My Mum's Bad Diaries

Jenny Ackland and Lilika May
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You're invited to eavesdrop as a mother reads out her teenage diaries to her daughter. Funny, candid, poignant and brave, this podcast is both living memoir and an investigation into what makes (and breaks) a woman. No scripts, no prep; just 40-year-old (diary) gold being unearthed. Even Jenny doesn't know what's going to come up as she lays bare her inner teen world to her daughter Lilika. Their motto is 'we go there', so what could possibly go wrong?

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  1. EPISODE 1

    Gerry you sleaze (Vol.6, 1983)

    Hello and welcome to MMBD, season 5! We have a lot for you both today (episode 1) and coming up next week (side chats plural! There's my theory about Virgos and serial killers plus a mega TV catch up). But first, a content warning for this ep: we talk about weight, we also talk about astrology as is our tendency. You've been warned. + We start off as usual with a catch up -- my new flat and how hard it is to choose paint (the best pink is Taubman's Cristabel btw, save yourself some swatches and samples: https://www.taubmans.com.au/paint-colours/pinks-and-reds/cristabel-F8E8E3) and we also touch on mum's knee, her tarot obsession and how exhausted we both feel. Also, did you know Cancers are mentioned in the Epstein files more than 1200 times (mum is quite smug that Sagg is only mentioned 4 times). We touch on Paris Fashion Week, Max the 10-yo and Matières Fécales which mum calls Satanic but then a day after recording actually said she'd read that it was a critique of all things modern and extreme. Then it's on to the diary reading and we're back in 1983, and one day mum's reading Princess Daisy (chick lit) and the next They Used Dark Forces (her favourite Satanist novels). She's planning a school reunion with friends and also manages to meet Gerry, a 'professional fashion photographer' and they 'exhange business cards' which is lol. The photographer says he did the Aquasun ad (we can't find it online) and also shot Isabella Cowan which we did find (see Vogue Australia June 1980 and she also has an insta! She married Peter McNamara the tennis guy). There's a sleazy bet involving Gerry and mum, he tells her she has nice hair, but mum's suss and just focuses on going to Golden Bowl and Karl of Switzerland to get her hair 'tipped'. There's a party in Prahran with a 'Sid Vicious' cutie Ben, the typing of a single invoice and delivery of it to Leader in Blackburn. Granddad pitches another bookshop idea this time with a different girlfriend running it with mum and a plan to go to New Guinea???? Mum sees Flashdance twice -- she tells me it's about a girl who's a welder by day and dancer by night -- and goes to posh drinks at the Hilton Hotel. There's more No Nonsense including a drunk night in Glenroy. One more spaghetti marinara for the tally and we get sidetracked by a great business idea: an '80s-themed aerobics/cocktail/movie night hotspot. Seed investors: GET IN TOUCH1 Finally, an emotional dinner with granddad who cries over a poem written for him, and mum tells me the other times he cried: over football and an obscure town in France which Australian soldiers 'saved' in one of the wars. Oh and here's a recipe for a Fluffy Duck cocktail: 30ml Advocaat 30ml white rum 15ml Cointreau 30ml cream Shaken with ice, topped with lemonade. (Not made with Creme de Menthe, not green. 25-50% accuracy!!) + As always, listen to experience: cringe, giggles and some real-life shit. Follow us on Insta @mumsbaddiaries and thanks for listening We'd love to read your comments or questions! Send us a text!

    1h 34m

  2. EPISODE 1 BONUS

    SIDE CHAT (virgos and serial killers)

    Content note: murder talk  How do Virgos rate in the serial killer stats? Pretty high. One slide we saw had Sagg at 4, Virgo at 10, Gemini at 9 and Pisces at 7. You can read more about such stats here: https://www.zodiacsign.com/article/most-common-zodiac-signs-of-serial-killers/  And yes, even though in this side chat mum says Cancer didn't feature in that particular slide in the above link Cancers are high in the numbers. As always, listen to experience: cringe, giggles and some real-life shit. Follow us on Insta @mumsbaddiaries and thanks for listening We'd love to read your comments or questions! Send us a text!

    18 min

  3. EPISODE 1 BONUS

    SIDE CHAT (tv catch up)

    A catch up of all of our shows: Love Story (CBK and John John, which seems to go awry Episode 6), Summer House (sending love to Ciara), Love is Blind (and our learning a new term along with everyone else: hobosexual), Southern Charm and Craig's dirty edit, our VPR rewatch (we're up to Scandoval now) and RHOBH and our take on newbies Amanda Frances and Rachel Zoe. As always, listen to experience: cringe, giggles and some real-life shit. Follow us on Insta @mumsbaddiaries and thanks for listening We'd love to read your comments or questions! Send us a text!

    28 min

  4. EPISODE 2

    Vol-au-vents (Vol.6, 1983)

    And we're out of the gate with a quick acknowledgement that we're both feeling better than we did 2 weeks ago, mum is reducing her coffee, it's an ongoing odyssey for some reason, and then we move on to the graveyard of boys and their birth charts. Never give a girl your birth date and year let alone your birth time and place. It's on you! I'm hoping for a second burst of summer and am exploring some therapies - reiki, massage and therapy therapy! My challenge is how to learn to be settled in one place, I think there are some shifts! We have a quick Summer House recap because we can't help ourselves (our girl Ciara! Westling! (quite a cool name), and this leads onto a chat about standards, and the eternal conversation about women and men. Then it's onto the diary reading and back to 1983, Golden Bowl aerobics, videos at Camberwell and shopping at Ojay! I notice that mum's doing a lot of driving as per usual, and she has vol-au-vents again as well (we did too, the night before this recording, as evidenced on our insta account). There's lunch at Berlitz Cafe in 'town' (does not turn up in a google search), dinner at Cafe Sport in Lygon Street (doesn't come up with google search either). Mum does some SCV work and types an invoice and puts $10 deposit on a dress at Ojay, and goes to see Breathless with Richard Gere (famous blink actor, and we're reminded of Ryan in The OC, another eye actor). She loves Breathless, she loves Richard Gere.  Of course there's a No Nonsense gig and I ask mum were there ever any new songs, she says maybe sometimes but people liked the old ones they could dance to. Then she's out to Eltham with granddad to a house built by ex-prisoners where she drinks 'beanshooty tea' and negotiates the purchase of a bohemian lampshade. I'm confounded by how mum can be so sangfroid about these interactions... she thinks it's her Gemini moon. As always, listen to experience: cringe, giggles and some real-life shit. Follow us on Insta @mumsbaddiaries and thanks for listening + We'd love to read your comments or questions! Send us a text!

    45 min

  5. EPISODE 2 BONUS

    SIDE CHAT ('wuthering heights', hamnet)

    Strap yourselves in because we get our scathe on in this side chat which is possibly our longest! We wonder if Emerald is okay. We talk about how this is a scrapbook of a film, a Pinterest board if you will. To start with we cover the plot and characterisation, we talk about the character of Isabella, sexy Joseph, the villainising of Nelly (and of course she's a Lady, she's the daughter of a lord). We talk costumes and even get onto sumptuary laws. Hamnet gets a mention but most of our time is spent on Wuthering Heights, sorry 'Wuthering Heights'. Enjoy. We'd love to read your comments or questions! Send us a text!

    38 min
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About

You're invited to eavesdrop as a mother reads out her teenage diaries to her daughter. Funny, candid, poignant and brave, this podcast is both living memoir and an investigation into what makes (and breaks) a woman. No scripts, no prep; just 40-year-old (diary) gold being unearthed. Even Jenny doesn't know what's going to come up as she lays bare her inner teen world to her daughter Lilika. Their motto is 'we go there', so what could possibly go wrong?

Information

  • Creator
    Jenny Ackland and Lilika May
  • Episodes
    153
  • Seasons
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 My Mum's Bad Diaries
  • Show Website
    My Mum's Bad Diaries