Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Parenting Hell - Now That's What I Call Parenting Hell... Volume 10

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

As we take a very short break for the new year here's a selection of some of our favourite chats about (mostly) parenting misadventures with previous guests…  We’ll see you next week for the start of Series 8!!  Episode Playlist: Jessie Ware (S3 EP30)  Mike Wozniak (S3 EP2)  Nihal Arthanayake (S5 EP12) Isy Suttie (S3 EP6) Pat Sharp (S3 EP10) Parenting Hell is a Spotify Podcast, available everywhere every Tuesday and Friday. Please leave a rating and review you filthy street dogs... xxx If you want to get in touch with the show with any correspondence, kids intro audio clips, small business shout outs, and more.... here's how: EMAIL: [e-mail] INSTAGRAM: @parentinghell Join the mailing list to be first to hear about live show dates and tickets, Parenting Hell merch and any other exciting news... MAILING LIST: parentinghellpodcast.mailchimpsites.com  A 'Keep It Light Media' Production  Sales, advertising, and general enquiries: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello I'm Rob Beckett and I'm Josh Willicombe. Welcome to Parents in Hell the show in which Josh and I discuss what it's really like to be a parent which I would say can be a little tricky. So to make ourselves and hopefully you feel better about the trials and tribulations of modern day parenting each week we'll be chatting to a famous parent about how they're coping or hopefully how they're not coping and we'll also be hearing from you the listener with your tips advice and of course tales of parenting woe because let's be honest there are plenty of times where none of us know what we're doing hello i'm rob beckett and i'm josh widdicombe and you're listening to now that's what i call parenting hell um do you want to do the intro josh yeah why not jesse

where hello hello god i'm really interested to know about this intro that you do you're much more prepared than we my mom and i that was the intro that was the intro oh oh there is no intro we just say hello and we take turns hello jesse you're not you're not going to talk about my accolades and my parenting accolade actually you don't know because I haven't got any you've got well you've got three children and yes yeah so that's we know that that's good is that correct it is correct I've got a five-year-old who's just started school and then I've got a two and a half year old and then a 10 week old oh my god actually my heart rate went up then as you said all those I could feel myself getting a bit more stressed oh I mean yeah yeah, how old are yours?

Yours are in school now, right? Yeah, I've got a five-year-old in year one of school, and then I've got a three-year-old who's in nursery, nearly four. So she's in like three or four days a week. So they're pretty much in school now, which is groundbreaking. You've got a kind of system. Look at the smile on his face. I do look smug.

You look like a different person to the other two people there. I might sit this one out, guys. I don't feel like I've got... Good for you, Rob. Me, I've got a three-year-old and a four-month-old. So I'm not a million miles from you. No. Also, just to say, though, guys, I've got to do the school run.

So can we wrap this up in about four hours' time? Is that OK? Is that all right for you? I've got to do the school run, too, whilst also implementing the afternoon nap in the sling because oh my god i've got a whole system i'm like militant with this third one i don't know about you josh how are you doing with the four month old do you feel like you're being stricter with the old sketch or have you got no sketch

we haven't got he doesn't seem to be into sleeping in the daytime which is pretty oppressive so his record nap so far is 45 minutes which is not long enough no you can't you can't get through an episode of anything on netflix with that no really no exactly yeah it's not long enough how about you so you're going for you're going for have you got a clear schedule so what are you on two and a half months, basically. Yeah. I feel, and I know this will divide people that listen

and I apologise in advance. I tried with my first one to like do the thing where I was like, you know, I'm a pop star. She's got to be on the road. She's got to be able to kind of, you know, jam with the musicians at 10 o'clock at night.

And that shit didn't work so then i realized the hard way when she hadn't slept through the night like until like what like 10 months and then second one was a little bit more like you know bad cop and then this one i was like mate you gotta like fit in wow yeah full russell kane we call it here full russell kane oh is that what russell kane does okay. Well, Russell Kane managed to get his child to sleep through the night for 10 hours within about 45 minutes of delivery with a technique where it's not about getting them to sleep,

it's about keeping them awake so they're tired for bedtime. Blackout blinds, air conditioning, and flannels on their feet to wake them up if they do nod off before bedtime. Yeah, he got it from Guantanamo Bay, his technique. But he stands by it and it has worked for him. So, you know, you can't judge anyone in this game. Listen, maybe I'll try the flannels.

You're straight on to Amazon to order 10 flannels. Russell, Russell. How cold is the water? Is it ice cold? You know what? Like, yeah, I think my youngest has realised he needs to just put up and shut up. And he just watches because my son is an incredibly noisy two and a half year old. And so he makes enough noise for all of us.

Okay. And also that's middle. Now you've got a middle child on your hands. You had a youngest three months ago. And I'm a middle child. and I'm here to tell you. Oh, no, what happened? You are just worse because you have to fight for more attention.

I disagree with you because I am a middle child and I am the best child of all my mum's children. So I don't know what you're fucking talking about. But no, my son, yeah, he's struggling with, I think he's struggling. Bless him, he's done all right. The five-year-old just kind of thinks that he's a dolly and she likes it. And she goes like this to me.

She goes, mum, I think he needs feeding. Like, she's like the mother-in-law. Oh, really? You're like, no, no, no, I've got this, darling, I've got this. And she's like, no, mum, I really think you need to feed him. At that age, they do get like that, don't they? It's unbelievable. That one year at school completely changes them into tiny Karens.

Aren't they? No, Davy, you forgot the lemon. Fuck off. I didn't even want lemons. I just half said that in the shop. Now you keep bringing lemons up. Whenever we go to the shop, my daughter will say, you forgot the lemons. They are like a nagging mother-in-law.

Totally. But my two-and-a-half a half year old, he did a thing. We thought he was doing all right with the new one, but then he had a kind of empty pram, you know, the miniature ones that you've got in your playroom. You've got about five of them broken. But yeah, we had one of them and my husband said, where's the baby?

And he said, oh, he's dead. And Sam went, oh, my husband went, oh, that's really sad. I was like, oh, okay, cool. So you're really getting on well with this new one. Yeah, he basically killed his brother. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So is he two and a half and he's aware of death then? Well, apparently, I don't know. I feel like the Lion King was maybe played, it's Circle of Life. Oh, my God. Too much. It's really hard. It's too much for me. But I remember when my daughter

saw it first time and her older cousin said, when Simba's dad is dying and my daughter went, he's just sleeping. And her cousin was like, he's dead. And I think, yeah, she got some hard truths.

Did it need such a brutal death? Because there's an old lion dying and then there's being trampled to death by a wildebeest. So you're saying, Rob, that you think the lack of success of The Lion King is they've misjudged how they put that film together. Yeah, I just think, you know, if they got it right, imagine the success The Lion King could have been.

Mike Wozniak, thank you for joining us. Can you just explain to the listeners what happened there? There was barking. There was barking. Golly, I'm even slightly breathless from dealing with it. And this is the level of crisis. That's quite a high level of crisis for me these days. So I'm all, golly, all flustered.

So, yeah, there was barking. That was Pam, Pamela, who is a wire-haired Hungarian Vizsla who lives in my house. How are we spelling Vizsla? I want to see this, dog. How do you spell a Vizsla? How's that thing spelled? V-I-Z-S-L-A.

Exactly how I would have done it on my own. It could be that I've got the Z and the S the wrong way around. Beautiful dog. I was expecting an absolute mess, but it's like a gun dog, isn't it? Yeah, but we've got the Z and the S the wrong way round. Beautiful dog. I was expecting an absolute mess, but it's like a gun dog, isn't it? Yeah, but we've got the long hair type, which is like a gun dog after a big night out who's not safe

to be handling firearms of any kind. And what placated the barking, Vizsla? I, at all times, carry with me a bag of dried ball sticks. And what about for the dog? Lovely bit of business. My kind of humour. It's a bag of ball sticks.

I've never seen a dried ball stick. I've seen a wet one, obviously. I'm no prude. You prefer them wet and fresh. Yeah, yeah. The drying process definitely takes the edge off, I would say. Yeah. Oh, they're long, aren't they?

They're long. They lose some of their glory, I would say. They're not intimidating. Oddly, when chewed, they smell like sort of badly gone off fish as well. Oh. So there is a price to be paid. Yeah. For quiet.

Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. But that seems, so it's bought us some time, I would say, for now. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. We'll crack on then.

As well as the Hungarian Vizsla you've got, which is a lovely dog. Are they a good dog for families? Well, I don't know anything about dogs. So I think so. I don't really know. How did you end up with a Vizsla? There's no precedent for me in my life. There's no yardstick for me to measure it by.

This is your first experience of having a dog? Yeah, I've never had a dog before. How old is the dog? My wife, how old is it? The dog is a lockdown dog. We jumped on that bandwagon big time oh no yeah so as soon as it's all opened up again you know we'll be sending her back obviously to Budapest exactly with a pride flag on its neck so that's exactly and she's going to

join a right-wing militia. Mike, what's your family set up at home? You've got the visitor. How many kids you got? We've got two little girls. So one has just this weekend turned 10. The other one is seven. Pam's about eight and a half months old.

They're quite a tight unit. Do the kids love the dog? The kids massively love the dog. The kids knew that they loved the dog before they met the dog. So my wife grew up with dogs. My wife had dogs in lieu of siblings. So I can't really tell the difference between dogs and people at all. Oh, God.

I wouldn't want to go around Jarrah's for dinner then. In ball sticks all around. Yeah, so the children have been brainwashed from the get-go that they are dog people. So it was just a matter of time before we got a dog. You've held out a good period, 10 years. I think one of us had promised the big one that years ago, oh, you're a bit too young.

You're a bit too young. You're a bit too young. You need to be able to get involved with a dog and take it for walks and tidy up after the dog when you're nine years old. But if you make a promise to a child involving an age, I mean, they will remember that. I mean, it's completely verbatim. And they helped in remembering that by repeating the promise to you on a daily basis for four years' time.

So once she did turn nine last summer, then the pressure was really on. And we were in lockdown. And we just waited long enough for the prices of a dog to soar to well above £34,000. And that's when we pounced. It's tough to get a dog. And dog walkers are in demand now. man now is the time now is the time

they poodle about with their little vans fill out with dogs i mean it's they're absolutely rolling in it it's quite good as well but the big one wants to be a dog walker as well that's that's what she wants to do for her career yeah well i mean that's that's the main job she sees i think in the streets of people going about who are actually doing something. And how many dogs have they got, a dog walker? I think it varies a lot. There's a park we go to, Pam and I, sort of in the middle of the day when the kids are at school,

where there's two dog walkers who team up. And they go bulk, definitely. So they've got – it's knocking on the door of double figures each. Bloody hell! Oh, that's too many. I thought it would be about six. And that is intense. For Pam in particular, who is...

I mean, it freaks her out because they're all loose and they want to see this young pup and have a sniff about. Oh, wow. It's intense. She basically crawls up my back and tries to pretend that she's just an unshaven backpack basically until it's all gone away again and so uh your children back at school now presumably they are yeah yeah so you're and and your wife has a job where she she leaves the house

she has an nhs job and is currently being worked to death. Yes. Yes. And then there's her layabout husband. But that means you're stuck with a dog. I'm stuck with a dog. I think I've come to terms with it. I think family life, a lot of the time, is just a slow chipping away of your self-resolve and your self-esteem.

chipping away of your self-resolve and your self-esteem. And she's very much the last nail. My lovely little hairy last nail is what she is. So I've given in. First couple of weeks, I just thought, we've made a huge mistake. We've made a huge mistake. And, you know, you're ruining the inside of the house. And then I looked looked at the inside of the house and the inside of the house is a mess anyway and then uh and then

thought about the impact that she's had on my day-to-day and my schedule and even outside of lockdown i'm mostly doing absolutely naff all anyway so to be fair she gets she gets me out for the odd airing she She's doing you a favour. She is. She is. Yeah. Your girls are obviously both in school. And are they quite easy now at 10 and 7?

You know, you're beyond the sort of toddler baby years and you've not hit teenage years. Yeah. I mean, yeah, compared to – Josh, where are you up to now? Is it seven weeks? Six? Seven weeks, yeah. Good grief.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's not, you know, they're sort of fully sentient human beings and all that kind of stuff. I mean, they can go and get themselves a drink and all that kind of thing. They're quite advanced at 10. Pretty advanced.

So, I think, yeah, this is quite a nice age, I think. Honestly. I don't have a great deal of complaints about them specifically but what's interesting some people go oh no it's just difficult in different ways it's just as difficult in different ways there's always something yeah i mean like the big one has all already begun to fathom the shortcomings of her parents for example you know it's dawning on her that actually maybe maybe we aren't world class do you know what i mean maybe we're not the finest minds in all of in all of christendom but they're still an age where mostly at this point now that they're an

age where they on the whole quite like like being with their family. Yeah. So we're not getting the kickback of teenage or tween ages. And you're scared of that? I'm completely terrified. Yeah. Yeah. Because already at the age, you get little hints of it. You get little moments, you know, during a little family spat

or during an absolute humdinger row, whatever it might be. You get, particularly because the big one's got quite sort of sort of laser guided ability to to to break down your your total bullshit and and spit your own words back on you you know so give me an example well it might be over detail i mean it might be for example no you're trying to be no we're going to talk about this actually we're going to sit down just for five minutes and we're gonna we're gonna talk about why you know what you did with your sister it wasn't quite right okay and then there's a sort of and she's you know she set a timer on her watch for precisely five minutes and you said you said after five minutes we would

stop so i'm off goodbye thank you um that's that seems very officious rigorous but i think yeah i think so these these little moments when you have your the detail of something you've said spat back at you or your own words throw back in your face that those those are the moments when you can sort of leap a few years forwards and think oh i'm gonna be out of my depth here quite badly quite soon nihao welcome to the show. How are you? Oh, I'm really happy to be on this. I'm not going to lie.

This is amazing. It's amazing. We're very happy to have you here. Yeah. I think we're coming on your show as well. Yeah, of course you are. Of course you are. Although, wait a minute.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. For BBC reasons, this has not happened because you're coming on my show. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not a quick pro quo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Of course not. Of course not. Because you've both independently been on my show before anyway yeah yes talking about was talking about something about my last book and i think we're going to come on to talk

about the new book it's an absolute book and you've got a book out it's a book frenzy you've also got children um can you give us a rundown of your child situation uh the child situation is i have a 13 year old girl and a 14 year old boy uh kingsley is my son uh who is 14 he'll be 15 in november and aria is my daughter yeah and they loathe each other at the moment so it's a proper like it is carnage Like it is absolute carnage. It's like one of them is mainland China and the other one's Taiwan. And it's always tense. The tension is always there. So how long has this been?

Is this a new development? No, it's just they're very close in age. There's only 19 months between them. And there's just this, oh, it's friction. You're always trying to, it's exhausting refereeing it. Like you're constantly kind of trying to go, no, just be kind to each other. No, don't do that.

No, don't say that. Don't trigger that. Don't escalate that. It's a constant kind of like. Like working for Donaldald trump yeah it's kind of like you're always trying to go no please don't say that don't do that don't trigger that don't escalate that don't react to that what are the main beefs then between them what's the main issue it's just a sibling my brother and i had a little bit of it when we were growing up it's just the kind of, they're very different personalities.

They definitely love each other. I know there's a lot of love there, but they just can't coexist at the moment particularly well. Like Gerard and Lampard. You know they're good. They just didn't link up. There you go. There you go. Absolutely.

Absolutely. What you're saying is you need to swap one of your children for gareth barry okay well we can take it beyond beyond football it's like alonso and hamilton i think as well it's uh it's there's there's a there's there's carnage there's definitely beef there's biggie and tupac uh except no drive-bys which is good because neither of them have driving licenses are you shug night in this situation? I kind of am Shug Knight. Yeah, you're right. So how did you feel when you found out that your partner was pregnant with the second?

Because that turnaround, you would have had a nine-month-old? Yeah. Well, for me, it was kind of okay, right? Because I don't have to do much, right? The first six months of being a parent uh i was a terrible dad right like i was a radio one dj i was off dj and i was like and my wife turned to me i kind of became my dad's generation which was that i go out work yeah i'll enjoy the nice stuff by cuddling a baby and putting photos on social media and uh and not and not really be kind of present as they

say i mean my wife i remember six months in turned around and said right okay well if i'm gonna have to do this on my own i might as well do it properly on my own and you can do one and i was like and i was like yeah like she like literally gave me that kind of ultimatum because I just, I just effortlessly slipped into this kind of really archaic role of being, which really kind of freaked me out because that's not the guy I thought I was. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have expected that from you. No. And that's not who I thought I was going to be. And then just, I guess, I don't know, the cultural nature of how I grew up just became that.

And then suddenly I was like, well, OK, that's not cool. That's not who I need to be. That's not who I should be. And I, yeah, kind of, well, I don't know if my wife would agree that I flipped it around. You did enough. You did enough to save the marriage. Yeah, yeah, exactly yes 17 years later yeah so our 17th save it keep it going it's a very fine line isn't it that's kind of what yeah just don't speak for themselves yeah exactly exactly numbers don't lie was your parents so with your parents were they a bit quite sort of old school with with the mum did all the baby

stuff and then the dad just worked yeah i don't think my dad was present when we were born yeah really yeah i don't think he was he was there when i think part of the reason was that my mum said that he fainted at the sight of blood so she thought she thought it would be best that he just didn't so the nurses kind of attended to her not to him right so uh so it was a better but also again it was a generation that didn't don't think you know change nappies or got that involved really you know my dad my dad worked away a lot as well so um i don't think yeah i think there's very clear roles i mean my mum did work she was a nurse in the nhs she worked part-time but it was very much a given that my dad was the breadwinner

my dad paid the mortgage my dad paid for everything and my my mum money that she had was stuff that she could just use as she wanted but the the primary breadwinner was my dad and that's how we were brought up and also as well you know it's my brother and i so there's three guys in the house so you're in that kind of environment as well you know so yeah it was weird do you think one of the differences not just generationally but also your job was djing on radio one so it doesn't even feel to the person who's stuck at home like you're going out to work it feels like you're going out to play records and have a laugh yeah i'm sorry but womad in singapore that fly alone is is a is a grind quite frankly right okay off going off to do glastonbury these things are hard work and i'm not i'm not sure i appreciate the tone josh if i'm honest but also as well when you have

to present that show you you can't go oh this has been a bit boring actually at Glastonbury because it's on radio when you're like it was the best one ever these guys are amazing I'm having the time

of my life and your wife's at home yeah well that's the thing isn't it you know you're doing a DJ gig in Thailand and you're kind of thinking

wow this is amazing but there's two ways of selling it isn isn't there? There's the way you speak to your wife about it, which is like, oh, so boring. The crowd went into it. It was rubbish. And then, of course, you come back and you get on Radio 1

knowing that your wife's not listening and going, big weekend in Bangkok at the Supper Club. Big tunes were being played. Big shows. You know, two-hour set. Absolutely the most banging set of my life. It was amazing. The queue was around the block

and then when we dropped this track, the whole place kicked off. It was a mad one. And then come home and go, yeah, it's,

yeah, God, worst gig ever. Like, terrible. Also, it's on Radio 1. You can't really be like,

oh, it's hard. I was up with a baby last night because it's so youth-centric, that station. As soon as there's a whiff of you've got a kid you're en route to radio two or five live you're not there longer that's why scott mills he's got no kids that's why he lasted so long he's about 57 good on him what on innings he had a radio one yeah there was there was that though the thing was always when i was at radio one the audience was skewed much older that remember the chris moyle's years it was all young parents like the idea that under chris

moyle's it was loads of teenagers going this is the greatest thing in the world it wasn't it was loads of blokes in their 30s pretty much wasn't it like being super geezery and so when i was doing my specialist show on radio one of course that was just two hours of of me mixing live and and playing tracks back to back largely but when i was doing weekend breakfast and then weekend afternoon which are daytime shows then you are trying to kind of you can say that you've got babies so i had babies around the right time because a lot of the listeners were also doing that they were also having and also having kids i had kids late so i um you know i became a dad in my mid-30s whereas so so all the people who are having kids in their mid-20s yeah yeah you a you're identifying with them and b that was a kind of core radio one audience

are you nearly 50 i'm 51 you. You're unbelievable. No way. This is outrageous. What's the secret? Not looking after your kids? Is that the answer? No, it's eating copious amounts of mango chutney. Mango chutney. Fair enough.

Which Rob in his book said is a jam. And Josh, it's not a jam. It is a chutney. No, I've got a bit of a thing with chutney. It's just a posh word for jam that means you can have it with your dinner. It is just jam. But like, you can have it with your roast dinner, a bit of strawberry jam. But like, you can have a bit of mango chutney on a curry. But that's fine.

But no. No, let's not get bogged down by this. We're getting on well here now. We had this argument on your show last time. We did, we did. Hello, Izzy Sooty, how are you? Hello, I'm fine. I've got a coffee and a pint of orange squash.

Oh, God. Hangover? Is that a hangover cure? Or just how you start a day? I did go out last night with two of my friends. Like, how much have we all been out in the last year and a half? And it was absolutely brilliant. We went to this place where you, like, grill your own food over a grill what oh yeah what do you mean they don't

do it for you no i didn't think that they were like yeah yeah i remember there's this cafe that i used to go to with my scottish friend years ago in clapham where there was a toaster on every table and like loads of different types of bread and jams and stuff and it was like only eight pounds and you can eat as much as you want and we love going there and then my mate was like you know you could just do that at home it is literally a toaster and it was like oh yeah the point of going out is they do it for you so you spend you've been in lockdown cooking for yourself for 18 months you've gone out to cook for yourself on a little grill. Yeah, exactly.

But it's fun. You've had a good time. You've got a coffee and a pint of squash. Can I ask a question? Are you too old for squash? How dare you? I drink squash too, Josh. I know.

Well, I took that as red, Rob. But I presumed as much. Is it? What kind of squash is it? It's orange squash. Do you know what? Ellis is absolutely obsessed with squash. And I think if I hadn't found Ellis,

that's a weird way of describing my relationship. If I wasn't going out with Ellis, I probably wouldn't have it in the house. But he, I mean, we have to have one he's like this with squash and radox he has to have one full one like in reserve or he gets me and me and Ellis have got a lot in common squash you've got to drink a lot people aren't drinking enough water and everyone just keeps drinking tea and coffee which is bad for you and if you have a little bit of flavor in a nice pint of water to have some squash, it's good for you, Josh. Do you know what I've done?

Do you know how I'm consuming more water? What's that? I've got 840 mils of soda streamed water right next to me here, Rob, in a bottle. You've got a soda stream? What do you mean a soda stream? You mean it's got bubbles in it? I bought a soda stream because it's the 90s. And it's absolutely changed my drinking habits okay okay so what have you got have you

i'm wary on this because at one point soda stream we're going to sponsor our podcast and they didn't and i don't want to give them too much advertising for free so what is you just having fizzy water yeah so i just have fizzy water because i really like fizzy water but i was i was starting to get guilt about how many plastic bottles I was getting through. Yeah, because you get through it, don't you? Yeah, you get through it. Oh, sometimes I think, Josh, you've got to stop having so much guilt. You're just drinking water, mate.

You're not in charge of the bottling process. But I just thought I'll get a soda stream and then it's in my house. Do you make coke and lemonade with it or is it? No, you can't. I do apple juice with fizzy water for myself. If I'm feeling, you know. If it's a Friday night. If it's a Friday night.

That's exciting. Show your own apple ties. I make my own apple ties. Is it easy to make? Yeah, it is. Five squidges of the button. And there we have. Five squidges of the button.

And there you are. Oh, I want to get one now. I mean, actually, you have done really good good advertising i'm literally looking at them on amazon now josh what are you doing we should we should have got the money in for it we shouldn't just be saying it this is terrible advertising i never had a soda stream in the 90s was it 80s or 90s it was both my best friend, had one and it was so exciting to go but what happens if you put

like ice cream in it or something, would it make fizzy ice cream? I think you just Alright, Heston's on the phone Guys I'm thinking of diversifying I don't think there's such a thing as fizzy ice cream, is there?

You have to buy gas canisters to refill it. Yeah, you do have to buy gas canisters. But they're not plastic, mentally. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

they're great for the environment, John. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,, He must have his pizzi apple. It's a weekend. You can't get fizzy in the paper bottles, can you? You what? You can't get, you can't put, you know, like if you're trying to do it. You can have fizzy in glass, I suppose, can't you? Yeah, I reckon paper or cardboard wouldn't contain the bubbles, would it?

No. It has to be airtight. Waxy plus. Do you know what? Just buy bottled water. Can I say that? Is that allowed? I think we've covered all bases of the options of fizzy

water. We've promoted and had a go at all the different angles, if anything. I think people have left more confused than at the start of the fizzy water conversation. Either way, do you drink squash, Josh? No, I don't know. I drink fizzy water, but I do make my own apple ties like a complete twat.

Do you let your kids drink squash, Izzy? Well, look look everything's gone if you asked me a year and a half ago i would have said no but i mean i don't know about you but like everything all the standards have slipped yes yeah you know yo-yos those like wine fruit winders yeah yeah fruit winders yeah i don't know i know i don't know if that's the right name for it but i knew exactly what you meant i'm only i think there's an own brand version of them called fruit winders which is why which betty won't eat she's like no it's it's got to be a yo it's got to have the cards in it that's how they get kids reeled in isn't it

but she must have 18 to 20 yo-yos a day like she comes up to me and goes can i have a yo-yo and i just go yeah like there was a period where I was like no you've had you've had 12 maybe you could eat some proper fruit but then in my head I'm like well it is fruit it's just baked fruit um but it's just like if someone looked at her diet so yeah no they do drink squash um the little one doesn't I make it very weak but then he just grabs my pint of squash and downs like halfway so this is your second appearance on the show Izzy can we just have a quick reminder of the ages of your kids yeah Betty's six and Stefan's two and um when you

was on last time um we had Ellis on as well your partner who was doing like the early shift and you were going to bed later because you was writing a book now your book's finished is that correct it is yeah so what's what's the sort of set up now with the the child care divide now you're not how's the sleep how's the sleep okay oh he's a sleep junkie josh he's got a new kid and he's a sleep junkie oh Josh okay listen Josh it's not going to be easy for you to hear this um brace yourself yeah it's good what yeah interview's over but it was bad about a week ago it was terrible for years so console yourself with that like basically the reason that ellis started doing the mornings and i was doing all the cooking and cleaning in return which some of my mates

thought was quite unfair on me but i was very controversial in our it was very controversial very well in box we were considered was it leave and remain very much it was very much there's a lot of abuse of me and rob over us yeah the easiest side. I got called a gammon pig. The thing that I feel like I didn't mention the first time is that when I say all the cooking and cleaning, like I wasn't really doing that much cleaning. And like, it sounds like I was like, you know, dawn till dusk scrubbing floors yeah like mopping yeah i mean like a 1940s housewife yes exactly with a penny on and if you saw this dining room i'm sitting in it i mean like there's a pile all the time on the on the dining table of like pens and books and like my work ellis's work the kids drawings just

getting higher and higher yeah oh my right so yeah i think we still call it the dining table we've never dined on that table and it's fucking like it's like a boot sale stockroom yeah but no one would ever want to come to like a car boot sale people would pay not to come to. Like at a car boot sale, people would pay not to come to this stall. The only time we eat in here is Christmas dinner. And this is how much I did cooking and cleaning. I found a pea yesterday in the corner from Christmas dinner that was like all shriveled up. So what is it now?

July? Hello. Pat shot. I was going to try and do uh it's friday afternoon get ready for the week pat do you want to do the intro to this one it feels like uh you're the you're the most uh you know qualified to start a podcast in a upbeat manner here we go here we go you'll like this friday afternoon even if it's not, welcome to the weekend. This is where it starts with the Parenting Hell podcast starring Pat. That's a lot of Ps. That's incredible.

Is that just experience or did you learn that somewhere? I just learned to jock it, Rob, really. I just jocked it. I went to America on a skateboard when I was 19 and listened to the radio and came back and turned up the echo at Capitol. From the top of the tower, we're smashing the tunes. That's so true. It is an American style, actually.

Because you do it a bit more delicately, it doesn't seem like American. I got a bit older, so I've chilled out a bit now that I'm on Greatest Hits Radio, so I'm more laid back, but still upbeat still upbeat but when i was 25 it was like you know people used to say i loved that what you did but i didn't get it what was it all about you know what did you say just energy but that's the thing though it's like having that energy i think energy is good for anything you do including like work or being a parent it's when you're you're knackered you can't do it and how many kids you got pat what's your what's your setup now you got grown up kids yeah we have three kids and we have two grandchildren and one more coming so yeah wow so what ages are your kids

and the grandkids um daniel is 31 charlotte's 29 nick's 34, and our grandkids are two and one month or five weeks. Wow. Yeah, and another one due in September. How has it been a granddad? Oh, it's great. Yeah, it's really good. We have a beautiful, beautiful granddaughter, beautiful grandson, and another granddaughter on the way. And I love it.

I mean, I love being called grandpa, and I like being young enough to sort of you know um not look like a grandpa i see some some of the dads out there and i think wow you must be grandpa too and they go no no no that's my kid not my grandson so those ones always look so tired know, the kids are a bit older and they're just fucked. Absolutely knackered. I see them in the park and I'm running around and, you know, I'm just going to turn 60 and they're like, give us a break. Do you get called on to do a lot of grandpa-based babysitting? We do and we love it because, to be honest with you, you know one of our grandchildren kaya our oldest one the two-year-old he's actually in america because our

son lives in new york with his wife and they're there so we don't see them all the time especially with what's been going on so when we get called to babysit our five-week-old one we're there and we often don't want to give him back really to be honest with you so and you got another one on the way as well yeah but that's another one in america so i need the our british kids to really well they're all british but i need the ones who live here to really you know snap into it and get a few more kids here so um and with um having grown up kids you know this this is not a good tip for life, I'd say, but some people have said to me that, you know, when they're grown up, you're just worrying about them in a different way.

Do you find, like, what's it like being the parent of grown-up kids? How often are you thinking about them? Is it dominating your life in the way it did when they were children? It doesn't dominate your life, Josh, but you are absolutely right. You're never going to stop worrying about your kids, and you're never going to stop lending them money and getting them a start on the property ladder and just being there to help them, I suppose.

And you'll always do that because they are your kids. So anything you think that you guys are spending now, believe me, it never ends. It just keeps on going. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, no. That's not what I want to hear, Pat. Well, it gets bigger.

I mean, the sums get bigger, don't they? A deposit on a house is not exactly, you know, a train set, is it? Do you feel like, was you working loads or was you off work when the kids were small? Did you see a lot of them or was it a bit tight? Because you were all over the place on telly, I imagine, when they were younger. Yeah, I was working a lot and I still am to this day to pay for the extra bits that I just mentioned. So therefore, it never stops.

But I did see them a lot, yeah. I was a pretty good hands-on dad and I think my missus would agree with that, and I loved it. I mean, I took Nicky. When Nicky was a kid, he was very funny because he was probably, say, two or three years old, probably three, three or four maybe, and we would go to sort of Chessington World of Adventures, and then someone would come up,

and there obviously were no selfies in those days because then nobody had a camera. So they would say, can I get your autograph? And I'd say, well, I haven't got a pen. And they'd go, well, I've got one. And they'd find a pen in a handbag or whatever, and you'd do one. And then another person would come along, and they'd get your autograph. And then a big line would start.

And by the time you got to the end of the line, there'd be people going, yeah, can I get your autograph? And I'd go, sure, what's your name? And they went, yeah, what's yours? And I went, well, why do you want my autograph? They'd go, well, because everyone else did. And I said, all right. And then by that time, Nicky, who was about was about obviously about a foot tall or maybe too far i don't know i can't remember how big kids are anymore but he was a little boy and he would be tugging at my trousers and he got

so used to hearing people saying my name that he said for goodness sake pat sharp hurry up he goes i want to go on the rides. And that was how he grew up. He grew up calling me Pat Sharp because of people going, Pat Sharp. So I never got called Dad. I was just Pat Sharp to Nicky, and he's 34 now. But now he calls me Dad, so thank heavens for that. Oh, that's nice.

Eventually. As a kind of celebrity in that world, did you like, when you're going to chessington world adventure are you are you queuing in those situations or has the family got special perks well we did have uh some moments where they you're you're gonna think this is really pretentious and your listeners are gonna go what a dick but they closed the theme park for us and we got in either early or late like Tom Cruise. Like Tom Cruise.

I mean, because at one point, Pat, I would say he was one of the most famous TV presenters in the country, easily. Well, kids' TV, you know, yeah. I never really – Yeah, but then I think actually kids' TV makes you mega famous because they grow up with you, and then they see you on other things, so it's like they've all seen you, and it's sort of's a different bond i find they're really you've summed that up

rob there's an amazing affinity with kids tv presenters because i can go into a room where there's somebody of say you know your guy's age and there's graham norton and the person who's coming over will probably come up to me as a kids tv presenter before they go to graham norton because it's part of their childhood. Yeah. They remember you from a time when they didn't have, you know, relationship,

mortgage, rent, this, that job worries and everything else. They just remember chucking down their school bag on a Friday afternoon. And, uh, you know,

I'm watching me and the twins and some bright colors and a bit of gunge. I mean, what's not to like, what age were your kids when all that was going on? Were they fans of the show? Were they too young or too old? I can't remember the timeline. Nicky was spot on.

Our oldest son, he was spot on. He was about the right age and a little bit younger than the contestants. They were around about 12 or 13. It was probably about, it started, Nicky was born in 86. The show started in 89. So by the time the show was sort of 93, 94, he was a prime candidate fan. He used to come to some of the recordings. And we made Funhouse, the whole series for each year was made in one week at Scottish Television.

Really? Yeah, so we would go for seven days. I'd take the time off capital and then for seven days we would go to Scotland and we would do one in the morning, one in the afternoon, two times seven is 14 series done for a whole year. So I've only ever spent 10 weeks of my life doing fun house. It's mad,

isn't it? And then it can sort of, you know, define someone and be such a big show. I know, you know, isn't that mad? Cause I,

you know, I mentioned this, uh, when I last spoke to Josh and and I said to him that people will come up to me and say in a burly voice, a great big guy at a DJ set, and go, you made my childhood. And I'm going, well, that's just as well, isn't it? And you think about it, people come up and also say to me, not my name. They just look at me and go, Funhouse. I mean, the best story I've ever got of that one was at the Nordhoff Robbins Music Awards lunch in about early 2000s. And Posh was there, as in Victoria Beckham, and with David. And they were sitting at a table and they had people around them so that people couldn't go up to them. Because they were sort of the flavor of the

month at the time and they didn't want everybody coming up to them and they couldn't eat their lunch and blah blah blah so at one point i sort of glanced over and uh and she smiled which she doesn't do a lot as you know and she um and she wagged her finger in a in a way to say beckon you over like this and i thought oh i went over i went hi she goes hi i just want to say that i heard you on the radio the other day and you were mentioning my autobiography learning to fly and it was so nice you were so kind about me and you weren't rude about me or David or anything like that it was just really nice and David was in the bathroom and he and he heard it as well and while she was saying all this to me I just focused on her eyes and he was grinning and leaning over her

shoulder next to her looking at me just smiling so and he was grinning and leaning over her shoulder next to her looking at me just smiling so i then looked look around and i went oh that's great who's your friend and um and she said oh that's my husband daily and i went all right yeah and he was obviously the england captain at the time and and you know probably equally as famous as he is now and uh and he looked at me and literally in his voice, he just went, fun house. That's it for this special best of episode. What is Oh My Dog with Jack T and Sean Walsh? This is what happens when two thick people make a podcast.

Come together and talk about the moronic things they've done. What about dogs? What, so Jack and Sean, do they talk about dogs? No, sometimes they just talk about their illnesses. Who should listen? You don't have to be mad to listen to this. Yes, you do. When you consider how many quality podcasts there are out there you've got

to be off your nut to think oh i'll listen to this instead seriously though what is it what is oh my dog well they you know they get a guest on they talk about dogs i mean sometimes there's not a guest because they don't turn up sometimes one of the presenters is late because he gets locked out of his house i don't really know what it is, actually. Yeah, it's just a shambles. Any final thoughts? We're just two gentlemen running a podcast. Maybe it's called Oh My Dog because it's what a podcast would be like

if it was managed by dogs. Oh My Dog with Jack D and Sean Walsh. New episode every Monday. Hello, my name's Joe Wilkinson and I do a podcast with David Earl. It's called Chattabix. Chattabix is a podcast magazine and chat show, isn't it? Yeah.

We're on three times a week. We have loads of guests, special guests, surprise guests. Can I read some of the highlights? Yeah. Interviewing a Red Arrow pilot. Visiting a haunted house. Chatting with Ricky Gervais, Harry Hill, James Acaster and Catherine Ryan, amongst others. Backstage at the Blur concert at Wembley.

And I met my hero, Angie Roachford, and I cried. So that's Chattavix. D-H-A-T-A-B-I-X. Chattavix. Andy Bush here from Guestimators, the brand new game show where guesswork beats Google. Join me, our resident quiz master, Statman Matt, and a celebrity guest as we dive into the brains of the great British public.

Statman, what sort of questions have we been asking? Well, Bush, here are some of my favourites. Who's the best Irish person? Which finger would you chop off if you had to? And how many human-sized corgis could Prince William beat in a fight? To play along at home and listen to the podcast, just visit guestamators.com. I think I'd chop off my left little finger, by the way.