Annabel Crabb & Leigh Sales On Friendship

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Annabel Crabb is running late. This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s listened to Chat 10 Looks 3, the insanely successful podcast that Annabel co-hosts with her good friend, Leigh Sales. Seven years after the pair sat down and recorded their first episode on an iPhone, Chat 10 Looks 3 has become a phenomenon that reveals a different side to two of Australia’s most respected journalists.

Legions of listeners have become familiar with Leigh’s love of show tunes and her innately organised nature, as well as Annabel’s more freewheeling manner and the fact that piles of books clutter her house. The podcast has given birth to a highly engaged community on Facebook (a group known as Chatters), a series of live shows, and now a book, Well Hello, Meanderings from the world of Chat 10 Looks 3.

So when I set up a Zoom call with the pair of them, I know that Leigh is going to be the first one on the call, and also that she is going to text Annabel to give her a hurry-up. After we meander through a couple of topics, I suggest to Leigh that we get the interview started.

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UTE The pair of you have been friends for 10 years, and doing a podcast together for seven. Is there anything about Annabel that still surprises you?

LEIGH Not that she’s five minutes late for a Zoom, that’s for sure [laughs]. Because she’s got such an original brain, often her insights – whether it’s a book, politics or whatever – I find, not surprising, but original and interesting.

ANNABEL [joining the Zoom] I clicked on the wrong link! I thought, ‘where are they?’

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You thought you got in first this time?

A I did feel a bit virtuous for a minute there. What an idiot. Sorry about that

L Ute just asked if I find anything about you surprising, and I was talking about your take on things.

A Remember when I used to be able to surprise you by wearing jeans?

L Oh yeah, that used to be surprising, because she’s always in a nice frock. If she showed up wearing a jeans and T-shirt, I’d be like, ‘Oh!’ But I gave her a pair of jeans the other day, and they looked really good, and I think you should wear them all the time.

A Those jeans are fantastic and I’m bad at buying jeans for myself, so maybe I’ll just outsource it to you [laughs]. I am always surprised – and I know I shouldn’t be – by her capacity to have a complete belly laugh, even when things are really shit. We can be talking about something super-serious and then she’ll say something so absurd, it makes me absolutely crack up. I think it’s the sign of a very resilient person. Even when Sales’ dad died, which was terrible, the most useful thing for me was Sales’ book, which was not even out yet.

L Yeah, you read a draft.

A And I went, I know what to do now because I’ve read this great book – ironically written by this person I’m now approaching. It’s something I value in her, and am constantly surprised anew by her capacity to be resilient and to find humour and lightness in serious things.

L I thought the anecdote you were going to reach for was the time we were running horrendously late to a live show in Brisbane. We took off in Sydney knowing we would not land in Brisbane before the actual time we were due onstage and so we were having a meltdown. We had checked-in bags and we were waiting for the bags [in Brisbane] and in the one five-minute window we had, instead of putting on some make-up or something, I just went and got a sausage roll. And Crabb looked at me, with crumbs all over me, and said, ‘Are you kidding me? We are 40 minutes late for a live show and you’ve just waltzed over and bought yourself a sausage roll?’ [both laugh]

A Eight hundred people were in the Tivoli, waiting for us – they were already in their seats. We were actually communicating through the Facebook group to the people who were waiting for us to show up. We were like, ‘Okay, we’re at the carousel now… Jesus, Sales has just got a sausage roll… We’re in a taxi now…’ That’s how we met Bec Francis who now manages our social media. She was in the audience that day and she messaged and said, ‘Do you want me to talk to the establishment and let them know where we are?’ and we were like, ‘Yes, god yes!’ Our mode of arrival was to pull up at the Tivoli, spill out of the taxi, haul our bags up the central aisle of the venue, clamber up on stage and then away we went.

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““At the live shows, women often come with their female friends and when they come and say hi to us [afterwards], we can tell, you are to each other as we are to each other.””

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With Chat 10 Looks 3, you thought you were creating a podcast in which you would discuss books and television, but what you actually created is a podcast that celebrates female friendship. And female friendship is not something that we celebrate enough.

L I think you’ve nailed it. It’s so puzzling to me that in our culture, women’s friendships are depicted as either shallow and focused on appearance, shopping, fashion, stuff like that, or as toxic, where there’s an undercurrent of competition or whatever. Whereas in my life, from childhood onward, my female friendships have always been an incredible source of support and comfort and absolutely vital to me. I feel like what we do and how we interact with each other, a lot of women relate to. At the live shows, women often come with their female friends and when they come and say hi to us [afterwards], we can tell, you are to each other, as we are to each other.

A Inasmuch as we had any plan at all for the podcast, it was that this would be a culture podcast. But it insistently became something else, not because of anything we consciously did, but because of our growing awareness that people liked listening to us interact. We get a lot of feedback from people that are alone for one reason or another: they’re unwell and in hospital, or have a newborn so are up in the middle of the night with the baby, or they’re long-distance drivers, or they’ve moved overseas from Australia and they’re really homesick. That’s what they tune in for. They feel like what they’re getting from our conversation is the same thing you get in real life from catching up for a big belly laugh with your buddies. You walk away feeling lighter and energised. That’s an amazing thing to hear.

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How has doing the podcast changed your friendship? Do you have to give each other space so you will have something to talk about?

L I’ll think, I can’t wait to tell Crabb about this, but I’ll just wait till we’re recording. So that is kind of strange. But we went to the pub with a group of friends in the middle of last year and I happened to be sitting next to Crabb and we ended up having a conversation that wasn’t for performance, that wasn’t being recorded, and I left the pub thinking, God that was so nice, just having a normal chat.

A She rang me up the next day and said, ‘I really enjoyed that conversation,’ and I was like, you thought in real life I would be boring? [laughs]

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On Chat 10 Looks 3, you both always sound so happy. Which makes me wonder, how do you cope with stress?

A I feel stressed every single day of my life. Because I am not super-organised, part of my brain is always in this defensive stance because I think, what have I forgotten to do, who have I forgotten to reply to, whose birthday have I forgotten? So there’s always that tick-tick, drip-drip of stress. Quite often we’ll have scheduled to do a podcast and I’ll be like, ‘Oh my god, now we have to do this podcast. Argh! My brain is going to explode!’ And I walk in and we start talking and instantly it’s like the pressure comes down. It’s a great reminder that sharing that feeling of mental overload is a good way of lightening it.

L Sometimes we will have talked about something and two hours later I’ll think of it and I’ll start laughing again. It’s like you get a bit of gas in your tank that can last days. Any activity that grounds you in the moment is super-good at getting rid of anxiety and stopping your worrying. For me, playing music puts me in the moment. Cooking does the same thing. It requires enough concentration that you can’t be lost in your worries, but it’s using a different part of my brain than my job does, so it’s giving me a break.

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When borders open, can we expect to see more Chat 10 Looks 3 live shows?

L We just have to wait to see the date for a federal election because guaranteed, if we book any live show, that will be the date of the election. We just need Scott Morrison to call it that so we can get some things lined up.

Drop him a line, I’m sure he’ll oblige.

L [laughs] Yes, he’s working mostly around the Chatters’ schedule. He’s great like that.

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Interview_ Ute Junker
Photos_ Supplied

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