Rebecca Lucy Taylor on getting to grips with fame as a woman

TV’s Ryan Sampson, the Brassic and Plebs actor, is one example.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor - better known in her stage name as Self Esteem - you’d think would be another.

Yet Rebecca, whose ability to attract rave reviews in acting and as a pop star, doesn’t seem to be able to rationalise whether she is famous or not.

Or care, one way or another.

Certainly, if you saw her on the West End stage, or producing works that saw her nominated for the 2022 Mercury Prize, you’d think she had pretty much achieved her varied showbiz aims and would be easily recognisable by the public.

The truth may be a bit different though for Rebecca, (38) who routinely steers clear of social engagements and moves around her newly-acquired home turf of Hackney, London, without much fuss being made.

Before, an interview with the October edition of The New Statesman, the political and cultural news magazine based just around the corner from her first apartment, Rebecca had said she'd be happy to chat in a café.

“People won’t recognise me...I’m not famous,” she insisted.

It’s a theme she returns to. She feels awkward about setting up a WhatsApp group with fans, explaining: “Fame is a game you’re never going to win.

“It’s a trap, waking up every day feeling like you’ve not quite made it.”

The former Wales High School pupil recounted how, at a high-fashion Vogue party in London she was awkwardly sat between two people who didn’t recognise her.

Generally, Rebecca is brutally honest about the perceived role of women like her in the entertainment industry and how they are expected to come across, especially at a time when she herself is two years away from turning 40.

She is currently working on a new album but sometimes struggles with the concept.

It “doesn’t seem like a big deal, but doing an album, putting it out, even styling it, I’ve suddenly felt ridiculous.

“That is my own misogyny, and my own bull***t that I’ve fought, and will fight.

“But there’s something about saying, ‘This is the new me, and it’s my new style and it’s my new album’ – the older I’m getting, the more mortifying that is, for some reason.

“I watched the Blur documentary [To the End] recently and they’re all in their 50s.

“No one gives a shit; they still look cool, they’re all just getting p****d up, and I thought: ‘If these were 50-year-old women getting p****d up, you’d all be hysterical about that, being caught on camera.’”

The article suggests the world “allows female pop stars to last as long as fruit flies.”

The South Yorkshire performer manages to stay relevant as fads come and go - at one point she refers to the “brat” culture, that regards people as 'confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.'

“I made the last album before ‘Brat’ existed,” she says.

“When (her album) Prioritise Pleasure came out there was still not much going on, female-wise, and now it’s everywhere – they’re a thing now, women! It’s supremacy!”

Rebecca Lucy Taylor has played a part in that - not bad for a lass from Anston.