THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.109 - DAWN O'PORTER

Episode Date: November 16, 2019

Adam talks with British television presenter turned author Dawn O'Porter about selfies, how she coped with the death of her mother when she was just 7, what she plans to do with some of her other loved ones when they die, her early days in TV, social media scrapes and writing routines.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for conversation editing. RELATED LINKSDAWN O'PORTER BOOKSHELP REFUGEES CHOOSE LOVE CHARITYELON MUSK - TESLA IN SPACECAN YOU TAXIDERMY HUMANS? (HOPES&FEARS WEBSITE)SECRET ARTISTS PODCAST (ON PODTAIL)WESTWOOD: PUNK, ICON, ACTIVSTSUCCESSION WEBSITE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. I am walking down my favourite farm track.

It's not even four in the afternoon this saturday in mid-november 2019 and already it is well gloamy and i guess in an hour or so it'll be dark wow look there's a big puffball mushroom there oh it's detached a friend of mine the other day who was visiting went for a walk and came back with one of these big old puffball mushrooms a few weeks back this was this one that i'm looking at now is all manky it looks like a kind of zombie skull but the one that my friend brought back was more pristine and firm in its riper, younger state. And he was saying, oh, look what I've got, a puffball mushroom. Do you know these are delicious if you slice them up and fry them? Now, my friend Mark is a restaurateur and a talented amateur chef. So I believe him, but I definitely didn't encourage him.

I just said, wow, that's interesting. I definitely didn't say, let's do that. I want to eat some slices of fried puffball mushroom. I'm not going to rule out the possibility that it might be amazing, but I suppose the reason I didn't leap at the opportunity was that I don't really like mushrooms to begin with. I'm quite a fussy eater. I'm trying to get better as I get older and I am trying lots of things that I would never have tried in my younger days but fried slices of puffball mushrooms is very low down on the list still. Anyway look,

very low down on the list still. Anyway, look, Rosie, my dog friend, is not, as I speak, by my side or even in visual contact because I think she is further down the track somewhere with my son, my eldest son, Frank, who is 17. I think he took her out for a walk before I left the house, so maybe we'll bump into them as I'm recording this intro. But look, let me tell you about this week's episode, 109, which features a rambly conversation with British television presenter and journalist turned author, Dawn O'Porter. Dawn facts. Dawn, currently aged 40, worked in TV for a while, presenting sort of poppy social issue based programs and documentaries for BBC Three, Channel Four and Sky in the UK,

before the publication of her first novel, Paper Aeroplanes, in 2013. That book was a fictional tale of an intense friendship between teenagers Renée and Flo, loosely inspired by Dawn's own childhood in Guernsey, and the death of her mother from breast cancer when she was quite young. The book was a critical and commercial success, and a sequel entitled Goose was published the following year, 2014. Since then, Dawn has had two more standalone novels published, The Cows in 2016, and So Lucky, published earlier this year, a funny and poignant story about the deeper truths

and intertwining lives of three superficially happy and successful women. Another Dawn fact for you, Dawn was also one of the founders of the charity Help Refugees UK, also known as Choose Love, though we didn't actually talk about that in our conversation. There's a link in the description of this podcast where you can find out and support the charity if you wish. Dawn lives in Los Angeles with her two young children and her actor husband Chris O'Dowd for whom she incorporated the O into her name when they married in 2012. But I met up with Dawn when she was in london in october of this year on various promotional duties around the publication of so lucky and we recorded the conversation in a room

a room at the london offices of a cast who are bringing you this and many other great great podcasts of course thanks to them for hosting. We kicked off with a bit of shallow chit-chat about selfie techniques and general digital vanity, and that shifted to me asking Dawn about her mother. Hey, look who's here. Hello, dog. How are you? Yeah. Look, you get a bonus walk now you've already had one you want to join me for more yes please okay good one where's Frankie oh there he is he's wearing his headphones he's listening to music and he's grinning at me cheesily because he's thinking uh oh I'm gonna be put on the spot he's backing

off because he doesn't want to improvise some great great chat for the podcast intro or do you i know okay see you when we get back see ya what are you listening to wire wire which one pink flag pink flag's a good one my boy i'm so proud come on then rose fly past fly past and puddle jump that was anyway look where was i oh yes i was asking dawn about her mother. And by the way, the conversation when we get to that part contains spoilers. I'm trying to be better about my spoilers. I'm aware that sometimes I'm very casual because I personally don't care too much about spoilers, but I'm trying to accommodate people who really do. There are spoilers in

the conversation for the film Terms of Endearment which came out in 1983 so that I would say is very very respectful. 36 years is I mean that's got to be pushing the envelope for the spoiler embargo don't you think? Our death chat was not by any means all serious, and Dawn told me about some of her thoughts for what to do with her other loved ones after they die, especially her cat and her husband. And by the way, according to New York based taxidermist Kate Inamorato, as far as I know, it is illegal to taxidermy or mount a human being in the US. While I'm sure it's possible the end result does not seem worth the trouble. Human skin discolours greatly after the preservation process and stretches a lot more than animal skin. This would mean that the maker would have to be very skilled in creating an exact body replica and painting and touching up

the skin tone this episode as well as containing adult themes juvenile themes and trivial themes also contains very strong language multiple jeremy hunts in fact so watch out back at the end for a small serving of solo waffles, but right now, here we go. Put on your conversation coat and bite your talking hat. Yes, yes, yes. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Is it my imagination or is everything about overhead lighting these days? Pinned spots in the ceilings. Yeah. And it's not flattering. It's not flattering.

And also I wear a baseball cap a lot because of the desertion of my hair. Desertion. My cowardly hair. The disappearance of my hair. My stupidertion. My cowardly hair. The disappearance of my hair. My stupid cowardly hair is deserting. How far back has it gone? It's fine.

That's alright. The thing is I don't want to you know you get criticised for everything these days I don't know if you've noticed Dawn but the other day

I was complaining about my hair to Richard Herring I think on his podcast and then I fielded a few tweets after that from angry men. Right.

Angry baldies saying, you don't have to cover up. There's no reason for it. Of course there's no reason for it. I've always been a baseball cap guy, though. Right. But the problem is with the peak, my face is always in shade with the pin spots in the ceiling. Right. So then I have to tip my head back if someone's doing a selfie or something.

Yeah. And then I look as if I'm doing some kind of looking down my nose, Noel Gallagher style. Right. Like he thinks he's cool. Yeah. Like, fuck off. I'll be mad for it, whatever. You could say, I'm just trying to find my light.

Exactly. If someone does a selfie with you and you see it and you are looking absolutely monstrously grotesque awful do you take it again do you say come on let's do it again or do you just let them go with it so i had an event last night and there was quite a queue which was i'm very happy about but when there's a queue you can't like start saying oh let's take that again because you just think of the people at the back who just want to get their book signed so there's an awful lot of photographs out there of me from last night that are really displeasing but hey don't really care that much yes you do well i don't know if i do as long as i'm not getting mature i'm not going to post them on my instagram right okay so i mean

that is the thing about the selfie generation though isn't it is it it's well you tell me is it this is like a conversation from a radio show about 15 years ago but is it more than just an exercise in managing your own vanity and just giving you a little philip a little philip yeah little i was trying to avoid using the word mental zhuzh. That's a phrase. I'm unfamiliar with Philip as a phrase. Oh, like a Philip, you know, a pick me up. Oh, okay. Well, I think there's definitely no doubt that if you're feeling low and you manage to take a nice selfie of yourself, that you won't get a thousand compliments underneath your post. So I'm sure that there are times when people, possibly including myself,

have just posted a nice photo for the sole purpose of receiving compliments. You see, I've never done that, I don't think. Like, I've never posted it. For me, it's always been a private thing. Yeah, just for you to look at. Yeah, it's just like if I wake up and I look in the wrong mirror and I just think oh Jesus Christ who's that fucking who's that guy monster man and then I think okay I'll just check because it might just be the bad mirror so I'll just check on my phone and i think that the

iphone has a sort of slight fisheye effect on it oh really maybe a very slight one so that you don't really get a true representation of what you look like it slightly thins you out okay so if you go high and scan around for the right light yeah and then you just think oh there it is turn your head a little bit get the right side there and bongo and then you look at that and you think oh no i'm okay okay and on i go with my day looking gorgeous oh no i'm not grotesque that's fine that's fine i mean it is. It's pathetic behavior that has now been entirely normalized and exists under the guise of some sort of, yeah, let's all share. It's fine. It's cool.

But selfies are fundamentally pathetic behavior. They are pathetic behavior. But, you know, a big part of human behavior has always been vanity, hasn't it? It's always been there. We've always cared enormously. And now we've got this way of self-affirming every day but most of the time it's a lie like you said find the right angle yeah I'm okay when the reality yeah isn't quite so much I used to do a thing on my live

show where people would see everything that was on my desktop oh wow gosh so they'd see the folders and everything and so it came out of a time when I was doing a show called Bug, and I plugged in my laptop, and I forgot that I had things on my desktop that I didn't want people to see. I mean, it was fine. It wasn't too embarrassing. Once I did genuinely, though, call up a browser,

and there was some softcore pornography left on it. Gosh. I mean, it was fairly tame. That's quite revealing of you, though, which is actually quite sweet. Did you just get a group? No, I think people thought it was deliberate. Right. People thought that I deliberately put it.

And then I thought, oh, yeah, of course, I can do jokes about that. So I'd have all these folders with different stupid names in them and, you know, like failed projects and lists of regrets and things I'm ashamed of, you know, for January this year and things like that. And one of them was selfies. And so I would take a new selfie for each show and there would be a flattering selfie. And then another folder there would be what I actually look like pictures, and I'd take those from a very low angle, looking down. That classic angle. Yeah.

Do you ever take those? Like you look right, like the most unflattering one you can possibly take to counterbalance the flattering ones. Well, I try not to take them. However, the other day I didn't realise that I'd kind of opened FaceTime on my computer while I was writing and I got to see my writing face and it was horrifying to realize that my my chin juts back into my neck like giving me multiple chins my eyes go squinty and cross-eyed I'm always slightly like my head is copped and I was like this I was like oh my god that just

flashed up and I didn't know that that's what I look like when I'm concentrating so that was very upsetting there's a little bit in the book in your new book where one of the mums takes a FaceTime call accidentally yes and gets that shock and I very much related to that I don't do FaceTime well you know when someone says I'll call you later and then they FaceTime you like what the hell are you doing you have to that's a plan that we should have made together that should have been something that as a collective pair is going to have this call should have been able to both agree from both sides that a FaceTime call is acceptable because it rarely is rarely is do you FaceTime with like older people ever no I try not to FaceTime ever

with anyone well see if I FaceTime with my elderly auntie, I get the top right corner of her forehead for the entire call. If I FaceTime with my dad, I get the, like, from below, up, his nose, chins, beard scenario. It's just an all-round disaster. The only people I like FaceTiming with are my kids. That's it. You know the comedian Roisin Conaty? Yes.

She loves it. Loves it. People will FaceTime her. Yeah, sure, she'll take a FaceTime call. No, no, no, no, no. No way. Absolutely not. It loves it. Loves it. People will FaceTime her. Yeah, sure, she'll take a FaceTime call. No, no, no, no, no. No way. Absolutely not. It's horrible.

Yeah, I don't mind if I've had time to apply my strong eye and I've got big hair. Then I'm like, bring it on. But no, just your kind of average cold caller on FaceTime can do one. I'm just not interested. It's terrifying. And also sometimes you do work people want to do like FaceTime calls. That's the worst. Yes.

What's wrong with an email? It'll take half the time. You get the time to compose your thoughts succinctly, say everything you need to say in one email that would take an hour. Like if you do a conference call, that's even worse. Awful. And no one knows who's talking. And the first bit where all seven people have to comment on the weather about where they are.

I can't do it. It's so boring. If I've got the option, I will always be the person that says, fuck all. I'll say it right at the beginning. It'll just say, Adam Buxton has joined the call. Yes. And then it'll be, hi. Hi.

Hi, everyone. Yeah. And that'll be it from Buckles for the rest of the conference call. When I'm in that kind of situation, I overcompensate and become... You start leading. Basically, jazz hands feel like I need to do stand-up. Just can't stop trying to be funny because I find it so awkward. And then there's always the situation because it's so awkward where someone will say, pardon, and then you kind of have to repeat the funny thing that you tried to say.

And I get to the end of those calls, I'm like, why? Why can't I be more like Adam Buxton? Why can't I just stand back, listen, let them talk, me occasionally saying yes, can't do it, can't shut up. I'm an inherent show-off. It's a challenge to shut up. Have you always been like that? Yeah, I've always been craving to be the centre of attention

in whatever room that I'm in. I would say that the older I've got, that's become less so. In the fact that I still really enjoy being the centre of attention, but I don't need to be it in every room I walk into. So Dawn, I'm going to go into Anthony Clare in the psychiatrist chair mode. Do you have therapy? I don't, and I probably should. I was just wondering if a therapist had ever offered

an opinion on why you need to be the centre of attention. I think I'm probably pretty textbook. I lost my mum when I was quite young. How old? A couple of days before I turned seven. Oh mate. Yeah pretty young. Yeah yeah. And I think before that, I was definitely, you know, she'd been ill for a long time before that. I'd say I, as a kid, was just kind of desperate to be loved and noticed. Don't think it's any coincidence that I went into trying to be in the public eye. So I think if a therapist was to listen to me, they would say, yes, you were a little girl who was terrified of being abandoned and just went out there in the world to just, you know, be loved. Pretty textbook. How long was your mother ill?

My memory kind of is different to what the reality is. So she would have had breast cancer probably when I was around three or four and had a mastectomy and was okay for a few years and then it came back and she was it was just everywhere so I'd say for that last year or two she was in and out of hospital because we grew up on Guernsey she'd have to go to Southampton for her treatment and so she would have been away quite a lot and upstairs in bed quite a lot I'm a bit blurry on the exact timeline of all of that but I'd say it was a good year or two. And how much were you aware of what was going on? It was very weird because I didn't know that she was really ill or dying but you know she was lying

upstairs in bed with a turban on and that's one of my main memories of her cultural appropriation yeah sorry she was bald and she it was weird because i don't know if this is a consequence of the chemotherapy and i need to find this out my sister and i used to lie in bed and peel off her skin because like it was sunburned yeah and it was all peeling off and we used to just love it we used to peel off and flake off her skin well yeah those were the younger people won't remember those days. But in the old days, that's what summer holidays were all about. Right, yeah. Go on summer holiday for a week or two.

You get really burned. And then you have peeling fun when you get back. Yes. But it's just so weird that she was kind of lying in bed and had obviously been going through chemotherapy. So I'm just wondering now, was that actually a consequence of the treatment? I'm not sure. But also she was a sun goddess and loved sunbathing. So it could have been that as well. So it was a weird childhood because at that point, I've never lived with my dad. I love my dad dearly. He lives up in Scotland. They got divorced when I

was around one when my mum left and moved down to Guernsey with my sister and I to where the rest of her family was. So at the time that she died, we all lived with my grandparents and I to where the rest of her family was so at the time that she died we all lived with my grandparents so it was odd because while my mother was very ill we kind of had my grandparents who were very attentive we kind of had all the attention that we needed we were it was kind of overcompensated in a weird kind of way and then after she died we carried on living with my grandparents until I was about 10 before we moved in with our aunt and uncle I mean it's just it's all weird isn't it aunt and uncle. I mean, it's just, it's all weird, isn't it? Back then, I've got two kids now. It's just like two little girls going through all that.

It's so bizarre. I mean, that was my worst nightmare at that sort of age. If there had been a film about your life, it would have been on a rainy Sunday afternoon and I would not have watched it. Because the idea was too depressing of a child losing their parents in that way. Yeah. I mean, it's so sad. But were you sad all the time? No.

I think I was a really happy kid. I think it played out in... I mean, I was full of... I was... God, was I sad? My sister was two years older than me and it definitely hit her very differently because she just had that two years of maturity,

everything, you would feel everything a lot more. But I remember my overriding feeling was, just got to make everyone laugh, got to make everyone happy. All the adults are so sad, can't mention it. Walk in the room, do something funny, just do that. I remember feeling like that, just thinking like, no, no, no, no, can't go there, can't go there, can't go there. And I know six and seven-year-olds now,

and they're incredibly emotionally intelligent. So I look at them and I think, I knew exactly what was going on. I must have known exactly what was going on. But I just kind of banked it. I didn't let it go deep whilst watching my sister who would be, you know, quite openly show her devastation and cry a lot. And I'd say that I was like hugely in denial as a seven-year-old.

Which is very weird. But I think that was kind of maybe what my family kind of did a bit I mean not everyone can be touchy-feely in those moments you know what I mean sure it's great to talk about your feelings and you know for my parents generation it wasn't necessarily helpful the prevailing wisdom at that time was that actually it does more harm than good to constantly rake over your feelings maybe i still have a bit of a hangover of that idea from my dad you know i mean i'm very happy to talk about anything yeah i do think it's helpful and on the whole i'm with the modern way of looking at things but there are times when i think actually you don't need to talk about absolutely everything

all the time all the time and that's a hard one especially when you're in that situation did you ever see terms of endearment no i haven't have you not no i don't know maybe you shouldn't see it you know what it's about no oh well it's about lots of things but one of the characters is played by deborah winger and she has an affair. She's got a slightly boring husband who I think is called Flap, which is a strange name for a man. Yeah. I mean, maybe better for a man than a woman. I don't know. But he's called Flap and she gets cancer. Spoiler alert. Do you mind a spoiler? No, I'm all here for it that's fine all right okay she dies okay it's very heartbreaking and she has these children that she loves and they're

just little but the scene i haven't seen it for a long time so i may be getting bits of this wrong but i was struck when i saw it must have been about 20 years ago I saw it, something longer. That the final scene, her children aren't with her. She kind of shoos them out of the room. And I always thought, God, that's a bit harsh. Well, how old are the kids? I mean, they're little, like seven and 14. It's such a weird thing. I don't know what the answer is there.

Like, we didn't go to the funeral. That was kind of family kind of decided that that was going to be the thing and i actually it's always been a question in my head was that the right decision or not and even though there's a part of me as a grown-up you know with a mature attitude to death and someone who isn't upset about my mum dying anymore i kind of think i'm just intrigued but i think i'm kind of glad i wasn't there. And I think you can, when something that traumatic is having to a kid, you can spare them some of the heavy parts.

It's heavy enough. And you can spare them some of the visuals and those memories that would just be locked in forever. You know, it's each family to their own and what you do in that situation. But you can't ask a seven-year-old, do you want to go to your mum's funeral or not? Do you want to watch your mum die or not? I've heard described to be the moment that she passed when she was sitting there with, you know, her family. I think that's enough for me.

I don't know if I needed to be there as a seven-year-old. The funeral. Oh, it's weird. It's just, oh, God. I mean, and also you're asking grown-ups who are devastated to make decisions in a time when their heads are completely up their arses. Like it's so deeply complex. What would you do if you were in that situation? I don't know.

I mean, obviously, I think, you know, people ask me all the time, how does the fact that your mum died affect your mothering? And the honest truth is I rarely think about it. My auntie stepped in as my mum when I was 10. I'm very close to my sister. Like I feel like I have endless female support. She died so young that I don't, I'm sad she's gone. I'm sad I don't have that, but I don't miss her. But what it has done to me is it's given me a heightened feeling of the fact that I could die on my children. And sometimes,

you know, when I've got the fear from hangover, which is most of the time, I kind of look at my kids and I'm going, God, I hope I never do this to you. I hope that never happens. And I go through the whole scenario in my head and just play it out. And I think I'd make them a video. You know, as soon as I found out that I was ill, I would start filming so that they had this video as reference for the whole life.

But then would that be weird? And then you think, what would the last thing that I want to say to them be? Would I write them letters? You don't know. You can't plan. It's something you can never say to you what I would do if I was dying.

I mean, it's like none of us know anything. You know, at the moment, I'm going through this situation with my Siamese cat, Lilu, where she's 16 and I've had her my entire adult life. I think when she's died, I'm going to get her stuffed because I can't live without her. I don't know how I'm going to feel. There might be when she's died and I'm presented with her dead body, I might think, I can't do that. That's too twisted and dark.

You just don't know. I think you can't plan for death and how you will react and what you will say and how you will be because you could think, right, I'm going to write these beautiful words and I'm going to say to my kid when I'm on my deathbed, if that moment arises, truth is, I'll probably be in floods of tears and not be able to get a word out. You've just got to... You'll just be wasted on morphineine i'll just be wasted on morphine and margaritas hopefully

my dad was out of it on yeah all sorts of things that's the thing is i think you it's often i think not always but much less sort of dramatic yes it's just sort of they zone out either because of the pills or just that's your body is just in the process of shutting down if it's old age so you're often not dealing with someone who's either completely lucid or particularly articulate yeah they're not sort of saying ah now yes i have a speech yes exactly i want to say some pretty profound shit that you're going to remember for the rest of your life. But losing someone as an adult and losing someone as a kid is so entirely different. And I had this odd situation when I was a teenager

and in my 20s when if any of my friends' mums died, they would call me as if I knew what they were going through. And I'd be like, I have no idea what you're going through. Like, my frustration is that I barely knew her. That wasn't fair. But I didn't understand, like, the later in life that you lose a parent. Jesus, when this person has been a part of your whole life, like, that to me is just, I mean, I've got that all to come with other members of my family.

You know, it's like that is, I don't know how that feels. That is devastating. I kind of feel, oh, God, it's such a weird thing to say. But, like, maybe I was kind of lucky in a weird kind of way that I didn't have to experience that kind of devastation. I know what you mean. You know? Do you genuinely think you might stuff the cat?

Here's the thing. She's Siamese, so she's quite beautiful yeah and my relationship with her is very intense a very intense relationship with this animal like i said i've had her for 16 years she has been my entire adult life i've traveled the world with her take her home for christmas she's literally been in a bag by my side wherever i've gone i had to find a man who was willing to accept the cat because she's quite overwhelming and I honestly cannot imagine my life without her despite the fact that she pisses on my pillows so I also have a dog called Potato who is the most delicious person imaginable I couldn't stuff Potato because his doughy little eyes would just devastate me.

There's something about Leeloo and her self-righteousness and the way that she kind of judges us all where I think she should be in her most upright pose sitting by the fireplace for the rest of my life. Yes, in a regal, haughty posture. Yes. And I think because of her hard personality, being hard would suit her I refer to potato as my memory foam dog because he just flops into whatever position you're in his body just somehow just like you know fits your body he couldn't be hard but I think Lulu could work and I think as long as I

get some weight put in her and ideally get her made to the same weight that she was when she was alive, I think we could all have a sense of humour about that. And that we could potentially not be devastated by it every time we walked into the living room. Chris is on board. And I think it's what I want to do. As long as she dies in a pleasant way. Obviously, if it's roadkill, then we're not going to be so interested. Some people stuff people.

Pardon? I mean, there are taxidermied people, aren't there? You can do it, right? Can you really? Sure, why not? Why could you taxidermy an animal and not a person? I mean, it's a funny subject. Chris has determined that when he dies, he wants to be shot into space.

But he really feels like it's going to dies he wants to be shot into space so but as he really feels like it's going to be his actual full form shot into space so for his 40th birthday I did quite a lot of research into this I thought my gift to him would be like you know I would pay part of the price and get some sort of promise from NASA that we were going to do this thing so I found this company that I well I realized that actually it's not possible what you can do is you can have some of your ashes shot into space in an aluminium capsule okay and um so I was talking to this company's associated with NASA who do this I had like I work in this co-working space I had this hilarious conversation where I'm on the phone to this quite old woman and um

I was saying right so is it possible to get the aluminium capsule that I could get engraved to give to my husband as a gift? And she was like, yes. And when's the funeral? I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's not dead. I want to give it to him as 40th birthday as a promise that I'll shoot some of him. Yes. But so when when is it? And she couldn't. And I was having to say quite out loud by this point, like six people who work in the office with me are all in hysterics. And I was like, no, he's not dead. I want to give it to him as a gift for his 40th birthday as the promise that I'll shoot him into space when he dies this woman was just like I don't know and that was when I was like let's switch to email I need to explain this to you properly realising that it was just so

complex to do this aborted that idea and then afterwards when I actually gave Chris his real present at his party I kind of thought that joke could have just died, couldn't it? If I just hand him this aluminium capsule saying, I'm going to shoot you into space when you die. But he's quite disappointed. I don't think that joke could have died. I mean, it's quite. When I told his mum, she was just like, no, I just don't get it. I just don't.

I just don't get it. And I was like, OK, OK, I'm going to I'm just going to let this idea go. get it and I was like okay okay I'm gonna I'm just gonna let this idea go anyway um he's very disappointed that he can't be fully shot out there so that his weird dead body just floats around space forever I mean it's a good idea yes well Elon Musk shot a car into space there's a car floating around that Elon Musk put up there and there's a dummy at the wheel and there was a theory going round that it was actually David Bowie's body stop this and that the car stereo

I think I'm right the car stereo is playing space oddity all the time even though in space you can't hear it because there's no atmosphere and so people were imagining that somehow bowie had got in touch with elon musk and said stick us in the car and shoot us out into space would you and musk being a fan had said yeah sure i'll sort it out that is fantastic i don't think that's true but let's all just but the car is true the car is floating

around and there is a dummy about that wheel. Here's what worries me about that. So when I was researching shooting my husband into space, the thing about the capsules is that it gets sucked back in by the Earth's atmosphere. And something that small, I think, gets burnt up as it's coming back in. But what if that car

gets sucked back in? Or if we did start shooting bodies into space and dead bodies just started landing in your garden. I think they burn up. Do you think? Yeah, they're not going to get through the atmosphere. That's equally as horrific, really, isn't it? No, a little shooting star.

Maybe. A little meteorite. I think that was Chris. Oh, Chris's balls. Oh, Chris's balls. There he goes. We're halfway through the podcast. I think it's going really great. The conversation's flowing like

it would between a geezer and his mate. Alright, mate. Hello, geezer. I'm pleased to see you. There's so much chemistry. It's like a science lab of talking. I'm interested in what you said. Thank you. There's fun chat and there's deep chat. It's like Chris Evans

is meeting Stephenhen hawking now look i read your wikipedia page excellent it's all true do you maintain it i don't you've done a lot of stuff i have yes you're driven i do like to drive yeah i am driven yes you'd like to be driven um you went to liverpool institute for the performing arts i did that's the school that maca set up it is yes he gave me my degree and um yes i remember um having never really thought he was particularly attractive meeting him in person i was overwhelmed by his hotness yeah if i remember rightly he was wearing a white suit with kind of jesus sandals and he gave us all our degrees and i thought that was pretty damn cool i was like you can pummel your money into something like that but to actually show up and do that every year is amazing yeah it's brilliant

yeah that was an amazing school i mean i went there to do acting quickly realized i didn't want to be an actress so that was a bit disappointing. But I made friends for life. Called ourselves the Sofa Gang. Popped loads of pills. Just gurned on a sofa for three years. What kind of pills? Headache pills? Yes, lots of headache pills.

And I just look back. Actually, I think most people look back on the university or college years as a party. Yeah. And very rarely is that degree that you're getting at all relevant to the rest of your life. I just had such a good time there. But yeah, in my third year, I really don't want to be an actress. Thank God, because I always think if being married to an actor, if I was an actress too, it would be so hard. Yes, competitive tension.

Not only competitive, but just the demands of the job and how much it takes you away. I used to do TV and do those kind of 12-hour filming days, and luckily I've kind of settled where I just write full-time, which it's so great for our family, because Chris does acting, and if he needs to move around, as long as I've got my laptop, I can be anywhere. And I sometimes think, God, if I was pursuing that on-screen job still with two young kids, it would just be so difficult.

No wonder people break up when that's what you're dealing with. It's really hard. So, yeah, in my third year, I was like, I don't want to do this, I want to do TV presenting. So instead of doing a final play, I said, can I make a TV show? And so a friend and I made a TV show, and then I knew that was what I wanted to do. What was the TV show you made then?

So the TV show we made at school was called A Matter of Taste, and it was kind of a studio base we had a huge red mouth that was a sofa i think and it was just that's a good idea what the tongue is the sofa i think so i woke up the great thing about that drama school is that you had that there was a whole design so all the designers who could do a set you had like sound engineers who could do it and lighting people and so the lighting was actually pretty dark but my friend ed and i like wrote and hosted this half an hour long tv show and it was just really fun was it sort of meta or was it a genuine attempt at doing a sort of magazine show it was a genuine attempt at doing a magazine show and we did things like i can't remember what us who are

celebrity interview was god that's terrible it would would have been some local Merseyside celebrity that we had. And then I did a feature where we interviewed a woman who was plushy and was in love with fluffy toys. That was quite fun. And we all just did it. We did like, it was at the time when, what was the Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston show? The Ozone.

Oh, no, no. The Priory. The Priory. So that was kind of, it was that kind of vibe. And it was just so fun and it felt really different. And I think. So that was kind of, it was that kind of vibe. And it was just so fun. And it felt really different. And I think, you know, with acting, I think my problem with acting, and I remember doing this, I remember saying when I was in one of the plays, I just remember thinking, I just want to rewrite this line because it's not very good. Didn't like being told what to say.

And then suddenly we made this TV show where I was like writing it and doing it. I was like, this is it. This is what I want to do. And suddenly felt very excited again and felt I wish I'd realized that in the first year because I felt I spent the first two years of drama school just being like, I just don't care. I just don't want to do it. I just don't want to act, which is so weird because I'd spent my entire teenage years thinking that was what I wanted to do.

The weird thing about it, I wanted to show off, wanted to do the weird thing about it like wanted to show off wanted to do these things but I just felt really unconfident acting felt really shy and like I was really like just didn't know and as soon as I thought right I'm gonna do me then I really worked it out so it's great and then I moved down to London after that and was like a runner for Princess Productions and booked audiences for the ruby wax daytime tv show and did all these kind of fun behind the scenes tv jobs wow yeah i like the idea of someone like lawrence olivier or meryl streep having an epiphany at drama school and going actually the thing i would most like to do is work in daytime I mean, that's when you know you're not cut out for it.

I'm going to go and book audiences for Ruby Wax instead. But yeah. And you worked on Fadil and Skinner on Plan. That was my first job. So another thing, when you're at drama school, you're in your third year. A Matter of Taste was like my first project. And then in the second half of the year,

you've got to do big play and like present yourself. And I said, I just really don't want to do it. So instead instead can I go down to London and do a work placement at a TV production company instead and they kind of said yes because I think by this point they were just like just get the fuck out of here you're moaning and unhappy all the time and they agreed to mark me on it which was really great of them and so I can't remember what my contact was, but I managed to get work experience on Badil and Skinner Unplanned in the Avalon office. And I was so taken by, I love Frank Skinner, absolutely adore him. And David Badil. And David Badil as well.

But at the time I was like, you know, very excited to work with Frank. Now I just think they're both awesome, obviously. But it was so exciting. I was brought up on Guernsey. Then I went to Liverpool. Like this kind of London TV production vibe was like, this is where I'm supposed to be. This is so brilliant. I couldn't get enough of it.

And as I hoped, that kind of led on to other TV jobs and kind of moved down to London after I graduated. And weirdly, I had to do it as part of my course, the showcase at the end of your drama school. You had to do like three monologues on stage at the criterion theater is it the criterion in the west end and loads of agents come and i got some agent attention and kind of went and had those meetings and that was the moment where i realized no i really don't want to do this and it was really great leaving drama school with no doubt like it never went for an audition never did and didn't want to do it done end of conversation so you didn't say i'm dawn porter and i'm uh going to perform piece to camera about local fun run no no no i didn't do it i and i still find that so weird because like i said it was all i ever wanted to do and then it just kind of i kept getting good like

wasn't long before i wasn't doing worse but it's got paid to be a runner then started booking audiences for ruby and then one of the producers that I worked with said that he had a spot on this show called Balls of Steel where they needed someone who was willing to do terrible things on camera and oh were you on camera yes and that was my first like foray into being on tv and I did this terrible sketch which was I don't know if I'd be allowed to do it now. So remind people what Balls of Steel was. Balls of Steel was a prank show. And there was a kind of cast of us where we all had different characters. It was the show.

The thing that made it famous was when, do you remember when Tom Cruise was on red carpet and got squirted in the face? And it was just this microphone squirted water. And it just felt flat. And it was just like, you're a jerk, you're a jerk. And it was a terrible thing to do to someone when they're at their movie premiere. But that kind of got the show in the headlines. But this is the thing.

It's like the way to be a top flight prankster is to be a fucking cunt. Yes, an absolute cunt. It's really horrible. There was one of the pranks in Balls of Steel where this guy would jump out from behind a wall and just jump on a person's back and ride them like a buckaroo. the physical damage you could actually do to somebody

the whole thing was just absolutely horrendous it's just being mean yeah that whole tom cruise thing when that happened we were all like oh i feel so full of shame like doing this show uh-huh tom cruise i mean in a way it's got an edge to it now because people who are suspicious of his activities with the Scientologists might think, oh, well, fuck him. Whatever. But everyone I know who knows him, which is one person. Think he's amazing. Think he's really nice.

Yeah, I just hear the loveliest things about him all the time. I really hope, I would like to believe he's nice. I really hope, Tom, if you're listening, I hope you haven't intimidated people for the Church of Scientology and disregarded naughty behaviour for the glorification of

L. Ron Hubbard. Anyway. I hope that message gets to him loud and clear, Adam. You never know. Wow, that's funny that you did all that stuff, though. I know, also terrible, but yes, funny. No, look, we all did terrible stuff. Yeah.

Well, maybe not all of us, but I certainly did a lot of stuff that I am not best pleased with. But how do you deal with all that? I mean, you get into the odd scrape, right, on social media? Yes, I do, occasionally. It's not too bad. I kind of, I generally, unless it's a cause I really believe in, I don't try to get into arguments, really.

No. I got, you know, you get a bit of shit for totally believing that Michael Jackson is a massive paedophile, and then you get his supporters having a go, yeah, I just don't care, that's not an argument I'm going to get into. And there's stuff like, oh, you know, when I talk about motherhood, and this is something that's really fair, and this is when you kind of, your instant reaction is is to argue and actually then you've got to take a step

back and understand what this person is saying so I wrote an article for the Sunday Times last week about raising toddlers and how it's really hard work and you know when a toddler has a meltdown and you're just trying to get through a day it's it's exhausting and anyone who's a parent knows that so I write this article and then you get a few kind of comments underneath from people who would say things like oh yeah poor you living in hollywood with your movie star husband you can afford child care whenever you want and blah blah try throwing two you know hard jobs into the mix oh i think i wrote that and my kids being in an overcrowded school my instant reaction was like oh for god's sake and then i just stepped back and

was like no you're right that's bullshit and I'm really sorry that you're experiencing that and it must be really frustrating when someone like me moans about parenthood I totally totally get it and sometimes you have to just think about where that thing is coming from and very often when someone's having a go at you for something that you've said, it is their feeling, their opinion, their situation. It's of somebody who just comes out as pure rage. So I've tried to just, you know, I wrote a reply and deleted it immediately. Because if I write that to her, she's going to get loads of shit from my followers because that's what always happens. And she's obviously having a really hard time.

And so I'm sorry that, you know, it's annoying that this article that was supposed to be kind of entertaining in a way has upset somebody. And I got a few of those comments. But then you get other times. God, I had a situation a few months ago where someone just wrote to me on Instagram. And I'm kind of just up at night and can't sleep. And someone wrote to me something like, you're a bore and your husband's ugly. This was at the Oscars. I saw that. Oh, yeah. And I just replied,, you're a bore and your husband's ugly. Oh, this was at the Oscars. I saw that.

Oh, yeah. And I just replied, and you're a cunt. Don't write to me and be like, say my husband's ugly and I'm boring. Anyway, I had no idea. And I honestly, genuinely, because this has never happened before, thought that anyone from the Daily Mail looked through the comments on my Instagram feed. And they printed it the next day that I had this comeback. I think your Instagram feed is linked to their front page. maybe anyway i was i've got to be honest i wasn't that well that wasn't something that made me feel good that that person got that i'd called her a cunt in the daily mail

and that she got loads of shit for i thought it was quite funny to respond and i was just like she was really blatantly rude yeah anyway i was kind of the next day like oh god i mean that's just really not very nice her comment underneath so you were at the oscars and you were there before the ceremony started and you were running around taking funny selfies and stuff drunkenly as the uh this is from a website called evoke that's irish i think okay so they describe you as running around tweeting drunkenly. Sounds classy. And the comment was, honestly, your husband is gross and you're a bore. That's right. To which you replied in all caps, you're a cunt.

Then the person came back and said, it's not okay to say that. What I said was just my opinion. And if you want to be in the public eye, learn to take it or get reported. That's bullshit. That is bullshit, I think. Like, I didn't want her to get loads of shit and to have her name in the Daily Mail or whatever. But fuck you for saying that. Because it doesn't matter about that.

You don't write to someone and say, your husband's gross and you're a bore. You are being an outright cunt. There's no conversation to have about that you're being mean yeah it's that thing of people saying well no if you choose to be in the public eye then fuck you you've lost all your rights as a human being that's a terrible way to think about now especially because everyone's in the public eye like everyone's got thousands of followers on instagram or twitter and you never heard of them like everyone could do so if we all put ourselves in the position to be like kind of abused in that way it's i i just i've got no time for that i but i tried to be like i said before i tried to be sympathetic towards like opinions on actual matters yeah upset and where people are coming

from you don't call everyone a no she can go fuck herself i mean i get that i put that on instagram so i am inviting opinion yeah it's your fault but um but the way that people care so much about what other people do where people are just so fucking angry about what other people are doing i don't know what that is do you feel like that about anything? Well, it's, I mean, I would guess that it's a feeling of powerlessness. If you see people parading their lives and flaunting their good fortune online or living in a way that you find troubling somehow or challenging somehow, or challenging somehow, then a natural instinct, not the only one, but a natural instinct is just to lash out and just to go, no, don't do that, what are you doing?

And to express that in a variety of ways. But that's what social media encourages. It does. It's just those instincts to come out in one form or another. Yeah. And then they're there forever. I know. So hateful. It is. don't you get off it um well actually it's saying all of that mine is generally really nice and friendly

yeah i generally have a really fun time on instagram yeah i'm oversensitive why if i be moving so slow it's taking ages for pages to load. It was like this when the engineer came. He said it was fixed but now it's the same. I'm taking a photo with my tea to put on my Instagram. Some people like to see the tea of another man. People be tripping on tea. Pick it.

Yo, she brewing a nice picket. But I can't upload. Because my Wi-Fi's too slow. Come on. Come on. Have you seen the documentary about Vivienne Westwood? No, I haven't, no. Punk icon activist.

No, been really looking forward to seeing that. I'm going to use the phrase hard recommend. Okay, great. I would hard recommend Vivienne Westwood, punk icon activist, directed by Lorna Tucker, herself an ex-model. And it came out last year, year 2018 but it was on TV the other day holy shit

it's one did you see the the Bross documentary oh yes I did it was a dream yeah it was very

oh god I can't I just it was all so so fantastic it was a very happy time and also with that Bross documentary

you didn't feel unclean afterwards because it had a happy ending. Yes. They were on board. You got the feeling that they didn't disown the whole thing. It gave their career a boost, as far as I'm aware. So it was victimless joy. Yeah, I think it's the fact that they kind of came together at the end and you saw some sense of hope for them was what pulled it all together. I wonder if we didn't

get that, it would have been quite complicated to be left with it. No, I mean, as I was watching it, I was uncomfortable. I was thinking, are they in on this or what's going on here? I mean, no one was feeding him those lines. No. It was absolutely magical. It was great. Well,

this one, I would say, maybe it caught me at the right moment. We'd had a couple of glasses of wine, me and my wife, when we were watching it. But, oh. Okay. Some pretty good stuff in there. However, she has disowned it. And she's not happy with it at all. But she wasn't happy with it going in.

Right. This is the dame of British fashion, twice crowned like fashion oscar yeah yeah at the awards right i don't know what i'm talking about sounds perfect you might not like her stuff but you can't argue with the fact that she is a legendary and pivotal figure in british fashion god yeah absolutely and she is good value holy shit so right at the beginning of this documentary she sat there sort of going oh god I don't want to talk about all that old stuff anymore it's so boring

oh the sex pistol no I'm not going to talk about it it's no no I'm not look the only way this is going to work is if you just leave me and I'll just talk about things and maybe some of them will be useful

but I'm not going to just talk about all that stuff. It's too boring. So already you're off and running. It's great. The whole thing is really well put together. Okay, I can't wait. I needed something to watch. And she's got a her third husband I think is this guy called Andreas

Krontala. Artistic director and collaborator. Oh, he's so passionate about things. He's so passionate, you just have to do what he says. She says at one point. But the people around her, like the Alexander McQueen documentary was similarly enjoyable for some of the characters that inhabited that world. Exactly.

And this guy, Andreas Krontala. And, you know, like sometimes one of the kind of four or five voices that I do when I'm reading out YouTube comments, it'll be kind of like this. And it's a fashion voice, like this guy that I know. He does fashion, photography and stuff. But I now know that there's a lot of people who just talk like that. And this guy Andreas, he's married to

Vivian Westwood he's like this and there's a great scene where he's like Vivian Westwood's got into campaigning about the environment so she's spending a lot of time doing that and less time concentrating on her label and so Andreas, her husband and collaborator

has to pick up the slack, he's very stressed out and so andreas her husband and collaborator has to pick up the slack he's very stressed out and so he's talking to his assistant who is called excellently pepe lorifice oh come on yeah l-o-r-e-f-i-c-e that's fantastic pepe lorifice and poor old pepe is getting shouted at because evidently there's been some show, there's been some models, and they didn't have socks. And Andrea Cisca, everything I ask you is not done.

They have no socks on. They've got no socks on. I don't know why people don't go downstairs and get some socks from the shop. They're downstairs. One flight or stairs down, there are the socks. Why don't you go down, get the socks? And at one point, Pepe, who, you know, they're being filmed.

They're happy being filmed having this little set too. Pepe scratches his face. He's a little sort of awkward. And Andreas gets right in his face and makes this, like, aggressive gesture of, like, scratching his face. Oh, God. Scratching his face. And he goes, why don't you go downstairs and get the socks?

It's just thick. Useless. I've written down exactly what he said. You just need to go downstairs in the shop and get the socks. I'll do it myself next time. Sounds fantastic. He's amazing. Like, you could do a whole documentary on just Andreas. But I really

strongly... Okay, that's going to be the first of your recommends. Yeah. It's good, man. It's really nicely done. I love a good documentary. Have you got a favourite doc that springs to mind? Oh, that's a nice question. What one were we just talking about? I mean, I loved the Nina Simone.

Oh, the Bross one. Oh, the Bross documentary was my favourite one that's happened in the last six months. I thought that was so good because I just love it when, oh, you just go on such a journey, you know? It was just so perfect. I loved the Nina Simone documentary. Yes.

What Happened, Miss Simone, is it called? Yeah. What Happened, Miss Simone, is it called? Or what's the book? What Happened Miss Simone, yeah. Yeah, I love that. What an insight into a life that was. I thought that was beautifully, beautifully done. Obviously, when there's a documentary that also involves great music,

that's always wonderful. But I tell you what I've been watching a lot lately, a series of documentaries that CNN did about the different decades. Oh, yeah. They're fab. I love them. Are they on Sky Atlantic or something? I don't know what they're on here.

Obviously, I live in America. Oh, you're in America. So I've been watching all of those for the second time. Love, love, love the vintage decades. Everything up to the 60s, 70s, and 80s specifically. Can't get enough. Everything about them. So I think that's a really lovely documentary

war and racism love war and love racism it's just such an interesting time you just realize you know how much of it has shaped us culturally yeah we're still referring back to all of it and i just find it all really interesting particularly the 80s which i'm really enjoying reading about i'm writing a musical that's set in the 80s are you really yes i'm writing a musical using the stockhaken and waterman back catalogue um which is hands down the best thing in the world that i've ever done and so um it's set in the 80s so i've been going back there a lot recently you know i enjoy reading about the people power and how people took to the streets and made change in the 80s and just looking at what's happening now and how we're still like realizing that that's a really effective way to make change and looking at where women were

at in the 80s in the workplace thinking that they were the ones who had cracked equality and if they knew like well they do because most of them are still alive but to see that we're still fighting that battle now is just extraordinary and so many of the same arguments happening still it's just interesting to look back on a time where they thought that it was happening in many ways. I think that's the thing about the 80s is that we thought, I should say we, I was just a teenager, but there was a sense that like all the big problems had been solved. Yes. And now it was like, what are we going to do with our freedom and our money? And it's going to be great. I know. I mean, on the one hand hand the big problems have been solved on the other hand there was a good chance we were going to get annihilated by nuclear i know so it was a very odd time it was such an odd decade it must i mean i i was the same i was

you know i was literally in my bedroom listening to stockhaken and waterman with a you know mother dying upstairs yeah just having this kind of for me it was an incredibly confusing bizarre decade but then I wasn't aware of the rest of the world living on Guernsey I kind of heard about Margaret Thatcher I didn't know anything about politics didn't know any of it it's quite blissful in a weird kind of way when thinking about the rest of the world so looking back on it it's just like god that was all going on how was the wi-fi on Guernsey oh back, back then, not so much. Probably slow. Yeah. So in the time we have left, I want you to tell me why writing is the best job in the world,

not what I believe is the truth, that it's the shittest job in the world and it's fucking torture. And instead, you are just churning out books left, right and centre. I want to know your writing routines and your secrets and your tips right I'm just going to go about it so it is the worst job

in the world and sometimes I'm like why have I committed myself to a lifetime of homework it feels like homework used to feel at school however I'm complete control

of my time which is what I love about it and since having children it's made me really focused and I do a solid nine to five Monday to Friday drop the kids off get to my desk about quarter past nine don't look up headphones in And since having children, it's made me really focused. And I do a solid nine to five Monday to Friday.

Drop the kids off, get to my desk about quarter past nine. Don't look up, headphones in, listen to sounds of the ocean really loudly to block out everybody else. And just write like a motherfucker until about quarter to five. When if it's my day to pick up the kids, I go and pick them up. And because I'm so focused in that time now, I kind of get the job done. It took me three months to write So Lucky. It used to be like a year of just always at the computer, but generally on Twitter. Three months?

Yeah. And is that long or short? I'd get three paragraphs done in that time. So yeah, but it's my, now I kind of don't do TV anymore and I've like cleared the way and it's all I do. I can be a lot more productive, which I think is key. Trying to write when you've got other shit going on is hard. Yeah.

And it's taken me to my second kid to get my head in gear of like, right, I'm a mum now and I've got other shit going on is hard yeah and it's taken me to my second kid to get my head in gear of like right i'm a mum now and i've got to get this done and the first you know when i had my first kid and i wrote the cows it was a mess i just didn't know what i was doing it was just all over the place and now since i had valentine i'm like i do my nine to five and how old are your children now two and four oh mate i know it's so much work it's so much work we always say you know that thing you finish a day's work and then you go home and do the second shift. It's just a round-the-clock job. But I love it.

And I'm married to a man who's incredibly hands-on. And when we're home, he's... I don't believe that. I promise you. And it's a wonderful thing. And I don't think I could do it without it. And just, you know, some strong Irish stock. His mother and his sisters wouldn't allow him to be any other way so that makes it easier obviously having that shared load and yeah I just get the

job done and it's taken me I'm 40 now and I've written books since I was 25 and it's taken me all that time to get this discipline and also I you know Mike the cows did really well and I want to maintain that I really enjoy that feeling of that all that work I put in gets received well and that is great motivation to kind of keep working to that standard and I think when I sit down and I've got a blank page in front of me I think how can I make this page the most riveting funny or whatever it is that I can do so that this person wants to turn on to the next page and I think, how can I make this page the most riveting, funny, or whatever it is that I can do so that this person wants to turn onto the next page? And I think about my readers on every single page. And that's exciting.

And I don't necessarily plot the whole novel because for me, that's not how I live my life. And I find that if I've locked myself into a format or a plot, I'm bored from the second I sit down. So a lot of the time, by the end of the day, I didn't know that was going to happen. And that's how I keep myself excited. And what about just basic things like dealing with distractions and answering emails and having to just do something that isn't part of the routine?

That's really hard. And my addiction to social media is definitely a problem and something that I have to just constantly battle with. Write a sentence, check Twitter. Write two sentences, check Instagram. That's my biggest battle. And it's real and I have no answer for it. And one day, I got interviewed by Chris Evans the other day and he got rid of his mobile phone completely and email.

And I don't know if I'd ever go that far, but I think there's something in the value. And I've done this before when I wrote a book called Goose. I had an assistant at the time, and I got her to lock me out of Twitter and Instagram for five weeks and got the book written in five weeks. No way. And so I think in future if I'm up against it,

then that's the thing. You've got to give your password to someone else and have them lock me out because I can't be trusted otherwise. But I also love Instagram and Twitter because I know currently on a book tour, because that kind of, you know, immediate relationship that I have with my readers is how I think my book will hopefully be a success. It's invaluable when you're promoting your work. So I'm kind of addicted to it with that knowledge at the, you know the base of it i'm so grateful that it exists i've been in a cave for three months listening to sounds of the ocean how did you figure out

sounds of the ocean was the thing because my kids sleep to it every night i gave birth to valentine well as art was asleep in the next room with sounds of the ocean turned up and he didn't even wake up i was like this shit cuts out noise so you were at home birth? Yes, for Val, yeah. And I tried it one day at work, and it just cuts out the room. And I work with people who really respect that and don't try and talk to me all day. And so that's it. I'm in my cave, by the ocean, just writing. The sounds of the ocean. Yeah, it's great.

I'm going to try that. Do. It definitely works. Do you sleep with noise on in your room? No, but I wear earplugs, a silk sleep hat and an eye mask and I go into a cave when I sleep as well. Poor Chris. He's like, ah, yeah. So you put your hat on again. Sorry, I need all this equipment. To block you out of my life. There was a while ago I went to the dentist and they told me and I didn't know that I grind my teeth in my sleep I was absolutely devastated because I was just having such bad pain and so I was like well what's the

solution and she said you need a mouth guard and I was like I cannot add more apparatus to my sleep my husband will leave me so now I just grind my teeth in my sleep and it's just something else Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop and I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop these are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace.

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So that was Dawn O'Porter I was talking to there. Very nice to chat with her. Links to her books and her charity, Help Refugees slash Choose Love, in the description of this podcast. Now, after I have recorded this outro, I'll go back, edit it, put up the podcast,

and then this evening I think we're going to carry on watching Succession. Yeah, I know. Late to the party. But it was one of those things, in my mind, it's the fleabag factor. Just a weight, an overwhelming weight of hype and expectation that comes with reams of rave reviews and awards and your friends telling you, oh, it's so good good you've got to watch it i just think hmm maybe i won't watch it then sounds as if you've got it covered and uh i you know but it just got ridiculous after a while there were so many people saying how good it was so we sat down gave it a go. This is a few months back, actually. Started watching the first series.

If you're even later to the party than I am, and you haven't seen Succession, it is about a Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell type media oligarch, and the struggles within his family, mainly between his children, for control of the company. And my initial reaction was, eh, I get it, they're horrible, but I'm not sure how much fun it's going to be to spend time with these people. So I kind of gave up, or rather we gave up. It wasn't unilateral.

Myself and my wife agreed to give up. But then we had more conversations with more friends saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've got to stick with it. Oh, because it's so good. There's so much more to it. It's so multi-layered and multi-textural.

Anyway, so we did go back. This is a good story, isn't it? But we went back, and I'll tell you what we did go back this is a good story isn't it but we went back and i'll tell you what we did actually and some of you may find this shocking and i'm sorry if so but we rather than go back to series one and pick up where we left off we were about three episodes in i think we just started watching series two and sure enough after a few episodes it got really good and then it got better and better and by the series two finale we were electrified with excitement and so now for the last few nights we've been picking up where we left off in series one

and i would imagine that it's not the way that Jesse Armstrong, the show's creator, would have recommended that we watch the show. But it's actually working quite well as a sort of prequel. Oh, it's so good. So yeah, there you go. You're welcome. Recommendation for a show that everybody knows about and is probably slightly sick of hearing about if you're anything like me. Well, I'll give you another recommendation. Have you

heard of a film called Star Wars? It's about a farm boy in space who makes friends with a couple of robots, one of whom is like a little bin. They have adventures. And the good thing about it is that if you like it, there's a lot of them. Well, actually, before I go today, here's a recommendation for something less well-known. A podcast.

It's called The Secret Artists Podcast. Hosted by comedian and artist Annie McGrath. Basically, Annie has identified the fact that many comedians have artistic aspirations or pretensions or backgrounds. And, you know, they just like art in some form or another and so she sits down with them and paints for an hour so it's a nice therapeutic mode to be in when you're having a conversation with someone and uh it's good i listened to a couple katie wicks and phil wang who else has she got on there pierre novelli harriet kimsley lou sanders reese james ellie white all sorts of good people from the current uk comedy scene and um give it a listen a link is in the description of this podcast. Rosie, come on. Can't tell if she's down there or not.

I see a moving blob in the dark. Here she comes. Yes, that's a good sight. Well done, dog. I love you. All right. Hey, look, thanks so much to Dorno Porter for making the time once again. Thank you very much indeed to ACAST. Thanks as ever to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his help with this podcast. And thank you to Matt Lamont for editing the conversation this week. Thank you very much, Seamus and Matt. Thanks to you for listening right to the end it's heroic or maybe you just fell asleep if that's the case sorry but I love you

bye Thank you. ស្រូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប Thank you.