Monty Don: Get out of your bubble! Immerse yourself in a new culture on holiday

0:00Fearne Cotton: Hello and welcome to the Happy Place Guide to Holidays brought to you by British Airways Holidays. I'm Fern Cotton and today I'm chatting to Monty Don. I relax most in the garden or in my workshop. If I'm doing something that needs my attention but is not stressful in itself or doesn't need other people's input, I live a pretty busy life and with a lot of demands. It's the demands really. To me, resting is not having demands. I am choosing what to do. And if I choose to do something that's incredibly hard work or demanding or difficult or stressful, that's fine because it's my decision. The Happy Place Guide to Holidays is the series where we remind ourselves why holidays matter so much and how we can do our best to get the most out of them.

0:47Fearne Cotton: Whatever a great holiday looks like to you. And it does look slightly different to all of us. We've all got our own idea of what makes a truly brilliant holiday. But whatever or wherever that might be, I reckon we can all still take things to the next level. So this is the series where we can be a bit nosy about how other people do it and hopefully pick up some tips along the way. I am so looking forward to chatting to horticulturalist Monty Don because he has had quite an intriguing approach to holidays. He obviously travels a lot for work, so he has to make a really clear distinction between enjoying new places for work and enjoying them in holiday mode.

1:29Fearne Cotton: We also, by the way, talk about his approach to his mental health. And he talks very honestly about how unable to talk about depression he felt at first. It's really useful stuff. You're going to love this one.

2:03Fearne Cotton: Monty Don, hello. Hello. How are you? I'm fine. I'm good. Good. Well, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast today. We've got lots to discuss. I've wanted to chat to you for a long time for many reasons. one is that you were one of the first people in the public eye to write about mental health which is a topic I am hugely invested in personally within the work that I do with happy place I think it's super important that we have storytelling around mental health and you wrote an article back in 2000 about your mental health for the observer I'm imagining that that was I don't know felt exposing or uh felt vulnerable doing it you do I did feel exposing vulnerable but I realized no it sounds pretentious to say it was important I felt it was something I I ought to do I felt felt sort of it was a duty about it because I was very aware that men certainly back then and even now were not talking about mental health I mean the classic stories I've written about this a lot I my wife made me go to a doctor she said you know we can't put up with this any longer you're impossible to live with which is fine and was true so i went to the doctor and said my knee hurts and then the doctor said okay let's look at your knee fine well that seems to be okay anything else you want to talk about at which point i burst into tears because it was just the relief you know in other words i was completely inarticulate about it i couldn't talk about it and i did and gradually i did and and you know i put on medication one thing another and that was about oh five or six years before I wrote that article so I realized that you needed to talk about it and if my job was communication this which was such a central part of my life needed to be communicated about.

3:47Fearne Cotton: I mean did you have any idea to what extent you were sort of expressing your depression your your low mood to everybody else because I had a really similar thing where a friend of mine said enough's enough I'm she actually took me to a doctor and I didn't realize it was that bad I thought oh I'm just going through a tough patch I hadn't realized how to the outside world that looked or even how bad I felt actually no I think for a long time certainly since my teen years I've had these very sort of dark periods when when I felt like grieving really that's what it felt I felt incredibly sad all the time and I would cover it I'm you know I'm a bloke I would just cover it up and carry on and you know if I drank too much or something it would come out but but basically I suppressed it and covered it up and it wasn't really until Sarah and I probably lots of other people said you're just impossible to be with And what you realize, it wasn't just me slightly romanticizing being sort of sad and feeling things too much.

4:56I was actually irritable, bad tempered all the time. Nothing ever pleased. Nothing was ever right. My body was falling apart. You know, mentally and physically, I was just not in a good place at all. Whereas I think, I mean, I'm looking back, but I think probably I slightly romanticized it. And also, when it was really bad, I never saw the future. I never saw me being part of any future. So I was wrapped up. I mean, one of the worst things about depression is it's incredibly self-centered. You become, you're only interested in yourself.

5:35Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And that makes you a very boring person apart from anything else, you know. Yeah. And that to sort of connect to other people, and that I think is part of the writing about it. You're just connecting. And I'm imagining that that was a deep connection with your readers, that you had a huge response to that. Well, I mean, what did happen, and subsequently, you know, I've talked about it on the radio, I've talked about it on time, I've written books, I've written a book about it. The thing that keeps me doing it is not to say, look at me, how much I've been suffering. it's because the response I get from people who have been too frightened to own up to it or to talk about it or not known who they could talk about it to invariably you get those response and you think well I'm for them I have to be a voice without a doubt and do you know what what sort of kept you suppressing whether it was you acknowledging how bad it was personally or reaching out and saying to your wife or a friend, I am really not in a good headspace?

6:33Fearne Cotton: What stopped you doing? I don't think we talked about mental health in that way. You were either a loony. You went, you know, I don't think anybody had that conversation. No. You know, it wasn't there. And you might be saying, you know, you say something, oh, perk up, you're looking, you know. And there were examples. There was Churchill's black dog and there were various things. But I don't think it was in the sort of general problems. It wasn't something you talked about down the pub or you talked about when you played football or tennis or whatever it was you did. Don't forget, men in particular, they don't sit and chat very much about themselves.

7:10And I don't think that's changed. It hasn't. And certainly the way I was brought up, which was very conventional, middle England, boarding school from the age of seven, all that sort of thing.

7:20Fearne Cotton: You suppressed your feelings always, you know. And that was all just part of it. that's why I think it's deeply powerful that you so early on in this discussion around mental health thought this is worth the risk I'm going to do it and like you say before we had the the language essentially phrases like black dog were used which is sort of like a way of going there's a problem but I'm not going to give it a proper name and then now we have you know names and labels and diagnoses that I think are mostly helpful. They are. I mean, if you talk to anybody in the profession, I mean, what is shocking is we still don't know much about how the brain works.

8:01I mean, there are a lot of drugs that are helpful, but no one knows quite how they work. You know, they can make the chemical connections, but they don't quite know what's going on in the brain. So there's still a lot to learn. And I certainly increasingly connect mental health with physical health with what you eat with what you you know everything the whole everything being very holistic about the whole thing um but i think above all i see myself as a communicator in various mediums and media and if i can communicate about that and feel i'm doing something that needs to be said i've always spoken i've always talked too much my mother said my mother said for the moment i could speak I never stopped and you ask certainly if you spoke to my wife I just talk too much and so in a sense writing is talking television is talking what we're doing now is talking so I like articulating what I'm feeling or seeing or experiencing whether it's on the page or on on the screen or across the always so in a sense that's what I do you know it's it's so it was natural to do that I mean other people would write a piece of music about it or would paint about it or go and you know chop wood about it or whatever it might be but that's how I express myself I mean

9:24Fearne Cotton: I'm the same I it almost makes it real I don't know I need to go that full circle I completely understand and agree with that is that and this is is that I need to share something in order to make it real but then I'm a twin you see yeah and I think that might be to do with it wow and what do you think that connection is then because literally from my first consciousness I've shared with somebody and so from the womb up until I went away to boarding school we were never apart everything we did was a shared experience whether it was breakfast school having a bath getting up in the morning you know anything anything snow rain dogs so that i think that although in fact my twin and i are very different people we're brother and sister we're not identical we're completely different people we're almost opposites that experience shapes how you see the world and do and i think that's true of my relationships i've had you're always looking for a soulmate you know I mean there's all kinds of things going on but at the same time and I think that for me yeah I can't really experience anything that matters to me without wanting to share it I totally get that I mean I don't have the excuse of being a twin but I just need to say the thing and I'm not very good at I'm not very good at not exposing the truth about stuff or things that I believe to be true.

10:56Fearne Cotton: I like to dig around in it and try and work it out with words. But I also like, I love writing. I also like painting. I don't know if I find that translates in quite the same way. I maybe try to get that feeling of bringing it to life. I think we're all, most of us are better at some things than others. So you find the medium that suits you. So for me, it's always been words. And I do like lots of other things, but I know I'm not as good as it. Is gardening communicating? Well, gardening is lots of... No, it isn't actually. It is communicating with nature. Yes. But that's private. That's between me and me.

11:39Gardening for me has always been healing. it's always been about I mean literally getting back to earth getting back to the ground what matters and completely solves a lot of problem I mean you know one of the ways and I have to say by and large now I avoid bad depressive episodes I've learned how to see the triggers and ward

12:05Fearne Cotton: them off at the pass sort of thing and how are you doing that well it's just old age you know I just now recognise the symptoms. I avoid situations that I think are bad. Which might be what? Well, I mean, for example, I can't cope, never have been able to, with too much social interaction. Same. You know, so I don't like big parties, or at least I only like them with friends. Yeah, same. You know, I mean, what's weird is I'm really happy on a stage in front of thousands of people. Same. But, you see, I think that's because… There's rules. There's rules and you're in control. Yes. And you're not, you know, whereas if I have to go to, you know, I mean, various things one has to do.

12:50Work party. Yeah. Yeah. Not good. So there's that. And I avoid those. And, you know, you get old enough to say, actually, no, I love you, but I'm not coming to your party. Correct. Yeah. Love that. I went to a party on Saturday night with people I love dearly. And we slipped away very early.

13:06Fearne Cotton: You did a little secret exit. I love that. Just a backward walk out. Don't make eye contact with anyone. Never say goodbye. No, that's fatal. Fatal. And I think also, I know for me, that I get exhausted. I find it really hard to rest. Yeah. So the more tired I am, the more sensitive I am, the more fragile I am. Yes. So I now know, stop, go to bed. You know, tomorrow will be another day. or just let things go a bit. Yeah, I think we're very similar in temperament because if I'm in a social environment, I am so sapped from all my energy is just seeping out of me in that transaction with lots of other people.

13:51Fearne Cotton: I am useless the next day or even after I've left, I have to sort of sit in silence. Or even if I were to do, I don't know, three of these interviews in a day, you know, we've got the crew and the team. I am knackered. But you see, and I mean, I find that, I mean, I really enjoy filming. I've always enjoyed filming. Yeah. But I like it best when I'm with people I know. Me too. You know, if you go and film, last week I was filming up in Lancashire with incredibly nice people and they were very impressive. I didn't know any of them. It was quite a big crew. And I thought, well, okay, that was fine for a day, but I wouldn't want to do more than that.

14:29Fearne Cotton: No. Whereas when I go off for two, three weeks with people, I know them. I've known them for years. I know when not to say anything. Yes. And I think that's part of it, isn't it? Knowing you can sit in a long car journey and not speak. And no one's judging you or thinking, oh, God, Monty Don's a bit quiet. What's wrong with him? I completely agree. And I'm deeply fascinated by people that are boosted by social situations where they get charged up. I am envious. I am not that person. But I do not think that's something to do with being a performer. that if you because you are creating the rules by putting yourself in front you're actually putting a distance between you and everybody else yeah and that's probably subconscious i don't think it's something you deliberately choose to do but you're just and part of that is not admirable i mean i i'm not particularly saying that's a good thing at all but it's a fact yeah i completely agree it's interesting when you get to know yourself properly and you can start to honor what you know works and doesn't.

15:27I think that's all part of health too. You get to know yourself, you know what works, you know what is bad for you. And in time, if you're lucky and with help, you learn to manage the situation.

15:40Fearne Cotton: You've also got seasonal affective disorder. So there are triggers that are cyclical that you're going to have to face every October, November, December. Funnily enough, when it's bad, July and August can be really bad because there is this sense of things slipping away. Oh, it's already, the days are already getting shorter. Don't worry, it's fine. We're okay. But what I'm saying is, November, December, I've always hated as months. And I've, all my adult life, I thought, I'm going to spend my winters abroad in the sun. I don't care how hot or cold it is, just in the sun. I never have done yet.

16:13I'm in my 70s and I've never done it yet.

16:15Fearne Cotton: Why do you think you haven't? Because I've always been either too busy or there have been dogs or children or, you know, just life stuff. Yeah, yeah. So how do you manage? Because you know it's coming. so what do you do? Well, the root pattern of my life is I tend to be really busy filming from March through to October. So I'm busy and I'm outside and doing things. And then November, December, January, February, I normally write. Right. So I completely change my lifestyle. I spend a lot of time indoors. I hole up. I wear the same clothes every day. I only shave when I feel like it, you know, what have you.

16:53In other words, I'm not putting on, I'm entirely private. Yes. I hardly, occasionally I have to go and do things. I have to remember what it's like, you know, what you have to do to be that person. And I just focus on the project. Yeah. And I mean, you know, you've written books. It's, there comes a point with any book when there's an exciting period of planning it and thinking about it.

17:15Fearne Cotton: Oh, yeah. And that's very exciting. And you've got to do it. And then you start to do it. And after about a week or two, you think, this is just so bad. It's so embarrassing. You know, and then there comes a point, which is the sweet spot, when you can't think about anything else at all and you're just flowing. Yeah. And that's not to do with speed. And that, for me, has never lasted more than about 10 days, two weeks. Right. And then after that, you know it's happening. It's just procedure. Yes. You go to work and you finish it. And that sort of routine manages to sort of get you through those winter months.

17:50Yeah, and that means that I'm at work and I go to work every day and I do it like a job. Yeah. You know, I'm at my desk and I walk the dogs and I do garden and, you know, make it a point of going outside and all that sort of thing. And, you know, life goes on. I have grandchildren and family and one thing or another. But then suddenly when you get to January, snowdrops are appearing, aconites are appearing. The days are getting inching just a little bit longer and longer and longer. And I'm one of these people who actually rather likes January and February because it's getting better. It's not good, but it's getting better.

18:26And I don't mind bad weather. That doesn't bother me at all. You know, it's lack of light I don't like. Whereas November, December, there's practically nothing good to say about them in my book. I like Christmas because it's near the end. Right, got you. I totally understand.

18:42Fearne Cotton: I mean, I do really like November and December because when it gets dark at four, I think, right, I can shop for the day. Lovely. It gives me the excuse to do nothing. I do know that feeling. Absolutely. Whereas at this time of year, I think, God, I mean, I will be out in the garden until nine. Yeah, you feel like you have to. Exactly. Why can't I just go indoors? Exactly. I went for a walk at 8 p.m. last night. I must make the most of this lovely sunny day. Actually, you say, how have I looked at it? I now take great pleasure in going to bed at sort of half past nine on a July evening when it's still light.

19:18Fearne Cotton: And I don't care about that at all. No, nor me. I love going to bed early. It's my favorite thing. Now, in these podcasts, I often speak to people who say, do you know what? I wish I took more holidays, but I don't think that's going to be your response to this topic. No, it isn't. I mean, when I was thinking about this podcast, I thought, how? I'm such a sort of contrary, cantankerous person when it comes to holidays. I have never in my life thought about a holiday. Literally, never. Which is not to say I haven't taken holidays. But I think if I was left to my own devices, I'd never take a holiday.

19:56Fearne Cotton: Is that because you are satiated with work travel? That gives you the hit of travel. For the last, when did I start doing the holiday programme? 92 or 3. So what's that? That's the last 33 years. I have travelled a lot. A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. So, for example, the holiday programme, which I did for about four or five years, I think I worked on something like 82 trips. Whoa. Now, not all of them were to the far-flung fields. You know, some of them were to Tainmouth or whatever. But the vast majority were meant getting on a plane and going to visit a place. And some of them were luxurious and some of them were distinctly not.

20:33But you travelled. You travelled a lot. And the name of the programme, I mean, they were all superficially about holidays. Although, as you will know, actually, they could be quite hard work. So I saw a lot of places. And up until that point, I hadn't travelled very much. I mean, my wife, Sarah, was a great traveller. And when I met her, she'd lived in New Guinea and she'd hitchhiked around Europe and done all that. Whereas I'd barely been out of Basinstoke. But I did live in France for eight months when I was 19. And I was learning French when I was gardening and doing things there. But the first overseas holiday I ever went on, I was 26.

21:13Fearne Cotton: Wow. That was with Sarah. And where did you go? Where was your first trip? We went to Venice. Oh, gorgeous. We went to Venice for 10 days and blew a huge sum of money. Oh, I bet. And it was fantastic. It was absolutely fantastic. I loved it. And I've been back many times since. And then the first sun holiday I went on was about two years later. We went, I remember, where did we go? We went, it wasn't Mykonos. We went to Coz. Right. We went to Coz in the days when there were no tourists going there. Wow. I remember there were just sort of two hotels. I think it's quite a clubby destination. I mean, there's quiet bits, I know, but it's quite a clubby place.

21:51I'm talking that would have been, what, 45 years ago? Wow. So, you know, a long time ago.

21:56Fearne Cotton: So with Travel for Work, because obviously you do these beautiful shows where you go and look at extraordinary gardens all around the world in really special places. When you're headed to film one of those shows, what do you think makes a place very special? So I'm imagining you want to turn up somewhere and go, wow. Yeah, I mean, I think when you arrive, everybody has that thing. You come out the plane and there's a sensation of the air. Is it hot? Does it hit you like a wall? You know, is it cold? Is there a wind? That of the otherness of the air. I love it. I remember going to New York for the first time in about 83 or 84 and on the car from the airport looking at the trees and thinking, I wonder if they've got the same trees as us.

22:42You know, it's the otherness that you're looking for. So the most depressing thing is to go, you suddenly could be anywhere. I mean, anywhere is no. And, of course, modern airports are a bit like that. All the airports we like are the ones that we remember. yes that are distinctive either got great architecture or got quirky things you know um and so that matters but i think when you're trying you're looking at food i always try and eat local food lovely usually with disastrous results oh no well yeah and there's that thing you know when you're filming with a crew you when you we always go with the light so when you're filming gardens you've got to have the best light so depending what time of year it is you may well have to start filming at six yeah uh and then what we nowadays because budgets are low in the old days you would have you know you'd turn up somewhere about sort of four in the afternoon do a recce film a bit until it got dark go back the next morning you know film a bit and then maybe pick up at night nowadays you're lucky if you just do one garden in a day yeah so so you might well film from six till nine say have some breakfast get in a vehicle drive three hours and then film another garden and hopefully get some good light later in the day so you're you're looking at i mean for me very much it's it's what does it actually look like vegetation what's growing um and obviously it's different you know i mean i've filmed in the middle of the amazon i've been in the arctic circle i've been sort of in the outback you're all the time because it's always gardens there is a theme that runs through it but it's different so you want and that the different food the different languages and i'm terrible at languages by the way oh me too i um so but i'm listening and i'm hearing but i'm not really understanding but it's all part of it yeah what

24:23Fearne Cotton: where really stands out what's what's stuck with you oh gosh so many places i mean i think japan is extraordinary i'd love to go to japan well i've done three filming trips to japan and i would willingly do more um it's just such a different culture that's the thing you know it's I keep coming back to this. The trouble is, every trip I do, it's usually the last one. I mean, I remember having one wonderful week, not so long ago, about three, four years ago, filming in Venice, when we just visited Venetian gardens. All Venetian gardens are hidden. You know, you can go to Venice and not really realize there are any gardens at all.

24:58So you're going behind walls, down little canals. And we stayed in not a fancy hotel, but it was really perfectly nice. And I had a little room at the top, which became my sort of base camp. and you literally stepped from this door from the breakfast room into a boat so there was no street involved at all and we had this big boat which was a barge I mean it wasn't fancy but it was big enough for the whole crew and the kit which was our home for the day and we had it for a week and we just explored Venice with guides and and this sense of really getting to know somewhere and since and I've been there a number of times before and I'm that so that was a really good I mean, you know, going, I think the coast of Chile was incredibly beautiful.

25:43I'd like to go back there. But then, I mean, everywhere. Don't forget, I go to beautiful gardens, so it's all beautiful. But I think in terms of places, I love Italy. I go to Greece a lot. That's where I tend to go on holiday, but it's usually connected with gardens. Italy, I love Italian food very much. But, you know, China, I've been to China. I mean, the extraordinary thing of having a disgusting breakfast in a Chinese hotel and thinking, this is great because it's so interesting. Yeah.

26:13Fearne Cotton: Do you think this is edible? Well, there's nothing else. Let's give it a try. Give it a go. And I remember just in China seeing, and this was what, early 2007, seeing a power station being built and a sort of high speed train going by. and someone ploughing with oxen next to it. Wow, yeah. All these different things going on at once. And you think I'm at this moment in history, you know, which is really privileged. But I love New Zealand. Yeah, I've not been to New Zealand. Go in our December and the light is unbelievable. Really? Unbelievably beautiful country. Yeah, that's on my hit list. I mean, South Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places on this earth.

27:00Fearne Cotton: I went for the first time this year. Really? Yeah, I loved it. Yeah, I've been a few times. And driving, even if you drive from Cape Town across to Stellenbosch and across the mountains, go that way. Or up through the Drakensberg Mountains, driving from Durban to Johannesburg. So beautiful. So beautiful. Yeah, we did Stellenbosch. And it was just, the expanse of horizon was overwhelming. It was so beautiful. It is incredible. Like you were just saying, you're in China, you're eating something completely random. I love that feeling of being in a completely different place. Like you say, the otherness of a different place, the air, the food, the whole thing.

27:36Fearne Cotton: And being reminded that we can step out of our own little bubbles, our own little worlds, our own routines. There's something about that that I find really inspiring. Like, oh, wait, I don't have to always do the same shit like every day. No, and also realizing that for them, that is their norm. That is their norm, yeah. That's their bubble. and so it's not oh look at us we're stepping out into this extraordinary strange world actually it's not you're going to their normal yeah yeah i love that and if they came to your life it would be weird and exotic totally yeah the thing that always exemplifies that for me is you know when you go to a hotel and there are a lot of japanese tourists and at breakfast you know how and especially if you're filming you're sort of in a bar filming everyone's coming in and doing their stuff and japanese you often see loading their breakfast plates with sort of cornflakes fried egg croissant um maybe a sort of you know the whole thing on one plate yeah thinking how weird is that how old is that go to japan you understand why because at breakfast the idea is to have seven different things on your plate right and so you have these often with sort of like school dinner plates with compartments and you have a bit of seaweed and you maybe have a bit of egg or something lots of different things and culturally it's completely normal yes to have lots of different tastes and flavors on the same plate yeah it's weird we who are odd to them yeah we're so basic we're like a piece of toast and then i might go back for something else after and you're the weird ones and you layer it you do it in a succession so i think i think it's the i mean for me the huge privilege of being able to travel the world and seeing how other people live I remember when I did a series called Around the World in 80 Gardens which was the first big one and that was you know it was 18 months doing that.

29:24Fearne Cotton: Wow. And something like I think it was about 13 trips each one of about two or three weeks so it was quite a big project and going to the head of BBC Two and saying I think it's a pretty crappy title Around the World in 80 Gardens you know it's a bit derivative he said listen we are going to do a series called Around the World in 80 Gardens If you want to do it, fine. If not, someone else will. Okay, I'll put back in my box. But, he said, what I want from it is to get under the skin of a culture through its gardens. And ever since then, that's what I try and do. Yes. So it's not just about gardens.

29:59Fearne Cotton: It's the storytelling around it. It's about, you know, what's happening here? Why? What's the history? It's stories, as you say. Yeah. It's always stories. I love that. So outside of your extensive travel for work, what is a holiday for you? Where do you go? I go two places. We have a farm in the Black Mountains in Wales, which is only an hour away from us. So our holiday home is an hour away. And so, you know, I might well, you know, one week I might spend three days there. I might not go for three weeks because someone else is managing the farm, but I'm always in touch and what's going on. So a real luxury is to go and spend a week or 10 days there.

30:38Lovely. And there is no work connection there at all. I used to occasionally, occasionally I've done Zooms from there, but not very often, probably three or four times.

30:49Fearne Cotton: But I'm imagining not totally relaxing because you've got livestock. No, no, no, no. But I relax by working. Right, yes. I relax by doing things. Yes. So to me, to get on a tractor all day or to go and plant trees or to chop firewood is relaxing. Yeah, so you're not wanting a book on a sun lounger. No. Well, it has been known for about an hour or two. I read a lot but not I find and this is where because Sarah loves a sun lounge and you know she's got used to me but we're not really very compatible in that way occasionally not so much now when the children were little and we had a bit more help we would go away for sort of anything between four and six days get on a plane and go to Portugal or the canaries or something like that and just rest.

31:43Fearne Cotton: Yeah. Just flop. Heaven. So barely leave the hotel. Yeah. But your brain is the sort of brain that needs to be doing to kind of flatline. Yeah. And that's fine. I mean, I relax most in the garden or in my workshop or as I say, if I'm doing something that needs my attention but is not stressful in itself or doesn't need other people's input. I mean, I, it always sounds so pathetic, but I did a pretty busy life and with a lot of demands. It's the demands, really. So to me, resting is not having demands. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And so that you can, I am choosing what to do. And if I choose to do something that's incredibly hard work or demanding or difficult or stressful, that's fine because it's my decision.

32:32Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And the outcome, there's no one judging it or saying you haven't done this correctly. Also, I really like, I realize, I mean, when I was coming here today and thinking about it, it goes back to my rather sort of neurodiverse mentality. I like to know where things are. I like to, I really like knowing where the bread knife is. And I really like sort of having the coffee I like and all that sort of stuff. It's not fancy, you know. No. So therefore, I'm very happy on the farm. you know everything the great luxury we have the huge sort of result of earning enough money is that we can kit out a second house exactly as we want it yeah I love that and leave it I am exactly the same but what I do is even if I'm going on like a little trip with the kids or whatever I take my own pillow my own instant coffee because I only like instant coffee I take my own mug because I'm really specific about the mug I'm teased on all filming shoots I take my own mug Yeah.

33:35I take tea bags. I don't want a weird-shaped mug. I take green tea bags and chamomile tea bags. So you don't need milk. Yes, heaven. And I sometimes take a kettle if I'm going to places where I don't know. I've got a mini travel one, a cylinder one. I've got one of those too. Yeah. I've got a collapsible kettle. It collapses.

33:53Fearne Cotton: What? Yeah, there is such a thing. I am Googling that immediately. And I take – no, no, I have to have – I don't take my own pillow because that doesn't matter. But you have to take what matters to you. Yeah, a lot of things matter to me. But make it, and I'm endlessly teased about that. Me too. When I was doing this TV show, we were going to like, I don't know, Yorkshire for a night. And everyone's got a tiny holdall and I'm wheeling a massive suitcase of all my shit. There is that. But also, I think if you're in front of the camera, you have to have duplicates. So, for example, I never buy one of anything.

34:30Fearne Cotton: Right, yeah. Mine was less clothes and more just like stuff from my house that I needed from myself. So look, let's talk about taking holidays seriously. How do you do that? What does that mean for you? Well, I'm lucky in so much that the last, what, 12 years or so, I've gone to the same place in Greece every time. So I know what's needed. So what we need to do is, obviously, we're going to Athens to fly in and then we have to get a boat or a car. I try and only take hand luggage what happens is it's a terrifying thought and doesn't always work if someone else is taking luggage I always take carry on luggage too because there's no point you're still going to have to wait for them so I nearly always go with friends because it's their place and I leave there I always leave some shirts and shoes so I have my own stash there I've learnt from travel get the earliest flight you possibly can.

35:29So I very often stay at Heathrow.

35:31Fearne Cotton: Oh, really? Yeah. So because we live miles from Heathrow, it's sort of you have to allow three hours. Be like the early flight. Yeah. So I stay at a hotel at Heathrow, arrive at 10 o 'clock at night, pay an inordinate amount of money for what is just a bed because, you know, you're not a big... But get up at five or five past four or whatever it is, check in and get the earliest flight of the day. Wow. I like the civilised... I prefer like a, ideally, 10 a.m. flight. Trouble is, that takes up the whole day. Yeah. Whereas if you get the 7 o 'clock flight, and okay, you're a bit short on sleep, you can sleep on the plane, you can sleep on the plane.

36:09Get the 7 o 'clock flight. Now, with Greece, it's two hours ahead. So it's a three-hour flight. So it's five hours anyway. Yeah, you've lost a lot of the day. So you arrive at lunchtime. You've lost a lot of the day. But it means if we can get the 7 o 'clock flight, then get a car to Paris to get the boat, which takes getting off the plane, getting the car, you have an hour and a half or so. But it means that, and then the boat is about an hour and a half, two hours. It means you can arrive about sort of five in the evening. Lovely. Still hot.

36:35Fearne Cotton: Yes. You arrive at the port. There are no cars. It's only donkeys. You can sit. Before going to the house is only four minutes walk away. Oh, lovely. So before going to the house, you can just sit at that bar, have a whatever it is you want. Dreamy. Go to the house. Everything's there. And there's a garden there that I've been helping make. Ooh. So I always go to garden. Yes, I love that. So that's me doing something. It's still a doing. And I love it. I mean, the point is, it sounds sort of rather smug, but I happen to really love what I do. How brilliant. So it's not work. No. I mean, I would do it anyway.

37:16Fearne Cotton: Yeah. I always say if I work less, I garden more, not the other way around. So there's that. But at the same time, I know the guy who sells the best bread. I know the shop that has the oranges that come in and the peaches. You know, there's people you meet. Hello, how are you? How are the children? I like all that. Yeah, I do. And I know that for a lot of people, they go on holiday to explore. I explore through work. Exactly. You've ticked that off the list already. Okay, so that's how you take holidays seriously. What's the best decision you've ever made on holiday?

37:53when we were in Venice back in 1980 the first holiday Sarah and I ever had together mailing for more money in those days there were no credit cards you had traveler's checks yeah we spent all our traveler's checks and we took a lot and bearing in mind we had no money I mean this is the point and I had just got a grant and I worked out that I could get access that grant from Venice. So I remember we decided to mail our bank and we had to wait 24 hours. So we had no money for 24 hours.

38:26Fearne Cotton: God, what palaver. So we didn't eat for 24 hours. In Venice? In Venice. So we had the hotel. That was okay because we didn't have to pay for that until the end of the day. So we decided, okay, we will risk it. Instead of when we ran out of money going home, we mailed for more money. And I think something like another 500 quid came through. and we blew it, of course. And bearing in mind, this is 1980, so 500 quid is probably the equivalent of about, what, three, four grand, something like that. I love that decision. Slightly reckless, but in the funnest way. Because it was just, it was such a combination of, it was the first trip we were away together, and we were young.

39:07Fearne Cotton: So exciting. It was wonderful. And also Venice, you know, and the Biennale was on. And so it just felt the most romantic place in the world, which it is, of course. It's so gorgeous. And where is your holiday happy place? It might not be a place. It could be a little moment or a scene that you can really picture. On the terrace of this house we stay in on this Greek island, which is going to be nameless because I don't want everyone else going to it. my friend's house is on two levels and you go up steps and then there is a kind of terrace with a kitchen and a bedroom and a sitting room and things leading off it it's a very beautiful house and on that terrace having breakfast very leisurely but but you know and we were having breakfast and having that knowing there's no time that you can have the third cup of coffee if that's what you want with the sun coming up if it's very hot protected because there's a thing over the top and it could be March and it's still coming.

40:06That to me, I know I'm on holiday. Yeah. I know it's the beginning of the day. I might spend the day gardening. We might go off on a boat somewhere. We might. The point is it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's up to you. I love that. And it's that. I'm such a day person, not a night person anyway. Same. So it's the beginning of the day.

40:24Fearne Cotton: I'm morning all the way. I lose my personality at about 7 p.m. Interestingly, on holiday, the thing I find most difficult is when it's really hot, we, and as I say, and I know people on this island, so very often you meet people for dinner or whatever. So it's really very, very rarely just Sarah and I. If it's very hot, you tend not to go and eat until 9 or 10. It's so hot otherwise because you always go and eat outside. And I struggle with that. I struggle with that. So normally at home, if I haven't eaten by 9, I just don't eat. Oh, God, same. I hate eating late. I'm really happy not to eat.

41:02Fearne Cotton: Yeah. And then, so I have, that's where I have to get a grip, not get too grumpy and just sort of be a big boy and cope with it. And then it's, and actually what I find is if I can get, I've found this all my life, if I can get to about 11 or 12, I get a second wind. Oh, nice. And I'm good to about one-ish. I do not. I do not get a second wind. I like if I could choose to pick a time for dinner if I'm having a little meal with a friend in London it would be granny o 'clock 6.30 right dreamy Sarah's the same absolutely dreamy the other day my friend suggested eating at 8 which you know means you're going to eat at half eight quarter to nine yeah if you go out nightmare I'm not here for that see at this time of year we usually at home don't eat till eight or even half past eight because of the we're outside and gone And suddenly, you know, I'll say, what are we doing for supper?

41:56Have you got any ideas? And of course, we live in the movie, we can't deliveroo. We eat everything we eat, we cook.

42:01Fearne Cotton: Yeah. I mean, last night we had French beans from the garden, tomatoes from the garden, courgettes from the garden, potato from the garden. We had beetroot from the garden. Oh, this is a dream. But it had to be grown and dug up and cooked and washed. But it tastes so much better. It tastes much better, but it takes time. It does. I just got a bunch of my dad's runner beans from the weekend, and they are the best run of beans out there. Yeah, no, no, I wouldn't have it any different. But we tend to eat later. And increasingly this time of year, I eat, tidy up, potter a little bit and go to bed.

42:31Yeah. You know, that's my nightlife. Heaven.

42:34Fearne Cotton: Sounds like the absolute dream. Well, look, Monty, it's been just wonderful talking to you today. Thank you so much for being on Happy Place and have a lovely holiday. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Oh, Monty. Honestly, I've been wanting Monty done in the podcast for so long. having really looked to how he's talked about his own mental health as one of as we said one of the first people in the public eye to do so um very courageously and i just think he's a brilliant person and let me tell you when we turned the mics off we carried on chatting for some time he is just the most wonderful person i think we've got to get him back on i feel like we could chat to monty about all manner of things he's wildly wise and also incredibly honest and as he pointed out lots of men out there still feel unable to talk about their mental health and he's definitely doing brilliant things to help move things in the right direction thank you Monty so much for your time I do hope that you managed to get away and do a bit of gardening in Greece let's hope so now if you want help taking your holidays more seriously then you know where to go British Airways Holidays allows you to book with a low deposit and pay off your holiday in flexible instalments.

43:48Fearne Cotton: They offer a 24-hour holiday helpline and all holidays include a generous baggage allowance per person. What's more, all British Airways holidays are at all protected, so they've got you well and truly covered. Huge thanks again to Monty, to British Airways holidays, and to you, you brilliant lot.

44:30Fearne Cotton: Happy Place is researched by me, Fern Cotton. The producer is Anushka Tate at Happy Place Studios with studio engineering by Basil Oxtoby.