Mark Ronson - The Stories Behind ‘Uptown Funk,’ Amy Winehouse & ‘I’m Just Ken’

0:00Uptown Funk came out of a jam with Bruno. know and actually it kind of was like a definitely linked to a there's a failure origin story and she was like and can you just write a Ken song like just meaning like maybe in the credits we'll have a song about Ken and so I came up with the idea for I'm just Ken we met that day and then literally wrote Back to Black that night. Hello and welcome to How to Fail. I am the creator and host Elizabeth Day. And this is the podcast where we believe that learning how to fail actually means learning how to succeed better.

1:03reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Well, hello, I'm Simon Mayo. Well, hello, I'm Mark Kermode. On this week's rather wonderful edition of The Take, we have reviews of the not-so-wonderful The Strangers Chapter 2, the really exciting Dead of Winter, and one battle after another with our very special guest, The director of that movie, which may well end up being one of the movies of the year, he is Paul Thomas Anderson. Do not miss a single minute and listen to this week's show.

1:41Thank you. And if you're not subscribed already, what are you thinking? Subscribe for extra takes and bonus goodies now. My guest today is someone who, without you even knowing it, has probably been responsible for the soundtrack of your last 20 years. Mark Ronson is a globally celebrated DJ, a nine-time Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, who also scooped an Academy Award for his work on the Barbie movie. Because yes, it really was Mark Ronson who co-wrote and produced I'm Just Ken. Throughout his stellar career, Ronson has worked with everyone from Lady Gaga to Duran Duran, Miley Cyrus and Sir Paul McCartney.

2:21He produced Amy Winehouse's legendary 2006 Back to Black album, and his own 2014 single, Uptown Funk featuring Bruno Mars, is one of the biggest selling songs of all time. Ronson was born in London and, after his parents' divorce, moved to New York City at the age of five with his mother and stepfather. Music was always in his blood. Ronson's father, an entrepreneur, was a music obsessive and his stepfather is the foreigner guitarist Mick Jones, who wrote, I want to know what love is, for Ronson's mother, Anne. Ronson himself had an internship at Rolling Stone magazine at the age of 12, manning the phones before his voice had broken and in between prepping for his bar mitzvah.

3:08He began DJing in earnest while a student at New York University, which eventually led him production, experiences recounted in his new memoir, Night People. In the book, he describes the hit of selecting a song to play at his mother's second wedding. The first time you feel this sensation, nothing compares, Ronson writes. You're giving the room a feeling they didn't even know they needed. Oh, how I loved that control. Mark Ronson, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Yeah. Tell me about that control and what it felt like. Yes. For me, the control, you know, I grew up in this pretty, you know, I love my parents and I say in the book, they're good people, but they were not good together.

3:59And I had a pretty turbulent upbringing from the ages of zero to five. And the house was, it was a lot of fun at night. And in the day, it was not so much fun. there was something about the DJ booth just like almost physically it was this one-man command center where I was just the captain nobody can get to me this is my thing so that that sense of control you know I mean it makes me feel sound like the evil like villain in like a Bond movie or maybe more like an Austin Powers film but like you know I'm controlling all of you with my music and selections it wasn't but there were there was this thing that like nobody can touch me in here and the worries and the unease of the outside world is does not affect me here you have this amazing phrase in your book about you getting very good at walking on eggshells but inevitably one would crack yeah so you are so loving about your family in the book and I want to make that clear from the outset.

5:08And the chaos such as it was, was kind of a party chaos. Is that right? There was a party chaos and then there was the hangovers the next day. There were moods. And I, you know, I have such a great relationship with my parents now and this book was, isn't that kind of book where I'm throwing anyone under the bus and they were wonderful, loving parents to us at that age, but they were really young and they were partying. And, you know, that's why I learned And I think I had this attraction tonight from really early on because at night, grownups were like buzzy and excited and they wanted to know what you're into and all these things stumbling out into the, you know, my parents house in the middle of the night.

5:47And there were 50 people there hanging out. And then the daytime, the mood was always very heavy and kind of hanging. And I remember even as an early kid, like being able to figure out, like, what moods he and what moods she and like, do I am I going to be careful? am I going to maybe take the long way around the kitchen and just like play it safe so yes I do think that um as a young kid I remember being very very sensitive to like the moods of adults because I was like you know looking out for myself do you think that makes you particularly gifted now at dealing with artists who might occasionally be emotionally fraught or anxious I I absolutely think that and i think that um being so attuned and listen i'm not saying i had some like supernatural talent for empathy but i think from such an early age being so so in tune with that i think even made me probably a pretty good dj because it's like as a as a dj you're trying to read the room you're walking into a room you're looking at 300 people most of whom you've never seen in your life and you're like how am i gonna get these people open like what mood what's the first song so i think there's that and then i think absolutely dealing with superstars it doesn't even have to be a superstar but incredibly talented artists we all know sometimes the more talented the more complicated you know so dealing with these people and as a producer your job is to just make them feel as safe and as vulnerable as possible so i think yeah absolutely and i think working with people who write songs in this place of real heartbreak and heartache, whether it's Amy Winehouse or Yebba or whoever, there's a moment at which you can't make them sing that song one more time.

7:42It might be just the time that emotionally they crack. You're always navigating this thing. So I think absolutely being in tune with people's emotions is something that's benefited me much later in my life. You made a conscious decision not to write about Amy Winehouse or Lady Gaga and to set this book in a very specific period of time. Why was that? I hope there might be a time when I write about the later years and working with Amy and other experiences that I've had. But I really felt certain about making this just within the 90s because I wanted to celebrate DJing And I wanted to celebrate the kind of DJing, like not standing, superstar DJ standing on a stage at a festival with 10 ,000 people, but like a gigging DJ, like five nights a week, the ins and outs of that, the highs and the super lows of like, you know, you're just in the club by yourself at the end of the night as the lights come on most nights.

8:46so I just I knew I wanted to be about this era and then as I started to get into it I was like what was it that brought us all together these like night people so a little bit more of a you know without stepping out of my pay grade a psychological examination of what brought all these people together at night but there's a difference between people who enjoy a night out and then night people and night people the kind that just like they live for the night whether it's dance to go out it can be drugs it can be a lot of things but what was it that brought us all together and for anyone who has yet to read it what was your conclusion god that's really a good question did i come to a conclusion i think it was it was all different reasons you know there were some people that went out because they loved the music there were people that went out to took up.

9:39There were people that just almost a little damaged, like people that day was just a bit too harsh. Like maybe you're running from something in your reality. Maybe you didn't think that you lived up to society's expectations or your family's expectations. And night provided this armor for a lot of people. And maybe sometimes it was the drinks, drinking and drugs that also helped like a little bit of that as well. The armor, of course, we know it does. You also talk about when you experimented with heroin and met David Blaine shortly afterwards. Yeah. You know, I tried to keep it as diaristic as possible, like I'm writing in that era, even though I didn't keep a diary I wish that I had.

10:21I had to interview like 200 people to get all these stories straight for the book. But yeah, there were amazing people in that time that went on to be superstars. So even when I first see Beyonce in the club for the first time, as ridiculous as it sounds, I'm like, this girl named Beyonce who sings in Destiny's Child was there hanging out. And David Blaine and there were these people just at the beginning of their career in that time in New York in the 90s. And David Blaine would just be in the club doing tricks. Like that's kind of how everybody got to know him. He would just come up to you and go like, hey, want to see some magic?

10:58And, you know, that's kind of how he made his name. I remember being on heroin. I didn't, I'd never done heroin. I sort of did it by accident, but the way that I was so cavalier about taking drugs, it probably wasn't a surprise. I snorted something that somebody put in front of me. I'm not saying I'm especially proud of it, but yes. And I was stumbling through this club called the tunnel. And I was just having this terrible sort of like meltdown out of body experience. And then David Blaine just came up to me and was like, hey, want to see some magic? And I was just like, already on another dimension, he bit a coin in half, spit it into himself, made it reappear.

11:41And to the point where I just really had no idea what was actually really happening anymore. What was Blaine and what was the heroine? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Before we get onto your failures, I want to ask if you're still a night person, you're now the father of two young girls. So has your night personhood served you well? It's so funny, you know, I met my wife, Grace, during COVID. So we really had this relationship in the way that it started. Of course, she knew that I had been a DJ, but the way that we were first together and she didn't see any of that side of me, never saw me DJ, even for the first few years we were together.

12:20And then, you know, we have these two amazing daughters. But as a result of the book, I've kind of gone back to DJing. Something about it just triggered, like, I want to go out and play vinyl again. I want to play in some clubs, play in some underground places, just show up with records. So, you know, now I, like, come home at three in the morning. She's like, I can't, like, she's in a sweet way. I was like, I can't believe this book has, like, made you go back to a night person. Like, I married a DJ, didn't I? I was like, sort of. But I definitely had left most of that time behind. but it's no surprise the book has reopened a little bit of that.

13:00But I guess when you come back at 3am you can do the feeds. Yeah, you can do the feeds and you know, I don't need a lot of sleep. I'm pretty lucky so I'm up at 6.30 anyway. Your first failure is, as you put it, the Jay-Z approach disaster. Right. Tell us this story. There's quite a few people in the book that start off as these characters that, you know, I like really hero worship, like Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest, Jay-Z. And then as I, you know, kind of get a little further in my career, they start to be in the clubs and we start to almost, with Q-Tip we became really good friends with Jay-Z.

13:44You know, he started to know my name, come to where I DJed. They go from being these heroes on your record sleeves to these people that you actually know. But early on with Jay-Z, there was a club night that I used to do on a Tuesday that one night him and Biggie came down to. And it was such a big deal because Biggie was the king of New York at that time. Jay-Z was sort of like the prince. He only had one or two records out, but they came down. And so I was at this other nightclub once on a Monday and I saw Jay-Z and I'd had a few drinks and I was thinking to myself, you know, what a great time to just go up to Jay-Z and just say something really, really intelligent and insightful that's just going to make him so curious about me and we'll be best friends by the end of the night.

14:34And he'll be saying, call me Jigga, you know, we're toasting Christelle. But I was kind of tipsy. and as I was thinking of what to say, sometimes in a really packed club, there's almost like a current in the club and I remember just being like pushed right in front of him before I really thought of anything to say. And I don't think I had anything intelligent to say anyway to him because the truth was I just wanted him to think I was probably cool or something. And I said, I play all your songs. The absolute most inane thing I could have said, like I'm the DJ Tuesday night you come down and hear me play like anything it was just like I could I could have literally been anyone could have said like I have an iPod um so and then just as I really got to you know barely finish the line you know the the club current like was like kind of pushes me away from him and I can see out the corner of my eyes I look back like he actually probably because I was drunk in the manner that I went up to him thought like maybe I was like a heckler or something or like some kid being a wise ass because i saw him like slightly tense up and say to his friend like what that kid say you know and uh and uh his friend's just like i don't know like probably a fan or something and i think i just like i wouldn't say i was like absolutely shattered because i knew like the way that i'd gone up to him like what was i actually really expecting but um there was this slight like embarrassed um thing as i you know made my way through the club the mortification yeah yeah a light mortification for some reason everybody has like you know i get together with some of my friends um my friend ezra who's in this uh lead touring on this band vampire weekend like everybody's got a really good mortifying jay-z story from somewhere early in their career yeah because i think everybody loves jay-z so every everybody at some point has like gone up to jay-z and tried to say something and I'm sure like I wonder if Jay-Z just keeps a tally of like all the people like he can just flip through a magazine be like yeah that I remember that person said some dumb shit that person that person made a mess out of themselves yeah something about Jay-Z the power that he he wields have you ever crossed paths with him since oh yeah very much okay I mean I've never reminded him of that story like I don't think that he would even remember and uh he figures importantly in the book because he was just such an important part of of new york and how the scene transformed in the late 90s um and then you know he wrapped on a remix of rehab with he was a huge amy fan he was at amy's first ever show in uh in new york at joe's pub um i remember it was on valentine's day that's a weird fact that saves my mind so yeah there um yeah he's we've had a I would say a basic normal relationship since that.

17:40Well, he listens to this podcast regularly. So now he'll know the story. Now he'll know, yeah. When you see someone like that for the first time, you mentioned earlier seeing Beyonce and she just came and hung out in the club. Can you tell that there is star quality there? I think so. I mean, anybody on that level of Beyonce or Jay-Z like certainly radiates something. Jay-Z was, I don't want to use the word remarkable or unique, but Jay-Z was just so memorable because I just remember seeing him cut through the club. And he must have been like, he's a couple of years older than me. I was 20. He was probably 24, DJing the club.

18:18And it's just like a force. I don't know what it is. And then there was such a sense of, even at that age, I just remember he just had this like kind of poise. I don't want to use these cheesy words like magnetism. It wasn't that. It was just like, he was just serious. And yes, and kind of intimidating because everybody knew like, you know, he rapped about his street rap and everything else.

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19:22All new Thursdays on FX. All episodes now streaming on Hulu.

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20:09Where are you now on your journey with people pleasing? I think I've definitely mellowed out. There's still some old habits die hard. There's just, there's something probably still in me that like some kind of validation or something or to people to think you're cool. But yeah, I've grown up a lot. I don't feel that happening too much anymore, but I don't think it's because I've learned to hide it better. I've just like got better at playing it cool i i think that i probably have gotten better at needing people's valid the validation of strangers but that is a big part of djing you know that's a big part of why i loved it and in the 90s and late 90s in new york we hung out with for some reason i hung out with djs and stand-up comedians we all like hung out together i think because it was same things kind of late hours you all get off work around the same time it's 150 bucks in cash and you know it was this era where dave chappelle and all these really talented comedians you could just go into the comedy cellar go see them on any night and then walk over to the club and it's i felt like there was a strong parallel between comedians and djs even in the way that like they both use the word kill and we both play clubs and for crowds and our entire thing revolves around the validation of strangers in a room you're just going to a room of people you've never seen and you have to win them over and you get immediate feedback as well yes whereas putting a podcast episode out or writing a book it's not as immediate or present or in your face yeah or making a record no absolutely and it's um and there's also something i write about briefly in the book it's like I'm sure it must be the same I imagine for stand-up stand-ups like you can have the best night you can have 300 people but if there's one person that just is not having a good time or didn't dance you just go home and you're haunted by that person's face until you fall asleep I think it goes back to control again doesn't I mean I speak as a fellow people pleaser yeah and I realized after a while that I was I guess you're trying to control other people's responses to you in order to feel safe.

22:24So that all connects as well. But I'm very interested in the idea of self-esteem. Do you think great creativity thrives if you have lower self-esteem or higher self-esteem? It's tough to, I know, drive and ambition. You can definitely connect to lower self-esteem, I'm sure, because you just constantly feel you have to prove yourself. So creativity is interesting because I'm sure that there are well-adjusted people, and I don't know many, so I'm just saying I'm sure there are, but who are incredibly creative and, you know, through all the, I hate to use all these things, but like the therapy and all the work and the things I've done, I certainly have less of those drivers that come from, you know, needing to prove myself, low self-esteem, whatever that is.

23:17but um creativity that's the one thing that I still see is this pure little beam in the middle of it all so you have drivers ambitions and all the things that can drive you to do all the work and stay in the studio till four in the morning but creativity is like almost just like the newborn baby that's just pure and I'm not sure if that's really affected by esteem or not beautifully put thanks can you talk to me about how you came up with Uptown Funk yeah Uptown Funk came out of a jam with Bruno and actually it kind of was like a definitely linked to a there's a failure origin story so we had this song called Magic that had nothing to do with the song Bruno went on to do 24 karat magic and it was a song that was left over from Bruno's album unorthodox jukebox that i'd worked on and i was convinced this was going to be like a huge hit and it had this great hook and it had this cool beat and i was working on my album and i was like bruno can we finish this song magic can we just do it for my album and he was like yeah and every time get in the studio crank it loud and sit back from him and be like man isn't this great and everyone like yeah and then after like 20 minutes just couldn't write a shred of lyric nothing else on it other than this little hook just wasn't moving anyone and so we just decided to take a break for a second and we're like let's just jam on something else fuck it and bruno got behind the drums and he had this really modest tiny studio at the time and the drum kit was like basically in the fax machine closet it was like a tiny cocktail kit which is just like three drums and i think he was like it was like almost like a child's kit bruno's playing i'm playing bass our friend Jeff Basker's playing keys and we just jammed for like five hours and we just got the basic doom just like just a disco groove that was fun we didn't come up with a do do do till much later but we wrote the whole first verse that night and we were like wow this is exciting so but that's all we had and then every time we got back together to try and finish the song We could never match that like brand new excitement of the first night.

25:38If things started to feel forced and labored and didn't match that like this here, that white gold, like this really initial excitement. So it took seven months. Sometimes we'd get together for three days to write. And all we get was like maybe two lines, like the Jackson, Mississippi, you know, that part. And Bruno was on tour. And then by the end of three days, everybody would just had it with each other. tempers were flaring with like frustrations kind of and and then I'd wait two weeks for everybody just to calm down and be like hey you guys want to get together try and finish that song um and and then after seven months we kind of got it to a place we were all happy with that's amazing so you always knew that there was something there that it was worth it was worth pushing through I did and honestly I had the most at stake because it was for my album so So I kind of needed, I was like, I can't afford to ditch this song fully.

26:33Bruno was on tour, this giant arena tour. So I would just get on a plane with my bass, just go wherever he was. And we'd just keep chipping away at the song. What's your relationship with that song like now? It's just so beyond me, like meaning it doesn't belong to me. It's such an interesting thing. I mean, obviously we were so excited when it came out. because it didn't sound like anything on the radio at the time it was all a bit of a risk i remember someone at my record company saying like i don't know do you want to put funk in the title is there another title you could possibly call it because it's a little like like there were just all these reasons it was four minutes long everyone was like can you make a radio edit we tried all these things to make radio edits didn't work um so it was it was always like a bit of a roll of the dice so then when it started to blow out we were obviously over the moon and then when it became a hit and then six months later it was like all my friends with the young children and it sort of went made its way it became a children's song and then a wedding song and it's just it's just incredible like i am as you know i i write in the book like even though it's a wedding song now like i heard it's been banned actually like some brides ban it from the wedding because they don't want the whole best man choreo but um I made sure to say I'm as proud of it as anything I've ever done because it's not a slight to that song but really is just like it's part of the kind of ether almost now you know I remember when I first heard it and I remember it sounding so original but also so cool and cool is something that you Mark Ronson strive to be and I from my perspective I think you achieve it.

28:17But there's a very funny bit in your acknowledgments to the book where you say you did a word search for cool. One of your friends told you to do a word search and you've used it 73 times. You've now used it 31 times. Do you feel cool? I mean, at this point, I know I'm all right. There's cool, there's like MIA and Travis Scott and like cool, SZA, cool in that way. Like I'll never be. Like I've made my peace with that. but um i think like what's cool is like if you're around long enough and you make good music that people like sort of get somewhere in the end but i don't really care so much about being cool anymore and then um it you reminded me with the in the acknowledgement so like my wife's grace her cousin abe is a really beautiful writer has written some incredible books and rights for the New Yorker and all these things.

29:12So when I had finished the book and I thought it was done, I showed it to him and he was like, there's a permanence to books. And I was like, okay, how long do I need? He's like, I think you need three months. So I asked my editor and he was like, I can get you six weeks, which I then did stretch to three months. But I really went so deep back into the book and Abe. And then he put me with his features editor at the New Yorker and they just I went to school for 18 hours a day rewriting the whole thing putting it um you know on much more under I don't know just a deeper lens and that was one of the things he was like you cannot use the word cool 73 times you have to dig deeper in your lexicon than that your second failure is the shattering of your guitar dreams yeah so growing up you always wanted to be a lead guitarist is that right I did you know it's you know I played guitar um I listened to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and Living Color and all these kind of shreddy bands and then Guns N' Roses and I wanted to be like that and I was in this band with another guitar player who actually technically was ridiculously gifted and can play all those crazy solos and i was the rhythm guitar player but like i just that wasn't my thing and i was coming to terms with the fact that i just didn't have those chops and then my best friend who i write about in the book sean lennon we were always about the same level as musicians and he came back from a summer and i don't know he'd been studying it was just so far beyond me i just remember thinking like if that's what being a guitarist sounds like i need to just find a new thing and it just sort of happened at the same time i was really falling in love with hip-hop music and i didn't know anything about rapping or making beats so i was like djing this is this one art form in this thing this music that i love so much that i could maybe do so it made me switch to djing but And yeah, I had this like, you know, this kind of like ridiculous fantasy of like being like Slash with the top hat, no shirt on stage, shredding a Les Paul.

31:30But it just that wasn't supposed to be me. Do you think being average at certain things can lead to you being brilliant at others? I absolutely think that for being a producer, which is what I went on to do, it was really great that I had like rudimentary or maybe above rudimentary knowledge of all these different things, a little bit of guitar, bass, piano. But yes, because I never had a virtuosic talent that was like pointed the way, like this is what you go do. I had to find it. It took me much longer. But then by the time I found it, I had these little tools in my box because of these, all these other things I had tried.

32:14Talk to me a bit about friendship because you write so lovingly of Sean in the book. And you express that time when he moved away. I think you were 14 and you express it as heartbreak. Yeah. Can you tell me a bit more about that? Because I think friendship is so underplayed in our modern culture. Yeah, there was that recent meme that went around in America where I live of like guys calling each other up just before bedtime just to say goodnight, but not telling anybody. It was like in this bro culture. It was something like just calling up like, hey, man, just thinking about you, just calling to say goodnight.

32:52Partly just to see what kind of weird reactions you might get. But yeah, maybe male friendship is still a thing that we don't feel quite as comfortable with. beyond like love you man but um yeah with sean we were best friends i'd finally felt like i'd sort of found like a musical kindred spirit and somebody who and sean was just so wonderful and charming and magnetic and he was my best friend and i probably even looked up to him in some ways and and i remember him calling me one summer to say like hey so i'm gonna go off to boarding school in Europe with Max. Max was our other really close friend.

33:36There were three of us. And he was like, but we'll still have the summers to jam, right? Like, you know, he's trying to sort of like keep the sunny side for me. But I also knew they were about to go off and have the best time ever. And I was just like, yeah, but I did. It was my first heartbreak in some ways because, you know, those were my best friends. That was sort of my life at that time. But then by them moving away, I had to put my own band together and, you know, it led to other things. And how important is friendship still to you now? Because you also have a bevy of siblings and half siblings.

34:14I know you're all very close. Yeah. So does friendship perform a different function? It doesn't. Because I've had children, you know, a bit later in life, like, it's so hard beyond the work and just the time that you want to be. to spend with family, keeping those relationships. I've felt some of my friendships then not what they were. And that makes me a little bit sad, but there's just like, there are not enough hours in the day. But I really value friendship. I think I'm really lucky that also a lot of the people that I work with, my songwriting partner, Andrew, like I spend so many days in a tiny room or just in a very close confines with people that I really love and working with people on records.

35:06Do you do have these sort of like very intense, quick friendships as well? Because you're, you know, working with duo, somebody like, you know, you're absorbing everything that they're going through in their life and you know and when they happen to be really great wonderful people as well you um you do become friends but it's definitely something that I've really noticed lately it sounds a bit like your job is also a therapist yeah and you mentioned although I know you feel uneasy talking about it that you have been in therapy yourself and I wonder if part of that is a bit like you needed a therapist almost like a supervisor I think I always thought therapy was something loosely like oh you're in trouble you're having anxiety attacks or something like that it's good to check in I didn't think of it was really something to like have consistently in in my life and then after my first marriage ended I noticed that the series of relationships that I was in afterwards were actually getting worse and worse than even my marriage.

36:22I was like, man, how am I getting, like, I should be getting better after this. I really need, I don't want to say kick in the ass, but it sounds like I'm trying to make light of it, but I do, I need to figure this out. So I did actually find somebody who was quite intense and put rules of basically rules of conduct and whatever you're not going to date anyone for six months you're going to sort yourself out I went to this place called Hoffman as well I don't think that having dealing with some of the emotional baggage of these incredibly wonderful complicated artists was like getting heaved on to me but I do think that you can definitely use it as a way to ignore skirt issues that you're dealing with in your own life because you can just take on other people's baggage or just use it as a way work was always something that I used to like blot out any kind of dealing with personal stuff as well.

37:23Hard relate. Yeah. I'm also someone who was married got divorced made some dubious life choices so I could and is addicted to work if I have an addiction it is that right. you mentioned earlier that you met your wife grace during covet yeah how did that happen i had met grace on one or two other occasions and i always was just impressed by her and i had a crush on her but the timing was never right and so in september 2020 um a mutual friend of ours just knew that we were both single at the same time and played matchmaker. And it was always, it was that really, you know, I can't remember exactly what it was like in London at the time or in England, but in New York, it was definitely like, you were looking out for your family.

38:16You were going, if you're going on a date, you were, somebody was getting tested or you're asking them like, had they been around anybody in the past five days? But yes. So we met in that time. And And then I think because I wasn't traveling like crazy and working like crazy, we had such a lovely, intense period of spending time. It's almost like we got to know each other in six months, what might have been three years during any other time. And then we were married eight months later. I'm so happy for you. Thank you. How do you feel about turning 50? I haven't really thought about it in the way that like, I mean, it's undeniably sounds like a big milestone.

38:54That's for sure. But there's no part of me that like wants to have like some crazy celebration. I did that on my 40th. I feel fine with it. It's just like I want to be somewhere with my Grace and our two kids somewhere. I'm not. Yeah, I guess my life is a bit different. I mean, I said before we started recording, your skin is excellent. I mean, you definitely pass for, I would say, like 32. two maybe 39 42 thank you thanks do you have a special skincare regime i do sometimes ask men this i do not i do not have a special regime i have a little moisturizer that's really just blessed genetically blessed at sierra i discover top workout gear at incredible prices which might lead to another discovery your headphones haven't been connected this whole time awkward Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices.