of my mind that, you know, tick tock, this probably isn't gonna last, but it will be nice for a bit. And then when it's ended, it's like, wow, too bad. But I think, and I felt bad when that realisation came because I thought, oh, you know, did I just put those people through a bit of a hard, unnecessarily hard time? Or were we both doing it to each other? Because, you know, they have a choice as well.
I did also realise, at the back of my mind, that there has been a kind of awareness that the people that I've put in there [as partners] thinking that oh, might make a decent father - [they] probably won't. And that's me being honest with myself.
Lucy [For my own interest, and because I think there’s a broader article in this - and I am 46 and Paulette is 57]: I want to find out whether middle aged people, middle aged clubbers can save Britain's dance floors?
Paulette: Yeah, I think we can… I think that there is this kind of - is resurgence the word? - of older people going clubbing. And that's great, you know, because there is this realisation that what it is to be 50 and 60 now is not what it was to be 50 and 60 for our parents.
Lucy: Are there any gigs that you've played, or clubs or festivals where you've noticed an older crowd?
What I'm seeing is, it’s a lot more mixed. And my kind of mission is for people not to feel like, oh, that's a young thing, because we [‘older’ clubbers] are stopping us from going. Whereas if we just think, sod it, I'm going, then it's not a young thing, because you put yourself there and then other people follow.