THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.131 - CAITLIN MORAN

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Adam talks with British journalist and author Caitlin Moran about sex, farts, dog snogs and genitals, however in amongst all that there is a serious section about eating disorders. The conversation was recorded remotely on September 2nd, 2020.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing. Podcast artwork by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/RELATED LINKSBEAT - EATING DISORDER CHARITYEVA MUSBY - HELPING YOU FREE YOUR CHILD OF AN EATING DISORDERMORE THAN A WOMAN by CAITLIN MORAN (WATERSTONES)JOHN CUSACK INTERVIEW GETS OFF TO A HORRIBLE START (2007, YOUTUBE)I misremembered this clip as an interviewer misremembering a list of John Cusack films. Actually she only misremembered one, but she misremembered it in style.HOW TO BUILD A GIRL - TRAILER (2020, YOUTUBE)ADAM ON THE WATERSTONES PODCAST WITH WILL RYCROFTADAM ON HOW TO FAIL PODCAST WITH ELIZABETH DAY (APPLE PODCASTS)RAMBLE BOOK CARDI B BOOK ADGEAR4MUSIC - BEECASTER USB MICROPHONE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosie, it's September. It's time to resume rambling. Rose, come on, shall we go for a walk? It used to be the case that I could just say the word walk and Rosie would hear me from wherever she was and rush down. But I think we might both be getting a bit deaf. but I think we might both be getting a bit deaf or the prospect of a walk is no longer quite so attractive as it once was. Poor dog. Rose!

Rosie! Shall we go for a walk? Oh, mate. I spoke too soon. That was a very impressive... Very impressive rush down the stairs, doggy. Did you know that I love you? Did you?

Shall we go? Shall we go? 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 It's on. Come on, Rosie. Oh, that's a nice bit of bird song, isn't it?

Right there in the hedge. right there in the hedge. It's a nice dramatic late September day out here in East Anglia in the fields and it is not currently raining. Good. It's been raining very hard

the last few days which is so depressing. The temperature's dropped, though. Don't worry, I'm not going to do too much weather chat. And it means that I'm no longer in my shorts, and I'm now in my long-grown-up man trousers. They're my favourite ones. They're sort of slacks,

but they're a little bit stretchy. Ooh, they've got some give to them. I love it. And that's important because I spent a lot of time indoors at my desk over the last few weeks slash months disappearing down rabbit holes of one kind or another. And one of the rabbit holes I've disappeared down has had biscuits

at the bottom of it. So stretchy trousers just at the moment are quite handy. But look, forgot to say, hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. I'm climbing over a gate, mate.

Rose, let's go this way. Anyway, look, we've got a fun podcast ramble to enjoy. And right now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my guest for podcast number 131, which features a rambly conversation with British journalist and author and returning guest to the podcast, Catlin Moran. Catlin facts. I'm recycling some of these from my previous intro. Catlin grew up in a three-bedroom council house in Wolverhampton in the UK with her parents and siblings. She was educated at home from the age of 11, having attended secondary

school for only three weeks. She began writing as a young teenager in the 1980s and quickly found success in that field. By the age of 18, she could be seen on Channel 4's music and comedy-based magazine show, Naked City. I keep forgetting to ask Catlin about Naked City, along with co-hosts Johnny Vaughan and Michael Smiley. Catlin's early life experiences formed the basis for her 2014 novel, How to Build a Girl. The film version, directed by Cokie Gedroich and starring Beanie Feldstein of Booksmart and Ladybird fame,

was released earlier this year and is available to stream now and starring Beanie Feldstein of Booksmart and Ladybird fame, was released earlier this year and is available to stream now on Netflix, I believe. Catlin's latest book is the follow-up to her 2011 international bestseller, How to Be a Woman. More Than a Woman finds Catlin writing about many of my favourite things to talk about. Parenting, middle age, marriage, existential crises, and of course, the feminism. My conversation with Catlin was recorded on Wednesday, the 2nd of November 2020, the day before what is known in the publishing world as Super Thursday. Things that we did not talk about. Coronavirus, Donald Trump, JK Rowling, and most of the other current hot topics of conversation.

Things we did talk about, sometimes in quite a bit of detail, consider that a warning sex farts dog snogs and genitals especially male genitals however in amongst all that there is a serious section of the conversation about eating disorders which caitlin writes about in her book after her daughter struggled with an eating disorder for a while. And you will find links to the organisations that Catlin mentions in the description of this podcast, if that's something you or someone you know is going through. All right, I'll be back after my chat with Catlin for another small slice of waffle but right now here we go Have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes, yes, yes. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, look, Catlin Moran has entered the waiting room for this meeting. I admit her.

Hello, lovely boy. That's the sound of Catlin Moran. And that's the face of Catlin Moran. How are you doing, though, Catlin? Have you been having a busy day of press? Yes, it's all been back to back because I'm doing US press at the same time. Catlin Moran. How are you doing, though, Catlin? Have you been having a busy day of press? Yes, it's all been back to back because I'm doing US press at the same time. So it was a late finish yesterday

and an early start today. And it will just continue that way for two weeks. But you can't complain. And also everybody who's got a book out at the moment knows that Ant and Dec's the guys you've got to beat because they've got a book out this week. So we're all kind of united in, fuck you, Ant and Dec,

I will do as much promo as it takes to get near you in the charts. what's Ant and Dec's book about it's called Once Upon a Tyne and that's as much as I know wow they've co-written it I wonder if it's confessional I wonder if Ant goes into some of his recent struggles and things like that well the only exclusive they've managed to pull out of it for serialisation was that they thought about leaving Britain's Got Talent in 2018. So I don't think there's anything too recent or too saucy or else it would already have been over the front of the sun.

So I think it's a very safe paddle through the shallows. I think the coke and hooker's shame is being left for volume two, maybe. And everything book-wise is being published in this month now because a whole load of books were delayed from earlier in the year mine included this i've just been informed by someone who knows about these things today is the super thursday or something like that yes it's a mega thursday 600 books or something ridiculous coming out it's like it's like there's a migration of authors into the bookshelves so uh we all right when have they pushed yours back to you when are you doing yours yours? Mine is tomorrow as well. I think you're tomorrow as well, right?

We're Super Thursday chums. I mean, I'm not likely to be giving anyone any serious competition. Also because my audio book came out earlier this year. And I feel as if in some ways, I shouldn't be saying this, but I was going to say in some ways the audio book is its natural environment. Having said that, the physical copy of my book is an extraordinary, beautiful thing that will enhance your life, whether you've read the audio book or not. How do you deal with repeating yourself in these promotional things? I think you're probably doing a bit more promo than I am, I would imagine.

Well, the thing is, I've got like a Rolodex in my head of subjects. And like the book, there are 24 chapters, each one's a different subject. And then the stuff from other books and then the general opinions on life. And I always try to make it not my vagina straight away. I feel like I've done a lot of vagina chat in my life and I'd like to move on from there and focus on the knees, which when you're middle aged becomes more of a priority because they hurt. That's been the major change in my life. They do hurt. Yes. Let's have a quick knee chat.

When did your knees begin to hurt? When I started running like an idiot. That was my big mistake. They'd been doing fine. I had left them alone. We lived in peace. I did not trouble them. They did not trouble me.

As soon as I started pounding them up a hill, they were like, hey, what's this? What's the deal with the running? I don't understand, though, how people run and don't get bad knees, as an expert told you. Right. I mean, science, I'm guessing, I haven't looked, would tell you not to run.

It would just be like, no. I mean, something's gone wrong if you're running generally in history. And they never get better. And I'm increasingly thinking that maybe my future, you know when you see those dogs that have had their bat legs taken off and they've got two wheels on the back? I'm thinking, bat, that's probably where I'm going, given that I'm not running and they're still really hurting. Do the dogs have it attached to their body actually?

Or is that a removable thing? I don't know. It's got to be a harness. Yeah, I thought that they, I realise now, I'm catching up on a thought. I thought they'd had the wheels nailed to them and that that was a permanent thing. Now I realise I should put it on. They don't shove an axle through their buttocks. But aren't you tempted to try now?

Like, I don't know, I'm thinking about it. Gives the dog more freedom. Because otherwise the dog's got to wait for you to strap on the dog wheels. Whereas a more independently minded dog might want to wheel around when it wants. But what about when you get tonal shifts because your book incorporates a lot of extreme variety in tone and i was reading a section earlier on again that i want to ask you about if it's okay i don't know how you are like are you okay to talk about the stuff in your book and yeah god absolutely yeah no don't worry like kind of being given like on the subject of my daughter she's given me some

very strict instructions which she wrote down with don't fuck this up do exactly what i say yeah i'll ask you about that later on yeah yeah but you know reading that bit as a parent as a human being it was very moving and sad and frightening and it was hardcore I was crying when I was reading it and then you're reading other stuff that is very funny so how do you negotiate those changes of tone within an interview because presumably sometimes you can do an interview and it's all fluff and fun and then the next one can be on the psychiatrist's couch I don't know I mean I think the thing is in life you are literally laughing one minute and crying the next anyway, aren't you? And it seems weird to me that conversations usually tend to happen on one level.

Like kind of I think whenever you've seen like a mate or you've watched a really great conversation, it has gone everywhere. You want to have a sad bit and a happy bit. You want to have a little bit of an angry bit, maybe two, three minutes, a little bit of salt, a little bit of fury. So, yes, that is what humans are like, aren't we? We are a mixed bag. Yeah. But I was reading an extract about your sex life and i wanted to ask what the process of clearing that for publication was with your family because i think the last time we spoke which i think was it was one of the first podcasts i did was with you maybe back in

2015 was that how long it's been oh my god possibly oh my god and one of the things i did was play you a an audio extract of me talking to my daughter who was then very little but it was her when she was five and we were talking about Jabba the Hutt and how he dressed up in a slave outfit. And my daughter thought the outfit was fetching. And I was asking, I was inquiring as to your thoughts on the kind of feminist angle on that situation. But in the course of that conversation, we established that you were very cautious when it came to talking about members of your own family when you write. So has that changed or is it now a more complicated process?

Well, I try and pull as many writing tricks as possible. So you will read the book and you'll think that I'm telling you everything about my life and all I'm doing is talking about me. But if you actually look at what I'm doing, I will start talking about me or a specific instance or someone else for maybe a paragraph and then we launch into a universal you or one or we and like kind of and that's where I can jump off and kind of make everybody join me in my booth of over disclosure and kind of put the blame on them really they're making me say this stuff for them so no so it's very uh my husband's a writer as well and he's just written a memoir about his family so we're kind of we're this is what we do now we live lives and then 10

years later we write about it but he obviously he approved everything about the sex life because it's quite you you describe the indignities of middle-aged sex or you know the difficulties of maintaining a sex life particularly within a long-standing marriage right and you talk about the concept of the maintenance shag yes which was very familiar territory right so it's my friend sally hughes's invention so i've credited for that but i hadn't really seen anything written about well you know when we see sex on tv or when people are talking about sex and kind of sexy stories in magazines and stuff, it's always about the beginning of a relationship, you know, meeting someone, finding out what they like, that white heat of attraction.

The bit where it's easy, basically, where you're really into each other and you just want to do it all the time. And then it's like it's a completely different kettle of fish. It may even involve a kettle of fish 25 years down the line because you know each other so well and you're just running this business together. Basically, that's what having a family is. So much of a marriage is just basically saying things like, have you swabbed the cat's stitches in the least accusatory way possible? So it's very hard to segue from, you know, expressing your dog's anal glands to suggesting that tonight might be the night. So my friend Sally suggested that what you must do is you must schedule it. You must have a maintenance shag

because if you let three weeks, four weeks go by without having sex, you start thinking what a ridiculous thing it is to do. You're like, we did what? You would do this and I would say that and then I'd put that there. I don't think so. It seems like the dream of a madman.

And so you have to have the maintenance shag. And the first 10 minutes will be a bit like, oh, God, OK, we've got to do it. And you're like, and then suddenly you're like, hey, I remember this. This is good. It's good that we did this. And often you find it's like turning a jam jar lid the other way if it's stuck. If you've had your maintenance shag on, say, a Friday, suddenly on Saturday, you might have a spontaneous shag because you've remembered how great it is. I know, right?

But you must do it regularly because otherwise you start to basically see the truth, which is that it's a ridiculous thing for two adults to do. And what are you doing? Are either of you sort of self-conscious now about your bodies? And do you feel like, oh, I'm not sexy? No, thankfully, we are both not he is just a very confident happy in his own body greek man who once he's taken that cardigan off it's business

time and I have always and I was sort of trying to work out why it is why I've always had body confidence and I think a lot of it is not going to school and never having worked in an office and basically never having been around society and people so I just never really had anybody pointing out that I wasn't attractive so I was just like maybe I'm all right then it's an interesting experiment to see if women would like themselves if they were raised on desert islands I suspect they would I suspect external influences that make women stand there going look at my bingo wings and look at my knee overhang and look at my muffin top. These are all made up body parts. None of these parts exist. We talk about them in popular culture, but it's just your arms and your knees, you know, and your belly, like kind of,

there is no such thing as a bingo wing. It's just an arm. Yeah, exactly. And remind me again, you were educated at home by your parents, is that right? Mm-hmm. And there are, sorry, just a little slurp of tea there. I always have to, I've got a drinking game when everybody mentions my parents like i have some tea yes so there are two kinds of home educators the first ones are like school isn't educative enough if i took my kids out of school if we went for a walk and through the woods we'd be learning about nature and geology and geography and history and stuff and i could give my kids more education if i educated them at home and that's one kind of homeschooler.

My parents weren't those kind of homeschoolers. They were the other kind, which was, I just can't be bothered to make sure that eight children have socks and pants and are out of bed at half past eight every morning. So you can all leave school. It's free time. Just do what you want. It wasn't a very mammalian way of parenting. Mammals care for their young and nurture them until they're old.

My parents were more like salmon. They spawned magnificently many many children and then they just swam the fuck away and how did they jump through the hoops that they presumably are legally obliged to when educating their own children you'd be surprised how loosey-goosey it is oh really you all you need to do is have an inspector that comes around once a year that checks you've got a roof on your house and you're not actually actively involved in Satanism. And you just show them like the week before it'd be like quick flam something together for the inspectors. And we'd like write an essay about how by making cakes we had learned about physics and science because of raising agents. I mean, it's so easy to fob those guys off.

so easy to fob those guys off but i mean i would from an educational point of view i think home education is the best way to learn because what you notice and maybe people who have been homeschooling during the lockdown have noticed this if you take a kid out of school at first they're like it's a holiday i will do nothing and then at a certain point their innate curiosity springs back up it had been crushed at school because you just made to do stuff and learning is a baller and it stops you from running around doing fun stuff give it a couple of months and the young of every species wants to go and learn stuff so they will just go and learn things and do it on their own and become obsessed so from a teaching point of view an educational point of view i think it is far superior to go to school but um from a social point of view it's not so good i mean every formative crush that i had in my teenage years

you know i've got no workmates or schoolmates to fancy I was like looking at brothers going could I should I like is that allowable to have a crush on them no don't do that so that's the reason presumably that you didn't go down that route with your own children yeah no from an educational point of view I think they would definitely have been ahead but yeah the crippling social anxiety that I've experienced for the rest of my life is you know it's no thing you need to schools there. You know, the main purpose of school is to learn how to get on with other people your age. And it's taken me a very long time to learn that. Yeah.

Back to Pete, though, and the maintenance shag. You talk about other ways to keep things spicy in a long term relationship. Yeah. I strongly don't believe in keeping things spicy. That's the kind of ultimate stance that I've taken. I think, especially if you're a lady, women's magazines, and particularly if you grew up in the 90s as I did,

women's magazines were all about telling women constantly that you needed to be basically inventing a new kind of sex every two weeks, involving ever more ridiculous positions and equipment and kind of grapefruit two weeks involving ever more ridiculous positions and equipment and kind of grapefruit and all this mad stuff. The presumption being, presumably, that men would get bored and not want to have sex with you unless you were just like, surprise, I brought tigers.

And as I've got older, I've noticed this generally not to be the case. Like kind of, you know, in a very lovely way, men will generally have sex anytime you want, whenever you want. There are men having sex with bicycles out there. Like, it's not that hard to convince a man to have sex. But women are made to feel so insecure about this. And there's all these things you're supposed to be doing. And it's like, I just think, you know, if a man is tired of fanny, he is tired of life.

You know, bit of hand and mouth stuff, 10 minutes of banging. I don't think you should do it any longer than that because there are chafing issues. You wouldn't put your nose between two pieces of bacon and rub it backwards and forwards for an hour and a half. Your nose would feel sore. I feel that's very equivalent in sex. It'd be horrible.

Although delicious. So, yeah, so it's just like, you know, let's say hurrah for vanilla missionary sex. It's just you're far more likely to do it if it's just going to be over in 20 minutes. Yeah, because the classic spice up your sex life tips were always the same, weren't they? It was role play, which you talk about. So you list them in the book. Role play, which have you ever done that? Like, have you ever committed to that?

Yes, we tried that once. And as I say in the book, the problem with that, if you're kind of say you've got a sexy pirate scenario going you're like be a sexy pirate are you going to buy the costumes are you just going to make do with what you've got that's your choice but someone's standing there with a sad parrot and a tricorn hat and you're like okay be a sexy pirate and unless you're married to one of written's great character actors e.g. paddy considine they're not actors like he's a man with an erection and a parrot on his shoulder. He'll be going like, what's my motivation? I'm like Pirate Sexington has this big backstory.

You know, suddenly you're on the set of a movie and you just wanted to have a bang. It's just it's like unless you are a professional actor, don't do role play. Also pirates. I would imagine that pirates didn't treat women with much respect. But I guess that's part of the fun, isn't it? We were having this conversation at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago going,

why are pirates not problematic yet? Like you can't almost any fancy dress that you wear to a party. Now, you know, you can't go as a native American, like, you know, you do all these things that you can't do,

but yet still children go to fancy dress parties as pirates. And what are pirates? They are criminals. Yeah. Not only are they criminals, but they're violent and frequently rapey. Yes. go to fancy dress parties as pirates and what are pirates they are criminals yeah not only that are they criminals but they're violent and frequently rapey yes so rapey and yet we dress our kids up like and it's like off you go and like you wouldn't dress them up as an embezzler or counterfeiter you know or a carjacker and yet for some reason when everything else in the world has been made problematic, pirates are still acceptable. I guess Johnny Depp, that, you know, upstanding pinnacle of being nice to women. He kind of rehabilitated the image of the pirate, didn't he?

But I think now he's ruined them again. That's the thing. Pirates got away with it because Johnny Depp was so charming and we're like, oh, Edward Scissorhands has got a boat. But now there's a whole new Depp story i think pirates yeah other ways to keep things spicy tantric breath work i'd never even heard of what is that sting that stings bag sting yeah it's that kind of it's nangy nangy nangy stuff so the idea being that like you kind of you synchronize your breath together and i think because you're one of you breathes out while one of you breathes in, so you're breathing each other's breath.

So it's basically like a sexy way of breathing into a bag. I did that once. That was fun. In a sexy way? We weren't, you know, there was no genitals involved. It was just the breath work, but it was really nice. And it made me feel like, wow, we're one unit. We are a symbiotic uh love creature so it

was a hundred percent successful then have you done it since yeah it was good i mean because you have to stop after a while obviously because the oxygen goes out of the breath that you're sharing but it makes you a little bit high and the feeling of running out of air is sort of quite trippy and weird there's a ticking clock on it as well isn't there like kind of you need to have presumably if you're running out of oxygen like you're kind of like there's a sort of element of the time is on let's let's there's an element of peril exactly we might die you might die unless you just stop doing it then you'll be fine the problem with tantric breath work which we tried is that my husband is very asthmatic and has sinus problems. And I found that my, what I thought was blissful yogic breathing

just came out like a tetchy sigh. So he was getting the feedback of me just sounding quite tetchy and I was just getting, I need my inhaler. So that's why we don't do tantric breathwork anymore. We crossed that one off the list. Other spice tips, sex toys. Yeah. Just something you've got to clean.

I just... It becomes harder and harder the older you get, I think, to produce a sex toy. Yes. Because they look like children's things often. Like they're often very brightly coloured and sort of a bit Fisher Price. And so that just gives me flashbacks to soft play areas. And also you can never find the batteries. They get a bit sticky.

Would you ever get a big man doll to shag would i no because i like i'm very into human beings yeah i like fur and and smells so they can do all that with the dolls now it's pretty realistic i wouldn't choose what i wouldn't i don't think i would favor the smells that a ukrainian sex film manufacturer had decided that i might like i think we might have difference of opinion that i'm sure you could pick your own smells um bdsm yes spanking so what does it stand for again bondage domination and so domestic isn't there you go yeah tying up and spanky again depends what your house is like man like you know in 19th century novels and sexy films they do it in a castle or a penthouse so they've got no soundproofing issues if you're doing your standard semi it's something that makes sort of you know spanky noises and you you just have kids on the landing going mommy why are

you clapping and it kind of ruins the atmosphere again i don don't understand the appeal, I must say. And I mean, I'm aware that I sometimes sound prudish when talking about this stuff. And I don't want to sound as if I'm casting aspersions or making judgments about anybody who's into this stuff. You know, I think you and I agree, if you're not hurting someone or... In a good way, yes.

If you are in a good way, yes. If you're not doing it without their consent, then go for your life but i've never got the whole world of sadomasochism and that stuff yeah i mean i tried again in the 90s you were supposed to do all this stuff so i gave it a go a couple of times just made me a bit sad yeah you're hurting me that's bad that's right what about slappy things can i ask you about that again like kind of you know we gave it a go but like there's a whole thing like you know sort of in mainstream sort of online porn it's so common now for men to be taking a

woman from behind and slapping her ass like she's a racehorse do the do the women do the women ever turn around and just smack the guy in the face they will when i start making porn and then you know the sad you know to get to the feminist root of it for a second to be serious but like so much of it is that you so rarely if ever see a woman orgasm in pornography and that's because it's not a visual thing when a man comes you can see it and that's the money shot and there it is and it's really spectacular and stuff you can't see a woman coming anyway you can't physically see it so it's all down to facial expression and given that pornography isn't generally about genuine female pleasure like that's generally not happening in the stuff that you're watching it seems to me that pain has replaced ecstasy and happiness as you know an intent she's having an

intense emotion because she's being heard and that in this weird way that's the kind of sad substitute we have for someone who actually looks like they're enjoying it it's you know she's kind of going ow rather than rather than, ah. And that would be my review of modern pornography. Although I have heard that apparently sometimes there are women in video pornography who now do this sort of crazy over-the-top orgasm, which is also incorporating quite a lot of squirting of fluids yes have you ever heard tell i've heard tell of the squirting and also the convulsions like crazy convulsions have you ever seen the impression you're doing there is of someone who's been selected from

the audience on the price is right in the 80s you're kind of like that's right they're like like they've been possessed it's like the exorcist it's the stupidest thing i've ever seen i mean a lot of pornography is very silly when you look at it you're like this is i keep having to sort of explain to my kids and they're growing up i was like look we need to talk about pornography you need to understand that when you're watching pornography that's not sex that's two people at work so it's very different when you go and do it it shouldn't look like this basically if anything that you're watching in pornography is happening in your actual sex life it's gone a bit wrong because it's not fun for ladies and you just don't need to scream and fall off a bed at the end of it you know that's a bad conclusion to the whole shenanigans what was the sexiest thing that

you watched when you were an adolescent oh good question That wasn't porn. I was a big fan of the show, so that was an early stimulus. It was, I watched Wish You Were Here, the biopic of Cynthia Payne, the future madame. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and she's just like kind of, she's insouciant and swaggering. She wanted sex. She was the first young woman I'd see that wanted sex. Looking back now, most of the sex she had was awful including with an uncle but in the 80s like you just didn't have that much choice you took it where you could and then there's a bit in blade

runner where harrison ford puts his finger in his mouth oh yes and every woman i know has that on a gif or a meme and we look at that if we need to to feel happy but i mean that was basically it for the entire 80s that's all there was so that's that's why I fancied Aslan from the Narnia series and Gonzo looking back. There wasn't that much. What about you? What was the young Buxton Cotting onto? Oh, man.

Well, the big one was Name of the Rose with Christian Slater and Sean Connery. And there's a scene in there where christian slater who plays this monk apprentice to sean's sort of detective monk is like he's in a room in this castle and some kind of feral peasant girl comes in sneaks in and basically she doesn't even speak all she does is make noises like a little sexy wolf and she hitches up his sackcloth and she just shags the ever-loving shiz out of him and and he's got this expression on his face the whole way through like what's going on and i think there's even a bit of voiceover that sort of says, like, who was this force of nature that came wild and free in the night?

And I just wow, that was great. I love that. I'd love to know her backstory, because like that's, you know, I feel like I would like exposition on how that happens. exposition on how that happens like you know as a young girl peasant girl in the village generally trying to avoid being run over by a cart or die of black death to just randomly climb into monastery windows i think there's a bit of quid pro quo i think she got something out of it or maybe she was burgling the kitchen or something and this was her way of saying look don't tell i don't remember thanks for the spoons here's a shag yeah either way christian was delighted with the arrangement and so was young buckles well that's what i'd like to see more i'd like to see

more men being delighted like kind of so many men look angry in porn or like they're trying to win right i remember claudia winkleman's did my favorite quote on sex she someone said what do you find attractive in a man sexually and she said gratitude and i thought that was lovely like that is what you want to see like kind of like not in a kind of you know weird way but just kind of like yeah you should look like you're enjoying it i have done you a favor because i might get cystitis let's all understand my sacrifice has been greater than yours i could be on antibiotics for a month yeah a little bit of sexy gratitude i like that yeah man well consider me a font of sexy gratitude. now i do i really want to talk to you about the stuff about your daughter and her eating disorder yes i feel as if we need to i don't, how do you feel about just jumping in there?

Well, we can come off the back of that because like, you know, in the new book, I write about my daughter. So my daughter between the ages of 11 and just before 15 had a very severe eating disorder. She was depressed and anxious and she had an eating disorder. And they were the four most difficult years of our lives because as a parent there is nothing more visceral to you than your child not eating like that's the first thing you do when you have a baby and you're just like keep the babies alive feed the babies so there's something very visceral about a child that is not eating and also if you have an eating disorder that's a problem that happens at least three times a day it's a problem at breakfast time it's a problem at lunch time it's a problem in the evening so it's very difficult and thankfully my daughter is now super fully

recovered and extraordinary and that's all she wants me to say about her now quite rightly she's like we don't need to talk about me now just tell everybody I don't really think about it now and I am totally better but she told me that I should write about it in this book because I made several mistakes when she first got ill and that I wanted to write about those and tell other parents out there things that you can avoid and things that you need to understand because one in four children will suffer from some kind of mental illness either anxiety depression self-harm or eating disorders and to understand how to deal with that as a parent goes against everything you've ever done before because you suddenly have to stop being parent and you have to become a mental health professional and it's a completely different

set of gears in your head and the main mistake I realized that I was making is that I was scared of her sadness I'm a very cheerful person I'm a very let's make jokes about everything person and when she started being sad instead of sitting down and talking to her I was like we're cheering you up we'll do something fantastic we'll go to a place that will change everything and it took me a long time to go no okay I'm not scared of your sadness I will sit with you it will pass I love you this is okay we can manage this together but that took two years and so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write about it just like here learn from my mistakes people out there here's something that I hope will be useful how long was the period in which you became aware of the problem and how serious

the problem was I was massively in denial about it I was like I thought because the thing is younger people the next generation down they don't have this shame and stigma about mental illness and eating disorders like they talk about it things have changed so much in the last couple of years and they talk about and discuss it it's so much in the last couple of years and they talk about it and discuss it. It's our generation that was brought up in a time when these things were seen as a bit shameful or things that would make you feel guilty or things that you tried to keep secret.

And so I thought by saying, maybe you've got an eating disorder, that would suddenly give her the idea to have one. And I would have made it even worse. You know, all these ridiculous things. Do you think that there's no truth in that? I think my mum thought when she was alive, like, oh, all this people talking about their feelings

and their problems and stuff, it just sort of opens the door a lot of the time to these problems and it just makes them worse, you know, a little bit what you were saying, really. But I wonder if there's any truth in that or do you think that that's just bollocks it's interesting there is definitely a narrative and a sense of it being in some way a coming-of-age narrative for some children that have a predisposition to unhappiness or illness or anxiety that you go on this horrible journey and you come out the other

end of it and this is your story and this is how you've become who you are but i don't mean i'd love to see studies on it the problem is that stuff people still don't really know why you develop these things and they don't really know the best way to cure it like when your child gets ill they will say well the average eating disorder lasts between five and seven years and that to me is still extraordinary it's like well if we do know how to cure it then why would it take five to seven years like kind of there's so much we don't understand about it yet there was a a moment when you're writing about it when you're sitting with her and she's very upset and then she says why don't you know the right things to say? And that made me cry. Oh, man. That's such a hard thing because everybody feels that, you know?

Yeah. When you're really in a terrible place and you just don't want to be alone. Yes. And my problem was I didn't know to say at that point. I didn't know to say to her, you are sad. I can see that. I'm not scared of this. I will sit with you. When I was just, you know, she was just going, why don't you know the right things to say? And the things I would

be saying are, let's go downstairs and play buckaroo. Or we could decorate your room. Maybe that would make you more cheerful. Or like, let's plan a holiday for next year. So we've got something to look forward to. Anything other than sit there and say this thing that I realised I was terrified to say, which is, you are sad. And that I can't help you, I can't cure it, I can't make you better, but I can promise to be with you all the way through this and to never shout at you about it or make you feel guilty. It was interesting, the response I got,

we serialised it in The Times a couple of weeks ago, and I had so many people who had suffered from eating disorders themselves saying that the way that I wrote about the illness, they were so grateful that I hadn't been angry with my daughter, and that I didn't write about it angrily now. And so you see the guilt that they have that their parents have had to go through this stuff. And because we don't talk about it, you know, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to write about it. Because the day that we published that serialization, my DMs on Twitter were full of messages from people that I know and people that we would know going,

it's happening in our family and I've not wanted to talk about it to anyone. We've tried to keep it a secret. We don't know what to do. It's so endemic at the moment and you need to be able to, you know, it always sounds like a trite thing, but once you start talking about these things and they become normal, it's much quicker to find the information. It's much quicker to get over it. And you as a parent are borderline useless if not making it worse if you are secretly guilty or shameful or thinking it's your fault or thinking that you know you should have made it go away that isn't your role now you have to be a medical health professional because you can't bribe a child with an eating disorder because they don't want anything they're

in a kind of negation of life and obviously you can't punish them for not eating because they're already suffering and you can't reason them out of it because they have a mental illness. You know, all these tactics, you can't jolly them out of it because they have a mental illness. So all the things you would normally do as a parent become suddenly completely null and void. And what you have to learn how to do is become a mental health professional. And that is a big old job to take on. How would you have played it then knowing what you know now? Straight away, as soon as I saw it, I would just be like, you are angry, you are sad.

Let's sit down and just talk about this. Like, kind of, I'm not going to try and jolly it away. I'm not going to try and make you think about the future. We're just going to talk about literally what's going on now. Let's sit together and discuss this. Rather than, as I did, kind of ignore, being in denial of it for six months and then trying to spend the next two years kind of trying to jolly it away. That doesn't work and then do you think that once you see evidence of a problem do you think it's ever the case that you can sort of talk through it or is it always going to be something that needs resolving with a professional yeah you're going to need professional help because

if your child's not eating then it's starving and so its brain isn't working properly and it gets into like quite a terrifying state and they're brain isn't working properly and it gets into like quite a terrifying state and they're not able to reason properly so you need professional help and the NHS is the best place to get professional help but the problem the NHS has is that mental health services are chronically underfunded so once you've done the big step of going let's go and get help we'll go to this hospital we'll say the scary things we'll admit there's a problem they then go it will be a year, a year and a half, and this was before lockdown,

I know they've got a massive backlog now, before you'll get any help. And there is no torture greater than knowing that there is help available, but you are going to have to wait for a year and a half. And you've got a child going, why won't you help me? And then you're going to the people who should be giving you help, why won't you help me?

And they're like, we have no money, you will have to wait. And what do you do in the meantime? I mean, what is the best thing a parent can do while they're waiting well there's amazing charities like beat the eating disorder charity are fantastic and they have support services and chat rooms where you can sort of talk to people and they can give you advice they were incredible and you can put your child on medication because it's usually uh an anxiety or depression so you can put them on sort of antidepressants which helps helps them get their head above the water. And there's an amazing book by an author called Eva Musby, and she gives you scripts of what to say,

the kind of thing a medical professional would say to your children. So you can read these scripts out loud and get through the days. And they have an amazing effect. And what does the treatment look like when it does become available? So the key things are you get a dietician who talks to the child about what food they do an amber light system red foods for the things they absolutely can't eat they're scared of amber things they might consider and green stuff they're happy to eat and you talk about having a system where once a week you'll try something from the amber list and kind of try and expand the stuff that you have and your medication is often very useful and cbt is the main thing

because you basically have a voice in your head that is being incredibly unkind to you and telling you that you need to suffer in this way. And so if you have effective CBT, you can learn to rethink and talk to yourself in a different voice. And it's something where you do in normal life, but it's just very extreme if you're suffering from a mental illness. So once you get the help, you know, you can incredible changes cbt is cognitive behavior therapy yeah and so rather than psychoanalysis which is all about tell me about your past and all this kind of stuff it just goes what are you thinking now is that hurtful and horrible to you let's see if we can change it which is so practical and particularly for a child no psychotherapy i think can be quite scary and intense but cT is just very practical.

It's just like, let's make the voice in your head better. I'll put a link to that book you mentioned in the description of the podcast. And where else would you say is the first place for people in that position to visit? The Eating Disorder Beat. So again, they're very underfunded, so you might have to wait for them to call you back. But they are incredible and they will talk you through it. And there are support groups within BEAT for both the children and for the parents. For people who've recovered, for people who think that they might be developing a problem.

There's all these different support groups within it. And their advice is amazing. Like, you know, you will ring them up at some point. The day you have to make that phone call, you're so glad they pick up the phone because they know everything about it. And they will just talk you through what the process will be. Hey, thanks for talking to me about it though caitlin and um when you were in that terrible few years what lifted your spirits i'm always interested in like when people are in that hole what are the things that make life livable i think that's a brilliant question and it is really key because if you are like so

much of the book, which is about middle age is about how women are often primary carers. That's kind of the thing that women do. We love and we care. And that becomes to a crisis point in middle age because you often have aging parents, parents who are ill, parents who are dying. You're caring for children. You have friends who are going through divorces and all these huge life changes. And if you are a halfway sorted person, you will turn into this fifth emergency service and you are looking after all these people and no one really looks after I mean obviously I write about middle-aged women but you know no one really looks after middle-aged women or men like kind of no one's turning up at your house and going I brought you soup and you might be sad and like you know let me cheer you up that doesn't happen

so you do have to learn to parent yourself and look after yourself and I found it sounds like such a cliche but I found beauty was very sustaining I've always experienced you know nature and blossom and birdsong and you know jumping into a lake very viscerally and very intensely to a point where I would almost become despairing that I didn't know what to do with the beauty. It's like, how can I, do I eat the blossom? Do I kind of live in the lake? Like kind of, I want to be in this and just merge. And during this bad time, I realized how you deal with beauty. You just remember it and store it in your head, just like a little supply. And then when you're going through a terrible time,

you just think about the beautiful things. Like it sounds so hippie and basic, but like kind of, you know, if you're sitting in a hospital corridor for five hours, you know, just being able to play in your head pictures of a pretty meadow or some bird song.

I mean, there isn't anything else. So it's that or crisps. And it's certainly a lot of crisps as well. Yeah. Callan, I'm sorry. This is very unprofessionalessional i'm going to have to go to the lavatory then that's good because i can make myself a cup of tea this is perfect you do fluids out i'll do fluids in perfect all right i am making tea would you like some tea it is strong builders tea would you like it do you want some

milk inside we got different types and if you want some sugar, just ask for it I won't judge you if you ask for it Hey! Now, you either have a far distant dunny or that was a poo. I doubled up. I did a wee and then I got some tea. Tea wee.

Ah, OK, fair enough. Cool. I just like to know where we're at. The tea isn't made of wee, by the way. I didn't just piss in my friend's mug. You've not gone Gwyneth Paltrow on us. You're not drinking your own wee-wee. No.

Was she a proponent of drinking your own wee-wee? I mean, she's got to come up with some new mad balls every week, hasn't she? So she must have supped a cup of waz at some point just to fill up some more space on her website. Is goop still a big thing? Oh you've got no idea she's making so much money just by suggesting that women just constantly obsess about their vaginas in the way that women used to obsess about having small lap dogs it's just all about you gotta wash it you gotta steam it you gotta put things up it you gotta sprinkle it literally with a thing called magic dust of all the things you would want on your fanny dust is very low on your list that's not no this though this doesn't count as you ragging on your sisters though because you do talk about like don't eat your sisters in your book message to young feminists

yes Gwyneth doesn't really count as a young feminist anymore though I guess does she no and also like she's leaning into it like you know she she's going out of her way to be provocative like you don't name a candle this smells like my vagina unless you're kind of up for you know starting a hoo-ha she's got it what's the candle's name this smells like my vagina oh yeah and there's one now called this smells like my orgasm which i think might be factually incorrect uh it's not a nasal olfactory experience as far as i'm aware maybe i'm doing it wrong i don't know if you like maybe it just smells of farts i was gonna say maybe she farts when she comes maybe that's what it is that's the big joke at the end of it you

spend 60 quid on a candle you sniff it you're like that smells bummy and she's like yeah when i come i fart that's everyone doesn't right no sure have you noticed a an increase in fart action in your middle years oh i've always been extremely gaseous i come from a family where it was a competitive sport and like and i still find it funny if you go into a room kind of fling the door open like you're going to tell some huge news and you you're just like, guys, guys. And they're like, what? And you just go, lift the leg up, the whole thing. It's like little bum trumpets.

It's like they're never not funny, are they? It's a silly noise. I agree. What about fart walking? You know, like sort of striding along and doing. Can you actually fart while you walk? Sure. Like if I do that, if I'm striding along and you kind of let them out in increments and see how far you can get.

Oh, I don't know if I could. It's a great time. I think I might be a more thoughtful farter. I was interviewed by Chris Evans this morning and he said something that apparently is common to men, which blew my mind. He said, normally when a man coughs, he didn't need to do a cough. It's a fake cough because he's covering the sound of his fart. And I was like, oh, yeah, really? I've certainly done that.

But the other thing, though, is I would imagine Evans is approaching the stage in his life where he's not even going to bother to cover it with a cough. cover it with a cough my dad uh when he was alive and some of the older gentlemen that i know they can't be bothered to cover it up anymore they're just like ah screw it maybe as well because their hearing is going so they'll just know yeah they'll just stand there and it'll just be like or just a very loud great kind of whoopee cushion style fart and everyone has to just get on with it it's never not funny no it's good it's brilliant one of the great things about having a dog we got a dog a couple of years ago and i know you love your dog but like when the dog just comes in the room and farts we always find that funny like having a dog is like having a little court jester like nearly everything it does is hilarious it's lovable but very very stupid and everything it does is funny so like

30 or 40 times a day it's serving us comedy gold in exchange for sausages and access to our garden it seems like such a great exchange but rosie's farts are silent but deadly so she will be curled up on the sofa with us while we watch normal people and everyone's getting very sexy thoughts and then suddenly there will be the smell of an old seaport in the room i can smell marseille oh no it's the dog it'll be yeah it's a seaport with a corpse bobbing around in the water. And that's the smell that Rosie creates. Are you a bit fond of it? Like when you smell it, are you a bit like, oh, that's her smell.

A little bit. It is weird. It's almost like smelling one of your own farts, you know. It's like, oh, yeah, that's pretty interesting. Same with the dog breath. I'm just into everything she does. I'm just a bit of a fan of the dog. I think everything it's done, like kind of pound for pound, it's the most value item we've ever bought. the dog breath i'm just into everything she does i'm just a bit of a fan of the dog it just i think

everything it's done like kind of pound for pound it's the most value item we've ever bought it's just i love her doggy breath i love it i think my favorite sound in the world is the skittering sound of her claws on a floor as she runs towards you like that's just the sound of joy that's perfect yeah yeah yeah absolutely are you you're not kissing her like ozzy osbourne used to kiss the dogs on the Osbourne well this is one of the things and I'm generally I think within wider society a borderline unacceptable person I am quite disgusting but my husband is fine with all of this and has learned to roll with it but the one thing that I do that he finds absolutely repulsive so the dog wants to lick my face and I

don't want it to lick my face because I'm worried it will give me spots so when she tries to lick my face I fend her off oh no i'm gonna get so much shit for this i fend her off with my tongue so if she's trying to lick me i'll lick her back in order to protect my face and to me that seems like a very fair exchange but other people seem to find that really unacceptable i think i might cross the line here so what she comes towards you and she's sticking out her tongue and she wants to get all licky and you sort of hold her in place and then you just touch tongues and then we have a tongue battle like some kind of duel and i will lick her tongue so much and as my daughter's pointed out several times it does look like you're getting off with a dog mom and i'm

like it's not sexual i'm literally just keeping to my skincare regimen it's taken a long time to get rid of my adult acne and i don't want the dog to screw it up. So I will, if I have to, get off with the dog to protect my face. Yeah, yeah. Because it is more than just looking like you're getting off with the dog. I think that is getting off with the dog. If I did that with another human being, my wife wouldn't be happy. Oh, you're another person who doesn't understand me.

I feel rejected are you still on social media and all i'm not going to obsess about social media because i really have to phase it out of my conversation it sounds like i'm totally hung up on it which i am are you on the social medias because i don't see you i get this weird thing where people that i follow disappear and then i have to keep refollowing them and it looks like i've stormed off in a huff and refollowed them but are you still there i haven't seen no mate i'm off i'm off there we go and i had to i mentioned the other day for the first time in public that i was really paranoid because twitter did this thing when i closed down my account the message that they left there in its stead the

implication was the account had been suspended because i'd violated the twitter rules i.e oh this guy is such a sort of degenerate transphobic yeah racist that we've kicked him off with all the others and i had quite a few messages from people saying like what did you do i didn't do anything so that gives you a dilemma because you've left but then because of the way that it was presented to the rest of the world surely you attempted to then rejoin just in order to go i left that wasn't thrown off and then leave again like it just seemed like such a massive dick move like they were were saying, oh, no, no, nobody leaves. You don't just decide to leave.

We'll teach you a lesson that you won't forget. Then maybe you won't leave so quickly next time. That is the business model, isn't it? Like kind of it's always useful to remind yourself that Twitter isn't just people talking to each other. It's a business model. Only 14% of the country are on it. So most people aren't on it. It's a very niche thing. And it's all business model only 14 of the country are on it so most people aren't on it it's a very niche thing and it's all about an attention economy and like my key thing is ask me what i

would do if i was the kardashians what would you do caitlin if you were the kardashians i would look at twitter and i would go this is a wild west of unverified accounts where there are rape and death threats and people publishing each other's home addresses and terrible things are happening and it's completely destroyed the political discourse in all of the western world why don't the kardashian family me and my sisters with our combined 500 million followers simply start a new social media platform a rival to twitter where there are no anonymous accounts everyone is registered and and traceable. There are rules of engagement and if you break them, you're kicked off. We will announce on day one

that we're moving over there with our 50 million followers, 500 million followers and boom, straight away, you've got an up and running social media platform with just as many people on it but one that someone's put some thought into and gone, this is a nice place

where only nice things will happen. That seems not outside the bounds of possibility as a business idea and i have copyrighted that and if they ever do it i will be on a massive back-end deal on that although initially all the people on that site will be fans of the kardashians which is the only drawback but who doesn't want to be watching the kardashian social media feed like if i don't get a new bum every day in my social media feed, then am I really alive? What do you, I've never watched a whole episode of the Kardashians, so I can fuck off. Oh, I have.

Have you? Yes, my kids were really obsessed with it for a while. And what happens in every episode is some really rich, beautiful girls sit around a table eating a huge salad and crying. That's 90 90 of it and then they'll cheer up by either going to an award ceremony or going to the shops and buying a really large sofa and that's about 90 of it okay i'm in um and like this is a ludicrously busy time for you not only is your book out but are you promoting the film how to build a girl as well we yes so we've done the us and uk promo and we're now on to countries i've never heard of

promo so we're on to kind of the rest of the world now did you do that remotely or did you go out there no no it was all done here it was all done online i spent one day doing a online virtual junket uh something i'd never done before, which lasted 12 hours. And they wheel people in and out so fast that some of the interviews were four minutes long. And as a journalist myself, I would spend the first two of those four minutes going, I'm so sorry you've only got four minutes. That's useless. You're not going to get anything out of me. Like, this is a shit show.

And then they'd be so angry. Did you come across any total maddies interviewing you who are obviously just having a bad day and like you know occasionally you you see some funny junket stuff on youtube or have you seen have you seen the thing with john cusack no no go on with someone very enthusiastically describing ah they're saying oh i loved you in this and i loved you in that. And they're all films he hasn't been in. That's good. Is the film out? I've sort of got out of the habit of going.

I can't imagine going to the cinema again. I never liked the cinema anyway. I've got a bad back along with my bad knees. So like I'm like this chair is not as good as the chairs in my house. Why am I here? Exactly. Oh, but presumably it's streaming, is it? Yes. How to Build a goal yeah

so we missed out on our big premiere which we were going to do at Glastonbury Festival so that was a bit of a bummer um the smallest of all the bummers in this terrible year I feel and it's a very tiny violin but we went straight to streaming and I I was actually really glad it went straight to streaming because like most of my audience is going to be women of my age you've got kids so you can't go out to the cinema there's's a whole load of babysitting fees. Or young girls who want to watch a naughty, saucy, sexy film on their own in their bedroom in the privacy of their own iPad. So I was very glad that it went to streaming. I think that's the modern way.

You can choose your own snacks, go to the toilet when you like and sit in a comfortable chair. You'll be 40. I'll be 51. This is a song that Jimmy Cliffy done But you'd be 40 Covered it in 1983

Then I chopped it up a bit In 2020 Jackie Graham And Jackie Me Too Moe Bush And Ruby Turner Provided lovely backing vocals For this bit

Although I'd rather Shout upon them With all of my shit. I love drama days to lose. Excuse me, I had some wind issues there. Top or bottom? Which way? Top. Top wind. What are your top five unwelcome surprises about middle age?

Oh. I just put you on the spot there. That's not fair. Yeah. No, no, no. Well, yeah, I mean, I genuinely thought, like, when I, the first chapter of the new book, More Than A Woman, is me now at 45 going back to visit me at the age of 35. at 45 going back to visit me at the age of 35 when I thought I knew everything and I just finished writing How to Be a Woman going I know you think the next bit of your life is going to be the great bit like you've got the kids are a bit older and you're just going to spend all your time having fabulous lunches with gal pals and maybe buy some elegant linen trousers and perhaps learn how to water ski or paint and that's not going to happen the luxury of your young years is that most of your problems are your problems things that you've done wrong things you need to sort out with yourself you get

to middle age and most of your problems are other people's problems you are helping out troubled people so that was the biggest surprise that it wasn't fun it wasn't like some kind of cross between calendar girls and sex in the city it was just a hurricane of shit what other things are interesting um you lose skin elasticity but you also lose the amount of fucks that you give. Like, I'm so into my wattle. You don't have a wattle. You don't even know what a wattle is. Oh, I wattle hard here.

You 45-year-olds thinking you've got a wattle. Yeah, but I can't grow a beard like you, so my wattle is like kind of, that's public. But I quite like that it's like having a little fidget toy executive stress toy like a little neck bollock that you can kind of fiddle with when you feel a bit stressed you know how men fiddle with their balls yeah as a woman you can fiddle with your wattle i like that okay i asked on twitter men like what their problems i was like i'm always going around women's problems what problems do you have men that's right about this in the book and lots of the men i mean there were so many things there's so many heartbreaking and so many beautiful but a lot of men just saying like you know if i

want to look sexy for my wife she can like you know buy beautiful negligee and sort of do her hair and all this kind of stuff and like if i want to look sexy for my wife what are my options like a posing pouch that says beware of the beast like it's it's a comedy item it's not and at first i was like that's quite funny but then I started thinking if women were being sold pants that made fun of their genitals, we'd have feminist outrage. Like why is your cock and balls funny, but people need to respect my vag? That's not fair. That is a true point.

And I have to confess to feeling a little defensive and occasionally irritated sometimes when women comedians do jokes about how grotesque men's junk is yeah that's not fair and i do think like i definitely i wouldn't say that about your lovely fanny don't insult my stuff my junk's so good we are splitting our family because my husband whenever women are doing those jokes will just just laugh and go, yeah, right. They are correct. This is all terrible.

I don't understand why anybody would want to go near it. And I'm like, you don't understand. I find it fascinating. Like if you hold someone's balls, let's not say they're my husband's, let's give him some privacy. But where are I holding someone's balls in my hand? They kind of ripple and shapeshift like a cuttlefish. Like you can see their moodss change it's true it's true like a baby in the womb yes sometimes they're shy and they sort of want to hide away a bit and then

suddenly they'll get a burst of confidence and kind of bloom outwards again and that's yeah i mean i don't know why attenborough hasn't done a documentary on this but i would watch the fuck out of that in hd that is yes he's come out of his hole and he's having a look around i've just suddenly realized i'm not good at doing david attenborough impressions or improvising no i find it all fascinating and similarly the penis um like that's a fascinating thing like i don't have penis envy because the simple truth of the matter is that women can have multiple orgasms and men can't so like kind of you know we've been given a better deal there. Cystitis notwithstanding.

But like, you know, as an object, as a thing, like a penis is magic. Like you can say words as a woman, you can say some words and then a penis hears the words and changes and becomes bigger just from words. Like that's magic. Like if Merlin was doing that kind of shit around the round table everyone would be like yeah you really are magic like we can change your body part by talking to it it can hear you that's magic that is true there are moments as a man i think when you do catch yourself looking in the mirror and you think come on look at that brilliant piece of equipment

that is magnificent who couldn't love that but i think obviously you have to you have to keep a lid on that or you have to keep it in proportion and have some sense of perspective it seems sad to me that like there are so many women who will talk about their vaginas and how incredible they are or their vulvas which is the correct term and you know and there's all this comedy about it now women rejoicing in all this art but you can't form look at my lovely dick color and that feels sad to me that you can't i think you want to i think this is a valid idea but i see you are hesitant and that makes me sad i think in the post me too era it seems inappropriate but then also i

mean to be feminist for a while again yeah sorry That's sad because most men aren't sexual criminals and most penises aren't used as a weapon. And like, you know, most penises are just sitting there trying to get on with the day, trying to make friends where they can. And why couldn't you have a lovely chat about that with some other dudes? But I suspect you would rather die than sit in a pub with your mates and talk about your penises. Like, would you sit in a pub with Louis Theroux and Joe Cornish and discuss your penises?

Well, we haven't done. That is a good point. Because, you know, as evidenced by our conversation today, I enjoy talking about these kinds of things and would happily talk about them with anyone. But no, I don't really talk about these kind of things with my pals. It does seem weird. Yeah. That's a strange thing.

Okay. I'm going to call them up and start asking them about their willies. Explain in advance that it's a thing. It's not just a chat. There is a purpose behind this kind of liberation and sharing. Joe once called me up. I hope this is going to be okay with Joe. But when we were in our late teens,

early 20s, it must have been early 20s, and we both had started having sex with humans. A great time in a man's life, yes. Yeah, it's wonderful. And one of the things that happened to both of us was the broken banjo string.

Do you know what I'm saying? I do. There's a very famous story about a very famous pop star from the 90s who was watching the women's singles final at Wimbledon and was masturbating so enthusiastically to the sporting events that he broke his banjo string and started to hemorrhage and had to be taken to hospital. And so did that happen with you? Were you hospitalized? No, but it felt as if it might be. I mean, it feels bad when it happens because no one

warns you about the, I think it's called the frenulum and it is the piece of skin if you're not circumcised that uh attaches the this is probably too much info but we're probably that horse is way past that yeah it's the piece of skin that joins the foreskin to let's call it the bell and yeah the polar neck head. That's kind of, yeah. Yeah. And if, uh, action gets too vigorous, then it will tear and it's very painful as you can imagine. And I, in my experience,

it hasn't been too bloody, but it's bloody painful. And, um, it happened to me and I told Joee about it i remember i was like oh man this was the most painful thing that ever happened and then um he had the same thing and he phoned me up and he said i think the same thing just happened to me but he said uh the phrase he used was i think my cocoon's broken um and so that was their shorthand for it how's your broken

cocoon i'm imagining and i have to tell you that you've got a small doll's bed and you bandage the penis and then you put it in a little bed and had penis hospital for a week and i've got the casualty theme music in my head and it's such a good episode of casualty. A tiny intravenous drip with the line going in the top. Anyway, no, I didn't do that. But that's what I should have done. No, I think it's like breaking a rib. You know, you just have to wait and then eventually it will heal. to wait and then eventually it will heal but you have to wait and you have to abstain from any work that would undo the healing you know what i mean yeah no no pokey pokey that's the no no no

no auto fun no anything you just have to leave that thing alone maybe what would be useful would be you know how dogs have the cone of shame when they've had an operation put a cone of shame around your cock and balls to protect it i tell you someone should have done that because it took the whole process of the thing healing took about two years for me because there was no way i was gonna leave it alone two years yeah well you do you do end up with some scarring let let me tell you. So would you be able to pick your penis out of a line-up because you could recognise your distinctive scarring? Defo.

Actually, that's an important point. I wonder if I could pick my fanny out of a line-up, if there were, like, 20 fannies. Would I know mine? Because my view's from above, so, like, it depends, I guess, what the angle is. Hmm. Interesting.

Makes note into dictaphone. Do anonymous line-up of fannies with friends and see if you can pick your own out. Then do bumholes. There you go. And that's how we're going to end the podcast. Yes. And my career. Yes.

Wait. and my career yes great 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. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. Who was she? Who was this creature that rose like the dawn? Was bewitching as the moon, radiant as the sun, terrible as an army poised for battle.

Hey, welcome back, podcats. Catlin Moran there. I'm very grateful to her for making the time to talk to me. It was nice to see her, albeit via the Zoom. It's nice to see anyone, really. So how have you been, though, podcats? Not doing too badly, badly i hope with the pandemic hokey-cokey i've been doing bits and pieces of publicity for the hardback publication of

ramble book out now in bookstores as you're probably aware if my hilarious Cardi B parody book ad is running in this podcast. If it no longer is and you're thinking, oh, I wish I could hear that, that sounds wonderful, then visit my website, adam-buxton.co.uk, where I think you can find it in a blog post from earlier this month, September 2020. Anyway, I was talking to someone the other day and they were saying, oh, I can't avoid you these days, you're everywhere.

And I was thinking, nah, I don't think I am. Maybe you're just directly in my bubble. And in that bubble, perhaps I would have been a little bit unavoidable. So if you've got buckles fatigue, I apologise. But if you would really love to hear me talking about a lot of the same things again, mixed in with some new things, then here's a few podcasts that I appeared on which you might be interested to check out. I have put links in the description.

I was on the Waterstones podcast. Is it Waterstones or Waterstones? Like the Flintstones. Anyway, I had a good conversation with Will Rycroft, one of the hosts of the Waterstones podcast a few weeks back. Quite a bit of Bowie chat in there, as I recall. I don't know if he will have kept that in or not. I also appeared on Elizabeth Day's hugely successful How to Fail podcast. I was honoured to be asked on there. That was

quite emotional, as I recall. I mean, the thing is that I have been feeling very emotional over these last few months. I'm sure many of you have too, just because of the way everything is in the world at the moment. And after my mum died, obviously that became a little more acute and I'm still in the process of restabilizing but it doesn't stop me going on podcasts and thinking that I can talk about it all without suddenly getting my old man crying voice on and sure enough I do find myself getting quite emotional. And I recently recorded another episode of Griefcast with Cariad Lloyd. And talked about my mum. And that was very emotional.

So as I speak, that is not out. I don't know when she's planning on putting that out but it was lovely to talk to Cariad and yeah it was very emotional but I guess that's fair enough it's not the pull yourself together podcast don't you think Rosie okay well that's it for this week

I am indebted to Catlin Moran. Incidentally, I would like to thank Gear 4 Music for helping me sort out a USB mic for Catlin. Just realised the day before we spoke that she didn't actually have a USB mic. And Gear 4 Music helped me pick one out and get it to Catlin just in time. A link to their excellent online store is in the description of this podcast. I am indebted to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support.

Thank you, Seamus. And to Matt Lamont for his edit whiz-bottory. Thank you, Matt. The artwork for this podcast is by Helen Green. Myself and my best dog friend Rosie will be back with you in the next week or so. Until then, go carefully. Now look, there's some people doing building work out here, renovating an old farmhouse. And it is a bunch of manly building men. So I'm too shy to shout, I love you, bye, in a weird way because then they'll come and get me.

And they might hit me with their building equipment. Ah, fuck it. I love you. Bye! Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Bye. Thank you.