I want my pound of flesh

Yes, I was at THAT Dolly Alderton event.

Thank you for reading this issue of The Middle. I hope you enjoy this selection of my thoughts, feelings, etc. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single sentence. Sian x

Thoughts

• Listen, I know I said I’d be back in a week like three weeks ago but life has just gotten a bit insane and hectic, ya know? A bit on and such. I’m back here for a solid month until I take some time off writing over Christmas and New Year before returning to regularly clogging your inbox in 2025 so I hope you keep hanging out with me. I love it here.

• Sorry to all the theatre nerds but I have zero desire to go and see Wicked, however I am very invested in the press tour and premiere looks from the cast. Cannot get enough of Cynthia’s wardrobe and Jonathan Bailey’s thighs. 

• Shocked my friend by telling her I liked a Taylor Swift song that was on a playlist I listen to regularly but that I do not to care to explore further as I am a Taylor-adjacent individual and neither a hater nor a rabid stan. Please do not attempt to convert me, I like my endangered species status. 

• Big love to my Baba, who turns 88 today. She is the matriarch of our family, the tissue-stuffing, Princess Diana-obsessed queen of our family. She had endured so much in her life and is currently saying a polite ‘fuck you’ to Alzheimer’s with her rare smiles and flares of recognition in her green eyes. She embodies a love I hope to give to my own grandkids one day. 

Dancing queens: My Baba (red shirt) and our family at her 80th birthday in 2016. Photo by my beautiful cousin, Maya.

Feelings

I went to that Dolly Alderton event in Melbourne two weeks ago and I’ve been wrestling with how to write about it ever since. Talking about the event has been no problem for me, the amount of (completely justified) whinging I have done about the nights host, Hugh van Cuylenberg, has been some of the best snark I’ve spouted in my life. But aside from venting one’s spleen as the saying goes, I’ve been feeling slightly conflicted about how I wanted to talk about the night. The first draft of this piece was 1600 words of pure “Fuck you, Hugh!” and as soon as I finished writing it, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to publish. I’m struggling to articulate myself whilst not letting old mate off the hook but also not spewing my bitterness into the world either. 

This was a highly anticipated event in my life. I had paid $150 for my ticket, organised flights, four whole days off of parenting and lots of gal time. Dolly Alderton was an author and podcaster I felt like I had ‘grown up’ with in my twenties, so to get to see her live talking about the power of female friendship with one of my best female friends was as good as it gets. 

So when we arrive at the show and realise roughly ten minutes in that the host, Hugh van Cuylenberg, is not going to be the intuitive, curious and emotionally intelligent interviewer that I already highly doubted he would be, there were some pangs of irritation that quickly escalated into bitter rage.

It became evident quite soon that I had paid, minute for minute, more money to hear Hugh speak than Dolly, the literal star of the show. That might be blunt but facts normally are. The cumulative offences committed by the host were many and the stories you’ve heard from others or viewed on TikTok from disgruntled audience members are also accurate: yes, he did talk over Dolly at multiple points in the evening. Yes, he centred himself constantly in the conversation, told numerous long-winded and unnecessary stories about himself that were, at best, tangentially or wholly unrelated to Dolly’s work (I’m still convinced his ghost story was really a homoerotic dream about Tony Armstrong). The final bit of salt in the wound was when he decided to end the event by selecting a question from a male audience member (one of four blokes in a crowd of a thousand women) about his relationship with his wife. Read the fucking room, dude. 

The biggest and most frustrating moment came after intermission when Hugh opens the second half with, “I’m gonna tell a quick story.” This, unsurprisingly, was met with a cacophony of uugghhhhhhhhhhhhhh’s from the audience. A hundred women who probably thought they were only audibly groaning in the direct vicinity of their seats but together, have encapsulated the global feeling of the audience. But Hugh, to my disbelief, is utterly shocked by this response and clearly has no idea what to do with the collective frustration of his audience, so of course decides to tell another unrelated story and barely engages with the crowd thereafter. 

He is not a malicious man, by any means, and was reportedly sitting devastated, head in hands, off-stage afterwards. But where does that leave this conversation in the wake of all this disappointment? I don’t think he went out there thinking he was gonna fuck this gig up, that he was going to piss off an entire auditorium of women who came to see God aka Dolly speak. But he did and now I want to know what he’s going to do to fix it. 

I don’t believe in cancel culture, it doesn’t leave room for anyone to learn and grow and figure their shit out and remerge as enlightened beings. I don’t believe trawling through his history and looking under stones for potential scandal is helpful either. But I do want something from Hugh in the wake of this: I want a mea culpa, I want my big, juicy pound of flesh, I want to see him eat that humble, humble pie. I want it more than if it was, say, Hamish Blake who hosted the event because of Hugh’s background and work. The guy who teaches emotional resilience to people. The guy who has a mental health and vulnerability podcast. Isn’t this person meant to be self-reflective and emotionally intelligent? Isn’t this person improving the mental health of Australia’s men? He’s the professional, right? The one who literally interviews people for a living.

And I’m checking. I’m watching his instagram profile to see if anything has come up. I’m not listening to his podcast because it’s not my vibe (I tried it, didn’t love it but do appreciate the message he’s putting out). But I’m on the lookout, don’t you worry. Because this is the real crux of the issue for me: you cannot market yourself as one thing and not exemplify the same traits yourself when the time comes for it. This is where you lose trust. And if you don’t have the trust of your audience, then you don’t really have anything. You need to show the work that you do isn’t just for everybody else but for you, too. So I’ll wait patiently for the apology that I hope he figures out for himself and doesn’t outsource the labour of discerning it to the women in his life. It’s not their job. 

We all make mistakes; we’re all imperfect. It’s called taking accountability. It helps build resilience. 

The host and Dolly.

Etc

BUY - Balm Dotcom in ‘Wild Fig’ by Glossier

I picked this little gem up while I was in Melbourne with the gals and I am very in love with it. I can’t stand a lip balm or gloss that has too much fragrance or taste but this one has just enough of a flavour to kiss your tastebuds without overwhelming them with synthetic fragrance. It goes on super easily, the formula is smooth and not grainy and the tint is just enough to give you a hint of colour on your lips. Bonus points for the wide applicator so the balm doesn’t look like a curly squidge of butter and Vegemite shooting out of your smashed together Salada’s. Get it from Mecca. 

VISIT - Mediterranean Wholesalers, Brunswick

Okay, also in Melbourne (sorry) is Mediterranean Wholesalers. I have been aching to go here for months and shop the double-sided pasta aisle for myself. Their selection of pannetone alone is impressive (my suitcase is glad I don’t eat pannetone). Most of their wares are imported from Italy and I picked up so many goodies, including some amazing blood orange flavoured lollies that did not last nearly long enough and that I definitely should have bought ten bags of. Also wish I had the room/inclination to take home an enormous chuck of freshly-hewn-from-the-wheel pecorino romano. Heaven for the food lovers. Make sure you visit next time you’re in Melbourne. 

WATCH - Love Is Blind S7 on Netflix

I am very late to this, I know, but if you want some A-grade reality trash in your life, then you need to watch Love Is Blind. This is that show where the couples enter solitary pods and talk shit for nine days before miraculously falling in love and proposing, whereafter they finally see each other in the flesh and the real shit show begins as they get ready to GET MARRIED FOR REAL three weeks after that. The most nauseating but entertaining thing about it is how quickly and often they say ‘I love you’ to each other despite red flags literally whacking them in the face. I ate this up. 

Waiting graciously for that apology,

Sian x