Ten years ago, Candida Doyle spoke publicly for the first time about having lived with arthritis since she was a teenager. In a 2014 film about her band, Pulp, Doyle talked about being in denial. It was acceptable for pop stars to have a drug addiction, but not to be ill. Doyle, who plays keyboard for the band, had kept it so well hidden that when a bandmate watched the documentary, her arthritis was news to him.
The condition came on when Doyle was 16, a month after her periods started (there is thought to be a connection between hormones and arthritis, though it isn’t very well understood). “It was suddenly such an extreme difference,” she says, when we meet at her home in north London. “I was just aching all over, I lost my appetite. Going upstairs was difficult, and bending and kneeling was difficult. Then I lived with that discomfort for 30 years.”
