Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Parenting Hell - S01 EP53: Mark Watson

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

ROB BECKETT & JOSH WIDDICOMBE'S 'LOCKDOWN PARENTING HELL' - S01 EP53: Mark WatsonJoining us in the studio this episode to discuss the highs and lows of parenting (and life) during the lockdown and beyond is the brilliant comedian and writer, Mark Watson. Mark's new book 'Contacts'' is available to pre-order now and is released on the 29th October 2020. Enjoy. Rate and Review. Thanks. xxx If you want to get in touch with the show here's how:EMAIL: [e-mail]: @lockdownparent INSTAGRAM: @lockdown_parentingA 'Keep It Light Media' Production Sales, advertising, and general enquiries: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Behold the DQ Freezer! An extraordinary freezer holding all the Blizzard flavors of the past. It's opening to bring back Rolo and Brownie Batter. Grab them before the DQ Freezer closes. Only at DQ. Happy tastes good. And if you're just joining us, we're live from Evan's living room. It looks like Evan is about to purchase tickets to today's match.

Kate, the real test is, will he use the BMO Toronto FC Cashback Mastercard? Well, if he wants to earn cashback on his purchases, he will, and... Oh, hang on. Hello, I'm Josh Whitacombe. Thanks for snagging those tickets. Make every purchase highlight worthy with the BMO Toronto FC Cashback Mastercard. Hello, I'm Josh Whitacombe. And I'm Rob Beckett. Welcome to Lockdown Parenting Hell. The show in which Rob and I discuss what it's like to be a parent during lockdown, which I would say can be a little tricky. So, in an effort to make some kind of sense of the current situation... And to make me feel better about my increasingly terrible parenting skills... Each episode, we'll be chatting to a famous parent about how well they're coping.

Or hopefully not. And we will be hearing from you, the listener, with your tales of lockdown parenting woe. Because let's be honest, none of us know what we're doing. Hello, and you are listening to Lockdown Parenting Hell with... Can you say Josh Widdicombe? Josh Widdicombe. And Rob Beckett. Rob Beckett.

Oh, that was Finlay Turner, two and a half, living in Alderney. Channel Islands. Bloody hell. Wow. I didn't know they could speak. Good on you, Finlay. Popular across the pond. Where is the Channel Islands? The Channel Islands is off the south coast.

It's like Guernsey and Jersey and stuff, isn't it? Oh, where Matt Letizia is from. It's where Matt Letizia is from, exactly. Graham Lat, where Matt Letizia is from. It's where Matt Letizia is from. That's all I've got. Graham Lutoe, Matt Letizia. Stop. That's it. Oh, my God.

Alderney. This place is so small. It must just be Finlay in there. I just Googled it. He can't live there. Go on. Give me some facts about Alderney, Rob. Alderney, right.

It is so little, mate. It hasn't even got a Wikipedia. Oh, yeah, it has. Here we go. Go on, give me some facts about Alderney, Rob. Alderney, right. It is so little, mate. It hasn't even got a Wikipedia. Oh, yeah, it has. Here we go. Elevation, zero. Is this his top trump that you're reading out? Part of Guernsey. It is three miles long and a mile and a half wide.

God, you could fall off that. That's so smart. It's like Paddy McGuinness's back garden. Absolutely the most ITV joke I've ever heard in my life. I don't know. Who's got a bigger house than that? Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart.

It's probably as big as Rod Stewart's garden. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to have a go at me for making kind of dated references, to go for Rod Stewart is quite a... What's your population? Population, 2,000 people. Blimey. That is small.

That is small, isn't it? So that's Finley Turner there, and that was sent in by his brother, mum and dad. Wow. All the same person. That is amazing. To think that that is 0.25% of the whole of Alderney have sent in. He's the voice of Alderney we've had on it.

Thank you very much, Finley Turner. Yeah, thank you. And thanks, Benjamin Turner, for sending it in. It looks beautiful, if small, didn't it? He's the voice of Alderney we've had on it. Thank you very much Vinnie Turner. Thank you. Thanks Benjamin Turner for sending it in. It looks beautiful if small but I imagine you're allowed to like

jump on a boat to the other islands, go into the mainland for a big night out. Yeah tough though isn't it getting back. Getting there is alright but.

Missing the last boat. How far are they from shore? It's quite, it's really close to France. Is it? It feels like it should be French But I don't want to get bogged down in some sort of old war

No, no, no, let's not get involved in that, mate Like that time we got an email from the Falkland Islands And you gave your views on that Oh yeah, did not end well, did it? Josh, I'm not firing on full cylinders I am so tired The clocks going back is an absolute disgrace And I think if i was

involved in government the only thing i'd care about is whenever the farmers wanted anything i go you can have whatever you want as long as you don't fuck about with the clocks is it the farmers they're always blaming the farmers obviously i understand that you know farming is a very important thing is it can't just be the farmers farmers, can it? Get a torch! It's only one of the jobs. I know, but all these poor kids going to school, coming home from school, if they do like, you know they get like, kids

leaving school at four o'clock after and after school club, walking home in the dark. Surely it's more dangerous than giving cows some food early doors, isn't it? You can't just, I mean, it can't just be the farmers. You can't go, oh, why are the clocks going forward? Oh, the solicitors want it.

Like, it's just not a way of work. It's in the farms. Also, why do you need to feed cows? Surely just grass does it, doesn't it? What more do they need? Well, they need milking, do they? But can you do that in the... Surely there's light.

No one's milking 5am. Surely. That's a midday job, isn't it? They do get up early, don't they, farmers? Why? I don't know. I think if you want to start a movement, right, I reckon Ross Kemp is well on board with this.

He put it in room 101 when I did that with him. Did he? Yeah. And he didn't put it in for, like, jokey reasons. No, I don't think he's ever done anything for jokey reasons. I'm behind enemy lines. Right laugh, isn't it?

But he is very anti it. And it's just, it ruins your kid's routine. That's the worst. And then we got it wrong and we were like, Oh, we have to keep him up later. Don't we?

But no, that was the opposite of what we were supposed to do. To try and help adjust it. I think if you, I don't know. I don't know what we've done, but no one was the opposite of what we were supposed to do because to try and help adjust it I think if you I don't know I don't know what we've done but no one's sleeping so complicated in you shouldn't be but the amount I have to think to understand and I'm not bad at maths but the amount I have to think to understand which direction the clocks have gone in and what that means for my day and so i was up at 10 past five on sunday but was that which should have been 10 past six shouldn't it yes but it's a long day to get for you're back to 5 a.m starts because the farmers have m starts all that hard

work i've got a friend who doesn't have kids rob and oh god get rid get a midday he said uh i was texting about something he said i didn't even realise the clocks had gone back. I was like, are you effing kidding me? He didn't realise. He didn't realise. Oh my God. It's such a big deal in parents' lives. Now as a parent, clocks moving is a bigger deal than New Year's Eve.

Yeah. That is a more important and more planning goes into clocks going backwards and forwards than a new year i don't go out of these why is it always going in the wrong direction i've never i don't know which one i'm meant to enjoy i'm not sure which i'm meant to enjoy when i was when i was uh working at a supermarket whenever the clocks change i'd always go in an hour late, whatever direction they went in. Yeah, of course. And then be like, oh, sorry, I didn't know.

Anyway, but surely once you'd come in an hour early, just by chance. Yeah, you'd think, wouldn't you? But yeah, you might have to carry me a bit here, Josh. My brain. From what time are your kids getting up now, Rob? Well, it's not just to get them waking up loads in the night. I don't know if their house is too hot or too cold.

The pipes were making a noise the other night. That's a new noise that's really loud ghost watch that's a 90s reference you're not going to enjoy um but um they woke up five times between them the girls woke up five times um malcolm because she's got a fingernail coming off um and we just couldn't be able to deal with that. Just bite it off. And Gavin is, oh my God, I can't even speak, Josh. Gavin, we're trying to get Gavin

out of nappies during the night. A lot of people have done panel shows with you who've been dreaming of this moment. Oh my God, I'm just climbing up. I can't cope.

Just sit back and let the show not take over. She wants no nappy in night. Oh my God. What was that? That went ascent, didn't it? She wants no nappy in night in night yeah she wants to go to bed without a nappy on right so we said if you have a dry nappy for like seven days in a row you can do that we're on day five but what she keeps doing is instead of

weaning a nappy or going to the toilet coming in and going my nappy's still dry oh what in the middle of the night yeah and then and then is waking up because needs a wee, but now she just thinks she's not allowed to wee in the night. And we're like, no, you're allowed to, but just go to the toilet. So she's coming in without, we've got fingernails. And then the worst part of all is Lou always wakes up before me and has to deal with it because I'm a deeper sleeper. But then what happens is she gets the up with me

for not waking up first. And then in the morning there's like a row about who's the most tired and i'm like yeah okay you did action the fingernail and the dry nappy situation however i was still woken up five times in the night if you didn't have kids and you went to work and you lived on your own and you went in and went oh the children i didn't i got five times a week after the night, oh God, you must be knackered. That conversation doesn't exist when you've got kids. You just function on it. And now I'm being like revered in this house of the man that got all the sleep.

Oh, sleepy, sleepy head over there. I'm like, I've had five hours sleep and I was up every hour. It's one of my favourite fairy tales, the man that got all the sleep. It's an absolutely wonderful story. Oh, sleepy head over there. You've got the sleep sleep out your eyes yeah i've been five hours sleep go cut five times well i'm glad you're having a good time now yes mate you want to get in touch this is how email us hello at lockdown parenting.co.uk or tweet us at lockdown parents or Instagram lockdown underscore parenting.

And you can also send us stuff. P.O. Box seven, six, seven, four, eight, London E9, nine, D.W. Here come the carrots making their way upfield, followed by the whole wheat bread over to the two dozen eggs. Sir, do you do this every time? Sorry, I've been a little excited ever since I got this BMO Toronto FC cashback MasterCard. Oh, and the broccoli boots it over the line. What a goal! How would you like to pay, sir? Credit, please. Make every purchase a win with the BMO Toronto FC cashback MasterCard with up to 5% cashback on your purchases in your first three months.

Terms and conditions apply. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With NuOle Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience treat your senses with new olay indulgent moisture body wash buy it today at major retailers okay now rob who have we got on today today we have got mark watson joshua very very it's a brilliant interview really enjoyed enjoyed it. Yeah.

Starts with a anecdote that shows him in a bad light. Yeah, I think. I think he comes out of it superbly. Yeah, I do feel like you put him under a little bit of pressure here to kick off the interview. One, we mess up the start and then you just remind him of bad parenting to really put our guests at ease. It's my new thing, Rob.

I'm turning this into Frost Nixon. I'm really going to grill people over their parenting. I'm actually getting some money from social services to really check if these people deserve to be all right just a double check-in yeah not good good on you josh am i getting any of that money or is that just you no but you are getting a knock at your door in around three or four hours i'll go and sort that out all right here's mark watson hello mark watson sorry rob that was a lack of understanding it's very difficult to judge who's Hello, Mark Watson. Sorry, Rob. That was a lack of understanding.

It's very difficult to judge who's going to do the intro when you're both not looking at anything. No, exactly. I was waiting for you and you were waiting for me, but we ruined it a bit there, didn't we? I would have done the intro if I'd known. Would you like to do the intro, Mark? I'd love to guest as a host here. It's not really my place to do the intro normally,

but you guys always have to do it. So why not just take the weight off a bit? Exactly. Do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Yeah, go on. Well, this is the...

No, hang on a minute. What's it called? Lockdown Parenting Hell podcast? Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to the Lockdown Parenting Hell podcast, normally with Rob Beckett and Josh Willicombe. But today the guest is Mark Watson,

and I am also the host as it stands. podcast normally with rob beckett and josh willicom uh but today the guest is mark watson and i i'm also the host as it stands not clear if rob or josh are even going to do it or if it'll be a 40 minute monologue actually we'll find out oh thanks for coming on mark really appreciate it i've i before we go on mark and we will get into stuff i need to start with an anecdote about your parenting oh dear i don't i mean this do you know what this is going to be i don't but i don't like the sound of it because if you look across the spectrum of anecdotes about my parenting very few of them go well for me well i'd say add it to the list so i'm quite hung over and i uh plymouth argyle are playing away at bristol rovers

yes we meet on a train well we don't quite meet on a train Mark I get off the train at Bristol Temple Meads and I'm walking across the along the platform and out of the train falls an empty pram crashes onto the platform to be fair we meet on the train he's giving me more credit now than the anecdote is starting to have in store for me. And then I think I should pick that up. And I pick it up and I look and you're carrying two children and a look of panic on your face. And I, at that point, I didn't have children and I didn't realise how stressful that situation must have been. Yeah. I mean, first of all, the look of panic on my face is just that's sort of

a given anyway anyone that's ever seen me in their lives will know that but it's true that uh as panic inducing situations go a pram falling out of a train is it's certainly the sort of moment where you think well i hope no one is surprisingly here that i know and has witnessed that it doesn't look great that that prams come out i thought I thought to myself, but unless I know a travelling Plymouth Argyle fan, we're all going to be fine. He may or may not have a podcast about parenting in four years' time. That's the unluckiest thing of all. We couldn't have anticipated this podcast at that stage.

But actually, I mean, you've got to accept now that if anything goes wrong in front of another comedian, you know, there will be a podcast. It'll always catch up with you. You're right, Josh, though, actually. I remember that incident being funnier for you than it was for me. And I quite often look at people without kids, as you probably now do, and think, not in a vindictive way, but I just think in five years' time,

you'll see things in a different yes a more negative light yes yeah well before we start recording you did say it's a good name for the the podcast because parenting is hell it's awful and really hard i think quite a lot of it is yeah and obviously in in normal times people put a lot of i mean don't get me wrong love the kids and love having them and everything but um people do tend to put a lot of positive spin on the trials of it. It was like, oh, it's been a bit of a challenging day or, you know, yeah, there's shit all over the walls, but, you know, that's part of it. But, you know, if there's been one thing that's been refreshing about the lockdown,

it's that most parents I know are no longer doing that sort of PR. They're just holding their hands up and accepting. That's what's nice about this podcast, sort of amnesty on it. Yeah, the PR spin for years kids have had. It's like the Trump administration, just like fake news, all that no sleep and the rubbing shit on your face, fake news.

Yeah. Yeah. I think probably, you know, these last six months have found out a lot of people who were previously painting a really positive picture of. So what's your situation mark if you'd like to just tell us what your setup is well yeah i'm divorced uh but i live down the road from um my ex and there are two children a 10 year old boy and a six year old girl so before um you never know how to refer to it these days to do the lockdown before this bit of unpleasantness um we were the weeks were sort of reasonably

equitably split in half or not quite half actually i had slightly less than half but uh nonetheless it was basically a couple of nights a week at mine a couple of days a week and so on and then of course uh the removal of schools really did put the cat among the pigeons there's no denying it it's bloody useful to have schools really it really is even if they weren't learning a thing it is ever so handy to have them parked for seven to eight hours a day i don't think we ever appreciated i did a tweet to this effect basically saying i think teachers should get a million pounds a year and that was about day three of homeschooling as well so were you doing how much

of the homeschooling were you doing were your children going between the two houses in lockdown basically yeah which is totally legal isn't it i'm not getting you in any trouble uh i think it is although also luckily these days, the government themselves don't really know what is legal. New rules are drawn up every 24 hours anyway. Is that when they get questioned, they go, but what about children that are given households? Can they go to their parents?

And then the Prime Minister or a British just goes, yeah, that sounds about right. I expect so, yes. I didn't read all the way to the end of the document myself, actually. I'll try and pass the question to Chris Whitty, if you don't mind. He deals with most of it these days. That's a bit of a nerdier question. Let that guy have a go at it.

Yeah. Because it's been fascinating to me. I don't think at the start of this year, Chris Whitty thought he'd be on telly more than someone like Rom Ash. It's been an extraordinary year for him. But unfortunately, you know, all of us are just sitting here desperate. And then that guy that doesn't even seem to want to be on telly is monopolising it.

He'll do Strict strictly in a few years without doubt he must have been close to strictly this year yeah the balance on valance in the cha-cha hey oh that's funny to think about actually a balance versus witty slam down for the strictly final it would show you how different the world has become um so yeah the kids would sort of go back and forth and we basically, I'll try and focus on certain subjects. You try and do certain other ones. The school were very good and they produced loads of resources, you know, and also lots of friends and relatives.

There was a period of optimism in about, I suppose, April, early May, where everyone was sort of pulling together and people would send you like a fun educational quiz about dogs or something and um that would do we also started doing the joe wicks uh as pe all that for a few weeks there was a genuine sense of the school timetable being pulled off in the house and then by about the middle of may it was just a case of google a picture of christopher columbus look at him for an hour that'll do that's history and you mean the director of harry potter as well not even uh the guy that

discovered america no that's that's right film studies as um as may and june went on there was more of an emphasis on things like film studies and food studies than I would have expected you'd normally get on the curriculum. iPad observation lessons and stuff like that. Yeah, there was quite a bit of IT. Streaming's the future, so it's best you know how it works. Yeah, it went from even the cooking, what you could grandly call home economics. In the first few weeks, we taught them to like, taught the kid to make a simple pasta dish,

did a little bit of baking. And then by week six, again, it was like, find a peach, eat it. That'll do. You, I mean, I think this won't be news to you. I would see you as a kind of warrior with W-O-R-R-I-E-R. Well, because of your West Country accent, I thought that was a compliment in the end it wasn't how do you do you worry a lot as a parent or is that where you find your uh finally relax yeah i worry about it loads just because uh the the things that

i tend to find the things i tend to fret about are things which I feel I'm sort of not capable of doing well or things that are beyond my control, basically. And you'll know yourself, when you've got kids, almost everything falls into the category of things I can't control. But I suppose I would say in this period, if anything, I don't know if I'm worrying less or everyone else has just gone mad. So they've caught up with me. But the bar for how mentally weird you are meant to be has gone up anyway. So I feel like I'm, yeah, I'd say maybe the pandemic has raised everyone to the pitch of anxiety that I was at to start with. So it's a little bit like uh in football terms i'm sort of just hanging in there collecting drawers and the teams around me are losing quite a

bit basically i'm moving up the table just by didn't have the other results being in my favor because you know the the parameters for life are mad now anyway even very capable parents have gone more or less crazy so i yeah i almost look better by plus i think yeah a lot of the things that i used to worry about were like have i got their school uniform ready are they have i remembered to take them to this party there's just so many the tasks really pile up don't they basically being a parent is like a an endless game of taskmaster but with no kudos attached to it yeah um but again now well firstly now almost everyone's been on taskmaster um and secondly uh even the best parents i know are just visibly beaten down by things so yeah i feel like and also that goes for um my mental state in general i think so many things happen every day now that you can't control

and don't understand anyway. I've almost become more relaxed because you sort of start shrugging and thinking, well, let's see what happens. I've never been very good at being zen about things, but you have to be in this period because you don't know what the hell you're meant to do anyway. And how was you when they were little, the kids? Was you like a natural dad or did you find it quite nerve-inducing

and stressful and you learnt to get into it, you know? Because I found it really stressful trying to do the right thing all the time when they're little babies because they're so fragile. Yeah, I think whether I was a natural dad or not sort of can be answered by that vignette of me throwing a pram onto a train track, really. answered by that vignette of me throwing a pram onto a train track really if you had to if you had to sum me up in one anecdote that isn't too far off um similarly alex horn has got an anecdote he sometimes tells about uh a time when uh we both had very small kids and we for some reason we must have just been on some sort of mental safari.

We took him to, both sides, take them swimming. A horn had a pool near, and I had to try and get my son into a swimming costume and myself. And long story short, both me and him were crying at the end. And also,

and I don't blame horn for this directly, but the pool was bloody freezing. So we only lasted about three minutes in it there was a lot of that in the first couple of years just just i found it just i think i expected it to be um pretty hard um but it was still 10 times hard i think that's the tough thing about early parenting everyone tells you it's going to be difficult and you sort of think oh yeah i'm sure it will be but they they don't focus on the right things necessarily they um like they told you about how you're going to be tired sleep deprived and stuff and that is true but that's that's only the beginning of your problems

really i remember this is must have been i had i had both the kids and i was going somewhere very far north with them. And I just remember getting, it was at Preston station. I remember looking out the window and thinking I could leave the train here and neither of them would react in time. I'm not going to, it's just, it's important to remember that I do have, I will outsmart these two here. If I do that, there'd have been a lot of consequences and I'm glad I didn. It's just, it's important to remember that I do have, I will outsmart these two here if I do that. There'd have been a lot of consequences,

and I'm glad I didn't do that now, disappearing into the Lancashire night. I feel you would be quite a toxic guest for this podcast had that been a thing you'd done. I think there would have been controversy if I was known as someone that had abandoned my kids in Lancashire. I'm not saying we wouldn't have booked you, but I'm certainly not sure I would have started

with the train station anecdote. No, I'd come with more baggage if the main thing people knew about me was that I'd once left my children deliberately on a train. Also as well, to be fair though, it was Preston. If it had been somewhere else, you may have gone. Do you know what I mean? But it's got to be really bad to have scone to Preston. It looked quite dark and rainy, of that was part of the appeal i thought well you know i could just vanish here easily i must have friends somewhere in this city

i can or town i suppose but yeah it was you know there were a lot of those a lot of those moments where i thought and it's just like, I said this on Twitter recently, but when the second kid came along, the girl, there was this, I think the least helpful thing you can say to a parent on the cusp of kid number two is, once you've got one, two is fine. It's just the same. People make out that it's not twice as hard, but obviously it is because another human, I said this again, i tweeted this recently people

make out that if you if you've got one kid then it's easy to have two in but to me that is like saying if you can drive a car you can drive two at the same time if you can operate a machinery then you can operate the machinery and also play chess at the same time it's um and i imagine if you have three kids it's it's you know as hard exponentially again this idea that you just throw more kids into the mix and it gets or you almost don't need to worry about it is absolutely bonkers well it depends who you are horn again horn's got three yeah young boys and he's unbelievably good at it you watch all three of them going dad dad dad and he reminds me of a press conference he's just like constantly whirling around, changing direction.

Some people are just very good at it, but to be fair, well, Horne was always going to be good at it. I mean, Horne has that mind. We interviewed him and I did feel like he was, he had a bit too much of a handle on the situation for my taste. Oh, yeah, I was furious. Oh, it's, yeah, he's a very bad parent to watch in action, really, because he's sort of demoralisingly good.

It's the equivalent of following someone really, really good on stage. You think, well, where am I going to go after that? I don't know if you've seen, have either of you seen the movie Sing? Oh, yes. Yeah, you will, basically. Sing and Animals. Yeah, that's right so there's a bit where that um

uh there's a sort of overworked housewife pig character and it's got like 40 kids as you remember rob and um she needs to escape to do this x factor type audition so she sets up a contraption that automatically feeds and washes uh all 40 of the kids and talks in her voice without her absence even being detected. A little bit like a Wallace and Gromit type contraption. Basically, Horn is the closest I've seen in real life to that pig. If there's anyone you would back to create a machine which was able to look after children for days at a time, it's probably him.

He's not who you need close to you when you're starting out in parenting is it no and he was slightly ahead of me as well he had his first kid before me and also i'm friends with um uh tim minchin and his wife sarah as well and they again you know obviously minchin is one of these people that can look after two kids uh write a half a musical, fly a plane, invent a new type of pate in a day. So perhaps I'm lucky that a couple of my best mates in the parenting world were, yeah, just really, really good at it. I could have done with befriending someone that was an absolute dick

earlier on, someone that was rubbish at it. I'm still in the market for friends that are bad parents, by the way, if anyone's listening. You've written a book, Mark. So you say you don't do it. You're also someone who's always kind of doing stuff and creating stuff. And so your book, Contacts, which is out basically three days ago

or four days ago. So you've been writing that while in lockdown with children. How are you doing that? Could I just say, Richard Curtis says, I prefer Mark Watson to Leo Tolstoy, both as a novelist and a stand-up comedian. So what a quote that is. It is a nice quote.

It's come quite a lot too late for me to really rub it in Tolstoy's face. Yeah, I think when... Are you writing in the other room to your children when they're in your house? I think when literary history, you know, when the dust settles, Tolstoy will still be regarded as the greater author. But let's see, shall we? Who's the better father? Well, it's him again.

But that's neither here nor there. Actually, Tolstoy had a lot of kids. who's the better father well it's him again but that's that's neither here nor there actually uh Tolstoy had a lot of kids and he did uh he basically made his wife keep knocking them out and he at one point he wouldn't let her have a nanny or a wetness I know a bit about Tolstoy as luck would have it um from my degree he was um he was one of these guys that has a like about eight kids but doesn't have much to do with them until they're big enough to be cute, Tolstoy. And obviously he was mostly just writing really, really long books. It's much longer books than mine.

So he was basically permanently in lockdown with someone else looking after his kids. So I think that if there's been a worst father in history, it's probably him. But nonetheless, I did have to, I had to write in a different room for the kids, but actually, mostly I didn't get it done while the kids were in the equation i think i think most people have found it's nigh impossible to to have creative projects and kids i was gonna say during

lockdown actually forever i just i think it's it's impossible like it's difficult to work in the same house as a child it's phenomenally hard at the best of times. And of course, famously, these are the worst of times. So what I've been doing is all of the, I mean, I had done written quite a lot of the book by the time all this began, but there still was a fair bit to do. And I basically started just getting up really early. I've never been much of an early riser,

but I started trying to steal extra hours at the start of the day because oh wow i knew your kids uh was still not from your kids but had you were getting up before your children yeah and then uh one or if they weren't in the house i would still maintain those kind of getting up hours like as if they were so basically i've become a morning person which is not how i ever wanted what time were you getting up well like half six or seven or something would then give me a couple of hours the kids are older these days of course I was gonna say older than they used to be but that's how it goes isn't it um that's very much how these days kids so it's not as if they're like it's not as if they're up at stupid hours but basically I've uh I've managed to sort of adjust my body clock so there's a couple of potential working hours at the very start of the day because once everyone can't

imagine that can you imagine that rob well no i couldn't have a couple of years ago i would have said if if if i was voluntarily getting up at seven half or seven it could only be that um i my personality had been rewired but what i didn't bank on was that there could be a major to come back to it again pandemic uh i think it's period of unpleasantness there's been to put it politely quite a bit of unpleasantness and um i think it's i mean you'll both know with kids you're um at your the time that you have to be you is like dramatically reduced yeah and i don't ever want to resent them for that but obviously you do so um yeah i feel like if i can make myself get a couple of hours in before they even are in the equation then i don't feel quite

so annoyed or resentful or whatever if i'm then picking up after them but again i'll say again it's not pleasant i'd much rather not regard the hours from 6 30 to 8 30 is in inverted commas my time yeah it's just what i've had to do to survive i continue to be of the opinion that you know these people that actually actively like morning and they're the last best bit of the day i've got everything done by 10 o'clock those people are still psychopaths in my view yeah i'm doing this under duress not out of choice especially when you're working late most evenings, you won't, you know, sometimes you're still on stage at 10, 10.30 at night to then get home

and then write that early in the morning. It's, I find my body clock, it's changed because of the pandemic, but it hasn't been absolutely exhausting in the morning, but I find I'm better at night than in the morning, you know, when you're gigging all the time. I always have been. Yeah, I've always preferred the night

because you've got a certain amount of adrenaline still from the gig haven't you and yeah you're i used to work quite productively very late at night um but then on the other hand not that many gigs these days are there a bit more free time in the evening hard to put your finger on it but the diary looks different somehow rob you can get your two hours before your kids get up so all you need to do is what set your set your alarm for 4am and then you've got four till six to yourself. Yeah, I mean, four till six. Sometimes I go up about half five, but I could always miss half an hour of my me time.

Yeah, that's the trouble. If your kids are a certain size, it's impossible to outmanoeuvre them unless you just don't go to bed in the first place. Especially, your kids are 10 and six now. So what time are they getting up now? The sleeping situation is a lot better now. the kids are starting to be of an age where they understand that sleep is the most blessed thing we have in life rather than some sort of inconvenience um and the 10 year old in particular is old enough to uh he now has the common sense to wake up and

just watch tv or do something rather than leap out of bed and demand to be entertained so it does that bit of it does get better um i remember when they were small and that bit where they possibly nap in the afternoon and then if if that doesn't happen you more or less want to kill yourself that period is behind me now yeah the flip side is the evenings are off limits because their idea of when they should be going to sleep of course it's like i mean a 10 year old is basically a teenager in terms of how much he demands to stay up so yeah again the routines of the day just get shifted i think i'd take my evenings over if you offered me to lose two hours of the evening

to my daughter staying up but i gained two hours in the morning i think i'd prefer to lose two hours of the evening to my daughter staying up, but I gained two hours in the morning, I think I'd prefer to lose the time in the morning still. The evenings are... I don't have the... I can't offer you that anyway. I don't control it, obviously. Also, Mark, with the... So, obviously, the kids split in times between the two houses and stuff.

Do you ever sort of clash slightly on the parenting? And is it harder to sort of like, you know, agree on how it should be done when you're not, you know, there together the whole time? It's certainly not. Yeah, of course, kids are quite good at exploiting. Again, in football terms, they will slip between the two central defenders.

They'll tell my ex that, oh yeah, we did that at dad's house and vice versa but we have to cooperate to sort of put the pieces together because the 10 year old in particular is a sophisticated uh sort of cheat now he'll always like claim that he gets certain privileges at the other place or that he's already done his homework there or you have to be you have to both have your mind switched on to stay to stay ahead of it yeah um and it's yeah there has to be a lot of cooperation and sometimes i've got better at just accepting that it's not going to always go well as well um because we have a lot of people emailing and

solicitors and stuff that are sort of separated and after the kids split time between two parents and it always strikes me it must be so difficult even if you do have a good relationship after you've separated um it's difficult to make you know make sure they're all telling the truth and stuff but if you didn't get on that well with your ex it must be impossible if there's not that you know because some yeah some you know some kinds of friends of mine growing up and you see that they'd like have to be dropped off at the end of the road type thing and then they don't actually see each other because you said to me Rob didn't you that the only reason you're staying with Lou is because it would be such a nightmare to be divorced that

was the words you used yeah absolutely absolutely right I don't money wise especially yeah oh I tell you what that is fiddly yeah I don't 100% recommend the process if you can avoid it. And we were kind of, it was a little bit acrimonious for a while. We were never quite at that, leaving them at the end of the road stage. But things are sort of reasonably equitable now. And even if they weren't, yeah, you'd have to make them because your mental energy for like fighting people is almost zero when you're also fighting with uh the world the way it is at the moment yeah i think so in some ways all of us have learned

to get better at like all of the interpersonal relationships have had to get better because otherwise you just can't you can't manage but that takes mental energy as well and there are days when you sit there and think well i just i think it's a case of have a glass of wine and forget about everything here. If you buy a glass, I'd mean quite a large glass, potentially. And do you like, what's it like, like when they're not there and then they turn up? Like, so you're, because you're getting half,

you're seeing them for half the week. Yeah. Does it feel like you're living kind of two different lives in a way it really does sometimes uh when especially because uh the like my uh partner and i run sort of a production company as well from from this house uh so a lot of the time there's there is kind of there's a lot of work going on things feel orderly here. Everything feels, you know, feels more or less like being a proper human being. And then you're aware that within 15 minutes of the kids being in the house, it will be, it will resemble a circus more than a workplace.

And, you know, what I've tried to get better at is not bracing myself too much for that if you if you if even as you're picking up the kids you feel tense thinking oh christ here we go uh that is not a good thing to project to them probably so these days i try to um kind of accept like mentally accept the chaos it's like tell you what is a bit easier is being able to take them to you know cafes or to the cinema and the worst bit for me was when there was literally no building outside your house that it was legal to set foot in at least now I feel like not everything has to be in the house but you're right Josh it is basically like for the last few months I've felt like um the the halves of me that are and aren't looking after the kids are almost two separate people. There's a person that can get quite a number of tasks done in a day,

and then there's a person that has to cower in a toilet to get a single email away. If you're parenting these past six months and you don't regard your bathroom as the office, then you're doing better than me. What a place. A door with a lock on it has become so so valuable in this period yeah mine's mine's worked out the old 10p trick though where you just undo it for the other side is that a thing yeah you know like

if it's one of those locks where it's not a key it's a little like oh it's a turning thing turn it like a little turning knob on the other side there's a little slit... Oh, it's a turning thing. Like a little turning knob. On the other side, there's a little slit for a screwdriver. You can get a 10P in there and turn it. Wait a minute. I don't think I'll allow them to listen to this in that case. Yeah. I mean, they probably shouldn't be for all sorts of reasons, to be fair. I don't know if you should be publicising knowledge like this, Rob.

This sounds borderline criminal. Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't endorse it, this sounds borderline criminal. Well, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't endorse it, but it can be done. You haven't exactly distanced yourself from it either, though. How do you sort of do Christmases and stuff like that? Do you sort of have a year with the kids or a year not with the kids? It took a little bit of time to work it out. And the past two years we've done Christmas Day itself

with our respective new setups. And then we've done things all together on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Oh, nice. For the past two or might be three years, it's been Winter Wonderland on Christmas Eve and then Pantomime on Boxing Day. But of course...

Who were you playing in the pantomime? Oh, just a set of bit parts for me. Chris Whitty was the lead, obviously. And it is nice. And that kind of Christmas Eve Boxing Day, I then tend to take them to my parents later in that bit between Christmas and New Year where it's a case of, right, what do we do now?

But all of this is sort of hanging in the balance, isn't it? I shouldn't think there'll be pantomimes and I'd be very, very surprised if Winter Wonderland is allowed to happen. No, not happening. There you go. I mean, I think that's probably sensible because that is essentially 40,000 people in quite a small field. And a lot of them are pissed on mulled wine and German sausages.

I mean, the more I talk about it, the more disappointing it is it's not happening actually because Winter Wonderland does sort of look like a hellscape, but it is a great place to entertain kids for four hours. So what happens at a Winter Wonderland? I've never been to a Winter Wonderland. Well, if you haven't got kids, it would be a weird decision to go, I think. Yeah.

But basically, it's a big old, like a theme park. So you've got your helter-skelters and those rides that someone like me looks at them and immediately throws up. Like awful looking rides. But then there's also this either German or fake German market with booze and sausages and stuff like that. So it is quite a good place. It's in Hyde Park, isn't it? It's all in Hyde Park and traditionally it gets so muddy that it's more like being at Glastonbury it's um in a lot of

ways it's quite an unpleasant experience but it is a place where the kids can have quite a nice night and you can get quite drunk in all fairness um and those are the as close to guilt-free as you can be getting pissed with kids, yeah. So, and also, if you go, like, in the afternoon, evening, it obviously gets dark, it's Christmassy, it has that sort of, it's the sort of thing that you are aware that the kids are, they're forming nice memories, even though you're looking around thinking, well, there's too many idiots here, and that was just £14 for a mulled cider there.

Yeah, it's so's expensive isn't it it really is the actual i don't know how much the actual tickets to it cost but as soon as you get through they've absolutely got you um you come away having had quite a nice christmas experience but you're about a grand down um when romesh went to see mr tumble at wembley arena with his kids obviously and it was like at 10 quid for a 12-inch hot dog. And he's like, do you do a smaller one? And I was like, no. He's that three-year-old.

It's an absolute 12-inch hot dog that you weren't eating any of. Those kids' arena shows are unbelievable. I took my kids to Paw Patrol live at the O2. I know, which is the bleakest sentence I've ever said. What was that experience like? Well, have you seen Paw Patrol? Yes, they're big fans in my house. Right, well, imagine that, but shit.

Imagine that, but instead of sort of a lovable animation, it's just people, you know, pretending to be dogs. The main thing with it was, it wasn't the O2, it was, again, Wembley Arena. It was the sort of place that, you know, 10 years ago you might have seen Arcade Fire, now you're watching a bunch of blokes pretend to be dogs. And going to stuff on that scale, like going to music venues,

but to see kids' stuff really reminds you of how your life has changed, I think. What happened to Paw Patrol Live? Sorry? scale like going to music venues but to see kids stuff really reminds you of how your life has changed i think um like you're thinking last time patrol live sorry what happens in poor patrol live it's just like how long oh i can i can summarize it for you very easily rob hard anything happens in it um you basically what happens in poor patrol live is everyone responsible for putting on the show makes an enormous amount of money. Because as with Romesh's hot dog story, there's any amount of dog merch that the kids all want. And I can't believe the actors are getting paid well. They're not on a door split.

I don't think. No, there's not a bucket collection at the end. The actors are, it should be like that, actually. It should be like a free fringe show in Edinburgh. And at the end, they should come and say, well, I think if you'd seen that on the West End, that would have been 45 quid. So if you wouldn't mind putting that in my bucket. But someone's making a lot of money because not only, so basically they come out, they do like a, you know, what would pass as an average episode of Paw Patrol but all of it is uh they're in costumes and it's done partly by talking partly by you know like voiceover tracks and stuff there's a few songs

and then pretty quickly it's over and the lights come up and if you banked on passing the you know killing the afternoon with your kids there's this horrible feeling of like that is that it um so it works out about 17 pounds a minute and um you often get this with shows for the very young kids it's you pay what you pay for a theater show and it's billed like a theater show but after 45 minutes it's a case of there's a particular feeling you get when they begin a song which has the look of an end song about it and you're filled with this cold fear of like hang on a minute let's not start singing a song that goes we we've all had a lovely time, it's time to leave the theatre. I don't think it is quite.

Straight away, you can spot it, that all of the cast are on stage. Everyone is like clapping. Yeah, the lyrics are something like, look how much we've learned. You think, hang on a minute, this doesn't sound like a song to go into the interval. This sounds like something a lot darker than that. The phrase no interval is absolutely chilling in these situations.

Well, that's the thing, they're not into it for repeat business. You are never going to go to that again. Not even if it was amazing, you wouldn't go to it again. They've got no interest in repeat business. No, and also, of course, they're doing, in some cases, well over one show like that a day. Oh, a triple matinee it's unbelievable the one i went to the

day i went to paul patrol there were three shows that day all with i don't know 5 000 tickets sold it's absolutely the phrase license to print money is overused but bloody hell i uh there's a lot of people including us that i feel sorry for with the theatres being closed. But I don't know how sorry I feel for the guys running that, really. I bet they got the massive art bailout as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah, they'll have got £10 million to keep doing that, yeah. Normally, we'd earn £8 million.

So I think, you know, £10 million with the uncertainty. If it was done on lost earnings, then fair play. Those guys will have put a pretty handsome application together. Similarly, I went to In the Night Garden live uh i went to that again yeah that's right and it was i mean very nice and everything i suppose the kids have only got short attention spans but again from a parent's point of view you've barely got sat down before they're starting to do the old uh before your man is returning to his boat yeah Yeah. But that, I thought the, whether it's the Ninky Nonk or the Pinky Plonk, as if I give a shit, the flying one, I thought that was very impressive.

I was impressed by that, that flying thing, whatever that was. Ninky Nonk is a certain, definitely a headliner there, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's, whereas a lot of bits of the show, a TV show, you don't necessarily need to see replicated on stage because it's still people talking gibberish. It's so boring in the night garden.

I hate in the night garden. I hate it. I don't think, yeah, I think most parents feel exactly the same way about it. And yet its effect on kids is absolutely miraculous if they get in the zone with it. Yeah. My daughter defaults to it whenever she's ill,

which is quite kind of weird and kind of she's not interested and then if she's ill she wants to watch in the night guard yeah it's it does have a weird sort of lulling therapeutic quality but if you watch it too often as an adult you start to feel that you have sort of taken leave of your senses and your personality basically that's another thing for you to to look forward to. The TV does get better as the kids get older. You can, you know, by the time the kids are certainly my son's age, you can be watching things and think, well, I'm sort of enjoying this. It's not purely.

So what would you recommend as the big, the best things? You probably haven't seen Octonauts yet, or have you? Oh, yeah, I'm at Octonauts. That's good. Octonauts is decent. It's basically a bit like Paw Patrol. It's this sort of seemingly NGO-type organisation made of marine creatures. And it's not clear how they're funded or who pays them

or how they came... Like Greenpeace. Yeah, like Greenpeace. They haven't even got an equivalent of Marshall in Paw Patrol. There's no obvious boss. A guy called Barnacles is a boss, but he himself is like a sort of octopus squid type fella um so they're remarkably advanced for marine creatures and they're sort of a task force that just go out and rescue like fish that are in

trouble a bit like how paw patrol they go out and solve minor problems that's why the funding of it is surprising to me because it feels like an organization i suppose most of them will be furloughed now actually um um it's japanese but dubbed into english and obviously the japanese are pretty good so it's incredibly high concept an average episode it will be like uh you know like uh uh what those ones called that squirt the blacking a cuttlefish or something like that has been caught in a coral reef and three of them go out in the boat disentangle it explain to the viewers what coral is and why this thing squirts ink um oh wow so it's an educational experience it's a mixture of an entertainment show and just uh a kind of david attenborough situation basically yeah i've been learning from it it's

quite you know as a parent you do genuinely watch it thinking yeah i wonder what i wonder what jellyfish we're going to see bailed out today i mean in terms of the dramatic range it's still not quite an adult show like you very rarely get one of these creatures dying which would raise the stakes well i'll just say though for a live show we've because we've slagged off a few, I'd say that Funs and Games, if they're still doing their kids' show, is really funny. Oh, that's great, yeah. That's really good. That's a proper show.

I think they used to do it at Sorrow Theatre. So if you want to take your kid, they need to be a bit older, don't they? Probably about five or six. They need to be that sort of age, but not too much older than that. Otherwise, they start to get the adult jokes, which is most of it, to be fair.

It's a classic example of a kids' show that isn't really about the kids at all, which, as we all know, is the best kind. The dream, exactly. But that is a great one to go to compared to those big ones at the Wembley Arena. Oh, my God. Do you take your kids to Edinburgh Festival, Mark?

The last couple of years they have been up, yeah, and I really loved it. And that does open up a world for you away from the comedy circles that we all operate in because, like, I took the kids last year – well, the last time the Fringe – no, it is last year, isn't it? 2020 has absolutely fucked us, really. It's gone on for so long, hasn't it? But back in the – it must have been in the 60s now.

Imagine if 2021 was worse. Sorry? Imagine if 2021 was worse. It would do well, wouldn't it? What could happen? Asteroids. It could just be more

of the same though, couldn't it? I mean, they don't want to bring us down, but. No, you're right. I think if it was more of the same, that would feel worse

because a year of this is probably enough, isn't it? Well, let's get back on the high. How was Edinburgh? Back in the days, back in, I think it was 1978 when I first took the kids to the festival. It was Edinburgh? Back in the days, back in, I think it was 1978

when I first took the kids to the festival, it was a much better time. We used to do stuff like, you go to like beatboxing or like hula hooping or, you know, dinosaur related show. You go to stuff that you wouldn't have dreamed of going to before you had kids. And so you were introduced to this whole world of other stuff, some of which is shit, obviously.

But if you're lucky enough to know you know a lot of our fellow performers do kids shows themselves and some of them are great would you ever consider doing a kid's show or as an author have you would you would you do a kid's book well i've never felt like i when i watch kid shows i'm astonished that people can do it really because there's there's just so much. How do I look in the mirror? Have some respect for yourselves. Exactly. For a start,

you normally end up covered in like, you know, toilet roll or ketchup or blood. And also the, I mean, I think if you're a standup, you are quite hypersensitive to people being like fidgeting and chatting, but in a kid's crowd,

there's nothing but that. Of course. I think it must be hard to turn off the instinct. That's just like, are you talking about boy yeah if it's a five-year-old doesn't go down as well i think um so there's that background hum of noise and it the room smells of like sandwiches and crisps and uh which to be fair is still a lot better than what some fringe venues rigidly smell of but yeah i think but also i think it's a real skill every time i see it done well a kid show i feel like how did you know this was going to work how did you you can't do many previews you i've seen some masterful ones i

you know will adamsdale um yeah him and tom parry did this kafka for kids thing last year where they just adapted kafka short stories for like 10-year-olds and under. And it was brilliantly done. But I just, I don't know. I can't imagine how you start. I think it seems it's like sketch comedy, isn't it? It sounds like it's going to be easy, but it's normally shit. So I think that's what you've had your fingers burnt so many times

where when sketch comedy or kid shows are good, they are incredible. But it's either incredible or absolute nonsense. Yeah, and of course. Or makes you wary it really does and kids you know might seem like they're easily pleased but as we all know both from comedy and from life if you're failing to impress a kid there's there's no worse feeling in the world really i've been to kid shows where someone comes out and you know just like whoops my trousers have come down ha ha and the kids look blankly and you're thinking oh this will be a long 58 minutes then is that all and you can see it on the performer's faces

you can see him or go the thing is mr fox doesn't like to come out unless you make a bit more noise and then the kids half-heartedly make more noise and then there's a fart joke and it's not going well and you can see the performer thinking i imagined i'd be on telly a lot more by now as you say rob there's there's very little worse than watching a sketch show go down the toilet in edinburgh but if there is anything worse it's watching a kid's sketch show for the part especially if it's like almost the worst thing you can see in the fringes we've all been there as well shows where uh it's a sketch show and there's maybe four recurring characters and all of them haven't gone that well first time out and there's that moment where for the first time you see a character return and you think ah shit so this is it now so we're just going to watch six iterations of each

of those bad characters all right cool and that's bad if you're on your own but if you've got two kids that are and again kids quite understandably will just, they'll just whisper stuff like, is this it? Does this get better? And quite often that's audible to the performer. So yeah, I can't imagine anything worse than doing a kid show if it wasn't going well, basically. That's the worst feeling in the world. I sometimes do think about writing a kid's book

because I've read some that are excellent and again, some that are rubbish. And sometimes if you're reading a bad kid's book to your kids, you're filled with rage and you think I could do better than this. But again, when your kid likes a bad kid's book and you think I'm losing so much respect for you, this is so rough.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to be nurturing you, but you're an idiot. The plot was so telegraphed here. Of course, the witch is going to end up being a good person. I tell you what, yeah, like they're not bad books by any means but you know the the julia donaldson axel scheffer ones like the room on the broom and the gruffalo

no it's not i don't mind them but come on mate that it's just you know that repetitive rhymes that you get in every chorus like the yeah have if you read A Squash and a Squeeze. I've got A Squash and a Squeeze. That is basically one anecdote repeated over and over and over again. And it always comes down to, and he said, old lady, help me please. My home is a squash and a squeeze. Over and over again. Yeah.

The thing is, there's no denying it, Josh. You're right. They're good books. They're just very well executed in a way that delights the kids. But if you're in a particular mood, you're like. This is bollocks. But then that goes for everything, parenting, doesn't it? It's not their fault.

You don't have to have the kids. What I'm annoyed about those books are, though, sometimes, is that everything has to rhyme. Fair enough, that's what you're doing. And then the rhyme gets weak, like, oh, mice and nice, and you think, come on. And then it gets a slightly trickier one, and they completely tap out.

You're like, oh, so there's just no rhyme on this page because you couldn't think of one. But you thought, oh, send that to the printers. Yeah, that's right. Sometimes you get that with, like, not to be fair, Donaldson really knows her stuff rhyming-wise. But there are books like that where, as you say, it's like mice and nice.

But then on the second chorus, it's like, and he had a friend called Mr grice and you're thinking come on i mean yeah like you say rob it starts to feel like oh there's a deadline looming was there especially sometimes there's these ones where i think to be fair like anyone like me and you there's a uh we're performers we're writers you've sometimes you see something that's just worked really well as a conceit and you're just jealous it's pure jealousy basically like do your kids have those that's not my pony type books yeah yeah i think you might have talked about them before that's not my pony he's you know his uh hair is too nice fluffy his face is too

cute whatever those guys are knocking 20 of those out a year, and all of them are bestsellers. So, of course, I'm angry. And they started off as, that's not my pony, that's not my, like, puppy, whatever. But now there's so many of them, it'll be like, that is not my artificial intelligence assistant. It's answers to staccato.

And they'll still be selling. If you come up with something that you can write 10 of them a year like that as a kid's author, you're absolutely away. Yeah, the ones that are zero to two. And then they'll credit the author. And you're like, are you – Yeah, I mean – Illustrator's doing 95% of the work here.

Yeah, you can almost see the email where the author goes, well, here it is. There once was a dog. He lived in a bog. He once found a log. He turned into a frog. And that's me, actually. That's 50 grand advance.

And then the illustrator opens the email and goes, for Christ's sake, I can't draw a frog. Such a shame frog rhymes with everything. I think illustrators get far too little credit in these books massively a lot of kids books are absolutely beautifully done and like gorgeous pictures yeah there's some absolutely we've got some uh eye-wateringly beautiful kids books but then all the text is like he looked into a mirror then there was a gorilla. There's a building with a pillar. And yeah, I'm off to Spain now because my work is done.

Good luck drawing that for six months. Rob, you always like to end with the same question. This question now might be interesting to you, so you may want to engage with it or not. But it's normally your partner, which is currently your ex-partner, but the other parent of the children is there something that they do with their parenting that annoys you but you you're within your rights to say but it's never been a right time without kicking off that something

that they do with the kids that annoys you that you want them to stop doing i mean you know if this is going to open too many cans of worms for you in your current situation you can take it it might well do quite honestly yeah you can take a bow of silence on this one you could you could choose your you could choose your current partner i think i'm going to answer it by saying absolutely every decision they make is perfect i think that's right i think that's the best the best thing you could have said so i'm glad you asked me actually yeah mark watson it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you. It's been a nice hour off from parenting. What's your name in your book again? The book is called Contacts. It's called The Frog and the Log, isn't it? That's right. It's called Contacts. It's about a man who came up with a plan and he ate some bran and he had a tan.

If we see that you now produce those books in like two years' time, we'll know that you're doing it in a loveless way. You'll know then that I've accepted that all my other income streams have dried up and it's time to just rhyme a very long series of words and get some poor bugger to draw a goat, yeah. Well, good luck with it. I can't wait to read it to my kids angrily.

Thank you, yeah. Cheers, Mark. Cheers, Mark. Thanks a lot, guys. Good luck with everything. That was amazing. I really enjoyed talking to mark it was great wasn't it he's a love such a lovely bloke but that anecdote was amazing the panic in his eyes dropping that pram i can oh my word and see his nervous energy i was so hung over that day but um you know it's better to be me than him at that point i think his book Contact is out now in hardback.

So, you know, buy that for Christmas for the one hour you get to yourself every evening. I prefer a paperback to a hardback, you know, but they never bring out the paperback at the start. Why is that? Well, it's because they make more money selling the hardback, mate. So they sell them to the keynotes and then, you know, the likes of me and you. It's so ungainly. I'd pay the same for a paperback you can't take a hardback out of the house i've always said it it's true you can't take a hardback

on the train no it's there's no pleasure in it if you put it in a bag it'll destroy that paper wraparound bit the whole thing is an absolute saga but i would say it's worth buying mark watson's contacts in hardback which is in hardback or do what me and Robin done and pre-order it in paperback and enjoy it next summer. Well, yeah, that was a, that was a good one.

Don't it, Mark? It's interesting. We've had a lot of people asking, um, getting people that sort of, uh, separated and looking after the kids.

And we do try to as well, but it's always also difficult where some people may not want to talk about, you know, their parenting set up on a podcast. I should say if, if you are a comedian and you, you want, a comedian and you want to move up the ladder of people that we want to book next, if you could get divorced, that would be ideal.

Anyway, it was a great chat. It was a great chat. We'll speak to you on Friday. Yeah, Friday. Look forward to it. See you then. Bye. Bye.