Our stylish guest, Lauren Bravo, is known for writing on fashion, food, pop culture, travel, and feminism for outlets including Sunday Times Style, Grazia, Cosmopolitan, Stylist, and The Guardian. Lauren's first book, 'What Would The Spice Girls Do?', is a pop-culture look at girl power and 90s nostalgia. She says they weren't given much credit back in the day, but were so influential for a generation of girls like her growing up. She's always been obsessed with a second hand aesthetic, which she says she inherited from her parents and iconic grandmothers. She's always rocked a flamboyant style and says she was that kid going to sixth form with a vintage pillbox hat with a veil, so it was a natural progression for her to write a book called 'How To Break Up With Fast Fashion' — after taking on a year-long shopping ban in 2019, the book was published in 2020. She shares plenty of her tips for shopping on Vinted and successful charity shop bargain hunting, including looking for natural fibres and seeking out older brands. Learning how to layer is the key, and not being afraid to wear things out of season - a little summer dress with a roll neck underneath, for example. She says she finds that the men's section can often yield better quality jeans and shirts. Her novel 'Preloved' draws on her experience volunteering in a charity shop in London, where she encountered people from all walks of life. She is fascinated with the stories behind objects and the new life they get after they are bought in a charity shop, so this was fertile turf for her characters. She says her glamorous granny and nanny lived opposite each other and were great friends, and it was why her parents met in the first place. She says both of them were style icons and bought great quality pieces from charity shops. Lauren has inherited their coats and jewellery and brought her granny's cocktail ring to show us. It's a knuckle duster of a ring, given to her by her parents and made out of her great-grandfather's tie pin. Lauren wore it on her wedding day and any time she wants to feel fancy. A small round compact mirror from the Dubarry perfume company has a local link. Her parents gifted it to her as a graduation present. Coming from Worthing to Brighton on the train to sixth form, Lauren used to pass the art deco perfumery in Hove, and used to fantasise about living there with her friends, so this thoughtful gift from her Dad, tracked down on Ebay, means a lot to her. A match-box sized little green box revealed a suffragette brooch shaped as a letter 'C'. Her daughter loves to look at it, as her name begins with a 'C' too. It's made with peridot and an amethyst on a white stone background - the colours of the Suffragettes. People used to wear them to signal to other women they were fighting on the same side. Her last piece is from her thoughtful husband, Matt. He made her a book of all of her Worthing Herald columns, which she wrote weekly from the age of fourteen to twenty-six. She says most people commit their embarrassing teenage stories to their private diaries, but hers were all out in public. Still writing as a freelance journalist, Lauren's latest novel is 'Probably Nothing', about a woman named Bryony who gets drawn into her late boyfriend's family drama while dealing with worsening physical symptoms she keeps dismissing, exploring modern wellness culture and people-pleasing. When it comes to life hacks, Lauren says she's a born people pleaser and tries to remember her friend's mantra: "Don't put your name on stupid lists." She says the best piece of advice she ever got was from her granny, which she's passed onto many friends starting their first day at a new job: "Don't be scared. All you need to know is where the toilets are and how to get out." Follow her on social media @laurenbravo and subscribe to her Substack newsletter for her chatty pieces: Nobody Wanted This.

To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast

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Fresh from the tennis at Eastbourne, Alice and Josie are joined by bestselling author Erin Kelly for a summer special. She talks glossy-mag capers, getting drunk for free five nights a week in nineties London, and writing The Poison Tree in six months once motherhood made freelancing impossible. Plus her new novel The Night Stairs, a chilling tale of fainting, hysteria and secrets at a Yorkshire Moors convent school.

And her bits: a nameplate necklace from her mum that made her cry, a silver-and-onyx ring worn smooth since the sixties, an Italian gold cross that captures her love-hate relationship with Catholicism, a bead bracelet made by her thirteen-year-old, and — for the self-confessed Tudor geek — a replica Anne Boleyn necklace, with an E instead of a B. Find Erin on Instagram @erinjelly, www.erinkelly.co.uk and on Substack @mserinkelly

To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast

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The entrepreneur who solved the problem of non-biodegradable balloons, CEO and co-founder of Bioloon, Charlotte Melia joins us from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to tell the astounding story of her discovery.

Her story starts with humble beginnings on the Isle of Wight. As a child she dreamed of becoming an actress, but after returning from a theatre tour pregnant, she realised she couldn't fulfil that dream and be a mum. Instead, she started a children's party company as a side hustle, dressing up as princesses at weekends. It quickly took off and, by 2018, Dazzle & Fizz had become the go-to company for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, royals and A-listers, with offices in London, New York and Saudi Arabia.

She shares some hair-raising stories from parties for the ultra-rich, including transforming The Dorchester ballroom into New York City for two-year-old twins. The average spend on a three-year-old's birthday party? £55,000.

Although fiercely environmentally conscious—banning single-use plastics long before it was fashionable, upcycling sets and redistributing food waste—Charlotte says party balloons remained a huge problem. With thousands being used and discarded after just a few hours, she became increasingly troubled by their environmental impact.

The latex balloons she bought claimed they would biodegrade as quickly as an oak leaf. Charlotte jokes that, despite only getting a double B in science, even she knew something didn't add up. After conducting some "cowboy science" of her own, she discovered they definitely weren't biodegrading.

Digging deeper, she uncovered years of greenwashing and found research proving latex balloons don't biodegrade as claimed. Instead, they contribute to microplastic pollution and are responsible for the deaths of around one million seabirds and 100,000 turtles every year.

Determined to find a solution, one of Charlotte's shareholders introduced her to Professor Jason Hallett at Imperial College London, who suggested funding a PhD student to develop an alternative to vulcanised latex.

With her party business losing 95 per cent of its revenue during Covid, while raising a son with special needs and going through a divorce, Charlotte risked the last of her money to fund researcher Juliana Cumming. Three years later came the call she'd been waiting for: Juliana had found the winning formula.

The result is a material that is both biocompatible and biodegradable, with the potential to replace vulcanised latex across the $40 billion industry—from balloons and gloves to medical devices and condoms.

Charlotte also shares the three objects that matter most to her: Rabbit, the soft toy she's slept with since birth; her well-travelled passport, which represents the freedom and purpose she finds in exploring the world; and Terrance, a small turtle attached to her backpack that reminds her every day why she's doing this work.

Her life hack? Turning her stubbornness into her superpower and swapping her morning coffee for functional mushrooms.

What a remarkable woman.

Find out more about Bioloon at @wearebioloon on Instagram and connect with Charlotte on LinkedIn at @charlottemelia.

To view our guests' special bits, please follow us on Instagram @showusyourbitspodcast

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