Check Out Pauline Bithell’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Pauline Bithell.

Hi Pauline, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I moved to Los Angeles from England roughly ten years ago. I had backpacked for a year and lived in Australia, but I knew I would always end up in Los Angeles.

I studied Theater in England and I came to LA on a Student Visa, meaning I had to go to school and couldn’t work, which was incredibly frustrating to someone who wanted to dive into making a life in Los Angeles. I was introduced to the Indie music scene in LA and I fell in love; my degree was in English Literature and Journalism and I knew Music Journalism was calling my name.

With the confidence only found in youth, I called the epic music magazine “Music Connection” and just asked if I could have a job. I went in and met with Editor Bernard Baur where I showed him some previous articles and spoke about my Dad hanging with The Beatles and The Stones during The Cavern Club era (my Dad was also a Journalist), and to my surprise I was hired on the spot.

After years of nights in sticky-floored clubs reviewing bands, interviewing some of my heroes like Amy Winehouse and Adele (when she played to only 12 people at SXSW), and going from Festival to Festival, I wanted to transition to an area of creativity that was a little bit more “lifestyle friendly”. I began to write copy and create EPKs for musicians working freelance and also began work on my Novella.

In the last year, I have been working on several projects surrounding my undying love for Pop Culture and our obsession with Reality TV. I had a concept for a Podcast that I thought was original, amusing, examining, and most importantly a lot of fun which I pitched to my friend who knew about all things in the Podcasting world-she loved it, and Tender Loving Care…? was born!

The premise of our Podcast centers around my story of coming to Los Angeles and watching the TLC Channel and believing that the TLC stood for “Tender Loving Care” which when watching the shows did not compute. When I found out that it actually stood for “The Learning Channel” my confusion deepened, and I wanted to see if anyone was actually learning anything from the shows on TLC. In our Wednesday episodes, we spin our “Wheel Of Shame” which contains every TLC show in existence, and pick a show to examine…as you can imagine there is a lot of shit to cover! We have now expanded to releasing 3 episodes a week covering other shows in the Bravo and TLC world, plus twice monthly episodes available to our Patreon subscribers.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Los Angeles is not real, and I tell people this all the time. This city is full of dreamers, we all flock to this entertainment Mecca to be seen and to be told that we are good enough at what we do to “make it.” Every day I meet people who are creating, they are writing music, they are filming a documentary about an obscure topic, they are reciting poetry at their local coffee shop, they are filming movies with actors that they grew up watching on TV and I love it. The tricky part of living in Los Angeles is that the majority of these creators that you meet won’t ever pay their bills with their creativity and decide it is too hard and move back to their hometowns with a head full of memories and thoughts of what may have been.

Nothing is smooth in LA, you have to be a fighter, and you have to understand that what you are chasing has been grasped at by millions but caught only by a few.

There have been many a night that I’ve fantasized about how much easier my life would have been if I chose a linear path. If you want to be a nurse or a lawyer, you know the steps that you have to take and if you succeed at those steps, you will achieve your goal. In LA if you want to be an Actor, for example, you can take every acting lesson, join every overpriced Improv group, dye your hair, become the body shape you need for a Role, and still not get it. There were nights that I was VIP at a gig, interviewing Music Icons, getting home at 3 am, submitting my article on no sleep, and getting paid less than my grocery bill for the week-sometimes the safety of paying the bills becomes secondary to climbing the ladder and hoping for your big break.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
During my time as a music journalist, I have had two major career highlights. I was sent to SXSW in Austin to cover the festival and spy on new artists that I thought we had to keep our eyes open for. I had been listening nonstop to this London artist I loved on MySpace (yes…I’m old) and she was playing at SXSW. I dragged my friends to a tent occupied by no more than 12 people one of which was Zach Galifianakis (very random) to watch this Indie Folk girl play her tunes about London Town, she was amazing and she was Adele. I went up and interviewed her while she chain-smoked and told me her LA gig next week had “loads of tickets left” if I wanted to come, I took her up on her offer and went to see her at Hotel Cafe. Adele’s music is very different now from the young girl I watched play acoustic guitar and sing about her love for London, but to have seen her in her finest era (in my opinion) is a career highlight for sure. Since the moment the “Frank” album came out, I was an Amy Winehouse adorer. I got to interview her at SXSW one year and I was the most nervous I had ever been with “never meet your idols” repeating in my head, but she was everything I wanted and more, she was clearly in the grips of addiction at this stage but was kind and I was so bloody thankful. After our interview, Amy played a few songs acoustic to a room full of journalists and it was a moment I will never, ever forget.

Even though music is still such a large part of my life, I appreciate it and experience it in a much more relaxed and non-deadline-enforcing way!

I am so incredibly proud of our Podcast “Tender Loving Care…?” which takes up a huge part of my life. When Kate and I began the podcast, I told her this wasn’t going to be another half-hearted Podcast recorded when we had time or one in which the hosts believe that they are so charismatic that they can just talk for an hour and people will want to listen, I wanted to treat this as a business and produce quality, structured content. I taught myself how to create a podcast and edit everything from YouTube videos. I had zero idea what I was doing, but I was determined to make it work. I wrote show structures, copy for intros, and listened to all the Podcasts which I loved and figured out why I loved them.

Since our first episode in March 2022, we have released over 100 episodes, we have a subscriber-based platform, we are downloaded in 70 countries every week, and have been featured in “The Sun”, “US Weekly” and lots more publications.

Discussing “90 Day Fiance” and dissecting documentaries on societal oddities may seem a long way from my days in music journalism, but to me, it’s all about the story. I am a host, I love to tell stories, to dig into the minutia and details and most importantly I love the absurdity of it all.

Being English in Los Angeles certainly has its benefits, you do stand out and people often mistake your accent for an air of sophistication which I take and run with any day…especially during a day I’ve spent editing an episode about grown men turned on by balloons…yes, that is a TLC show.

When I’m not being equally revolted and intrigued by TLC shows I have an e-commerce shop called “A Brit In The Sun”. I design and create Pop Culture merch mostly based around Bravo shows, TLC cast members and YouTubers. It is incredibly fun and I create what I would wear, whether that is a Dad Hat with “Sonja’s Intern” on it (Real Housewives Of New York City) or a t-shirt with the slogan “Andy Put Me On Pause” (Dorinda/Andy Cohen reference)-I love it all!

I have my own shop as well as selling a line of notebooks and journals on Amazon and the reaction has been amazing. During BravoCon last year Andy Cohen reposted a photo of my t-shirt to his millions of followers and the feedback has been so funny and silly.

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson that I’ve learned along the way is tough to pinpoint as LA teaches you MANY hard lessons, however, I think number one is that if you are not comfortable in being uncomfortable to achieve your goals, go home.

The path in Los Angeles is like no other, and you will need to accept that no one other than people here will understand it. You will hear from friends and family back home, “Why don’t you just get a normal job?” “Why don’t you just move back, you gave it a try”.

When you are an artist, there are no other jobs, there is nothing else that will ever fulfill you, even if you try and try for the rest of your life, it truly is so much more fulfilling than giving up. Some days you will dream of having a 9-5, knowing that you will do that for a set number of years to buy a house, conforming to family expectations as it is all easier than hustling every day, but the moment that you see your friend book their dream role, the moment that you have someone come up to you to tell you how much they love your work, you are reminded that you are living your authentic life.

Living in LA excites you every day, people’s dreams do come true, we see it, we want it and we keep going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tenderlovingcarepod.buzzsprout.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tenderlovingcarepodcast/
• Other: https://abritinthesun.myshopify.com/. – ABritInTheSun Pop Culture Shop

Image Credits
The image of two people is me and Kate Chindlund co-host of our podcast Tender Loving Care…