TV Favourite, STEPH MCGOVERN!

0:00Mo Gilligan: Yes, what's good people? My name is Mo Gilligan and right now you are locked in to my podcast, The Beginning, Middle and End. Now my guest this week is one of Brent's most promising engineers but has become an award-winning broadcaster who has worked in journalism for over 20 years. That's right, eight of which of those was part of the BBC Breakfast family. Now, she was relatable. She was a reassuring voice that helped the UK better understand economics, who is now one of the best loved TV personalities, presenting her very own BAFTA-nominated live daily show, Steph's Pat Lunch. We talk about her incredible journey, her early life in Middlesbrough, even meeting President Trump.

0:47Mo Gilligan: We're also going to be talking about her new debut book, Deadline. Please welcome to the podcast, it's Steph McGovern. I went to Middlesbrough for the first time actually. Did you? Yeah, I had a show there. I absolutely loved it.

0:59Steph McGovern: Did you do the town hall or something? Yes, I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:01Mo Gilligan: I really liked it. I'd never been there before. The furthest I think I've gone up north to do any shows is probably Newcastle. But I really liked Middlesbrough. Good. Yeah, because it felt like it was like, don't get me wrong, it was a proper grey day. It felt like if there was an advertisement for Middlesbrough, that would have been the day. Very overcast, very grey and stuff. But the show, the people are so genuine, so friendly. They'd be buzzing that you were there.

1:27Steph McGovern: Oh, but I felt that. It's like a proper night out for people. It's like they go and see a show and then they don't go home till four in the morning with the pizza stuck to their face. No, I felt that.

1:36Mo Gilligan: I really did. It's the first time I ever went there. But sometimes when we've done this tour, we've gone to places I've never been before. I've only heard about them.

1:43Steph McGovern: Yeah.

1:43Mo Gilligan: And sometimes, obviously, you go to the major cities like your Newcastle. And you're like, everyone, there's the night. But Newcastle, it was a vibe, man. I really, really liked it. How was it for you growing up?

1:53Steph McGovern: Yeah, so like for me, it's interesting because Middlesbrough is quite close to Newcastle geographically, and it's only like half an hour away, but it felt like two days away. And like to ever go to Newcastle was like a mega treat, you know, because you were going to go to a city. So like where I grew up, it was a town, it's heavy industry. So like my school was right next to the place where they incinerated the mad cows. Is it? doing all that. Right, that's a throwback

2:23Mo Gilligan: for any of the listeners, man. I know. Yeah, man.

2:26Steph McGovern: Man, cow disease. Do you remember that? Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, yeah, and it was near, it was in a really funny part of town and it was right near like the chemical works and things like that. So I reckon if you turn the lights out in here, I'll probably glow in the dark. That's how I like.

2:39Mo Gilligan: Well, it's interesting you said it because a lot of small towns are like, I used to go to Cardiff a lot. I've got a lot of family in Wales and just outside, I've got a lot of family in Barry. Barry's become very, very popular with Gavin and Stacey. but there is a chemical works there and everyone's like yeah like if you checked my blood there's probably some trace of chemical in there in the dna somewhere do you know what i mean yeah totally yeah man but your upbringing is interesting though because i know you used to do irish

3:08Steph McGovern: dancing as well i did yeah yeah so my dad's irish on his side of the family and also there's a girl who lived over the road from us who did it and i just fancied going one time and it was just like Like, it was something a bit different. Everyone thought it was weird when I was growing up because who'd heard of Irish dancing before Riverdance? And that's when I was doing it. But I loved it because it was just, it was, do you know what I really liked about it? No one cared about your background or what your mum and dad did for a job because it just took away all that class stuff. It was just who was a good dancer and who isn't.

3:40Steph McGovern: So you went to competitions and it didn't matter like if your parents were rich or not. It was literally just whether you could dance. And I think that gave me like a confidence of a like getting up on stage and b meeting people from different backgrounds and so that that really helped because like middlesbrough i will defend it to the end of the earth like for me you have to do that it gets slagged off all the time but like i would take middlesbrough over anywhere else in terms of like what it taught me like i would not be where i am if i wasn't from there because it's made me really strong and like resilient and also good humor like yeah i think when you're going through like tough times you use humor to get through it you're like you must do that more you're like you kind of just make a dark joke don't you like you just do you know dodgy humor to just get you through these mad moments of course and i feel like with home it

4:32Mo Gilligan: i always i always find it interesting when i meet someone and i guess look for whatever experience they have they don't like home they're like oh i'll never move back there i'll never go back there and i guess that's just due to the experience but even for myself and i've got to do traveling or even when i come back from holiday it's like a sense of like oh i'm back yeah obviously there's your home home but there is like something quintessentially british about just the small things that we feel like happen every day but until you go somewhere else you're like yeah that doesn't happen anywhere else like i know that from going up north people are just much more friendlier so for us living in london's shock you're like oh right people people say

5:11Steph McGovern: good morning yeah but you can't the thing is so if you go to a shop in middlesbrough you can't get out of it because people are talking to you the whole time and it's like i mean you get on the bus it's like yes you know you have to have a bit of crack with the uh bus driver and that as you get

5:23Mo Gilligan: on and off but does it feel like everybody also knows each other though yeah i guess they do it's

5:29Steph McGovern: like no i guess it's nosy as well like everyone's just nosy but yeah there is like that was a shock to me when I first came to London because it was like on the tube I kept smiling at people and and

5:42Mo Gilligan: I just think people are going what's wrong with her what is wrong with that girl no and it's hardened

5:47Steph McGovern: me though because I think I'm a bit like I'm a bit more grumpy when I go home now you know I'm like don't talk to me and that's actually yeah rubbish I think London builds you up with such a toughness

5:58Mo Gilligan: that I also realize that whenever I go on holiday you know you're at the resort it takes me a couple days to like yeah but i've always i think that's doing doing stand-up comedy and going up north the friendliness and the warmth and it's not to say look i can't just say it london is harsh but i feel like the friendliness and the warmth you get from up north you're like okay cool i can see why you lot come down here and we'll complain about the price of a pint oh my god i remember

6:29Steph McGovern: when I first went to the BBC and like I was a guest on a show and it was when the BBC had a bar in the middle of like the offices so they used to have this bar which is just mad to think of now isn't it and when I went in there I didn't know what to order because I was like what do media people order and someone ordered a spritzer in front of me and I thought oh that must be like a hooch or a like a Smirnoff Ice type thing so I was like oh I'll order a spritzer as well and I got this drink and obviously it's wine with soda water and i was like oh my god the water down the wine here and like the charge of a fortune so there was all these things you learn don't you like you're just you've got your own way of thinking of things and then when you're thrown into a different place in the country or the world or whatever you're like what i've had this wrong all the whole time

7:15Mo Gilligan: so so where did your love of because you know going on stage is is one thing and i always find anyone who goes on stage has a almost like a level of creativity about them yeah you know especially really doing dance and there's also being in front of the the lamb lat as such yeah yeah so then how did it start to change for you when you got a little bit older and i know you did you study engineering yeah i was doing engineering originally yeah yeah

7:41Steph McGovern: it's a funny one isn't it transcend yeah yeah so at school i was i'm an only child and i think you go one or two ways you're either like desperate for attention or you're dead quiet and I'm clearly desperate for attention so I would always be like hey everyone I'm here but I think it's that desperation to like please people so I'd work really really hard at school secretly because I didn't want to look like a swat and but also try and be a bit of a class clown and I think but what I realized was and my school was quite unique so it was a school because of how tough the area was and there were a lot of families struggling they opened this brand new school which was sponsored by a business so weirdly it was sponsored by british american tobacco so a cigarette company yeah that's showing the time yeah yeah yeah which explains why they're all right with the smoke and the loose but um but it was interesting so our whole thing at school was not we didn't have a head teacher it was like a managing director and like they presented it as a kind of a business place and it was all about trying to get a job you know it was less of course you had to do well in your exams but there was less focus on that because a lot of the kids in my school like they didn't have the structure at home to do well in exams you know it was like a real melting pot of people from really like tough backgrounds like in there was one time where in my class there was like hitman's son drug dealer's son but also the policeman's son who was investigating the latest murder that happened every time crime stoppers was on it was my mate in my class who had whatever the jury was that had been nicked out so but yeah you don't when you're growing up in that you you don't feel like that's a thing you're not aware that you're you're either like poor or you're in a like criminal environment or you just don't it's just normality and so but what our school did really cleverly was like try and get us to use that in to think about how we could get a job out of it rather than going down the criminal route they were like right we're going to introduce you to loads of businesses in the area we're going to teach you about all that and that's basically what happened so i could see from a young age that there was loads of work in like the engineering sector so even though i would have loved you know i wanted to be richard and judy when i was a kid i didn't have any contacts in that world or anything but i just went with the money and i was like i could see that especially as being a woman they were pushing for you to do all these different courses and pay for you to go on all these trips and things so i just and i thought oh and i love science and maths and stuff so i was like this is me i'll do this so so then the reason i ended up in the media is because i ended up working for black and decker that make all like power tools and stuff and do all which is the professional business side of it and then while i was there i ended up winning this award and then i got noticed by the media who were like oh who's this girl doing well in engineering.

10:33Steph McGovern: And the award was the,

10:34Mo Gilligan: was it Entryno?

10:35Steph McGovern: Young Engineer for Britain, yeah. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so. It's a big award, man. I know, isn't it? I know, yeah. It was mad, that.

10:42Mo Gilligan: That's not a joke, man. Yeah.

10:44Steph McGovern: It's mad to think of it now. For Black & Decker as well. Yeah. That's big. Yeah, it was, I didn't, yeah, it was one of those weird things where you don't realise how, you know, big it was in my life until I look back on it and go, actually, that was quite a life-changing moment for me, really.

11:00Mo Gilligan: Yeah, of course.

11:00Steph McGovern: then suddenly the media were like oh we want to interview her talking about being a woman in engineering and because i had my accent a northern accent that was unusual for them as well you know like i remember when i first went to the bbc and i literally was like i'd never been in a bbc building before like i'd never been in a media place and i don't know how you felt when you first went into like a tv studio you're just like wow look at all these jobs that people do and look at this world and I was like I want to be in this world like I never thought I would end up in front of the camera even though I'd when I was younger I'd kind of wanted to I just thought I want to work here I want to like do whatever job and so um that's kind of what happened I ended up doing a show talking about being a woman in science and engineering and I just stalked the team and was like please can I have some work experience and so I got some work experience but it was dead funny because before I got there, the boss had told the team, like, there's this new girl coming and she's really unusual.

12:02Steph McGovern: She's Northern. And you were like, what? It's a national thing. And it was like some mad thing to say she's Northern.

12:08Mo Gilligan: I'm not from like another planet, man.

12:09Steph McGovern: Yeah, I know. And it was just dead funny. And I remember being, and it was great. Like, I really have to, the BBC were amazing to me. Like, I spent a long part of my career there. But it was just mad how weird they thought I was. Like, they were like, oh, wow. you're really unusual and there was this when I went into the current affairs department where I was working there was like and I was like started entry level so I was answering the phones and stuff like that and there was this map of Middlesbrough on the wall my hometown and I was like eh why is there a map of Middlesbrough on the wall so I went over and I was like oh hiya do you know you've who's the smoggy which is what you call a person from Middlesbrough because of

12:47Mo Gilligan: all the heavy industry and the smog yeah of course and I was like who's the smoggy and they were like

12:51Steph McGovern: what what's she on about and i said oh the map of middlesbrough on the wall and they're like oh that's because we're doing a program about asbos and i was like what and i said what is that red line on the map like the circle and they're like that's the no-go zone for the crew and i was like my mom and dad live in the middle of that but it made me realize they had no clue about real life because i would have been i could have walked through any part of middlesbrough and felt safer than i did at the time walking through shepherd's bush at that time where you know where the bbc was yeah because it's just the world you know isn't it so but it was like an epiphany because in my head it just made me go no matter what i do in this career i've need to make sure they understand that like it's not as wild out there as i think it is and yes there's tough elements to it but there's also a lot of normality and a lot of people just getting on with their lives and like not the way that you think we are so that was a big thing for me and did it feel like

13:47Mo Gilligan: you had to really almost like represent where you were from yeah absolutely i think i probably went more northern because of it yeah i would have yeah like i i definitely did because it became

13:58Steph McGovern: a running joke about getting me to say words as well like i once asked for like a coke as in like

14:04Mo Gilligan: a can of coke but the way i say coke they they thought i was saying cork as in like a wine cork

14:11Steph McGovern: yeah so like they would would get me to say words like that they were like oh steph ask for a coke again go on step out for a cook and i'll be like can i have a cook so i just you know i just pull it up to it because it i think there was a sense and i don't know if you've had this more where i think people have underestimated me and that's helped because i'm like if you underestimate me that's that's actually quite useful and i guess it's like being in your field as like as well

14:40Mo Gilligan: with business yeah and also media as well um and then like you know that you're you're representing where you're from as well so you're representing Middlesbrough you're from up north as well and you're talking about like business and media so I guess it's almost and also like what you like have been able to achieve before that as well so you know what you was doing at things like Black and Decker yeah like you've come from a place where you're like oh like this is my surroundings it's all I know but I guess also the way it's being portrayed outside of where I'm from I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't.

15:14Steph McGovern: Yeah, totally.

15:15Mo Gilligan: You know it was, right, is that how you got? So that must be quite encouraging when you're like, yeah, okay, cool. Watch this.

15:22Steph McGovern: Yeah, totally, because I didn't realise to them I wasn't normal. I just thought I was normal. Like, I didn't think, I've had no X factor kind of hardship in my life. I've got no big sob story. I've seen some tough stuff, but I think most people have. I've got a regional accent, but most people have got an accent. so they didn't realise I think at the time I think it's changed a bit now that they were weird the weird what they were the unusual ones if you look at the whole country the unusual ones are the people who work like the posh people in the media and in politics so I was like they need to see a bit of outside yeah like this will make you laugh one of the things so yeah obviously business journalism is my bag and because I'm fascinated by how we make money and who's spending it and all that and um one of the things that really blew my mind was when i was working at radio 4 and they're the way they used to kind of get a sense of how consumers how shoppers were feeling like the kind of barometer was john lewis's results coming out like their financial results and i'm like john lewis is literally one of the poshest places on the planet that is not telling me anything about how my nana's spending her money like what are you one of even max and expenses is posh like come on let's get to basics have a look at what's happening in b &m and poundland and then we'll find out that's what the deals are man so but it was just funny and i so i kind of i don't know i realized i think it gave me confidence in thinking actually there is some stuff that i can tell you a bit about the world and what people are thinking outside of like this media and political bubble and don't get me wrong everyone was lush to me my whole career I haven't had like a time when anyone's been horrible but they just made assumptions about me based on my voice and where I've come from

17:07Mo Gilligan: and that must be hard because I guess it's like there's always that feeling with like up north that it's always linked with hardship yeah totally and I don't know if that comes from like you know maybe the era in like the 70s with the minor strikes and stuff so I don't know if it feels like oh yeah it must be really hard up there yeah you know it must be you don't have to eat really hot yeah you're like no it's vibes man yeah well it is like you're right

17:33Steph McGovern: it's there there is a lot of hardship but you know without going into loads of economic ranting it's because we don't have the same investment in the north that you get in the south so there is there's definitely a divide but there's loads of like pockets of fabulousness you know there's beautiful countryside there's amazing entrepreneurs there's like brilliant shops and independent shops and you know pubs and everything else so there's football teams but i won't go into all that but there is there's a there's loads of good stuff and i hate it when we get kind of lumped together as being oh poor them because yes there is things where it is poor us because we're not getting the same investment but it's not in the terms of the people we are

18:16Mo Gilligan: and what we're about yeah and also you worked on when you mentioned the bbc but you we work them tomorrow's world oh yeah that is this and that program yeah that was like working on that

18:29Steph McGovern: yeah so for those of you who don't know it this is um basically like a science show where they used to tell you about what gadgets and science things were going to come out in the future so hence why it was called tomorrow's world and i was working so it was when i was about 19 or 20 and um i was like a runner on it and so and it was when the program was live so they used to do

18:53Mo Gilligan: these experiments live on the show and then i got asked to look at there was this fella coming on

18:58Steph McGovern: right this on the day i was doing and he was this like glaswegian guy so really thick glaswegian accent and so the producer put me with him because i thought they'll be able to understand each other because of the accents and um he'd invented something which makes your windows of your house eject if it catches fire so if it detects smoke it like kicks the windows out yeah which i mean obviously great for a bungalow but anything bigger yeah but and he'd like and so i was looking after him and which literally meant getting him coffee and stuff like that and chatting to him and he was like um dead nervous and i was and you know he was quite a big guy he was quite red in the face he was oh really stressed about this i was like don't worry it'll be fine we did the rehearsal and the window didn't work and i was like oh man and he was saying to me oh i've put my life savings into this you know i've like remortgaged i've um and he was talking about his relationship with his wife and all the pressure and i'm like oh my god it needs to work so i got the producer and i'm like oh like i'm really worried about this guy and they're thinking who's this daft runner who's you know it's telly whatever happens happens so anyway then i went back out to see him and i was like oh you know it'll be fine and he was really really red and he said oh i've missed my heart bypass operation to be here for this wow so i'm like oh my god he's gonna have a heart attack so i go to the producer and tell her this and then she's like right okay we need to make it work so on telly what they had to do was um when the moment came where they needed the window to eject i had to lie underneath the window and basically put my hands up and pull the window out just to make sure it worked and it was like and that's when i realized how fake telly was yeah yeah yeah

20:40Mo Gilligan: when when you see tv i think like when whenever you get to see tv from the from like your home and you're like especially you know i guess like saturday night tv is like that's that's i think that's cool when you're like oh this is how an entertainment show is made i remember watching shows like like blind date oh yes i'm thinking it was happening there and then yeah and i'm like

21:01Steph McGovern: it was 10 o 'clock now

21:02Mo Gilligan: what studio where is this happening and realising and you know they do that bit on blind date where they go on holiday they come back and I'm like so how did they do that then I thought it happened yeah in real time yeah like in real time but I think the fakery of television is I don't know there's even times where I've done television you see it and you're like oh wow that was we fully made them laugh

21:26Steph McGovern: for that bit

21:27Mo Gilligan: and used it for the bit that wasn't too funny

21:31Steph McGovern: yeah no one ever admits that though it's like yeah that laughter thing but also just how it looks it's not as glamorous as everyone thinks and don't obviously we both know that there is a glamorous side to it but there's also times where things are just like gaffer tip together and you're thinking is this set gonna land on my head people would never know great you're like if only you knew yeah how close i was to dying um so like you then also went on to them be a

21:58Mo Gilligan: presenter on breakfast um bbc breakfast news um how was that because i remember that very vividly where your segment would come up and you'll tell everyone what's going on in the world and um so how was that transition where you've had a little bit of a taste of yeah television you know and now and i guess it's also it's also live as well you're the first person that a lot of people

22:21Steph McGovern: yes i know that's a weird thing that you had you were like loads of people used to come up to me all the time and go oh i wake up with you on the morning or i watch you in my pants um but yeah so what happened was i was working behind the camera as a producer so i was a producer on the 10 o 'clock news and it was when the financial crisis happened so like 2008 time it was totally wild and i was the like lead producer of business news working with robert peston um who now is the political editor at itv and we have a podcast together but um at the time i was his producer and it was it was mad like we were constantly in downing street getting briefings constantly having to fly to america it was really really fun but also obviously really hard for the economy i don't want to make out like i just benefited um although i did that's the thing it's a bit like now trump going mad is actually really helps me because i guess it's like stuff to explain yeah i always look at like news

23:18Mo Gilligan: as like you know the person presented you you that's now knowing that you love chaos yeah you're like well it's all kicking off yeah i know it's really bad but you do if you're in the front line of to report the story is yeah man it is it is you're totally right um anyway so i was behind

23:33Steph McGovern: the scenes for a long time and then one day it was literally one of those moments where someone was walking along the corridor and was desperate to find someone to do the business news on radio or two that afternoon because um the person who normally did it it was when chris evans had the drive time show was ill and they they saw me and they just said oh have you done live radio before steph and i remember getting like a nudge off robert peston as if just lie and i said yes i have yeah and they went can you come on and do the business news this afternoon and i was like yeah and i i think i respond best when i'm just thrown into a situation so i went and did it and it went really well and um and then the breakfast tv editor at the time heard me on the show and then she asked me to come and do telly and then in that typical way no one really checks people's cvs or anything yeah yeah you're in and um as we were about to go live you've got like 10 seconds in your ear before you're about to start speaking on telly someone was like oh good luck steph you know but you've done loads of live tv before haven't you and i was like no and then it was too late

24:40Mo Gilligan: and they were like, ah, she's never done a telly before.

24:43Steph McGovern: But I'd worked behind the scenes long enough. And so it was like a baptism of fire. It was, and I remember my boss saying to me, like, because you don't, I think people think as well, like, especially in news, that you would have a whole styling team and people to help you. And you don't really. You kind of, no, you don't. I never knew that. Yeah, you have no help with your clothes or anything. Nothing. You just, nah.

25:04Mo Gilligan: Because you guys, I feel like news presenters, anyone who has to do breakfast TV, news presenters, they always look like smart, slick, nice suits.

25:12Steph McGovern: Do you know what I mean? Like, oh really? I never knew that. So no, I mean, you get your makeup done, brilliant, but you don't get help with your clothes. So sometimes all the girls would turn up in the same like colour outfit. We'd all be in red and it'd be like the Tory party conference or something that day. And we'd be like, oh, look like we're in labour colours or whatever. So no, you didn't. And I, so the first time I did breakfast and you can see it on YouTube, I like went and got myself like what i thought was a good dress from top shop and a pair of heels from you look and my editor at the time was like steph do you know what you do a good job there but you look like a middles with tart because i literally and she wasn't being mean she was just like and she was a geordie to be fair with but it was just funny because i just thought i hadn't thought about like how when i sat down the skirt length because you just yeah and stuff and like i had big heels on and actually it wasn't suitable for the studio um and like i had the hair color i've got now actually like white hair which was a bit too much for then because kind of reflected off the studio lights and it was a bit too white and mad um so then they did help me for a bit and get me a stylist but she basically aged me about 100 years so the next time i went on i literally had like a

26:23Mo Gilligan: fluffy cardigan on and like a pearl necklace and i was like this is i can't i literally can't do

26:30Steph McGovern: this yeah yeah totally i literally look like someone's posh nana yeah so uh so it was like it was trial and error to begin with but that was fine because it was brilliant and you know

26:42Mo Gilligan: let me ask you something as a journalist on live tv especially the news what what is it like when you have to report like a major story because yeah i always think that because you're gonna deliver the news that someone might not have heard or you know you might have even something prepared beforehand in that breaking news you know this has happened straight to what's that like it's

27:08Steph McGovern: really exciting but you either i think you either love it or you hate it okay because so i there's nothing I love more than someone saying in my ear we've got breaking news so and so's died or whatever you've got to deliver something's happened obviously it is horrendous if it's a tragedy don't get me wrong and I have done I've had to report live on terrorist attacks and things like that which is absolutely horrendous but if it's but this I don't know if you're a news presenter a reporter you you get a thrill out of explaining what's going on to people the first yeah but you know what is funny and people might not realize this you have different levels of people of deaths so you have what's called a category one death which is someone like in this case now it would be the king or it'd be the prime minister that's real stuff yeah so they're people of a level where if they die while you are live on air you have to go into this whole protocol so you have to follow a really strict procedure and because it's so important that you have to get it right you rehearse it so on breakfast once a month we'd rehearse the queen dying before she died yeah and it and it honestly we'd and you'd do the show as if it was real so you would come off air so we'd finish the show at 10 past nine or whatever and then we'd start the show again and then they'd say in our ear we've had so it starts with them telling you there are reports that so you know one of the category one person has died and then you have to wait for like the head of news at the BBC to confirm it to check it's not just like...

28:41Mo Gilligan: Because I heard there's a telephone that rings and if this phone rings... I don't know about that like...

28:46Steph McGovern: Is that not true? Like a red phone in the middle of the room.

28:50Mo Gilligan: Someone said there's a red phone and if this phone rings then like you're saying the Queen or the Member of Parliament has died. That's not true.

29:01Steph McGovern: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think there's a specific phone. There might have been back in the day but there is definitely like this protocol where the head of news has to be the one to tell you it so that it's definitely official so it has to however many sources and then you have to do this thing where you've got a cut to black so first of all you announce it but the camera cuts to one presenter the other presenter has to go behind the back of the sofa and change to a black outfit so you have black outfits around the back yeah wow they're just on standby just all the time yeah oh wow and you know what my weight fluctuates so i always panic that i'd never fit into the outfit when it came at the moment so you have the outfits out the back like just kind of just off camera behind the sofa and so yeah so one presenter kind of buys time while the other presenter gets on the black outfit then once they're ready it'll cut to them announcing that the whoever it is who's died and it cuts to black and they play the national anthem and then you have to come back and if it's a royal family member, you have to read a very specific statement from Buckingham Palace.

30:11Steph McGovern: Like really, and every time we rehearsed it, I was so scared because it's so posh as well. And I ad lib a lot, but this script is so strict that I was convinced I was just going to get it wrong and just go, oh no, she's pegged it or whatever, you know, just in the moment. but it was fascinating and we used to regularly rehearse this and you'd also have to put like you know stuff across the screen so that anyone walking past the studio doesn't think the person's died because we had that happen once where we were rehearsing it and then one of the runners had gone past and was like oh my god the queen's dead and we were like no no no no we're just rehearsing it but they'd already like so they didn't put it out on social media oh my god man

30:58Mo Gilligan: I know.

30:59Steph McGovern: Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's all, it's really fascinating, like those types of news things, because it is, you know, if you're the person that has to deliver that, that's you in the archives forevermore. Yeah. Like you're going to, in a hundred years time, they're going to play that clip of you. They're going to play that clip. Yeah, so you feel the weight of it on your shoulders. But again, it's fun, like in that kind of, being part of history.

31:25Mo Gilligan: Yeah, yeah, of course. Oh, wow. I never thought of especially the archive stuff I never thought of that because you just think you just take it for granted you're like but that would be the part that they play forever to they show it in you know films or whatever it is oh wow yeah oh that's so interesting I love finding that stuff like this oh so then you you was on BBC Breakfast News for quite a while

31:47Steph McGovern: yeah nearly 10 years yeah and I loved it and I think for me like coming back to what I said at the start about wanting to show life outside of like the city the that financial city vibe like what's going on in the stock markets my thing was more let's get out and show loads of businesses so i would forever be in factories or you know in the middle of field farmers fields or whatever and that was really fun because you were showing off a like different jobs to people because you then you'd see on the telly me somewhere in a construction site and you'd see all the people doing the jobs behind which i always thought was good for people so they could see them.

32:24Steph McGovern: And it made things more interesting. You know, if I'm talking about the latest growth figures, who cares? But if I'm in somewhere fun, like a toy factory or something like that, you know, although it meant I did spend my life in hard hats and high-vis jackets.

32:39Mo Gilligan: Okay.

32:40Steph McGovern: And someone set up a fetish website of Steph in safety gear. Uh-uh. Yeah. And I had to explain it to my mum.

32:47Mo Gilligan: How freaky guys are there? I know.

32:50Steph McGovern: Someone, do you know, this is another funny thing. someone also set up a Twitter account pretending to be my high-vis jacket. What? I know. And they used to tweet as if it was my high-vis jacket with me on there. I know. And then eventually I did get a message from them saying, I'm really sorry, I'm going to have to close the account because I've now got a girlfriend. Oh. And I was like... It's like creepy,

33:11Mo Gilligan: but it's sweet, but it's still a little bit creepy.

33:14Steph McGovern: Yeah, it is a bit, yeah.

33:15Mo Gilligan: Knowing that someone took the time and said, I better let her know that unfortunately this comes to an end. You're like, listen, it didn't need to start yeah so then how was it like because where you are now within your middle right now currently and when i say middle i'm glad you said middle and not end yeah no no no not yet not yet don't worry but like where where you are now within your middle of you know like when you had your show steph's pat lunch what was that like now having a transition of like now you've got your own show that must have felt quite nice yeah yeah well you'll know this feeling as

33:49Steph McGovern: well because like we were kind of we got our shows around the same time didn't we we both had the same production company as well so yeah it was weird because i had done breakfast for a long time and i'd done by that point i'd done a few other shows as well like a few consumer shows like watchdog and shot well for less and things and done various bits of like what what you call prime time telly so outside of news but then um got pregnant so i was pregnant with my little girl and I thought I can't do the mad breakfast hours anymore. Like, I loved it, but I thought I can't get up at half three anymore.

34:22Steph McGovern: Half three? Yeah. Wow.

34:25Mo Gilligan: Oh, my God. I didn't know you guys woke up that early, you know? Yes.

34:28Steph McGovern: That's the cool time. Yeah. What time did you have to be on set then? We got him for about half four, five. Oh, my God. So it was like, it was brutal, but brilliant. But also, you know, in terms of your health.

34:40Mo Gilligan: Five days a week, yeah.

34:42Steph McGovern: Yes. so so then I just thought I'm gonna leave I'm gonna just go on maternity leave and then figure out what I want to do with my life and then that's when channel four came and said to me oh we're setting up you know we want to do a show from Leeds obviously as a northerner that was massive to me yeah um and so I was like oh my god I'd love to be part of it and then we did pilots for it while I was pregnant and then when we were about to launch it was when covid hit and then you and i both ended up doing shows in our houses because i was like tell me what what have you learned from what moore's doing we're like absolutely nothing i was like most probably asking the same question

35:24Mo Gilligan: what can we do to make this the hard you know what's so interesting about that is that i was able to do studio shows before so i was like doing a show from my house like in my head i never forget I was like, you know, I lived in it at that time. I had an apartment, top floor as well. So I was like, yeah, it's a couple of cameras. I was thinking in my head, I was like, this would be like a webcam kind of vibe. I don't know how it was for you, but like I never forget the day where the cameraman came and he goes, I think he was Italian. And he goes, okay, okay, I'm just going to bring the kit up.

36:04Mo Gilligan: And I was like, cool. So he brings the kit up. and I was like, oh, that seems like enough. And he goes, yes, we're going to need this spare room because we need that as a gallery. And I was like, okay, cool. And I was like, oh, so where's the cameras? Are they going to be at? And he's like, no, no, no. And he brought these massive studio cameras in my small flat. Oh, really? Oh my God, Steph. As soon as I seen these cameras, I genuinely was like, I thought, I don't think we need to do this show. Like my whole flat had turned into essentially a set but it didn't work in a flat oh my that is hardcore well mine was a bit different

36:42Steph McGovern: yes because i was up north so you know the same price of a flat up north is a house um so yeah mine was set up like um like the big brother set okay so we kind of had a room in the house which was and i was renting it thankfully so um so i could move out straight away after and not have tourists constantly popping around. But we had it set up like cameras around our kitchen living room area and then the crew were all in the garage.

37:13Mo Gilligan: So that was the gallery. Yeah.

37:15Steph McGovern: So that worked out quite well for us. That's good. Yeah. So we, but it was just so weird because I was just on my own in the room talking all the time. And obviously, you know, we do like Zooms or whatever, but it was just quite surreal because sometimes they go, we've got, we haven't got anyone to interview. so you're just gonna have to talk and there was nothing going on so i'd be like well i can see pat putting out the bins um and you know like your show must have been so much harder because what yours was like yeah live every day for an hour um but but also do you know what everyone was broadcasting from their house at that point like even if you you're not a tv presenter you were having to suddenly do zooms for all your meetings so you were also broadcasting from your house so every i felt like i was part i didn't want to not do it and not be part of like what we'd all you know been forced into in a way you know everyone's suddenly having a part of the house that was their tidy nicely decorated put posher books then they actually read or behind them yeah and you know actually funnily enough i was in belfast last week and this fella comes up to me in the bar and he went i just want to thank you for lockdown and i was like what do you mean and he went he said I own a gin company called Jawbox Gin and he said and you had a bottle of it in the background on oh wow and it was when I was hosting Have I Got News For You from the house so we did like the first episode where it was on Zoom and I mean it was chaos but in the background there must have been the gin and he said he sold out of the gin that day oh really oh wow and then it was a year later he came up and said thanks yeah

38:52Mo Gilligan: ain't it mad to think that like you wait your whole life for sometimes opportunities like this you know to do a show to do a show is an extraordinary feat in itself but to then do it I'm doing it in my house knowing at the time I remember when it was done I was like okay cool you don't need to go my house was turned upside down obviously it went back to normal but it was having these three massive cameras in my house and everything else but I always look back at that moment and I was like wow I can say I've done a show from my house yeah during the time that we couldn't go outside or I we we had one day where um the show wasn't able to air just like technical difficulties and um we were about to go live and I remember I never forget it was counting down it's like 10 9 8 7 what what yeah okay well someone's got to tell him and i was like i was like what's going on someone's got to tell him and i was like tell me what and then someone said yeah um the show show can't go live but also i wasn't i wasn't guided i was like we're in a pandemic like there are people struggling a lot more than i am right now and And also just knowing that I was all over the place, man.

40:14Mo Gilligan: Like I put on a ton of weight. Yeah, we all had. Some of my friends still send me pictures now and being like, you know, this is what you used to look like. Yeah, man.

40:23Steph McGovern: No, it was a crazy time, wasn't it? But like everyone just did what they had to to get through it. Yeah, yeah. I think it was like nice to be part of that from a, you know, because we're not key workers or anything where we weren't doing any graft.

40:35Mo Gilligan: But I felt like we had a, we was involved in some way. Do you know what I mean? In history. We were part of history. Yeah, we'll be in the archives. Yeah, we'll be in a textbook or whatever,

40:44Steph McGovern: you know, text AI robot delivering the... Yeah.

40:47Mo Gilligan: So then how was it finally when you got to go to the studio? Because it seemed like a real vibe in the studio. Yeah, it was. It was class.

40:53Steph McGovern: Like, honestly, what I loved about it was, you know, not to keep banging on about the North, but it just felt like it was like Northern at its core, but spoke to the nation. And what I mean by that is regional, like in the sense of everyone who worked on there came from all different places and could live and work in the area in a way that often you can't in London like so a lot of people who don't live in London miss out on working in the media because they don't live in London and it's too expensive so it was great from that perspective and I think because we were the underdogs like you know there'd been TV shows on daytime that have been going for a lot longer than us with much bigger audience that audiences than us we were like the underdogs and that meant we could be really, we really experimented with stuff.

41:42Steph McGovern: Like we were right on a canal, so we were regularly throwing people in the canal and, you know, we just, and yet we also like talked a lot about current affairs as well in a way that I've never, you know, I've always done it in a newsy way, but this meant we could just debate it a bit more and it was just fun. Like I had a proper laugh. Like I had nearly four years of just having a laugh and getting fed amazing food every day because obviously packed lunch. there was a chef every day and it wouldn't be like some two-bit chef from you know wherever it would be like simon rimmer or you know john way or jack stein or these brilliant chefs who would basically make my lunch every day and it was not a job like i can't claim it was a job because every day and and also the hours and the fact i could live up north again with my little girl i could drop her at nursery get to the studios do the show and then pick her up afterwards and it just felt like amazing so i feel really privileged to have had that and that must have

42:43Mo Gilligan: been nice being able to like do television where you've gone to london yeah you've had people kind of make fun of the way you speak or where middles was from to then like go and do a show you know within the bbc and present like you're saying like really serious news topics about business and current affairs but then it must have been so fun now being like it's afternoon because the report stuff but it's yeah it's more of a vibe i've got people that want to be in this you had like a live studio yeah we had an audience who were like yes yeah our lunch mates who became part of the gang

43:17Steph McGovern: you know and they they all had normal jobs as well like you know they might have been firefighters or nurses or whatever and every so often they come in and sit and chat to us as well and it meant that that gave us like a richer debate on stuff as well because they could they're not like us who are not really normal anymore they they were people who could just bring that normality and it was funny because we really did some mad stories like I interviewed some woman who'd um who made money from farting in jars what like she used to sell her farts in a jar for like a hundred what was it about a hundred dollars I mean how do you even capture a fart that's part of this but you know oh there was another time you know I interviewed a woman who married a chandelier yeah and it's like you know and we can laugh about it but like she seriously had this we i remember when she came in and she said to us oh you'll have to move some of the lights because they're flirting with me what and i was like what is and i was fascinated by her like because i just thought this is your reality you're not who am i to judge and so i just loved interviewing her and so i think it was that as well we got to do some really like just wild interviews you're so gonna leave this and google the woman who sells farts in a jar know you are

44:42Mo Gilligan: when you do a show like that and it you know i'll because i always remember like when you do a show that comes on monday to friday every you know you have those you have core fans essentially oh yeah i also forget how much people realize that like places in like you know people that maybe in hospital or prisons that regularly watch this is they regularly watch this kind of television

45:06Steph McGovern: you know yes because you know i did um i did a series for netflix last year with boris becker the tennis player oh yes amazing amazing guy so i did celebrity bear hunt with him and one of the first things he said to me was oh i watched you in prison oh really yeah boris becker yes fucking hell i know that is mad so i was like so he said i was with shirley ballast at the time from strickland he said oh yeah i watched you in prison and i used to watch you on a saturday night when i got out and i was like what is that is mad and i just had this vision of all these fellas in ones with prison like watching pack lunch thinking wow get in uh yeah i know that that was that that was a mind well yeah definitely how was it when you went into uh because it was in

45:53Mo Gilligan: costa rica right um uh bear grill what's it what's it sorry what's it called again bear hunt the bear hunt with bear grills in it how how was that because i've seen didn't you smash like you you yeah fell off a cliff and smashed into a wall yeah to a wall how was that yeah that was painful i'll be honest that absolutely you carried on going and stuff as well yeah and i like i really

46:15Steph McGovern: did smack into it and like had a like massive bruise on my bum which i love showing the photo to people but um yeah i i mean do you know what right if you'd have because the show had never been on before i had nothing to like watch yeah so i'd if i watch it now i don't know if i'd have done it because i would have been too frightened but in the moment i absolutely loved it like i turned into an animal are you like quite an adrenaline junkie oh i'm a massive adrenaline junkie but in a way that i didn't think i was a physical adrenaline junkie i thought i was just like i love a drama i love the tv stuff and all that but what i realized was in that moment of being there and doing these challenges i literally turned like cave woman i was like wait i need to get away from him and like i just went really feral and i'm the type of person who normally if i'm going to sit down on the floor i put my coat down to sit on it you know and in this case I was like clawing my way through like scorpion nests and not caring.

47:15Steph McGovern: And I don't know where that came from, but it was like a really fun thing to find was this like animal woman that I didn't know existed. I don't know why I'm like doing animal actions with my hands as I'm talking. Was it also like, I don't know,

47:30Mo Gilligan: was there also a part of you that wanted to prove people's perception in a different way? Because then we only know you as sometimes someone who's maybe like a presenter that does you know business news essentially so was there also a part of you was like i'm gonna show a different side to me yes that only like my close friends and family would yeah i suppose but

47:49Steph McGovern: i think there also was a side of me that i didn't even know existed that came out in that because i'm not you know when i went into it i was by i was not the fittest and you know especially out the girls i was the fattest and i was just like and you know i'm in my mid-40s and i was like i'm not going to be able to do this and the first night and the first challenge i am rubbish in the first challenge and and that first night i thought i'm not going to even get used to this place because i'm going home because there was massive personalities in there too and i just suddenly felt like a little shy wallflower um but like i say going in that so part you do all these different challenges and then if you lose a challenge you get put into a bear pit which is a cornered off bit of the jungle where basically a gun goes and bear grails chases you down and so the minute that gun went i don't know it was like something came alive inside of me and then so that was i think it was more a realization for me i didn't know what i was going to be like in there i thought i'll give it my best shot but i didn't i didn't go in thinking everyone's going to see a different side of me because i didn't know what that side was yeah yeah so it's it is funny now though because like my little girl is just like i've never done really done things that kids have known me for i've only ever done like grown-up telly not in that dodgy way but well not there's anything wrong with that but you know what i mean so i am so kids don't normally know me and it's funny now like my little girl's like oh my friends have seen you in the jungle and you know and it's just that's been quite like fun and cute as well was you scared of like the things that was in the

49:25Mo Gilligan: jungle though but weirdly before i got there yes because i'm the type of person who gets bitten by

49:32Steph McGovern: something and my arm swells up and falls off like i react i'm such a like pasty you know like northerner who reacts to things but no i i think when you're in that habitat like and you've not got your phone and you've not got all the things that normally distract you i just was noticing in nature a lot more like i remember there was times where like me and big zoo would just be sitting talking to a crab like you know it was just because you just were in their world and you didn't it wasn't as scary and plus you you knew there was a big crew around you ready to take a creature out were you to be you know a crocodile come your way i'm sure someone would have well i hope i'd like to think someone would have got the sniper out and taken it out when you've done that

50:17Mo Gilligan: show you've got to show a different side of yourself has there like now been more attention to go into other reality shows like i don't know that strictly yeah like i'm a celeb because i guess that that must start happening once someone's one thing yeah and i've been i have for the last

50:34Steph McGovern: however many years i have been asked about doing strictly and i'm a celeb and things and to be honest when this bear hunt came up it was the right time because my show had finished before Or whenever I've been asked, I've either been like pregnant or in the middle of a show or just not can't fit it in with my life. And this bare home one was perfect because my show just finished and I wasn't really doing anything. I was just because it was a bit of a shock when it ended. So I was kind of unemployed. And so I was like, great. So but now I think I don't know. I've done that and I loved it. I don't know if I could do I'm a celeb now because I just I've just done that I don't know I really loved what I did on that show and again strictly I don't know if I'm a bit past it now but but never say never you know always with these things just depends what else is going on in your life

51:27Mo Gilligan: and you've got into you've kind of made your debut in acting as well alongside Michelle Michelle Visage as well

51:33Steph McGovern: oh yes I mean that's I mean I was being myself so I wasn't acting I'm definitely not an actor but yes would you ever dive into that nah I'm rubbish at it honestly I'd be the over actor who you know where they said something like can you look upset and I'd be like no I couldn't do it but yeah so I did Smoggy Queens obviously set in Middlesbrough written by the brilliant Phil Dunning he yeah he I'd bummed into him in a bar actually because at our birthday party it was Jack Rook's birthday the guy who wrote Big Boys we were there and got chatting to Phil and he said I've written this like comedy about Middlesbrough and I was like get in like I'm buzzing about that and he said yeah do you want to be in it as you I was like only if I can be like really awful in it or you know like not you know can you take the mick out of me he said absolutely so that's yeah so I went and did days filming with them and it was weird because they filmed it in Middlesbrough but they filmed it in a in the pub that I used to drink at growing up and I was thinking here I've snogged plenty of people in here and you know like I've got some if I could see a time lapse of me walking in and out of here so no it was really fun they're about to do the second series now which if the timings work out i might be in as well but it was fun like michelle visage is a damn trodden like office worker she was amazing in it she's lovely man i

52:49Mo Gilligan: worked with her on that's my jam yes yeah i think she's on the pilot for us oh she's good yeah she

52:54Steph McGovern: is she's great and she's dead supportive of like of you know the industry but also all the different creators in the industry and different parts of the country like she can do a northern accent really well now and you know i love her for that she's great so before you get to your end like

53:14Mo Gilligan: i know like within like your your life you've also become somewhat of a i say somewhat you you're an author as well yes so yeah so like and i know you it's july 2025 you have your book yes right and um how does this start to like because as we get closer towards your end question your story is like a real because you said that you've in your life you never like came from hardship or anything no but i definitely feel there's a theme of just like proving people wrong a little bit in some ways where you know you've gone to a school that was like predominantly like a business school but then through that then you've transcended into you know being a journalist and then saying all right you know i'm gonna do tv i've not done a lab but i'm gonna do it i'm gonna prove everyone right going on you know a bear grills essentially yeah and being like okay cool i'm i'm gonna do the thing i'm gonna do the tasks um so now being an author how does this start to shape like where you are currently yeah you know in life of your book

54:23Steph McGovern: coming out because it it's again like i am someone who likes doing loads of things like i do like trying different stuff and i'm just dead interested in lots of different worlds of you know creative stuff but also like the business side of things as well so the the book came about because i'm obsessed with like thrillers and crime fiction and i read loads of it and i watch loads of it and i always and i saw the brilliant harlan corbin do a speech at this event because i do quite a lot of um interviewing authors at events and things yeah and i heard him talk about the what if like if you're in a normal situation always ask yourself like what if what if now we saw someone walk past us outside here and we all thought they were dead like what would you do and like that so i used to when i was on broadcast i used to sit all the time in between like you know being on air there's always that down time isn't there where you're not really doing anything and you're just sitting about and i used to always say what if this broadcast got hijacked like what would we do what because i think people have this perception that there's really hardcore security whenever you're out and about with you know reporting or whatever and there really isn't it's like you and a couple of people then anyone could jump in front of you and do whatever so i just used to ask my team all the time and i work with different teams wherever i went so i always used to say to the camera team or whatever what would you do what would you do and everyone had different reactions and so then I thought and I was telling my mate about this who's a crime writer um called Ann Cleaves and she created like Vera and Shetland and all that so she's amazing and she said you should write it yeah she was like you should write it and I was like oh I don't think I can write because I know I can story tell like speaking verbally and that's been my job forever but I had no confidence as a writer like I really didn't I remember like in my uni being it pointed out how bad my english was and i remember an ex um when i got dumped she said something to me like and your vocabulary is terrible i know of all the things to say

56:28Mo Gilligan: it's not there it's there yeah yeah so i didn't have any confidence writing and i found it quite

56:35Steph McGovern: intimidating the book world in that way i love reading books but i just found it i thought i I can't do it. But then with lockdown happening and doing the show in the house, I was, well, I don't like cooking. And so everyone was doing banana bread. I just started writing this story. And then I just really loved it because I was creating these characters. And this, you know, this whole premise is there's a reporter live on air in the middle of like a really important interview. She's, you know, interviewing one of the most powerful men in the country. And while she's doing this interview, she's told in her earpiece, that her child and her wife have been kidnapped.

57:12Steph McGovern: And she has to do everything that the person who's hijacked the interview is telling her to do, but not give it away to the audience. So she's got to ask all these questions. So then the people in the gallery, like the control room of a TV show, are like, why the hell is she asking these mad questions? And so then it all happens over 20 minutes and it's like live on telly, but it keeps going back five years. So it's, is it to do with a stalker? is it to do with like a political corruption thing is it to do with terrorism is it to do with grooming and so like i explore all these different plots but so that and so it's all centered around this hijack but there's also a lot of my like politics with a little p like of how the media treats people from different backgrounds so there's a lot of that in there as well and there's a lot of like but not in a big worthy way it's more just what i've seen in my life and what I've like the power and the corruption and the lies that I've seen and what people have got away with because of their power and their wealth and so I wanted to kind of turn it on its head so it'd actually be I don't want to give it all away but you know it would be a sense of actually when you're underestimated that's when you're at your most powerful point I made earlier and so there's loads and it's fiction and I have to keep telling everyone it's fiction but there's a lot of stuff from my life in there too yeah of course of course so and that's been really fun and i love creating these characters and um you know hopefully it'll end up on telly

58:43Mo Gilligan: one day too i can see it already well i can see it yeah yeah man yeah that sounds really exciting

58:49Steph McGovern: yeah and i honestly it's just yeah it's just fun doing stuff i think in life you know you can worry too much and not take risks because you're worried about what people think of you and actually just don't give a shit like just have a go and if it doesn't work out it doesn't work

59:05Mo Gilligan: out that's it that's it that's all you can do is just just try yeah i know it sounds sometimes cliche but i guess it's like if you're it's like you're saying if you didn't if you sat on that idea of like i've got this idea but my i have my thing which is presenting and yeah being a journalist and yeah i'll leave that there and i always say just write the idea down write it down try it tell someone wake up every morning try another part because creative writing i think is generally one of the hardest things yeah to do it's like i luckily i write for comedy so i get to go on stage it works cool it doesn't work i get to keep trying and see what works whereas when i've written scripted and i've showed it to people the nerves i'm like hey like check it out if you like it I don't know yeah yeah and then you're like

59:55Steph McGovern: oh what are they going to say and you're waiting for the email yeah yeah

59:59Mo Gilligan: but oh that's an amazing achievement and it's out in July right yes it is out in July it's called Deadline

1:00:05Steph McGovern: amazing I always thought that the book people came up with the name of the book as well and they were like what do you want to call it and I was like oh I don't know Deadline

1:00:13Mo Gilligan: did you do some signed copies as well I have

1:00:16Steph McGovern: but you know what do you know I didn't know this right so if you get a book and it's got a signature in it and it says in print, signed by the author. They actually didn't sign the book. They just signed that page and you get sent a load of pages to your house. So I got sent like 3 ,000 pages and you just sign each one.

1:00:35Mo Gilligan: That's what I've done. Yeah, and then they go into the book.

1:00:38Steph McGovern: I didn't know that. It's called a tipping.

1:00:40Mo Gilligan: Yes. Oh, I just thought it was signing the book. I got tons of these pages and they said, can you sign it? And I was like, yeah, cool. And then, yeah, they put it into the book.

1:00:50Steph McGovern: in the book yeah yeah yeah but my little girl wanted to help when i was doing it so i thought i'll just let her do a couple of them because there's always a bit of wastage isn't there but then she started drawing these really nice drawings on so i'm i've kept them yeah to go in the book so some people are gonna get a signed book with a little drawing from my little girl

1:01:08Mo Gilligan: yeah don't you i don't know if you found this but when you signed a book at first maybe the first hundred i know it was the funnest thing i was giving him the best signature totally i don't know how many you signed yeah it was a few thousand yeah i think we done five thousand yeah and i remember probably about at 300 i was just like oh come on man come on man and i'm trying to do the but i was like okay let's go let's uh and it's not to say i didn't i didn't care because i was really enjoying it but i was like fool if you got those first 300 you've got a really nice signature I remember I was like practicing it if you're close to maybe like the 3000 odd I'm sorry man I was tired it was a long day and yeah we finally got to but I I've done the same thing of leaving some with like personalised messages yes as well but I think the book I believe that's going to be like a Times bestseller I feel like that

1:02:04Steph McGovern: oh I hope so

1:02:06Mo Gilligan: I feel like that's the vibe you know and that's what the authors will say as well they're like you know it's all about the first week

1:02:11Steph McGovern: yeah I know god yeah because i'm like mates with richard osman and obviously he's the king of the crime book like and i and i was saying to him and i remember before he'd even published we were both talking about writing crime books and um yeah and he was saying don't worry about the first week of publishing but that's all anyone's talking to me that's the big week yeah shift those copies man yeah so yeah the pre-orders i didn't think pre-orders were that important but it's like

1:02:39Mo Gilligan: Yeah, yeah. And you want people to get the physical as opposed to the one on the e-books. Yes. Yeah, it's, yeah. But it's a beautiful experience buying your own book. I remember when I bought my own book, I was very shy. I went to Selfridges because if you go to like a Selfridges or like a really nice Waterstones, the books, not to say another, I don't want to put down any other, you know, bookstores, but there's some places where the books are really well presented.

1:03:08Steph McGovern: Yeah, independent bookshops are going to happen.

1:03:09Mo Gilligan: and I had this really nice moment where I went to go and get the book and this one guy was like looking at me and he's looking at the book and he's like oh and I said oh yeah that one's really good you know

1:03:21Steph McGovern: I didn't know you and he goes oh okay I might check it out and he bought it and I was like he bought the book

1:03:28Mo Gilligan: and then there was another time where I think there was this young kid was with his dad and then he was like wait you're my kid again right and I was like yeah yeah and then his dad was like oh I don't know who you are and I was like I was fine man I was like I'm just here to buy my book

1:03:41Steph McGovern: and the dad was like wow a book wow

1:03:44Mo Gilligan: clearly middle class white guy

1:03:45Steph McGovern: a book wow

1:03:46Mo Gilligan: and he bought a book so honestly like just go to as many bookshops as possible and just buy your own book and change the display

1:03:55Steph McGovern: so that all yours are prominent oh yeah no I do that I still go into

1:03:58Mo Gilligan: Waterstones now and I'm like no one copy let's put that right at the front in the biopic but then also yeah they were selling some of my books in Audi for like two pounds

1:04:08Steph McGovern: oh I'll be in the bargain bucket I'm sure at some point

1:04:11Mo Gilligan: but then there was a part of me that was like I want people to read it at any cost whether it's a pound 50p or you've got it for free just read the thing

1:04:19Steph McGovern: the publishers obviously want you to sell as many as you can but I know what you mean I went round once to do some filming I won't name who it was but a famous presenter who had an autobiography and I needed to do something in their garage and in their garage was tons of copies of their book

1:04:38Mo Gilligan: and they'd obviously

1:04:40Steph McGovern: to get into the bestseller list bought a lot of their own books. Which I never said anything at the time but I just thought and I thought that's going to be me. I'm going to be like

1:04:51Mo Gilligan: If you get that call hey man can you post something on your Instagram? You're like hey listen guys and everyone's about 100 copies of the book first week.

1:05:00Steph McGovern: I can't lie

1:05:01Mo Gilligan: I did think of that but I was like I ain't got the space I know they were all going to turn up and I was like I ain't got the space for these books so then I just end up just giving them out to family and friends um but you're so like as we get towards the end of the pod like your end like because you know the things that you're doing now of you know being a presenter but also I feel like you know you get to show a bit more of your personality yeah but then you you know you have your passions as well that you still love with your you know your podcast as well um so with your end how do you start to kind of like you know model your end in some ways because it's like you're saying like you know you've you you you you come and you come to london to commute you still enjoy home life essentially and you know walking your daughter to school so do you start to like really like look at like what you want to do

1:05:55Steph McGovern: maybe i don't know how to finish up with it all do you mean like where in some ways because the

1:06:00Mo Gilligan: the only reason why I asked because that question got posed to me and I was like I have to put it in the podcast because no one ever I think it's so easy to think in the moment as opposed to look towards your future of do I want to do this forever or like like now you're becoming an author I think that's one of the coolest things of like creative writing you know do you kind of look more

1:06:19Steph McGovern: to that side I think yeah I think so I think do you know what right I've always had this thing of like oh I'm gonna retire early and just enjoy my life but I don't think my brain would actually let me do that so I have all these grand plans of you know like you mentioned I live up in the northeast by the seaside and it's fab and my little girl's at school there and that's all really lovely and then I come to London and I go into this mad like media and corporate world and you know you know I'm doing still doing a lot of like financial news and things so and I keep thinking you know, I should slow down and all that.

1:06:55Steph McGovern: But I just, whenever it comes to it, I just don't. I think I'm just someone who, you know, and I've got, like, I've got a retail business as well now. And I just love, like, doing a million things. So as much as I can say to you, my end is me nicely sitting in a lovely place writing books for the rest of my life. Which, like, my sensible head would say, yeah, that's cool, do that. That'll be really fun. Hopefully if people buy them and want to read them. But I just don't think I can. And I just think I'm 100 miles an hour. And that'll always be me. And because I don't know if you're like this, but I just cannot sit still.

1:07:32Steph McGovern: I can't like, I've got to do something. I've got to be doing something. I've got to be thinking about what the next project is. Or what am I going to do next? Okay, what should we do? Should we set up a business? Does anyone want to set up a business? I'm like, so yeah, I think my end is like, just being, I'll probably have a heart attack

1:07:51Mo Gilligan: in like some like corporate meeting and that'll be the end yeah yeah and that'll be the end it'll

1:08:00Steph McGovern: be she had all these plans to slow down and she never did and she you know died in the middle of delivering the fiscal policy details of the government and that'll be that but i don't mind that i think it's just if you enjoy i think i've definitely learned to enjoy days more and enjoy your life more because sometimes I forget what I've done because it's been that mad I forget that I've like like I've interviewed Trump before and and and so I think you've got a I've really learned in like the last 10 years and I've lost some friends along the way you know from various different things and so I'm really ground myself in there like actually this is really class I've got a great life my child's healthy and happy and so am I and I've got a lovely family like just

1:08:47Mo Gilligan: don't you know enjoy those days yeah yeah yeah and i think what's really nice is the fact that how like you still continue to like represent up north of having totally living up there having your show up there um i think it's it's like really testament to like where you've come from who you are and what you're able to do and achieve because it's like you're saying you know you go down to london and everyone's like say coke and you're like please man it's it's not that deep I'm not from a different planet do you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah

1:09:17Steph McGovern: yeah but I like the two worlds also I want part of the reason for going north is I want my daughter to have a northern accent so it's really like hello mummy oh no she hasn't quite got it yet she still sounds a bit posh to be honest but yeah mummy I will not be using the gravy and the chips no no way mummy yeah

1:09:36Mo Gilligan: so that's like the fear isn't it it's like when you become successful yes you know like your kids are going to have these accents so you're like listen you didn't grow up like that man

1:09:44Steph McGovern: we didn't do that yeah totally oh wicked well Steph man it's been a pleasure man oh thank you it's like being like therapy this oh thank you man no I appreciate you man so this thank you your beginning middle and end thank you very much thank you so much appreciate you man

1:09:58Mo Gilligan: hey what's up thank you so much for listening to the podcast today now a lot goes in to making each episode I know you hear my voice but there's a team behind the scenes who helped make it and if you did enjoy it I'd really really appreciate if you could show the love to them by giving us five stars and if you also have the time please leave us a review it's always appreciated and we love reading the comments and of course we want to keep making it better thank you for listening and have a great day peace