THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.9 - CAITLIN MORAN

Episode Date: November 19, 2015

Adam talks to British writer Caitlin Moran about driving, life on line, feminism, wee wee drips, a painful memory of Paul McCartney and a great one of Lady Gaga. Adam also tells Caitlin about some of the responses to a recording of his daughter talking about Princess Leia's slave dress when she was 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eitTGYQS2jc Podcast music/jingles by Adam Buxton except outro music bed from 'Wario’s Woods' game (Dr Buckles remix. Music composed by Shinobu, Soyo Oka, 1994) For more about this episode visit Adam's blog: http://adam-buxton.co.uk/ad/2015/11/21/podcast-ep-9-caitlin-moran/ 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 are you doing, Podcasterways? It is me, Fidel Podcastro.

Not, you know, not quite so revolutionary or communist. Infidel Podcastro would probably be a better name for me. What? Welcome to the podcast, which today features a conversation between myself and Catlin Moran. Oh, it's cold. I'm freezing. I'm out in the field with Rosie, having a walk-walk. And the wind is blowing. The sky is slate grey.

Sometimes at this time of year in November, you get some very beautiful days. Today is not one of them, and my hand is currently frozen. I'm wishing I wore gloves. I won't make that mistake again. Anyway, Catlin Moran, yes. Well, what can I tell you about Catlin? I'm sure most of you who have downloaded this are familiar with Catlin already. But for those of you who aren't, here are some cat facts. Well, she's a well-known writer, currently aged 40. She grew up in Wolverhampton in a three-bedroom council dwelling with her family there. She was schooled at home. She only spent three weeks at secondary school before her parents took over the job of educating her. And indeed, she was

something of an autodidact, spent a lot of time in libraries and started writing at a young age, at around 13, I believe, and very quickly started winning prizes and accolades and it was clear that she had a talent for writing and became quite successful quite fast. Like by the time she was 18 she had a newspaper column, I think I'm right in saying. And she also landed around the same time a gig as a presenter on Channel 4 on a TV show called Naked City in the early 90s, hosting alongside Johnny Vaughn and the actor Michael Smiley. And I was pretty jealous, I remember,

watching her. I thought, well, this, what? How's, that's not fair. Just because she's a kind of crazy boy George slash goth girl who talks really fast and is funny, that's not... Why can't I do that? Well, I spent the next few years answering that question. And in the meantime, Catlin went from strength to strength with various newspaper columns in The Guardian and the Times, who she still writes for. And then books as well, hugely successful books and live tours in support of some of those books talking about, I mean, because she's very funny. She's kind of a cross between a

journalist and a stand-up, I suppose. And she has also more recently written a TV show, a comedy drama, called Raised by Wolves, along with her sister Caroline. And that show draws upon her somewhat unconventional upbringing back in Wolverhampton for its inspiration. It's a good show. You should check it out if you haven't seen it. And I'd never met Catlin before, so it was really nice to get an opportunity to meet her. And we, of course, were able to communicate via Twitter. And of course, we talk about Twitter. You can't not talk about social media. No, of course. Why would you not do that? You'd have to be insane. What else do we chat about? Fear of driving, fear of flying. Maybe don't listen to the podcast if you're just about to get on a plane. No, it's not that bad. Flying's

fine. You'll be fine. But we do talk about flying, especially in the wake of a terrorist attack. And our conversation, I should say, was recorded before the Paris attacks on November the 13th, in case you're wondering. So we do talk about that and some of the assumptions, lazy assumptions you make about people after those kinds of atrocities and then I awkwardly segue into talking about feminism of course now Katlin she talks about feminism a lot and is very erudite and funny on the subject me not so much so I did my best but um oh yeah one thing I wanted to say was that at a certain point I talk about a book called The Female Brain by Luanne Brizendine that I read a few years ago and I found very interesting and it's a kind of a scientific explanation or a pseudo-scientific, I suppose, explanation of why men and women are different in certain ways.

And it seeks to explain why it is that maybe women aren't so good at maths and aren't so good at map reading and all these kind of assumptions that I grew up believing. But I fail to say, I fail to sort of make it clear to Catlin, I think, in the conversation, having listened to it back, I fail to make it clear that I have since had many of those ideas overturned by another book called Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. You see what she's done there? Delusions of Grandeur, Delusions of gender, grand gender clever title anyway, it's a good book though and actually it

takes the book The Female Brain by Luanne Brizendine and it more or less systematically overturns every significant idea in there and disproves much of what Luanne Brizendine is saying in her book.

And as Catlin points out, you know, the debate rages on about who is right and there are strong arguments on both sides, but it's a very good book to read alongside the female brain. I just wanted to say that because I didn't really make it clear in the conversation, which we shall go to right now and join myself and Catlin chatting in her kitchen in North London, in her North London home where she lives with her husband and two teenage daughters.

It was great meeting her. She was very friendly and welcoming. And I hope you enjoy listening to us burbling. Here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. 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. Go, go, go, go, go. What's your typical day like then when you're working? I wake up very reluctantly. I'm not an early riser. We once explained to our children that there are larks and owls. And they completely misheard this and thought it was sharks and owls. And one of them was like, I don't want to be a shark. He said, no, it's larks.

That's different. I'm definitely an owl. It's a slow start. I do 10 minutes of Pilates because I don't want to be a shark. He said, no, it's larks. That's different. I'm definitely an owl. It's a slow start. I do 10 minutes of Pilates because I'm a North London wanker now. And then I come downstairs and drink coffee. And then I just muck about on Twitter for half an hour and then finally get working at about nine. So who does the school run? I pulled the ultimate dick move in our marriage.

I don't drive. I can't drive. So my husband has to do all the ferrying of children to school. He has to do all the shoppinging of children to school he has to do all the shopping he's brian ferry delivering yeah he really is he's um he's daddison lee the amount of driving that man's done over the last couple years um and he gives me lifts everywhere as well yeah so it's been absolutely perfect i would say that's been the successful part of our marriage has been me never driving at any point and are there ever resentful exchanges

about that situation does he like when things get heated does he say when are you going to learn how to drive by the way he's seen me on a bicycle and he knows how dangerous that is okay i can fall off anything i can fall off my own feet on a flat floor i'm a very wobbly person i don't know the difference between left and right um the only two driving lessons i had uh the first one the uh driving instructor pulled me over after 10 minutes went because i kept steering into the curb and kind of crashing a little bit and after 20 minutes you went Miss Moran I've worked out what's going wrong you keep being distracted by boys who are walking by don't you I was like yeah busted and then the second lesson I just got to a five-way junction and completely freaked out

I can't do this I can't do this and just got out of the car and ran away I found it incredibly frightening all I could think my first few driving lessons, the phrase that kept going around in my head was, I'm in charge of a killing machine. You know what I mean? Yes. Literally. And I had a problem when I was in my 20s where I became very afraid of flying as well. And I had a phrase that went around before when I was at the end of the jetway when you actually see the hull of the plane for the first time. You know what I mean?

And some people reach out and touch it and give it a little pat patting it like a horse yes exactly like you don't throw me off that's right don't throw I'm one of the good passengers throw me down yes I didn't do that but what did happen for me was I would have this phrase that would just insinuate itself and it was twisted metal and I could never get on a plane without this phrase popping up it was terrible it doesn't happen anymore we know too much really to do these things we are still scared monkeys and then we go into these huge pieces of technology i can remember when i first started flying the first time i took a flight i was 17 and i was going over to review a band in ireland and we took off and i didn't and just the actual taking off the plane was incredible because the plane

just goes faster and faster and faster at a speed that you've never gone at before as a human being it's like an angry speed and it's like the plane gets angrier and angrier and angrier until it punches up into the sky and then you're going through clouds you're like we're tearing clouds apart what's going on what's going on and then when you get to a certain height suddenly the sun comes out and i just realized at that point i was like what's going on and my companion went well the sun's always out above the clouds isn't it and i was like this is an amazing metaphor by which i can live the rest of my life however awful it is down on earth if you get high enough it's always a sunny day yeah and if high slash famous enough yes the sun will eventually come out forever so yeah well the worst experience i've ever had on a plane i had to go out and

interview courtney love about 10 years ago in LA and I had to go via Birmingham airport via Paris and then to LA so for the first 5 hours of the flight you're just travelling in the wrong direction and it was the 2 days after the 7-7 bombings and airport security was just nuts and everyone was on the plane and they were waiting for 3 passengers

and everyone was really nervous and then the 3 passengers come on and this is in Birmingham, they are three muslim dudes with full sort of you know full long uh gowns on looking very sweaty and harassed because obviously they've had a very bad time in security yeah yeah um and one of them's on crutches and you're going oh my god crutches that's a weapon that's where the gun is this is awful everyone's on high alert you know poor anybody you know of any different ethnicity trying to travel anywhere in the world at that point and the guy on the crutches comes and sits next to me and i'm in this hyper post terrorist alert just kind of like oh my god oh my god oh my god okay clearly he's managed to smuggle

the gun onto the plane completely rational horribleness he's managed to smuggle the gun onto the plane in his crutch without being detected he's going to detonate it at a certain point so it is down to me on behalf of everyone in this plane to talk to him about humanity and peace and how we're all just the same and how we need to leave these kind of differences behind and well you know we're going to unite in the sky and this is that's what i've got to do with the power of my voice and my chat my heart i'm gonna i'm gonna bring world peace starting on this plane so i started talking to him like kind of massive liberal dick kind of like i can sort all this out yeah and uh and within 10 minutes it turns out that he was from wolverhampton

same as me and we used to go to the same indie club together. And we spent the rest of the flight just sitting there, quoting Sultans of Ping FC lyrics at each other. And I don't know whether he was planning to board the plane before we started talking about the Sultans of Ping FC. But after that, I noticed he didn't. And I can only say that must be down to the power of indie music to unite people at terrible times. Yes. Once you've heard the Sultans of Ping,

it's impossible to become radicalised. Yeah. No, no, no. Exactly. you're just more concerned about where your jumper is it brings it into very stark relief doesn't it the whole those kinds of dangerous cultural assumptions that you make in those situations and and and the fact that everyone has the capacity to to make those whether they are guardian reading bleeding heart liberals or yeah or not you keep voting scrote yeah i mean it brought out the best and worst people people sort of like when the terrorist attacks happened because you'd see people looking at you know sort of like anybody of any different ethnicity at all you know on public transport in a suspicious way but then you would see people there was that that

whole initiative of i will sit with you i will ride with you where you'd see people deliberately going over and sitting next to the brown guy with the rucksack and going i'm going to sit next to you i'm not going to you know exclude you you know i'm going to show that i'm not scared yeah and then you know it's beautiful these sort of things go through waves you know you see them happening on social media as well kind of you know your scared little monkey brain just goes a bad thing i'm going to i'm going to react in fear and terror and anger and then people have a second wave of conversations of no we are good people we you know we believe in civilization we're going to go out there we're going to put some love and trust back into the world because that's what we need to do now

meanwhile the guy with the rucksack is like fucking leave me alone I just want to sit here and have my sandwich and leave my bag

I wonder if it's too crass to suggest that it's like that with the world of sexism and with cultural assumptions about women as well and that we are in

a period now where we are in a period now where we are, certainly us men, are being asked to think about some of the assumptions that we've grown up with. And, you know, and even if you are, even if you're someone who thinks like I do, that I'm brilliant and open-minded and broad-minded, but then you still keep butting up against all these things that people are now beginning to talk about. And you think, oh, I've done that. And I thought that. And then you get, I've heard you talking before about how important it is for people who have been hurt and who have legitimate

grievances, not to let their anger get the better of them when they're talking online. I think that's really an important message. Well, there's two ways of dealing with hurt. Like if you want to, A, if you're dealing with, you know, and everyone has their awful things to deal with. You know, we're all dealing with bad stuff. But some people are dealing with a lot more bad stuff that's happened to them in their lives and in their day-to-day life than other people. So there's one, your hurt and your personal feelings. And then there's two, what you want to do about that.

Do you just simply want to express that or do you want to change things so that you don't have to deal with that kind of bullshit again and so your children don't and so other people in society don't. Now, quite a lot of social media, particularly in feminism and intersectional feminism, simply at the moment,

because social media is in its infancy and these conversations are still in their infancy, is simply about people talking about the awful things that have happened to them and expressing their hurt and anger but the problem is that 90% of what people hear when you're talking is not the actual content content of your speech but your tone so if you go on there hurt and angry and accusatory people just respond to the emotion and they tend to be hurt and angry and accusatory back at you and that's why over the last couple years on social media you've seen groups of people who should have got on with each other and should have been all on the same side trying to make the world a better place just basically having kind of i'm more oppressed than you wars or i'm

more upset than you wars and everybody's just a load of really upset people who all just needed to just come down the pub and you know have a ciggy and a couple of baileys and you know stick some karaoke on and start singing alone by heart. And we could have sorted this out. Because it's being acted out in a public arena where people pile on. It all becomes sort of quite argumentative. If they started singing heart, then I would have had to start fighting.

Really? Do you not power air grab? Till now, I know it's gone. What's the key album that I need to get? This is just a minor deviation. You just need the song. You don't need an album. What are you on about?

It's just that song. I'm a man. I need albums. No, you don't need to. No, no, no. This is where you're wrong. Roxette were never truer when they said, don't bore an album. What are you on about? It's just that song. I'm a man. I need albums. No, you don't need to. No, no, no. This is where you're wrong. Roxette were never truer when they said

don't bore us, get to the chorus. Now you're quoting Roxette at me. I have to draw the line there. Sorry, sorry. Do we need to go back into the Indie Citadel and make sure we're there?

Yeah, we do. But you know, if you want to change the world, that's why humour's so important. You know, at the moment, as soon as you go, okay, I'm going to make a serious point,

but I'm going to try and make it as humorously as possible. Everyone's butt up to relax. You know, everybody just sits more comfortably on the chair they're more receptive to listen and also i think there is a bit of egotism in trying to be serious i mean obviously i come from a humorous point of view but anybody can stand up and go i believe in good things and i think bad things are bad and that's basically just having a wank and making you

look great i believe in good things i'm against the bad things if you want someone to listen to you you need to kind of give them a little present or a gift which is to make it funny you know well twitter's twitter's all about calculating the best thing to say to make you look the way you want to look right like it's a big sort of pr exercise and and the more followers you get the more you think like oh is this is this a good thing to link to does this make me look sufficiently uh right on or funny or interesting but that's a new development though when it first started i think you joined after me but when i first got there it was all many women it was all funny women and it was much more sort of it was like because it's the first place that

that was colonized by women kind of like everywhere else if you're on a tv panel show it's men if you go on radio for it's, kind of like everywhere else. If you're on a TV panel show, it's men. If you go on Radio 4, it's men. The men got there first and you might be invited on as a token woman. But that's not a friendly environment for you to be funny in the way you want to be funny. This was the first space that we had. And now it is, as you say, it's turned into what is my branding? What is my reach? What is the right thing to say?

I'm now in quite a nice place on Twitter where I think people understand what they're going to get from me and what they're not going to get. And everyone's very respectful and decent and friendly. And it's pretty good. After I was initially very wary of it and it used to squat on my psyche, like to the extent I'd be worried I'd be told off by someone for tweeting the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing. And I would sometimes I would getised for not tweeting often enough. Well, I have many large, overreaching theories about this. When I go into the woods and partake of my ceremonial pipe, I can get quite wiggy about this.

But we, for nearly, well, over a century, we've speculated on the fact that there might be a global consciousness. You know, sort of young, sort of experimented with this, sort of like Freud spoke a bit about it, kind of, do we have a global consciousness? Is there a uniting experience of being a human being, with the internet we've got that, the world if you looked at it now

would look like a gigantic brain that is all parts of it are communicating with each other, we're now unmediated can talk to each other, but that brain is in its infancy, it's like a baby at the moment and if you look at the behaviour of social media it is very much like a child, it gets into massive tantrums and rages, you know but it can also be really easily distracted with a

picture of a cat, you know, and quite a lot of the time it really radiates the vibe of just wanting to be picked up by its mum and given a big hug yeah so it's so it's a little baby at the moment it's a tantrumy toddler but it will grow up and it will learn and we'll you know we'll find a way to talk to each other but this is a new skill that we're learning as a species we've had this before and what about the the language that toddler is using all jargon, especially I'm thinking in the world of gender politics and in the world of transphobia and sort of trans philosophy and politics. All those kinds of bits of jargon, I find them very alienating. Yeah. Because I'm expected to understand what they mean and I don't.

And obviously I can go and look them up and I have done. But even sometimes then I don't really understand, like intersectionality and all this kind of... Do you know what that is? I do know what intersectionality is, yeah. It just means understanding that privilege or oppression is a 3D thing. So as a woman, I am slightly oppressed. As a working class woman woman I find it more difficult

but I'm not finding it as difficult as a working class woman who is also of colour, who is also trans or who would be lesbian so it's understanding there is people are dealing with basically different levels of shit just kind of have a look at the person who you're talking to and go how much more shit than me have you had to deal with? Okay so it's like a big

Venn diagram of shit and where do they depending on who you're talking to more shit than me have you had to deal okay so it's like a big venn diagram of shit and yeah where you are on the shit thing but depending on who you're talking to or what the subject is your you know your privilege or you know your oppression may increase or decrease depending on what you're talking about okay i mean the thing i mean the thing is the idea behind it because i mean basically most of my feminism comes down to the to the to the uh the the thought did david bowie do it if david bowie did it that's fine a lot of people say as a feminist you can't wear makeup and it's like well david bowie did it then i can do it? If David Bowie did it, that's fine. A lot of people say, as a feminist, you can't wear makeup. And it's like, well, if David Bowie did it, then I can do it.

And also, it's understanding why you wear makeup. Most women wear makeup to look sexy, which is where I disagree with it, because I wear makeup to look like a puffin. When I'm wearing my eyeliner and my bright eyeshadow, I simply want to look like the bird, the puffin. So it's also to look like a clown, or maybe to look scary, or to try and look cleverer or weirder. So it's not just simply about looking beautiful all the time.

Yes, it's a theatrical gesture. Yeah, but David Bowie made up being him you know he just went i'm a bent alien from space with snaggled teeth and and and bonk eyes and it's just like that's great you made yourself up so so that's the whole idea with kind of like sort of like gender fluidity at the moment and all these kind of things but the problem is a lot of the people who are talking about it i think don't want people to understand it because they are forming groups that they don't want people to be part of, as everybody does. You want to be in a gang.

You want to go. You're talking to each other. You know, it's like it's like the treehouse. There's millions of treehouses, you know, kind of on Twitter, kind of like, you know, no girls allowed in the treehouses, like kind of, you know, no, no trans exclusionary radical feminists in this treehouse. Everyone's making their little gangs. But the whole idea of being able to stand up and go, this is what I am. I have created myself. I think it's a beautiful thing.

Yeah. Being your own parents. It does get a bit people's front of judea though sometimes oh god yeah but you know after a while you just sit back and go you know what what everybody's finding is that not everybody's going to agree with you like kind of i think for a while on twitter we thought at some point everyone will just agree yeah it's sort of like just realizing again as every generation does you know what lots of people are not going to disagree so let's make sure we keep the conversations polite and cheerful, and if we can, amusing. Yeah. And the other key thing to remember on the internet, sorry, is there was an amazing study recently that said that people's inhibition levels are lowered to the point where they've had two pints. You kind of, you feel much more relaxed on social media than you would in real life.

So basically the entire internet's a bit pissed. So once you understand that when you go online, it's basically about half past 10 on a Friday night in a pub, which again explains a lot of the behaviour. People are fighting and ranting or going, I love you. Someone at some point will try and show you their penis. Some people are trying to go on somewhere else. Some people are trying to just go to sleep and get home. You know, that's what the internet is.

It's a pub on Friday night at 10.30. So choose your words carefully. And of course, somewhere in the world, it will be actually 10.30 on a Friday night if it's Friday. So yeah, you're right. It's like you're coming across all these people. You've got no clue and no conception of where they are, what their state is, and whether they're genuinely pissed or just a little bit uninhibited.

Well, this is the thing that I loved about it. Like when I first started being on the internet, it was a chat room where I was heavily pregnant at the time. And I pretended that I was a fantasy warlord called lord venger who lived in a cave and had a hat that had one horn on it and i was a kind of sort of depressive peevish warlord and i was the king of that chat room i was kind of like everyone was like whoa you're so funny lord venger i love you lord venger you're fantastic and then someone found out it was me and like at the time i wasn't as well known as i now but people had known that i'd done this tv show when I was a teenager on channel four and that's right yes I was a very bad tv presenter but they found out it was me and within 10 minutes someone had made a comment about how I

was a fat and fuckable goth and it was really interesting going from when people thought I was a man just kind of like you're funny you're great and as soon as someone found out that I was a woman it was immediately a comment about my appearance and how he wouldn't want to have sex with me yeah and that was one of my sad days on the internet it was like oh my god there it is that's you know that's when they want and look how they want. And if they want to look attractive, then that's fine. But then you get men and some women, too, who turn around and say, well, well no you can't have it both ways if you're sending out sexual signals to men monkey men then you have to uh reap the whirlwind you know well

there's two things there first of all i think what a lot of because you've got to realize there's a lot of internalized misogyny as well women often you know when a man says a sexist thing women are often saying these sexist things to themselves as well you know when you're in your world of oppression you don't realize how much of the voice you have in your head is you know a male voice or society's voice so first of all when women dressing when women dressing up and making an effort to go out at night they're usually not trying to look deathlessly sexy or like or supermodels or like porn models they are just trying to look normal because most images that you see of women are very airbrushed very glamorous they're wearing spanks you know they've got their hair all done they spent three hours getting ready so in your head it's not that you're trying to are very airbrushed, very glamorous. They're wearing Spanx, you know, they've got their hair all done,

they've spent three hours getting ready. So in your head, it's not that you're trying to look beautiful and glamorous and sell yourself on the sexy market. It's just simply that you want to look normal. You don't want anyone to point at you and go, ah, you look like Gropbags, which I've had many times and I found very hurtful and I can't believe my mother said that to me. Gropbags? That's pretty harsh.

Yeah, I was a goth and I got a lot of that in Wolverhampton. So that's the first thing. But the second one is kind of like this sort of duality about male sexuality in that there's this whole thing about kind of that men can't control their sexuality. This whole thing kind of like, you know, kind of like, you know, that's why I raped her because the emotions became overwhelming. Because I'm hardwired to just go around having sex with people. And at the same time, women keep being told,

like in the last couple of weeks, there's been a couple of famous people who've gone, they don't like the idea of Hillary Clinton being president of the United States because it's like women are more irrational and both of them have gone, you know, I've just got a feeling that she'll let off a nuclear bomb

because women just get really angry and irrational and they've got their time of the month and that's why they get off a nuclear bomb. It's like, well, you can't have it both ways. If you're the rational sex, you know, if you're the guys, you know, who's supposed to be in charge of the world because you don't get emotional

and you can control your emotions in a way that women can't that you can't also say yeah but if i see someone's thigh then i'm immediately going to have some rape with them like kind of you know work out which one which one are you are you the guys who are in charge of the world because you're rational or are you are you sex monkeys that literally can't stop yourselves from having sex once you've decided what that is come back to us and then we'll work out a survival tactic do you have it like i grew up with i would say fairly typical cultural assumptions about the differences between men and women right and but that they were sold to me as not being cultural they were sold to me as being fact yes and i've even read books um which uh continue to discuss

them as if they are basic science like well there's a a book by a woman called Luanne Brizendine called The Female Brain. And she's an American neuropsychiatrist. And I found this book fascinating, right? Because I was like, well, here is clearly an intelligent scientist who happens to be a woman writing about the differences between men and women and they support many of my preconceptions about like, oh, that's... But she wasn't saying...

She was sort of saying, these are some of the differences and this scientifically is why because there are differences in the chemical makeup of the female and the male brain and she was going through and trying to explain why it was that perhaps women weren't so good at maths and why it was that they they didn't have as much spatial awareness as men did etc etc basically sort of saying well yeah they're not

all you know they're not so good at map reading and this is why um and then it was also other things like this is why they are more emotional at certain times and all these sort of things this i mean this book was written when not not very long ago 2006 well that's it's a fascinating subject first of all the whole idea of gender um and whether it's hardwired in the brain or not is a massively contentious subject and you can read about it and you'll get both sides arguing each other hammer and tongs and no one seems to know what the truth is there how much of it is is societal how much of its upbringing how much of it is hardwired into the brain uh the second thing is uh that i find it really interesting

that all the things that are supposed to be the male powers that the men are best at like you know spatial awareness map reading uh they're supposed to be better at memory maths all these kind of things are all really interestingly things that are becoming increasingly unnecessary in the world now because now we have technology that will do all these things for us. Whereas the things that women are supposed to be good at, like emotion, empathy, getting people together, keeping situations calm and quiet and all that kind of stuff. Yes, those are the things that are increasingly more important

because they're the only things that can't be automated and can't be done by robots. So again, that's quite interesting. The extension of that argument that men are superior at these things are like well you are superior things that are now becoming unnecessary so this is surely the era of the woman will now come along the second one is really understanding the history of because there's so much stuff that i just thought kind of men must be superior if you look at history however much of a feminist i am there is no female beatles there's no female einstein there have been no uh female civilizations there's been no female Beatles, there's no female Einstein, there have been no female civilisations,

there's been no female, you know, they didn't invent any banking systems or social systems. Well, I mean, you know, their delivery service is second to none, but their taxation policy is not one I agree with. But then, I don't know if you saw, it was an amazing documentary, and I was amazed the BBC didn't give it more publicity, called The Ascent of Woman by Dr Amanda Foreman. It was a three-part series that ran last month.

That was one of the most radical shows that I've seen. It's still's still on iplay so if anybody out there wants to go and watch it or you can tell them to do legally i'm sure from somewhere then please do she just sets out because the the sort of the biggest story of humanity so far that's been done on television was alan clark's civilization yes i can remember watching that at the age of 12 going this is an incredible documentary because it takes you from from the romans to the greeks to the romans and then you go through enlightenment and sort of renaissance and then the modern day and all the way through the sort of the narrative is and now we're getting closer and closer to the modern day where the goodies have won and all this great stuff is happening and then you watch it again when you're 26 and your feminist goggles have been put on where you see the world through

your feminist goggles and you have friends of color and friends from different countries and you're watching it going oh my god this is the story about how you know the goodies and the winners went round and screwed over a load of people and stole massive advantages and then absolutely cemented them into the society we live in now this now this series makes me feel bad and i wrote a big piece in the times going what we really need to see is a history of humanity about the losers you know the people who lost out the people who screwed over i see an alternative history of the world so we understand more about what's happening now and uh amanda foreman has done that through the story of women um but secondly you just go so these were ideas and they were ideas that won for a period of

history but they are ideas that can be overturned and that is what we're seeing now like kind of it's definitely been no better time to be a woman than now you know i often get asked would you go back and live in any period of history if you could and it's like no i wouldn't even go back and live 10 minutes ago in history it's his story not her story okay have a think about that for a while um i'm going to play you a clip of um my daughter talking about one of her favorite films return of the jedi you haven't seen this before have you what the film return of your daughter yeah it's online no i haven't seen this one um i record? What, the film Return of the Jedi or Your Daughter? Yeah, it's online. No, I haven't seen this one.

I record a lot of conversations that I have with her. She was talking about Jabba the Hutt in the palace at the beginning of Return of the Jedi when he's keeping Leia as a slave. Sexy slave. A sexy slave. Oh, mate, it's knocked over a glass. It's no good, is it? What are you looking at? Star Wars.

A book. What's it called? Star Wars. Yeah, but it's the Star Wars Annual 2010. And it's full of breakdowns about all the characters in there, right? Mm-hm. And what were you saying? Well, I know Jabba the Hutt is a baddie. Jabba the Hutt.

Yes. But he actually chose for Leia to dress up as a slave. He actually chose a really nice dress because I like the way he put the sort of tiara, the bands, these, this, that, her hair plaited. It's actually a pretty good look for her. You reckon? I mean, I think she does look pretty. She certainly looks attractive, but some people think that, you know, it's a bit... Do you know what the word demeaning is? No.

No. That it's a bit embarrassing and not really very nice to make a woman dress up like that. But it actually is quite nice, I think so. I don't care if people don't think that. To dress up like a slave woman? Yes. But you wouldn't want to be a slave though, right? No, I just would want to escape and just keep on wearing that. Because it looks really nice.

So your plan, if you were in Jabba the Hutt's palace... I would just be rescued and then I would ask them if I could keep this dress on. That's it. You asked to keep the dress? Yep. I could take it off, I could take it off and I could pretend that I'm, and I could go with Luke and put their dress back on and pretend I'm still captured. When Jabba the Hutt comes back, I can pretend I'm in prison still. So for you, it's mainly about whatever it takes to wear the slave dress. Yep. So that was my daughter when she was five.

And afterwards, I was thinking, because I ended up putting that online. And, you know, I had a few, I talked to my wife about it and said, is this cool? Is it okay to, I mean, she's not in the video. Although I have done things that have been on TV where she does appear on camera. I know your policy with your family is to keep that totally separate from your professional life. Because I'm better than you, yes. Because you're better. You're a nicer person and uh more rigorous

with your thinking but um i sort of thought this is so totally innocuous this is not going to upset anyone and i hope it will communicate the same sort of joy that i get from watching it right um of course because it's on youtube there's like loads of uh well i think what happened was that people on reddit um found it and then you know those reddit guys they like to have fun and and tinker around and i think what they do a lot of the time is they go in as sock puppets you know pretending to be angry feminists or whatever and then they will have fun watching people get really upset with this angry feminist there are so many of those pretend feminists and i do sometimes think maybe all of feminism is just men pretending to be women just trying to provoke arguments on the internet it's quite a big thing i mean it's not if you've

spent if you spent more than five minutes on the internet, it's not that difficult to decode. Yeah, yeah. But yet, people just, oh my God, they respond. So one of the main comments underneath this video of my daughter talking about that is from someone calling themselves Berta Lovejoy. Saying, this is absolutely disgusting. This child has been brainwashed by the father. He was obviously trying to act innocent in this video, so the legion of feminists would spare him our wrath. The outfit Princess Leia wore was disgusting.

I couldn't believe the level of misogyny I was seeing when I first saw it. It's sickening how this movie isn't banned yet. How pathetic of this male to expose his innocent daughter to imagery of a half-naked victimizedized woman and teacher that's okay all in all in the name of reddit karma and youtube views so it's almost like they're admitting that it's like we're from reddit we're just being silly yeah but then everyone responds yes either saying oh yes i agree or getting outraged you know you bloody feminists take you can't take a joke um here's one of the people that sort of agrees with that and seems to take it at face value phil coops i'm calling him he does the thing of writing a little playlet that people do online when they want to get an idea across yeah yeah he goes girls when i, I'm going to wear a pretty dress and wait to be rescued.

Boys, when I get kidnapped, I'm going to blue shit up and get the fuck out of here. Hmm. He continues after the little play there. Hmm. I wonder why so many game and movie have helpless girl that can't do shit. Next time you fucking feminists complain about girl not being useful just think about it i'm trying to decode the language just think about it you like being helpless and push around i don't know if you understood what he was saying i totally understand

what he's saying it's interesting it just immediately turned because this is the thing again with sort of you get the when you're talking about you know morality or culture or advancing things and stuff that people either immediately argue this is a right thing or a wrong thing and i think there's so much more to be done by going down the middle which is just discussing how to me that you know the whole scene with leia dressed like that just sort of reveals how camp jabber is like kind of you know he just just comes across as the goth wan of the intergalactic federation just sitting there just kind of he must have spent an hour doing her hair. That's a very difficult do.

You know, if he's accessorised beautifully. He's chosen her colours. He's obviously done her colours with those swatch, because those jewel colours work really well for her. Black hair. No, no, no, no, no, no. Blacked. Yeah.

Abdu. Yes, very classy. Day to night. Jabba like a black. And, you know, as teenage girls, I've got millions of sisters, and we sat there, and we were discussing the thing, and as you know as you know teenage girls I've got millions of sisters and we sat there and you know

we were sort of discussing the thing and you know kind of whether he's sexually objectifying Leia and we can't work out any way that he would be able

to have sex with her because you can't there's no you look at them physically and you just go that's not going to happen he must just have aesthetically liked

the way that she looked he can't do anything with it that was this completely non-interactive look for him so that's the main thing that I took from that not that leia was being sexually objectified whether we needed a big feminist argument about it but that jabba the hut is gay let's talk about that yeah or he's got just a stylist in the palace who deals with all the slaves again that's the spin-off you know i mean i know we've got three new ones coming along down the line i'm very much

hoping that character features quite heavily because there's the blue lady as well that gets pushed into the pit yeah no there's some great outfits although i mean you know han as well i mean you know the styling on those films is absolutely fantastic so you know and maybe there's one intergalactic stylist who's doing everyone good or bad here's another comment underneath that video from das reports go back to england and suck on your queen's shriveled titties. He says to my five-year-old daughter. Or me, I guess. I mean, there's a few people who do say, like, you know, what are you doing?

Someone says here, cool animation, but what a fucking loser dad. There's nothing slave about the outfit. Unless this repressed stay-at-home loser dad puts his spin on it so he's basically saying like i assume it's a he is saying oh you're filling your daughter with all this kind of wishy-washy liberal angst just let her express herself well this this is what another big sort of argument particularly in feminism is about mtv and whether you as a feminist mother should let your children uh you know your daughters watch mtv because they're going to see a lot of women being sexually objectified there like you know kind of you seeing a lot of of shaven mons you know more than you're seeing you know faces it's just i haven't heard the phrase shaven mons nearly often enough in my life you know and they are

close you were looking right in the eye and uh you know and you kind of and loads of feminist mothers would say don't let your children watch MTV, don't let them be objectified. But as soon as your children leave the house, your daughters leave the house, they're going to go into a world where women are sexually objectified. And this is what your idea of what feminism should be, what it comes down to, because a lot of women seem to think that feminism is rules.

You've got your rules. It's almost like you're being in the brownies or the guides. You have to get your badges for intersection intersectionality and what you're gonna wear and makeup and sex and jobs and housework and all these things and that's why it looks like a massive ball lake and loads of people are like well i don't know all the rules of feminism so i'm not going to say i'm a feminist and feminism isn't a set of rules it's a set of tools it's so that when you watch something or you're going out or someone says something to you or something happens to your work that makes you feel uncomfortable and makes you feel small and makes you feel angry that

you've got the tools to analyse why that's happened and then deal with it. So if you believe that feminism is tools, not rules, then you sit down and you watch MTV with your kids and you're watching Rihanna and you explain to them how that video's made. You go, poor Rihanna, this is like the 14th video in a row that I've seen from her where she's just in her bra and pants in a field in Northern Ireland writhing around.

Like, you know, by the law of averages, she must have had quite a heavy head cold on two of these. She would have been having a period on another one. You know, she'll do that shot and 10 minutes later, she'll have a make-up party. It's like wrapping up a new huge puffer jacket and she'll be sipping Bovril and smoking a fag going, I have got to start doing a video where I'm just wearing jeans

and a cardigan just for once. And you just give them the tools to understand it so they can start laughing about it because it's really hard to oppress someone who's laughing at this shit when they see it. Yes. Do you have daughters? Yes, two teenage daughters um when they were growing up though did you see because this is another thing that does my head in this like am i subconsciously

instilling a lot of these values into my daughter is she just it just seems like a tsunami of cultural influences that i can't do anything about and with the best will in the world and all my hand wringing and I keep you know trying to sort of remind her that she has other options apart from Barbies and pink things she just seems to go back to those and I mean I suppose I suppose that's a combination of things that her friends are into and things she sees on TV and all sorts of things like that. But, I mean, she really does seem to love those things. Yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, mine were the same. I can remember my daughter coming back from nursery when she was four and going,

Mummy, I like both colours now, pink and purple. And just being like, wow, your rainbow is very small right now, isn't it? Yeah. But there's that saying in feminist orthodox orthodoxy which is i cannot be what i cannot see and that's why the main thing is is about representation like kind of again feminism seems to get sort of very hung up on you know ban madonna looking like this ban rihanna looking like this protest against what we already have you know even though this is a woman exploring her sexuality becoming very powerful earning a lot of money because she's not perfect and because she's

not representing all women in one go then we need to campaign against this and ban it it's like no don't start cutting down the amount of women we've got don't start don't start shutting them away and telling them what to do don't stop telling women what to do just increase the variety let every single woman who's doing what she's doing now carry on doing that but start going where's the other 75 of women let's get them up there as well and this is one of the problems that you see sort of in campaigning kind of you know you know for people of color or different religions or sexuality or gender that that someone comes along and everyone seems to be waiting for you know a campaigning superhero who can represent everybody in one go and has all the answers they're going to come up with one tv

show you know lena dunham in girls you know it's kind of like you know she the feminist superhero you know it's melissa mccarthy are the broad city girls like you know anyone who writes a book it's like have they got everything right and as soon as writes a book, it's like, have they got everything right? And as soon as they fuck something up, it's like, oh, no, they got it wrong. It's all over. Or as soon as they're seen as being too self-interested. You know, it's like, oh, the thing that I think that most people felt when or a lot of people felt when Miley Cyrus did the wrecking ball video and made that appearance on the MTV Awards was that here is someone manipulating people's hang-ups about all kinds of important topics just for her own glory. Yeah.

And I suppose there's an element of truth in that, obviously. And you also feel protective of her in some way because she's so young and has had an unusual upbringing. And you think, you know, she seems kind of crazy in some ways and you sort of think oh I hope she knows what she's doing young lady I wouldn't let her do that I was her dad you know and you think all these things and it is weird and you've said before that obviously you don't think that about a man doing that kind of thing it is if you see a young teenage guy pushing the boundaries you think oh he's a boundary pusher hooray well that's of thing is uh if you see a young teenage guy pushing the boundaries you think oh

he's a boundary pusher hooray well that's the thing like kind of it's it's waiting for one person to come along who's perfect and if you ask that you know my rule is you can tell when some sexist bullshit's happening when you flip reverse it and go would you see do you see a man doing this would we have these questions if a man was doing it and the answer is clearly no and it's misunderstanding that in any campaign you're not waiting for one person to come along and solve everything because that you're representing 3.3 billion people if you're a woman it's it's that it's a patchwork quilt everyone does their little bit someone's going to do something about fgm someone else is going to do something about

makeup someone else is going to do something about motherhood and you patch it all together it's a communal effort which is why it's really important to never waste any of your time ripping someone down you know if you disagree with something that someone's doing rather than writing a series of angry blogs and pieces in the guardian about you know how they fucked it up and they're a wanker just create something else instead create an alternative and then that way we have more choice and we've increased the lexicon i think that's the most important thing in the next 20 years you know for years i thought i can't write a book or a film or a tv show because in my head if you were going to write a film it had to be like star wars it had

to be a boy who had some magical powers then he meets a magic man and then there's a baddie and you have and then you blow up the Death Star and that's a film and I was like I haven't I don't I don't have a story like that and it was suddenly going from looking at everything that existed and going I can't write anything like what exists to going hang on what are all the things that don't exist yet and once you turn your your attention 180 degrees and realize start making a list of all the things that you haven't seen suddenly you've got a million tv shows and a million books and a million things to write you'll literally never run out just little campaigns like my favorite one at the moment is this hashtag on twitter called um carefree black girls because usually when you see a picture of you know a woman of color it's like to illustrate

some racism and she's looking oppressed or you know she's just about to be married off in an arranged marriage and uh and and they're just like it's just pictures of girls just kind of like just messing about just eating just playing games just like kind of jumping off walls and looking happy. And you're just like, yeah, this is something I don't see all the time. You know, I don't see this. I don't see sex scenes where you don't see a woman with a perfect body just like, you know, being kissed all over. That would be far more good, you know, for girls with eating disorders out there and self-image problems than any amount of, you know,

dull, dry academic treaties about it. Yeah. Or anything any equalities minister could do. And that's, you know, I believe that the most sort of change you can do is through culture and not campaigning. You know, believe in politics and you need legislation. But one of the biggest changes I've seen in this country over the last 20 years is with gay rights.

Like when I was at school. Yes. The worst thing that you could say to someone was you gay lord you yeah and everyone did it and it was just like oh you're gay and and you know i must say i probably said that to people and it was just like oh gay that's gay yeah gay friends would say i would sit around with gay friends and they just go that's so gay yeah and then russell t davis takes over um doctor who and writes in the bisexual superhero captain jack harkness and he kisses the doctor on primetime tv and not only is there not one letter

of complaint but on monday morning at my kids school there were boys in the playground fighting to play the role of captain jack harkness in the playground they were fighting to play a bisexual superhero now with the best will in the world there's no equalities minister that could make that happen there's no legislation that you could bring in you could couldn't write a book that would make that happen that's just something that only popular culture can do and popular culture changes things fast it's that whole thing of i cannot be what i cannot see you know once you put something up there once you've told a story and created a character it's very hard to reverse those kind of changes in culture yeah you know that's that's that's where all the fun is at the

moment man i laughed very hard at you doing your feminist smile thing on stage one time. Will you explain what that is for people who don't know? Yes. So I've been all kinds of shapes and sizes over the years. And so in my teenage years, my biggest dream was, which is a terrible dream to have as a 15-year-old girl, would be that I would be caught up in a car crash, which would be not so bad that I died, but severe enough that I would have to go in and have my body entirely rebuilt five stone smaller with perfect tits that was a big wish that i had when i was 15 and then i sort of go through my life and you know i sort of i have babies and i

become grateful for my body and i'm you know just like pat my legs and go i like you you know i like all my body i'm really happy with it and uh so then i write how to be a woman it's a big book about feminist truths and being truthful and what often happens if you're a woman and you're telling the truth and being honest is that they'll go can we do a naked photo shoot because you're telling the naked truth so like if we could see you naked that will show the naked truth brilliant and so that was the idea for the cover of the book and i was like no i don't want to do that but what i have got is this thing called my feminist smile and they were like what's that and i stood up in this boardroom and pulled up my shirt and on my white bra i'd drawn two eyes

and then in the middle of my belly I'd drawn a nose, and then I manipulated my belly roll fat into a huge smile, and just made it talk to people who went, hello, this is Catlin's feminist smile, hooray, hurrah! And they looked at it for a minute and went, yeah, we might just go with a head and shoulders shot, actually. But I do this on stage now, because I think it's really important, like kind of, you know, I'm so happy with my body now,

and I sort of do these, when I do my gigs, they're sort of like 2,000 seaters, and the queues go on for about two hours afterwards three hours like teenage girls coming up going I can't believe I've met you you just seem happy how are you happy and I just think it's really important for you to just see a woman who is happy just kind of wobbling her belly about and being amused and happy in her own body it's so great it's a smile my favorite thing was after I did that in New York when my book came out in New York and the Daily Mail picked up and did this huge piece on it. And I had this huge thing about it.

I outraged Catherine Moran. I outraged the audience in New York by showing them her belly and all this kind of stuff. Didn't explain the context in why I'd done it. And then halfway through the article, online, as they always do, it went, do you want to get the look? And there was a big sponsored advert with, do you want to get Catherine's look? And for one minute, I was hoping that they were selling bras with eyes on. Yeah. And a sharpie to bras with eyes on. Yeah.

Kind of like getting a sharpie to draw a nose on your belly. But it was just simply the shirt that I was wearing that had little pictures of David Bowie on it. The William Wegman piece is called Stomach Song. Yes. You can see it on YouTube. And it is very funny. But I think yours is funnier because you have got the big bra there, which looks like a big pair of goggly eyes, like Simpsons eyes. I hope you've noticed on the bra that I've drawn one eye bigger than the other

because one breast is always bigger than the other and I just want that full Marty Feldman look, if you're going to have tit eyes they need to be properly representative but I think things like that are really, and again that's a culture thing these are the things that culture and humour can do that politics and academia can't do because

just to be playful about your body, particularly for women, women wake up in the morning and see themselves as like a to-do list of massive problems. You wake up in the morning and you go, I still haven't lost a stone, my hair looks flat, I still don't have a capsule wardrobe,

I still don't know how to dress day to night, I still haven't put that curtain pole up, I need to do my pelvic floor exercises, I haven't booked my child's birthday party. Whereas men tend to get up and just put their trousers on and go, my name's Simon and I'm just simply off to work. Well worry about other well you're you're a liberal lovely but not you're a modern man pelvic florex why do people do men should do them as well apparently apparently well

well for women it stops you doing wee wee when you're on a trampoline right and for men it will extend your your sexual ability and and it'll stop you like more control over the bladder is that right yeah it's yeah it's it's a wee-wee preventer. So after you've gone to the loo, you don't get the little drip, drip, drip, drips. Well, what you're supposed to do is when you're on the toilet, you go, stop, and you hold it in, and then you go, stop. It's almost like you're having a whispered conversation with your stuff as an extra in the background of a BBC period drama. You go, psst, psst, psst. You know the phenomenon with a man putting his equipment away after a wee and then a little bit leaks out, right?

Yes. And you get an embarrassing spot on your trousers or whatever. Does that happen to women? No, but then we've got enough staining problems of our own, really. The one thing we do do, actually... You wouldn't see it, though, would you? Because it's lower. No. No, exactly. And we've got more things to kind of cover it up as well.

There's more layering there. Tights can hold a multiplicity of sins inside them. The one thing that we have got though, I did this on my last standup tour because I was like, and the first time I did it, I was like, I really hope that I'm going to get the response I hope I'm going to get. I went, you know, there's so much about women's bodies

we don't talk about. We're a list of secrets. You know, we cover up kind of, you know, we never talk about how we remove hair. We don't talk about our periods. We don't talk about abortions. We don't talk about eating disorders. We're a list of secrets. Everything about our physicality should be kept secret. know we never talk about how we remove hair we don't talk about our periods we don't talk about abortions we don't talk about eating disorders we're a list of secrets everything about our physicality should be kept secret for and we never talk about these things

and there's not even names for things that happen to the female body for instance if you're a lady and you go and have a bath and then you get out and about 20 minutes later suddenly some bath water will come out oh and i was in pause and i was like oh my god it's me i'm the only one that's had this happen and everyone just suddenly went yes yes that's a thing the whole audience is going that happens yeah and it's not just if you've had babies like i talked to my daughters they were like yeah that happens to us and they've not had babies yet but there's not even a name for that just kind of like yeah but that's a regular occurrence that's something you have to be aware of the worst time that happened to me was i'd i was at the cheltenham literary festival i had a bath then

i went down to the site i had to do a live interview on BBC Breakfast. And as they were going, three, two, one, the bath water came back into my pale blue power suit that I was wearing. And thank God I had a pashmina. I'm not sure what the name would be for when a man's wink wonk leaks after a wee. I don't think we've got terminology for that either. I mean, you could invent some. A little bonus bath. Well, your thing's almost like a kind of spirit de de scalia isn't it of the penis like it's like you're you know

you're really sort of had its chat it's kind of left the party and one more thing yes and just coming back and here's something else yes actually i've got quite a lot to say on the subject it turns out because that's the thing sometimes you think you can feel it and you just think oh it's it'll just be a drop. Yeah. But it isn't. It's like another whole go. It's got more to say. And then you've got to start thinking about emergency.

That's when you start getting into the situation, which I've seen in drama a few times. We did a sketch about it on the Adam and Joe show back in the day. And then and I've been in this situation before. Who was it that was talking about this? I saw it on a... I think it was David Sedaris was reading out a short story by Miranda July, I think. And I think she was writing about the same sort of thing, being on a plane and having a little drip

and going back to sit next to an attractive and famous man or something on the plane. And rather than go back and be spotted for having done a little wee-wee, she decided that she would soak her skirt so that it would all be the same color. Just chuck it all over. Yeah. And I've done that before. I was wearing chinos once and I was out on a date and I got a little patch. I was like, oh my God, what am I going to do?

And so I genuinely soaked the trousers because I thought, there you go, they're all the same colour now. Maybe that's what happens in all those sexy R&B videos where they're all just like kind of wet in the rain. Just kind of like maybe they've just had a little bit of wee and just got, okay, the whole video is going to have to be about me in the rain now because I do not want to change these trousers. Yeah. little bit of wee and just got okay the whole video is going to have to be about me in the rain now because I do not want to change these trousers yeah I think maybe you should call that phenomenon elephant stone after the bit

in the stone roses 12 inch where you think the song stopped and you're kind of going off the dance floor and then it goes ching ching ching

ching and you have to go back onto the dance floor like oh I forgot did it did it did it or is that waterfall that would be more

accurate I think maybe that's waterfall okay then that's what it should be called then waterfall you think it stopped there's another six minutes to go is it waterfall or is it I am I think maybe that's Waterfall. Okay, then that's what it should be called then, Waterfall. You think it's stopped? Yeah.

There's another six minutes to go. Is it Waterfall or is it I Am the Resurrection? Maybe it's that. See, we're old now. We can't remember. Yeah, we are old, aren't we? Let us travel back into the mists of time Long ago when you were a stupid person

Do you remember when you did that thing? Let's discuss it in excruciating detail. Sometimes when something I've done pops into my mind, I just have to literally physically stop what I'm doing and go, oh, make a noise, you know. Yes. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, to try and block it out. Yes.

I have to do more than that. I'll make the no, no, no noise, then I have to bite on a wooden spoon and I will also go into the fetal position. And just, yeah, I mean, it's always, you realise that you're actually sort of going to the position for prayer. I can see maybe that's how religion was invented. Just, please take this memory from me. Maybe I will invent a confession now that will allow these memories to leave me. Have you got any ones that you can tell me about?

Dozens. I mean, just going back. I mean, the problem with sort of writing from a young age is that, you know, you're writing at a point when you're just basically a dick. So there's all these things in print that you just read back i mean the problem with sort of writing from a young age is that you know you're writing at a point when you're just basically a dick so there's all these things in print that you just read back now when i was writing my last book um uh how to build a girl it's about a teenage music journalist who becomes evil and writes all these awful things so i was like going back through my old old reviews in melody maker and just reading the kind of stuff that i wrote and the point where i decided i had to become a nice person was when i was 17 i wrote a review of the band ned's atomic dustbin ohbin where the I open it by pretending that we're at their funeral and that I have been chosen to say the last words as their

bodies are being layered into the ground and I'm throwing the earth onto their faces going you know just this horrible thing about how they're whiny unfuckable stringy haired cunts it's horrible and it ends with me going because that was the year that Kurt Cobain had killed himself and the guy from Dr. Feelgood had died and I was like so this was the was the year that Kurt Cobain had killed himself and the guy from Dr. Feelgood had died and I was like, so this was the year that we lost Kurt Cobain and the guy from Dr. Feelgood fancy making it a hat trick, John which was the name of the lead singer of Ned's Atomic Dustbin

anyway, it caused an outrage when it was published my editor had sort of headlined it with, Catlin, I think you've gone too far and the man who was now my husband who worked at Melody Maker with me they said that in the mag yes, the headline was, Catling, you've gone too far We've decided to publish this and say

you've gone too far at the same time They were two for one, they got the outrage but they were down on it It was a beautiful piece of publishing, I applaud them and the man who is now my husband who worked at Melody Maker at the time, who is a man who never has a harsh word to say to anybody and always sees the best in everybody, just took me to one side and went that was a bit off

and from him that was like a bollocking from anyone else so I was like okay I need to stop doing that now but when I had to go back and reread that review I had to bite down on a wooden spoon and walk to the end of the garden and go down on my knees for three or four minutes going No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, household and paul was your guy in the band yes very much well i mean you go through phases don't you i've written a column about this kind of i think as the years go on you'll oscillate between maybe all of them at some point it's right it's an ongoing conversation yes yes because when you're young you're like well of course it's john he's the iconoclast he's the rebel you know he's edgy you know kind of you know he's the noise and the sound that's fantastic then you get into your 20s and you think you're the only person to go actually paul was the best one he was the melody guy he was the one that kept him together through sergeant pepper you know he came with the idea of

the concept album. You know, he could have been banging all these blondes around the world, but instead, you know, he marries a vegetarian single mother, moves to Scotland, you know, mends the roof on his house, sends his kids to comprehensive school. Of course he's the best one. Then you get into your 40s and you're like, actually, it was John was the best one. Come on, you know, the balls of the man, that's incredible. I thought you were going to say, then you get into the George phase.

You get into sort of saturnine, rather slightly gloomy, but deep, deep thinking. The ongoing argument I have with my 12-year-old daughter, who's a massive muso, is she's like, come on, you're always so horrible to George. And I'm just like, he did nothing. Oh, come on. She'll go something. I'm like, yeah, that's the only something, only thing. Something is amazing. There's a lot of good stuff on his first solo album.

First solo album is brilliant. Yeah, no, that is a beautiful album. Yeah, but within the Beatles When We Was Fab is good come on, if you're throwing Roxette at me, I'm going to lob back When We Was Fab the microscopes that magnified

the tears it's brilliant The one thing I'll give for George is that only four people have ever been the Beatles and by all accounts that's an incredible experience to have had and what an incredible job and incredible time. And the fact that he managed to be really mardy with a face like an arse on him all the way through the whole thing is actually quite admirable.

Face like an arse? Just beautiful. Just all the way through just like oh god. No no he's a beautiful man. Yeah. But mardy faced. Oh I see. Grumpy.

Right. All the way through just like oh fuck am I still in the Beatles? Oh man. Like kind of you know anyone else in the world would have given their left and right bollock to have been in the Beatles, and he's just, like, sitting there going, not sure about this Beatles thing, oh, just seems a bit silly,

I might just go and meditate for a bit. It's like, no, go to the Beatles. They would have given their left bollock until they were actually in the Beatles, I would imagine. I can't imagine anything worse. And to be Paul McCartney. So what was it like when you met Paul McCartney?

Well, this is why it was so awful. So I go and interview Paul McCartney, so they take me on tour with him, and first of all, you sort of meet his guitars. So you go on stage after he's done the soundcheck. How old are you then when you're doing this? This was about five years ago. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, you know, I'm old enough to know better. Yeah. And so you meet all the guitars, the guitar techs go, you know, here's the Hofner bass. You're touching the Hofner bass. Here's the guitar he wrote yesterday on. And you're just touching them, just going, I mean, I was crying as I, I mean, I was so emotional

that day. I just cried every time I touched a guitar. And you're just touching them. I was crying. I was so emotional that day. I just cried every time I touched a guitar. And then we go and do the interview. And it's going all right. We've only got about half an hour. And then I asked him a question, which I wanted to preface with, this is actually a really intelligent and clever question, Paul McCartney from The Beatles,

because obviously all the cleverest and most intelligent questions are prefaced with that. In the same way that all the funniest jokes are prefaced with, this is a really funny joke. Let me tell you why this is so great is that yeah and uh and so i go so if you paul mccartney were heaven for fend in horrific car crash where your face got all mashed up would you have your face rebuilt as that of paul mccartney from the beatles or would you have it rebuilt to someone else meaning yeah, you've been so famous, no one's ever treated you normally,

would you now like to be someone else? You could suddenly become like an anonymous, normal person. It is a really clever question. Of course. He just went,

oh, that's horrible. Oh, you're a horrible girl. Oh, no, we don't like to talk about things like that at all. Oh, no. Oh, no. Next question.

I didn't have another question. That was my last question. But did you not try and struggle to explain the subtleties of that question then? With the words, it's actually a really clever and intelligent question. Did you say that? Yeah, it wasn't.

By that point, I'd lost the audience. It was all over. Thank you very much. Good night. And that was the awful thing. And then, because that was the last question, then we had our picture taken next to each other really awkwardly. My face really palpably, you can Google the picture,

my face really palpably going, shit, I've face really palpably going shit I've just blown it with a beetle balls balls and him just like here's another fucking person I'm being photographed next to when will this shit end and then I went to watch the gig

which was amazing and I cried all the way through it afterwards and then when I was there for the run out at the end when he was running off stage and he came over

and gave me his guitar pick which he'd used on stage which is you know a plectrum that has Paul McCartney written on it which is still

one of my most treasured possessions oh well he couldn't have been so down on you there I hope he'd forgiven me I hope as he was playing all those songs you would think

I mean he seems like an intelligent sensitive guy you would think that he understands how hard it is for people to meet him well that was I realised when I went

to watch Bob Dylan play about 10 years ago and I took my I got some new binoculars that were from the Second World War that had been used on warships they're really super powerful and I was like I want to look at Bob Dylan play about 10 years ago, and I got some new binoculars that were from the Second World War that had been used on warships. They're really super powerful, and I was like, I want to look at Bob Dylan's face close up.

So I watched the first half of the gig and then used the binoculars and just looked at his face and went, oh, shit. Because his face looks terrifying. He's got the face of an Old Testament god, and it's the face of someone who hasn't been treated normally by anyone for 40 years. Everyone who's met him has either completely lost their shit and just wept in front of him or worse decided that they're going to impress him by being all like sorry what did you say your name was again? Everyone has behaved like a dick around him. It would be amazing I think if you

were able to have an encounter with someone and it must have happened with someone on that level of fame and celebrity where you actually did communicate directly with them and they go oh you get it you know you get what it's like being me and how weird it is being me and let's be friends i mean that must have happened right i kind of had one like that a bit with lady gaga

oh really yeah i kind of i i fucked up the first part of it because i missed my flight to berlin to interview her and and this was the point where she was the most famous person in the world and so mysterious that people a lot of people still thought where she was the most famous person in the world and so mysterious that people a lot of people still thought that she was a man like no one

really knew anything about her at all so I've missed my flight so I know she's going to be angry and you're going to be dealing with American management

and American management are the kind of people who come up like holding a baseball bat going we fuck Gaga around we'll never forgive you so I get there and she's just

absolutely delightful and we're talking for 20 minutes and I've really thought about my questions and I absolutely love her and when you start being a journalist you think this will happen all the time you're going to're talking for 20 minutes and like i've really thought about my questions and i absolutely love her and and she and when you start being a journalist you think this will happen all the time you're going to interview someone and 20 minutes into the interview

they'll go hey you're really cool let's hang out and be friends yeah in 30 years of doing that that's never happened ever not even with like the rocking birds or like you know poi dog pondering and it happened with lady gaga after 20 minutes was like, what are you doing after the show? I was like, she went, I'm going to a sex club. Do you want to come with me? I was like, yeah. She was like, well, come party with Gaga. I'll see you afterwards. So we go and watch the gig. And then I go backstage afterwards and she's changed into a bra, pants and an Alexander McQueen cape that's worth 50,000 pounds, which I immediately tread on and rip. Did you really?

Yes. And then we get into the car and we drive out of the enormo dome and immediately there are like 10 blacked out suvs behind us with like paps hanging out the window trying to take pictures and she just says to the driver lose them and the driver just does some incredible kind of the sweeney driving and we go down this back street and we just lose these guys and she's like the thing is about being famous that like people always go on about how you've got no privacy but But she's like, if you spend your money wisely, you can have as much privacy as you want.

Other people spend it on diamonds or drugs. I spend it on my privacy. We're going to have a great night tonight and no one will know about this. So we go to this sex club in the middle of nowhere and it's like a dungeon. And you walk in and there are men in baths having sex with each other

and men hung from hoists having sex with each other. I know that place. And there's people walking around. Yeah. And we walk in and the first thing me and her english pr say to each other surrounded by all this bumming and all this sex is oh my god you can smoke in here because everyone's smoking cigarettes you can smoke indoors in a sex club so we walk in and again if you go somewhere with someone famous it's always the same thing they go and sit in the corner in a vip booth and their

people go and get the drinks but gaga just walks in up to this bar looks around at this room that's full of like lesbians dressed as sailors and just men dressed as bears and like covered in poo and just goes what's everyone drinking gets in around for everyone and then reaches into a bra and just brings out fistfuls of euros and just smacks them on the on the bar and goes i think that should cover it and then sort of like picks up our drinks and we go in the corner she goes have you got a cigarette i'm like yeah she's like twos so we're sitting there sort of smoking this cigarette getting really really drunk dancing with each other and then we'll be doing this for a couple of hours and she's already been talking she's been at one point

she's uh going do you think i should take mdma tonight to mdma or not to mdma that is the question and i was like oh i'm 34 i'm a mum and she's like come with me to the toilet and i'm like oh my god okay what am i going to do here because like we're clearly going to go and take drugs now we're the most famous woman on earth but i can't even remember how you take them anymore i don't think i can do it i'm scared of going wiggy so we go to the toilet and i'm standing there like what are we going to do next and she went i noticed that you're wearing a cat suit with a zip up the back and they're really difficult to take off when you go to the toilet so i thought i'd come with you so i could undo your zip and instead of racking out the lines or bringing out the drug she just undoes my zip and then we're standing there and it's like and she's like

after you so i have to sit down and have a and of course if you're wearing an all-in-one cat suit ladies will know when you take it off you're wearing nothing apart from a bra yeah so i'm just sitting there in nothing but a bra on the toilet doing a tinkle and trying to talk all through the tinkle with gaga and and and what we've noticed is there's no toilet paper there and she's like what are you gonna do and i was like i don't know what do you think i should do she went look here's a towel use that i would so then i have to wipe my cabbage with a towel and then and then she zips me up and then she goes i'm just gonna go now and she just pulls aside the crotch of her pants and wheeze through her fashionette tights and then just does a little

shake and stands back up again yes and it was at that point i was the only person in the world who could definitely confirm that gaga was not a man because i'd seen it all and that was lady equipment and then we went back outside and danced the night away till about we were up till about five o'clock in the morning mate and it was that was that was quite an amazing experience i woke up the next morning going did that happen wow and um do you stay in touch no we actually know we um we met up a couple months later when she was playing at the O2, and she invited me to the after show. And again, I thought it would be an after show where there were 10,000 people there.

And it was just me, her, one other person, and she brought the new album out. And she was playing Born This Way and that song Hair. And I got to the point of being really drunk and also thinking that we'd had such an incredible connection last time that I was absolutely convinced that she'd written Hair about my hair so she was singing she was sitting there singing it to me over the backing tape and I was just going I can't believe you wrote this song for me and she was like yeah no I can't even didn't that's not what happened after a night like that I mean that's perfect yes perfect in a way you don't want to sully it with having to maintain

any kind of relationship no well I've been asked to interview a couple of times it's like it's never going to be any better than that so that know that's it no oh that's an absolute it was quite the night katlin moran what a pleasure it was to meet her she made me feel very welcome and i believe we got on like a house that was on fire and um well i hope one day we'll meet up again and do some more podcasting because i think we both enjoyed it um so thanks very much to her what else can i say oh yes i wanted to say thank you so much to the people who have got in touch over the last few weeks with offers of help with this podcast, people saying, hey, I could help you produce the podcast or I could do some admin or help you book guests,

even a few people coming forward as potential sponsors. And so things are shaping up in that area. Too early to say anything for certain just yet. But I would like to say thank you very much indeed to everyone who has got in touch recently. But I would like to say thank you very much indeed to everyone who has got in touch recently. If I haven't replied to you personally, it's just because I've been somewhat overwhelmed with things recently. And I apologize, but I'm telling you right now, you know who you are. I really appreciate it.

And I gift you a creepy hug. Before I go, let's check out worldwide podcast stats. And let me tell you that things are shaping up. I don't understand why Sam Pierre and Michelon has dropped off the table. It used to be on one listen. I can no longer see it in the worldwide breakdown here on Acast, which is the platform that hosts this podcast. However, we do have new entries here. St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

I think I saw them on Jaws Holland the other day. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 25 listens. Good business. I love it. Further down here, the numbers decrease. Fiji, only 11 listens in total. Things are improving, though, let me tell you. On the Falkland Islands, Las Islas Malvinas, and we have now got 10 listens in total to the podcast.

Listen, if you're out there in one of these places in some far-flung part of the world, send me a message. Tell me what your life is like. Tell me in what context you listen to the Adam Buxton podcast. What's the view from your window? What's your life like? Why has it gone sufficiently wrong that you're listening to this podcast? I'm joking. At the very bottom of the league table in the world at the moment is Turkmenistan with just the one listen. Mongolia also not doing very well with just one listen. And still just the one listen in sleazy, sleazy Monaco.

They're too busy buying super yachts. That's what they're doing out there, wasting all their money on that. When in fact they should be downloading podcasts. Alright, now listen, I'm just talking pure bullcrap. So I bid you goodbye take care hope you have a good week back next week with louis through did i say that already no i didn't next week is going to be number 10 podcast number 10 and i am calling it the end of the current season series if you prefer of the adam buxton podcast And I started with Louis, I'm going to

end with Louis, a different conversation obviously this time and a longer one too, it'll be about an hour that podcast of more nonsense rambling with Louis. And then I've got a date in the diary to meet up with Joe and we're going to record some stuff that will come out on Christmas Day as a special Santa gift. A lot of people have been saying, oh, make it, do it like the Six Music Show and have Text the Nation and all our favorite features. I mean, that's not going to be possible because it's not live. And many of those things were reliant on a live interaction. if those things were reliant on live interaction. Certainly, you know, if you've got funny Christmas stories that you can send in for a possible Christmas textination, go ahead.

I tell you, a good place to send those kinds of stories in, longer bits of communication, although do keep them concise, because then it's more likely that I'll actually read them, is the SoundCloud page, Adam Buxton on SoundCloud, which is one of the places that you can listen to this podcast, of course. You can download it on SoundCloud as well, incidentally. So yeah, I think if you sign up for a SoundCloud account, which is very easy to do and free, you can message me and I get an email alert every time I get a message on there. So I'll be sure to see it. OK, that's quite enough rambling for this week.

Until next time. 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. 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. It's time. Please. Will you please take care? I love you. Bye! Song, story or just song? Song for the moment. What's this one called? Kung Fu Ninja.

Kung Fu Ninja Kung Fu Ninja Kung Fu Ninja, Kung Fu Ninja, comes from China, comes from China. He's a light in the night, while the moon shines bright. He's a light in the night, while the moon shines bright. in the night while the moon shines bright he's a Kung Fu Ninja he's a Kung Fu Ninja What's that song about? A Kung Fu Ninja You know, as soon as I asked the question I regretted it because it was a stupid question

and where did the inspiration come from for the song? China. China? China? Are you absolutely sure that the ninjas originate from China? Mm-hmm. Where do you base that information on, or what do you base that information on?

My friend Tabitha told me. Oh, really? What does she know about it? She knows. Has she got ninja What does she know about it? She knows... Has she got ninja connections? Yes. Does she? Mm-hmm.

How come? Because she knows a lot about them. Does she? And she knows a lot about China. Right. How come she knows so much about China? Well, she just does. She's figured it out by herself.

She's figured it all out? Yeah. Well, that's great, man. I think it's a brilliant song, by just does. She's figured it out by herself. She's figured it all out? Yeah. Well, that's great, man. I think it's a brilliant song, by the way. Thanks.