Dolly Alderton/Pandora Sykes

[Lanavalentine]

I think the fact that Dolly doesn’t also own a multi-million pound house potentially points to the fact that Pandora has money from elsewhere.

They’ll definitely both be earning well but not well enough to buy a 1.3 mil house, and completely decorate it, without having had a very sizeable deposit gifted to her at the very least. Has she ever mentioned having a mortgage on the podcast/in her book?
I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the house was purchased outright with family money.

I know Pandora is married and therefore has a double income household, but I still don’t think they’d have enough combined income to have secured the house themselves. Don’t forget Pandora is also technically self-employed, so the mortgage process will have been more difficult for her (if she even went through it!).

I don’t know what her sister does but doesn’t her niece go to the £13k a term private school? That also makes me think “family money”.

Edited to add:

I take back some of what I said!

Just had a quick google and did some very rough numbers. Top podcasts earn $50k per episode. I would put The High Low more at like $30k per episode, so around £22k.

They did 36 episodes last year, so that’s £792k total. They also employ a producer, presumably rent equipment (do they own it?) and will have some other small miscellaneous costs, I expect.

I would estimate they both take home around £200-250k pre tax. Then there is writing - I expect Pandora will have secured a decent advance for her book. She probably gets paid around £1 a word for her writing (this is actually really high!). I could see her clearing £300-325k on a good year, pre-tax? This is all a total guesstimate on my part! Don‘t take it as gospel!

Oh god, edit again! If she’s straight-forwardly self-employed then she probably takes home around £185k, post-tax, a year at that level. So yeah, they can afford that mortgage easily.

 

[stealthbtch]

Just read this and came to the thread to see if anyone else had seen it!

I was quite enjoying her advice until it got to the part about alcohol. “Modern puritanism” wiping out drinking. What a defensive take.

The girl is moving to Paris to be an au pair. I don’t think it’s a good idea that Dolly encouraged her to accept getting staggeringly drunk is ok. Tone deafness!

Listen, I can barely get through a yoga class if I drank the previous night so I cannot fathom what an ordeal it is to be hungover and caring for a toddler.

Me too and also you can understand how they get through so many if they are actually quite lightweight and easy to read.

Someone mentioned Pandora being well-read. To me reading all the latest releases isn’t being well-read, it’s reading a broad range of things and also from people you’re likely to disagree with. Ok maybe she does read stuff like that, but perhaps doesn’t mention it on the podcast to avoid offending people.

One can only hope Pandy someday discovers Anthony Trollope and Dolly finds EM Delafield.

I think the fact that Dolly doesn’t also own a multi-million pound house potentially points to the fact that Pandora has money from elsewhere.

They’ll definitely both be earning well but not well enough to buy a 1.3 mil house, and completely decorate it, without having had a very sizeable deposit gifted to her at the very least. Has she ever mentioned having a mortgage on the podcast/in her book?
I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the house was purchased outright with family money.

I know Pandora is married and therefore has a double income household, but I still don’t think they’d have enough combined income to have secured the house themselves. Don’t forget Pandora is also technically self-employed, so the mortgage process will have been more difficult for her (if she even went through it!).

I don’t know what her sister does but doesn’t her niece go to the £13k a term private school? That also makes me think “family money”.

Edited to add:

I take back some of what I said!

Just had a quick google and did some very rough numbers. Top podcasts earn $50k per episode. I would put The High Low more at like $30k per episode, so around £22k.

They did 36 episodes last year, so that’s £792k total. They also employ a producer, presumably rent equipment (do they own it?) and will have some other small miscellaneous costs, I expect.

I would estimate they both take home around £200-250k pre tax. Then there is writing - I expect Pandora will have secured a decent advance for her book. She probably gets paid around £1 a word for her writing (this is actually really high!). I could see her clearing £300-325k on a good year, pre-tax? This is all a total guesstimate on my part! Don‘t take it as gospel!

Oh god, edit again! If she’s straight-forwardly self-employed then she probably takes home around £185k, post-tax, a year at that level. So yeah, they can afford that mortgage easily.

Yes but families with the Duke of Edinburgh in attendance at funerals (as is case with Hon. Pandora India Nicole Sykes) we can imagine likely have a multigeneration trust set up, which pays for private school fees and, if large enough, can be borrowed against for a home purchase. No scholarship places or usurious mortgage interest rates for these types. Not the 1% but part of the vast 10%. As an example, Kate Middleton's paternal great-grandfather did very well in business and set up a trust that paid for the school fees for all descendants. Not a baron, not even a well-known late-industrial revolution name, just quiet wealth that his descendants were lucky wasn't gambled away or sucked away by alimony.

I’m middle class and privately educated and I don’t know anyone 25-40 who lives in that kind of house in London!

I think podcasts are a lot more lucrative than we think. Why else is every (wo)man and his /her dog making them?

If only I could make money off the long conversations I have with my corgi (he loves to learn new words/things and I live alone so...).

 

[Beaubeau66]

Pandora has got a mortgage- or at least she has referenced it in a podcast episode (possibly as a guest rather than The High Low). I think she had a flat before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she was gifted the deposit for that by her parents and if it had increased in value it would have helped towards the house. Ollie’s family have an entry in The Peerage too, so he may also have had some help. Although an entry there does not necessarily mean people have cash to hand out, as family money runs out if you don’t manage it or add to it.


the niece who is at St Mary’s is the daughter of the brother- I think both of Pandora’s surviving sisters are single (or at least unmarried) and child free/less (I never want to use one or other of those without knowing the person!).

 

[Mushroom7]

Edited to add:

I take back some of what I said!

Just had a quick google and did some very rough numbers. Top podcasts earn $50k per episode. I would put The High Low more at like $30k per episode, so around £22k.

They did 36 episodes last year, so that’s £792k total. They also employ a producer, presumably rent equipment (do they own it?) and will have some other small miscellaneous costs, I expect.

I would estimate they both take home around £200-250k pre tax. Then there is writing - I expect Pandora will have secured a decent advance for her book. She probably gets paid around £1 a word for her writing (this is actually really high!). I could see her clearing £300-325k on a good year, pre-tax? This is all a total guesstimate on my part! Don‘t take it as gospel!

Oh god, edit again! If she’s straight-forwardly self-employed then she probably takes home around £185k, post-tax, a year at that level. So yeah, they can afford that mortgage easily.

Wow, I had no idea it would be anything like that! I feel so naive thinking a podcast would earn £50k a year . No wonder everyone is making one.

@slugella I'm sorry for you loss, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been. It's lovely to know we've had similar experiences, I totally agree about the guardian piece and they should be challenged; because describing yourself as privileged is so relative it's meaningless. I wish there was more intelligent discussion like the guardian piece around - that would be a podcast I'd enjoy!

 

[Lanavalentine]

^ that makes total sense re: the mortgage!

Wow, I had no idea it would be anything like that! I feel so naive thinking a podcast would earn £50k a year . No wonder everyone is making one.

I thought similar until I googled it!!

I honestly don’t know if they make that much, it could be way less (or more!) but I just guessed based on the reported incomes for other podcasts.

 

[slugella]

Wow, I had no idea it would be anything like that! I feel so naive thinking a podcast would earn £50k a year . No wonder everyone is making one.

@slugella I'm sorry for you loss, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been. It's lovely to know we've had similar experiences, I totally agree about the guardian piece and they should be challenged; because describing yourself as privileged is so relative it's meaningless. I wish there was more intelligent discussion like the guardian piece around - that would be a podcast I'd enjoy!

Yes I totally agree! There is definitely some options for some good journalism to explore some of the themes we have discussed here.

Wowwww that income potential for podcasting is pretty insane! I had no idea.

 

[Libertine]

I’ve often thought that families who can afford to buy each child a well placed flat in the capital set their children, and in turn grandchildren, up for life.

I’m just going to be over here thinking about how character forming buying my own first (dilapidated, deceased estate) home was.

 

[cedarpeach]

Privilege runs so deep and is about more than money (though money is at the root of it, of course). Does anyone read Satnam Sanghera in The Times? He’s a writer from Wolverhampton who went on to Oxbridge. He’s a son on working class immigrant parents and writes well about the class divide.

He once wrote about how working class kids are fish out of water when they reach the corporate or professional worlds. Privileged kids know “the rules” from day one and are primed to expect positions of power. That kind of confidence counts for a lot. As someone who also grew up poor in the midlands my parents taught me zero about the “real” world because they’d never stepped foot in an office or professional/corporate setting. I was absolutely lost for years as I tried to make sense of the world of work.

I’m now “successful” (hate that word) in a traditional sense as I have risen to a senior corporate role. I am still shocked at what a huge role connections, schooling and networks play. the amount of people that are hires because they know someone high-up, or because they’re a friend of a friend or a peer is shocking. Meritocracy is such a laughably naive idea.

finally, as for Panda’s expensive house, I used to know a guy whose dad ran a plumbing company. The company was so successful that the family have been on the times rich list every year for well over a decade. The guy I used to know lived with his partner and newborn in a variety of his parents houses across the cotswolds and major cities in the uk. When he decided it was time to buy his own house his dad quadrupled the deposit he had saved (from his job as CEO of his dads company.....) and he now lives in country pile in Somerset complete with cinema, gym, pool etc. alright for some!

 

[Shane]

I read Satnam yes. He’s excellent. And also funny

Networking is everything in the corporate world isn’t it? I too was surprised by the reality of this - I’ve accidently ended up there after 3 decades in public sector/ charity/third sector where far less of that goes on (overtly anyway).

 

[smartgirl600]

Long time lurker here! I am really enjoying this thread and the discussion on class. I think that class is so under-discussed in the U.K, and Pandora running away from criticism instead of engaging with it just highlights that for me - it seems like it's something that people just aren't allowed to criticise or point out, and when they do, it's "unfair" and "cruel". Also just absolutely incredible that she chose to throw her toys out of the pram when hundreds of thousands of young people with A-Level results have had their lives ruined, literally (in a lot of cases) in factors that ultimately come down to their class.

I think the author of the Guardian piece has noticed this too -

 

[cedarpeach]

I read Satnam yes. He’s excellent. And also funny

Networking is everything in the corporate world isn’t it? I too was surprised by the reality of this - I’ve accidently ended up there after 3 decades in public sector/ charity/third sector where far less of that goes on (overtly anyway).

It really is. I find that corporate life is akin to being part of a secret society - you need to know the rules and be specially invited in order to fit in and succeed.

 

[Pablomamma]

Good spot! Must sting to get a bit of stick off The Guardian.

Long time lurker here! I am really enjoying this thread and the discussion on class. I think that class is so under-discussed in the U.K, and Pandora running away from criticism instead of engaging with it just highlights that for me - it seems like it's something that people just aren't allowed to criticise or point out, and when they do, it's "unfair" and "cruel". Also just absolutely incredible that she chose to throw her toys out of the pram when hundreds of thousands of young people with A-Level results have had their lives ruined, literally (in a lot of cases) in factors that ultimately come down to their class.

I think the author of the Guardian piece has noticed this too -

 

[Shane]

It really is. I find that corporate life is akin to being part of a secret society - you need to know the rules and be specially invited in order to fit in and succeed.

It’s like a cult.

 

[Ohnoitsnot]

Been lurking here a few days and I'm so glad to have found a place that puts my thoughts on Pandora down in words that make sense!

I've been a HL listener for a while now and though I actually don't mind Dolly, something about Pandora has always sat funny with me - and now reading here, I'm so aware that it's the class thing. I read Dolly's book Everything I Know About Love and while some of it was completely ridiculous (spending the £££ on the taxi to see a boy, for example) there were enough elements of it that mirrored my experience living as a twenty four year old in London that I enjoyed it and I think as a result I feel Dolly is the more relatable of the two, but even listening to the HL, Pandora has struck me as being so unrelatable.

Sorry for the rant - just glad to have found this thread!

 

[Pegsypog]

Privilege runs so deep and is about more than money (though money is at the root of it, of course). Does anyone read Satnam Sanghera in The Times? He’s a writer from Wolverhampton who went on to Oxbridge. He’s a son on working class immigrant parents and writes well about the class divide.

He once wrote about how working class kids are fish out of water when they reach the corporate or professional worlds. Privileged kids know “the rules” from day one and are primed to expect positions of power. That kind of confidence counts for a lot. As someone who also grew up poor in the midlands my parents taught me zero about the “real” world because they’d never stepped foot in an office or professional/corporate setting. I was absolutely lost for years as I tried to make sense of the world of work.

I’m now “successful” (hate that word) in a traditional sense as I have risen to a senior corporate role. I am still shocked at what a huge role connections, schooling and networks play. the amount of people that are hires because they know someone high-up, or because they’re a friend of a friend or a peer is shocking. Meritocracy is such a laughably naive idea.

finally, as for Panda’s expensive house, I used to know a guy whose dad ran a plumbing company. The company was so successful that the family have been on the times rich list every year for well over a decade. The guy I used to know lived with his partner and newborn in a variety of his parents houses across the cotswolds and major cities in the uk. When he decided it was time to buy his own house his dad quadrupled the deposit he had saved (from his job as CEO of his dads company.....) and he now lives in country pile in Somerset complete with cinema, gym, pool etc. alright for some!

Thank you for your point. It’s well made and I’ll definitely read the journalist on the guardian.
I can relate to a lot that you said as I come from a working class family too and didn’t grow up with ski hols, summer hols and definitely couldn’t afford to be picky with the jobs to find a better paid one/one in line with my aspirations etc.
I am quite successful now but I do think It is a massive set back (or it was 15 years ago) working where you know you don’t have a future but can’t afford not to be working.
I am now able to afford a comfortable lifestyle thankfully and I work in the corporate world in London where there’s a lot of privileged people (private schools, holidays abroad since they were kids, gap years) and it’s very clear to me we are A world apart.
I wish I had the confidence of white mediocre privileged guy

 

[slugella]

Been lurking here a few days and I'm so glad to have found a place that puts my thoughts on Pandora down in words that make sense!

I've been a HL listener for a while now and though I actually don't mind Dolly, something about Pandora has always sat funny with me - and now reading here, I'm so aware that it's the class thing. I read Dolly's book Everything I Know About Love and while some of it was completely ridiculous (spending the £££ on the taxi to see a boy, for example) there were enough elements of it that mirrored my experience living as a twenty four year old in London that I enjoyed it and I think as a result I feel Dolly is the more relatable of the two, but even listening to the HL, Pandora has struck me as being so unrelatable.

Sorry for the rant - just glad to have found this thread!

Agree about Dolly. I didn't love the book but did like bits of it and I think reading about her friendships and her living with them showed a side to her that I could relate to even if she was wealthier and working in TV, whereas I haven't seen this with Pandora. Even when Dolly wrote about her school which was a private school which I can not relate to at all, she still articulated struggles and lack of confidence which I could relate to.

 

[TGreece76]

Learning a lot about Pandora’s background on this thread, I can’t understand why she referenced the ‘moneyed elite’ in Tulum like she wasn’t part of that - that’s actually her life?! Someone needs to tell her that the average Joe doesn’t spend £3k on a rug

 

[maketheswitch]

I guess she doesn't feel part of it because I think, from memory, elements of that trip was comped and she wrote about it afterwards. So she feels separate from those who can afford a holiday like that when they're paying for it themselves. The rug - she probably also got a big discount on the understanding she would feature it on her instagram.

My guess about the house is that both her and her husband had some help with a deposit either on this or on their previous flat (or both) and have a mortgage too.

Is she actually an hon? I thought it was just her mum? If she is an hon then the whole thing is just so ridiculous. You can't call yourself 'middle class' - you just have to own who you are! Whether or not you feel defined by it, and whether or not you agree with hereditary titles, you have to accept your place in the system and what it has afforded you, and you just *can't* claim to be middle class.

 

[Nugget1973]

Just spotted this in Pandora’s Instagram bio... god why has it irked me so much! Why feel the need to put ‘Sporadic user of IG’ when you on avg post every 5 days - I’ve not posted anything in about 6 months!!! What is she trying to prove, that she’s holier than thou because she deletes it for a few days a week?!

On the Hon, I think it’s just her mum and my understanding is they don’t pass down in that way? *HOWEVER*, I sort of struggle in my mind with having a mum who’s a Rt Hon, and being typically middle class. Partic when you couple it with alllllll the other stuff.

I guess she doesn't feel part of it because I think, from memory, elements of that trip was comped and she wrote about it afterwards. So she feels separate from those who can afford a holiday like that when they're paying for it themselves. The rug - she probably also got a big discount on the understanding she would feature it on her instagram.

My guess about the house is that both her and her husband had some help with a deposit either on this or on their previous flat (or both) and have a mortgage too.

Is she actually an hon? I thought it was just her mum? If she is an hon then the whole thing is just so ridiculous. You can't call yourself 'middle class' - you just have to own who you are! Whether or not you feel defined by it, and whether or not you agree with hereditary titles, you have to accept your place in the system and what it has afforded you, and you just *can't* claim to be middle class.

 

[queenamber]

Am I missing it or has Pandora deleted those tweets about leaving Twitter?