Sophia Money-Coutts

0:01This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:11Well-behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do.

0:27I absolutely loved my chat with Sophia Money-Coutts. She's always the most fun girl at the party. Listen out for when she tells us about what really happened when Alan, the Tatler office dog and a tiny dachshund, lost his life in the revolving doors at Vogue House. Welcome to Difficult Women.

1:04Sophia Money Cootes, yes, real name, no doubt we will come to that, is a journalist, novelist, commentator, and now she's written a book that everyone will call, I predict, Bridget Jones's Canine Diary, as it is actually called The Year of the Dog. It's out this autumn. The cover reveal is Today, Sophia. It's about dating, being single, getting a dog, breaking up, keeping the dog and also life. And it's also very funny. Sophia Money Coots, welcome to Difficult Women. Hello, thank you for having me. I was just thinking, usually I ask my guests at the end what has been your most difficult time. But having just read your brilliantly funny book, I think we have to ask right up front, what has been your most difficult time because I think we are going to get some content yes well I suspect it it is about just under this time a year ago really which was the spark the idea for the book uh it was a very sudden breakup I was madly in love had got this puppy with my boyfriend who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with and uh having also I'm 40 right so I've done this all quite a lot later than some of my friends.

2:15I spent basically a decade going to weddings and seeing my friends have babies and thinking, well, when the hell is it my turn? And then suddenly I met this man, fell mad in love. We got a dog. And then, da, da, da, out of the blue, seemingly, he broke up with me just under a year ago. And now I've written this book. So that was probably my most difficult moment last September, I would say. And I know there are lots of worse, particularly right now, there's lots going on that's worse in the world in the world than a breakup but it was it was quite it was quite sudden and suddenly everything i thought was going to happen in my life having waited for that kind of thing uh vanished and i was left holding not the baby because i cannot bear people and mostly women who refer to their dogs as their fur babies or equate dogs with babies but i was left holding the puppy and that was also quite traumatic in his own way as i detail in the book it was a really brutal breakup i mean it kind of winded me so it must have absolutely broken you um because what it appeared was that he was a jackal and hyde type person and you realized that you'd spent a year of your life being in love with somebody who wasn't actually that person and that must have taken a long time to process because it was about you must have been angry with yourself as well as hugely sad.

3:41Yes, I kind of felt I felt stupid because I sort of felt like I'd been hoodwinked and got it all wrong and you know Christ I'm 40 so I've had breakups in the past and difficult relationships but this I went from something that felt so solid, so real and so solid and so everything and my family loved him and my sister said after she met him the first time she sort of took me aside and whispered to me after a dinner with him oh he feels like a brother already and I really did feel like this was my person after I'd you know been waiting for and I've I've said and I've written quite a lot before everyone gets their turn and I really believe that with falling in love we can't all fall in love at the same moment and it's difficult I think for women who get older and older particularly because of the biological clock and they're thinking well when the hell is it my turn because I can I'm going to fricking weddings in Oxfordshire every other weekend.

4:30It's so unfair. But I did think with this man, it was my turn. And then suddenly it wasn't. So it was difficult. But again, as I talk about in the book, I don't know how much to give away here. Actually, the way that he behaved afterwards made it easier in a way. I thought, I mean, I was very heartbroken, but various things happened, which I discuss in the book, which sort of made it ultimately, and ironically, easier to get over. Absolutely. And I don't want to give away any of the book either because it's not out till October. But I think in a way it's quite a lesson that if you are going to break up with someone, do it hard, do it fast and be brutal.

5:11Because if you allow that chink and their hope to survive, you know, you make someone pine for you. And I don't think that's fair. So at least the best we can say of the man you call Mike in the book is that at least it was a clean break. Very true. It was very sudden. You know, days before we were talking about lifelong plans and then suddenly he did this thing and then behaved quite brutally afterwards. But yeah, no, I agree. I do think that helped me actually get over it instead of, you know, I could be sitting. I traditionally have been really bad with breakups. There's a particular breakup that took me honestly about three years to get over.

5:58And actually, that was a breakup that I did myself. And I was pretty brutal with him. But for some reason, it took me ages to get over. And I didn't date for ages afterwards. But I do think now, yeah, short, sharp shock is maybe the way to go. Absolutely. And a lesson learned, eh? Now, throughout this process, you're a writer. You know, you have that kind of Helen Fielding, who wrote Bridget Jones, quality. And there are some kind of cheeky nods to the way, you know, the fact that you list all your Google searches in the month or whatever. And it's always about Bromley Bin collection. Always about the Bin collection.

6:39And the other kind of crazy celebrity searches like, you know, how long were William and Kate split up? How tall is Gary Barlow's son? Yeah, Domeo dumpers come back. They're very good and they kind of speak to the content of the book. So during the breakup, I've got to ask, you must have thought to yourself, this is irresistible copy. Yes, in that Nora Ephron way. Everything is copy. Everything is copy. But it's also, I think, how I deal with things. I have been a journalist for, oh, yikes, nearly 20 years. And as you know, particularly as female journalists, we write about our lives often. We get asked to write about our personal lives and men don't.

7:19In a way that men don't necessarily, yes, I agree. But I quite often read people talking about this and I think, well, also, we are volunteering it ourselves. I don't feel at any point in my career there was an editor above me saying, you must write about this breakup, you must give me more terrible details. I have willingly written about my... I'm very heart on sleeve and I've willingly written about my love life. And I think it's sort of how I process it, but it's also hopefully, and I hope this comes across in the book, it's funny as well because I think there's very little in life and I also talk about my mum having her brain tumour in this book but even with that, as a family, we managed to laugh and I think that ability to laugh in very bleak moments in life, whether that's a cancer diagnosis or a breakup or whatever it is, if you can find some chink of humour in that, then great.

8:10And that's what I hope comes across in my writing because it's sort of don't take things too seriously, basically, is my motto. You've got to find the funny. That's not a really annoying phrase, find the funny. But it's true. You mentioned your mum. She is obviously the unacknowledged heroine of the book. And your love for her shines through. And your relationship with her is very warm and intimate. I think you're one of four. One of four, yeah. And you have a brother, two sisters? Two brothers, one sister. and then it's slightly complicated because my dad and my stepmom have um but i like how much my siblings really but with my mom i'm one of four okay so how is she i mean has the fact that she you were also sort of looking after her but not because she actually looked after the dog dennis yeah she's a very good dentist so there's a sort of lovely codependency yes in the book yeah And codependency in a nice way, not in a kind of needy way.

9:08Yeah, I hope so. I felt for you going through that with your mum. Yeah. At the same time. Well, it was, yeah. So at the beginning of the book, I say, you know, I fall in love with this man. And it was a very, it was almost the week that I met him was the week that my mum was diagnosed with this brain tumour. And it wasn't her first round of cancer. She's had ovarian cancer for 11 years now. It's amazing. She's got this fantastic oncologist who says she's sort of one in a million. and obviously I think that's true. But she was diagnosed with this brain tumour and obviously you hear brain tumour, stage four metastasised brain tumour.

9:44And I was, you know, my sister and I were taking turns to sort of be there with her. As soon as you have anything brain related, you have to relinquish your driving licence. She lives in Sussex, so we were going up and down a lot and trying to be there. And life felt very fragile at the same time as I was falling in love with this man. And mum, yeah, I was sort of, you know, embracing myself and we were one of those quite english families again we were sort of trying to laugh through it and not imagine the worst not ask about prognosis but i suspect you know we were all individually sort of googling things um and it was it was pretty grim uh the nhs were amazing and they operated within three weeks and it was they looked after her fantastically and uh where are we now nearly two years on she was diagnosed september two nearly two years ago she's her most recent mri was clear and she's got her driving license back and she's amazing mum and she's busy writing and back making her marmalade and she's got chickens again in her garden which she gave up at the time um and it's just phenomenal to look back and think of where we were and where we are now so that is that's yeah a huge part of of my story and she's very she's very generous mum she doesn't mind ever being a sort of character in my writing but as you said I hope that my sort of love for her shines through because it really does I do love her and I admire her so much it's interesting that you've got this duality in the book with your mum going through treatment for brain cancer and you having a breakup and in fact when you go through life you know one thing should be massive and really important and the other thing should be dealable with emotes and emotional breakup but emotional pain is so disabling isn't it yeah and sort of and penitential and is you kind of can't see your way out of it and so you must have felt some sort of I don't know what was it like what was your emotional turmoil like I think it comes back to the writing thing I mean I was I was a sort of basket case a bit when mum was when mum was first diagnosed it was actually before this book starts that was um sort of the weirdest saddest period of my life i think those couple of those first few months um but again and maybe it's is it is it a cliche to say it's a really british thing there is also and you know the stiff upper lip is so derided these days but there is an element of like come on crack on like you just got to keep going somehow and i do think that helped um we would you know there was quite a lot of crying in that moment there was obviously quite a lot of crying with my breakup but you've just got a big girl pants on like get on with it basically i do think you are allowed to crumple and cry and be sad for a bit but then at a certain point you've got to go okay get on get on with it brace up yeah absolutely which is very unfashionable i think these days and we're all supposed to gnash and wail and and cry on the ground but still get up get on with it yeah and you've you've got a brilliant book out of it too yeah so you know i remember whenever anything goes wrong in my life someone always says really annoyingly, well, at least you'll get a column out of it.

12:45Yeah. And you it's very annoying when they say that, but you do. But it is true. I know, I completely agree. Can we talk a bit about your family? You said you get trolled on Twitter for having a baron as a father. He's called Crispin. Always. Although actually... What is his actual full name? His full name is Crispin Latimer, but he it's Lord Latimer technically, but he doesn't... Use it. He doesn't, I mean, I say he doesn't use it, he does use it a bit. I tease him for using it. But it doesn't mean, yeah, quite useful for restaurant bookings, I think. But he doesn't, he's not, you know, you say that kind of thing.

13:20And I think people on Twitter have all made all sorts of assumptions about me as a result. But they're not true. You know, look, I live in, as I say in the book, with the Bromley bin collection. I live in Bromley. I don't live in a, you know, 10 bedroom house in Chelsea. I'm not an heiress. You could be titled, but you're not loaded and landed. No, I wish I was loaded and landed. then you know life would be quite different I think really. But no I'm definitely not London Landed. I'm you know I sound like this right. I've got a stupid name. I sound like this. Went to a private school. Wickham Abbey.

13:52Wickham Abbey. Big up Wickham Abbey. But I don't think you know that I and I have been demonised on Twitter for that. I've actually now left Twitter because I had a particularly bad episode of cancelling about a year ago. Oh over what? Oh my god I wrote this column. um i wrote this column about working habits between eg millennials like me and gen z 20 somethings yes saying because i'd had a couple of conversations with friends or a few conversations with friends who are my age about one in publishing and she said it was really hard to get 20 somethings to go to book launches now in the evenings because they were like no not doing it work-life balance not on my contract out of hours and then why go into publishing right no one goes into publishing to make millions unless you're very lucky in the top of the tree so why go into publishing unless you're interested and you actively want to go to book launches in the evening and see how it's done and i spoke to another friend of mine who works in music and he said the same thing about the music industry it's very hard to get 20 somethings to go to gigs in the evening and even more so like why the hell go into music if you don't want to go to to gigs no work-life balance not in the hours not in my contract so and then you know it's it's i I hear often friends talk about, you know, trying to get 20 somethings to work in the office.

15:01And it's the generation who came into the workplace during COVID. So they got very used to work from home and they want more flexibility. So I wrote a column about this. I did say maybe it's a good thing if 20 somethings are more aware of their stress levels and their work life balance. So women in particular think about maybe having a family before some of my friends and I did. You know, I'm 40. I haven't got children. Still really on the fence about children. But obviously I've got to try and make my mind up soon. anyway but the Telegraph I'm not sure I love them stuck on a particularly inflammatory headline saying it said something like Gen Z are lazy work shy and an employer's nightmare says Sophia Money Coots words I didn't even actually even use I didn't use those words in the column to be fair I hustled for my job in my 20s so the combination of those words my name and the idea that I hustled for my job caused the entire internet to fall around laughing and I went I had dinner with a couple of journalist friends the next day and one of them arrived and she pulled a face and said, oh, Andy says you're actually, you're trending on Twitter.

16:01I said, oh, for fuck's sake. And it was pretty grim. It's never a good thing, by the way. It was like a couple of weeks. Yeah, you've had it. Never a good thing. It was a couple of weeks of, you know, the odd death threat and pretty nasty stuff. And I just thought, you know what? Death threat? Death threat. And there's one email that I've always remembered in particular because it sort of made me laugh. Can we swear on this? Yeah. Anyway, it said, you pig, bitch, cunt, whore. You're going to get what's coming to you. And I sort of laugh when I got it because I was like, pick one. You've just gone with all of them.

16:25Just pick one insult. So I just decided to come off and actually writing as a columnist and not being on Twitter is quite nice in a way because you're not writing with that monkey on your shoulder whispering, oh, that might get you cancelled. Is that going to be taken out of context? I remember reading a Lionel Shriver interview once in which she talked about that. She's not on any social media, I don't think, precisely because she wants to write and say what she thinks without worrying about the internet. and I get it a bit more now that I'm off Twitter because if I write anything that's going to be particularly controversial, no one on Instagram really or Substack or anywhere else gives a shit.

17:01It's Twitter that can be really venomous, particularly with my stupid name. So, yeah, so I've sort of given it up and I'm sure my sort of book publishers and various other people would prefer that I was still making a noise on there, but it's just not worth it for mental health, I decided. MH. MH we call it in our house. Oh, MH, okay, yeah. Not worth it for MH. Your name and your lineage, you went to LSE where you read politics and... Politics and history. Politics and history. And then your first kind of biggish job was you did features at Tatler. Well, no, I was on the Evening Standard before then.

17:34Okay, fine. Which bit? On the Evening Standard, on the features desk. On the features desk. Always been features. So, yeah, features on the Standard and features on the Mail. And then I'm much so... I love the Mail and I learned so much working there as an editor. I wasn't a writer. I did two years and it was so ferocious, the mail. The hours were so brutal that then Tatler had actually asked. Tatler had offered me a job twice before and I'd said no because I was like, I can't be called to Fire Money Coots and go and get Tatler. It's so obvious. And then the third time I got offered a Tatler job and I was on the mail at the time, I thought, do you know what?

18:08Yeah, I do want sort of, well, to be fair to the Gen Z, more of a work-life balance because I was leaving the mail office at 10 p.m. every night when the paper goes to bed. So I went to work for Tatler. Sorry, is it true that Dacre would prowl around at nine o 'clock and then you'd have to remake all the pages? Yeah, he would come out. Is it Paul Dacre, the historic legendary editor? Sort of worshipped and loathed in equal measure. I was very grateful to work for him because he was whatever anyone thinks. He's a titan of the trade. Exactly. An old school editor. I don't... Will we see the likes of him again?

18:38I don't know. But it was amazing to work for him. What did he teach you, Sophia? Well, I got away with it slightly because I think he did quite like some posh girls. So there was one particular piece that I was in charge of at one point. It was a picture spread. And it was actually, talking about mental health, it was a very typical male piece. It was black and white photos of kids in their sort of 20s and 30s on a playground. The headline was something like the days before health and safety. And it was children sort of swinging off monkey bars and jumping in the air without any health and safety measures whatsoever in this playground.

19:10So very typical male piece, double page spread of these photos of children back in the day. And I was looking after it. And Dacre, I can't really do his voice, he's got quite a low, gruff voice, he's a big man. He said, no, you will look after this piece properly, won't you? You will make sure the captions are proper. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I will, I will, absolutely. I'm going to be on the captions, I'm going to make sure they explain clearly everything in it. And then I think he left for the night, which didn't happen, I mean, we're probably talking nine o 'clock. Anyway, I did the piece, sent it off.

19:35The next day, he obviously decided that I hadn't made the captions clear enough in this piece. and he said, darling, I do love you but you didn't half fuck up those captions and he'd summoned me into the middle of the newsroom for this quote unquote bollocking and you could see all the news guys thinking he never calls us darling, he never says he loves us so I slightly got away with it I think, that was as bad as it got with me, happily he had a soft spot well I think, yeah, he was a sort of people always say he's a monster but I had a great time working for him I had a terrible falling out with him but we made up and I find it's all good.

20:12In fact, he sacked me, yeah. He's gruff and he's terrifying, but I actually like, you know, it's newspapers. You're not going to work in a creche. You know, I quite miss, now that I'm freelance, I quite often, and on big news days when there's a big story breaking, I quite miss that, the rough and tumble of a newsroom when it's very exciting and you do get shouted at and you do get bothered because that's the sort of thrill of it, really. And it was at the mail that you found some of your favourite headlines, like, is your shampoo making you fat? Yeah, my two... Those male headlines. What's the other one?

20:41My two favorite male headlines. Is your shampoo making you fat? Genuine daily male headline. And the other one was, oh, I so remember this, the downside of beating cancer. And the downside of beating cancer, I remember, was that you might have, you have survivor's guilt, apparently, which I can see could be a thing if you've, you know, you've made friends who have cancer when you're having chemo or treatment and then they don't make it and you do. But yeah, those are the two headlines that I've remembered. We all have routines. I'm Gibran. And with diabetes, mine was finger sticks. Sometimes I skip them because it hurt.

21:10The Freestyle Libre 3CGM changed that. It gives me glucose insights without finger sticks. Learn more at freestyllibre.us. Finger sticks are required if your glucose alarms or readings do not match symptoms or when you see check blood glucose symbol for the first 12 hours. The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice. Individual circumstances may vary. For prescription only. Safety info found at freestyllibre.us. you've become known uh your your stock in trade is the kind of fun um arch commentary on on kind of contemporary culture i guess i hope so yes i hope that's what i've seen i mean the things you've been writing i mean i looked through your times oh yeah archive and um help i've become a crazy puppy mummy welcome to the posh olympics have you got the work ick help they often they start help as if you're this kind of hapless bridget jones type help i've had to mute the holiday whatsapp i mean you're right you you sort of hit the subjects that the water cooler subjects that we are all talking about i hope so how do i leave my whatsapp group yeah um you know i've become a puppy mummy yeah i mean these are these are kind of so-called soft features but they're the most red features, aren't they?

22:26The minutiae. Yes, I think exactly. There's always, if you look at, I mean, I don't know about you, I quite often read comments beneath articles now. Not mine, I hasten to add because I'm so thin-skinned and I don't like saying, who is this girl? Who is this posh wanker? But other comments and there's always, quite often under features, there's people going, what, call this news? Cancelling my subscription. This used to be a proper newspaper. But then why have you commented underneath it? Why are there hundreds of comments underneath it? Yeah, exactly. you managed to wade through this piece and get to the end and feel so strongly about it you've had to comment why is the times printing this rubbish the times of london used to be the paper record yeah that's a real classic um i love it and so yeah i hope that i pick up on the minutiae of a little thing that might be pissing us all off or something that we're all watching or i don't know something very frivolous about some royal's hair quite often or just yeah just little things I think and you know about this it's if you've been a writer or journalist or a features writer for as long as long I'm saying it like I've been in the game for decades but you do get quite adept I think at spotting things you think uh-huh that's the thing that might like celebs going makeup free yeah or like Ulrica Johnson and Pammy Anderson that could be a feature yeah you could get a thousand words out of anything bash out a thousand words before before lunch job done thank you very much go for a dog walk after that yeah that kind of thing basically but it's fun you know i i love it i'm never sort of happier than when i'm behind my computer screen writing about some celebrity's hair or some mad incident in the park with my dog or yet another trip to the vet or yeah it's great nice what's the weirdest thing dennis has eaten dennis is the puppy by the way well i don't know i haven't actually gone into this in very many details in the book, but pants.

24:13Anyone listening to this who's got dogs? It is really revolting the way that dogs are obsessed with knickers. I don't want to really put everyone off their breakfast. Okay, well, I don't want to give away secrets. Is that why Dennis has got a pair of pants in his mouth on the cover? Kind of. He loves pants, and I think I'm slowly sort of training him off this, but he just loves, and they have to be dirty pants. Sorry to be disgusting. Oh, I knew you were going to say that. Sorry to be disgusting, but there was a phase when I would be stripping for a bath, and he would literally stand by He's like some Japanese pervert.

24:42I know. He is exactly the sort of pervert who buys used girls, schoolgirls nipples from a vending machine. That is a Japanese thing, by the way. I'm not being racist. Yeah, you're not going to get cancelled now. No. Anyway, and so there was a moment a couple of months ago. I'd gone somewhere and I pulled a pair of pants out of my suitcase. And they honestly, they fell to bits in my hand like they'd been eaten by moths. And I thought, oh, it's not moths. It's little, tiny little teeth marks because I know exactly who. I'd obviously thrown them in the wash. they were clean coming from my suitcase, I hasten to add.

25:12But he'd chomp through them. So that is probably the most disgusting thing of all, I would say. But I haven't gone into too many details. I mention it in the book, but it's just, it's so revolting that I haven't really discussed it. But I know from conversations with our dog owners that it's a thing, unfortunately. I was talking to someone last night, oh yeah, who was Labrador, chocolate Labrador, had eaten three quarters of a beach towel. Wow. What, and the other quarter was still in its mouth? No, literally had eaten three quarters of a towel and they had to take the dog to the vet and make the dog throw up for two hours, 175 pounds.

25:51Labradors are really bad, aren't they? I've got a friend who has a Labrador and they had to pull a pair of tights from the other end once because they'd eaten a pair of tights. But I have to say, terriers, the thing that I, if I was Prime Minister, I will, I would, not I will, I would imprison people who throw chicken bones. On the street? On the street. So many chicken bones on the street. Dogs, they're bad for dogs, like raisins. Dennis, and actually now he's, whatever he is, I was about to say 15 months, and then I hate myself for saying that because I'm sounding like a proud mother of a toddler again.

26:19But he's, I'm now relaxed a bit. When he was doing it when he was smaller, every time he got a chicken bone from the street, I sort of yelped and immediately got in the car and went to the vet. Actually, I've realised it's largely fine. Well, it can be. Sorry, but when I had Ziggy, my cockapoo, who I've spent more money, it's like having a child in private school. the amount of money I spend on her. In her first year, she had two enterotomies. What are those? They're cutting the stomach open to remove. On the first time, I was in Greece. Yeah. The first time I left her, my daughter was looking after her.

26:54She ate two peach stones and collapsed. Oh, wow, the nose didn't come out. Oh, wow, why are they poisonous? No, they were blocked to her stomach. Oh, they just got stuck. She collapsed. my daughter took her to the very expensive animal hospital in the east end 2000 pounds later literally three months later her wound had just healed she ate a corn cob a little section of corn cob collapsed, I took her to the vet in mine head, opened her up, removed it, another couple of grand and then we had her spayed I mean, nobody tells you're not getting a dog, you're getting a what a mass you're getting a cost center yeah yeah no the money i remember texting a friend of mine who had a dog before i was really seriously thinking about getting a puppy and saying can i just check what sort of costs are we talking and jen um didn't make it sound that much she's got a dachshund called jeffrey and i was like yeah this sounds all right jeffrey um she was the owner of beloved tatler allen before then and now it's um tatler allen you've got to tell this was this day you all went home early in tears.

27:59The day when I worked at Tatler and we, yeah. The Dachshund. The Dachshund, Alan the Dachshund. It was like my first couple of weeks at Tatler and Jen had this little Dachshund, mini Dachshund puppy called Alan. He was so small, like the size of a flea practically. And Jen had gone out for lunch and one of the many lovely things about Tatler, it was slightly like being at a girl's boarding school to be honest. We were all so matey and so close that she went out for lunch and someone else would look after Alan and the person who was looking after Alan went outside for a cigarette at lunchtime and took Alan down on the lead.

28:31And, you know, the old Vogue House. Yeah, revolving doors. Big revolving doors. And a man from GQ came downstairs. He was going for a lunchtime run and he sort of jogged through the lobby. And Alan, being a puppy, thinking this was fun, jogged after him on his lead and then got stuck in the retractable doors. Unhelpfully, some people then tweeted that he'd been decapitated, which wasn't true. But unfortunately, he did suffocate because the revolving doors... I remember being upstairs and seeing three fire engines from my desk outside in the street and I called the receptionist Peter he was called he was a sort of legend of Oak House at the time it's a piece of what is going on and he said it's all right the little dog will be fine they're removing the doors and I took photos I remember thinking this will be a great diary story tomorrow this you know sausage dog Tatler fire engine and then unfortunately for whatever reason they couldn't they couldn't um get the doors down and he very sadly suffocated and honestly that afternoon in the Tatler office it was just wails wails wails wails obviously everyone was in tears and it was awful and I remember I went on a press trip the next day but hold on that story went round the world yes I was on this press trip and I went on a flight this is what Tatler was like the next day I was sent to the actual town of Tequila for a press trip to go and taste tequila with Guy Pelly and various other sort of booze industry people friend of Prince William Prince Harry's Prince Harry he was sort of naughty Guy Pelly he was the one who supposedly always led him astray anyway so I was on a plane naked billiards Pelly yes exactly yeah yeah yeah in Vegas so I was on a flight with Guy Pelly and various other sort of booze industry people because we were all going to this town of Tequila and I picked up, it was in the New York Times that was what I remember reading it being like this is so mad I bet they did it with deathless lack of humour yes I think it was all quite sincere Classy magazine dog dies in revolving doors I have to say I feel quite bad because I you know I've joked about it since and poor Jen now having a dog of my own I cannot imagine It makes me feel quite sick actually thinking, oh my God, if that happened to Dennis, I can't.

30:28I can already make myself, you know, Dennis is one and a half. I can already make myself well up at the thought of that final trip to the vet, which hopefully is many years hence. But I remember saying this to my ex when he was still my boyfriend, when Dennis was a tiny puppy. And he did look at me quite nervously at that point and said, are you serious? So that might be the first nail in the coffin when he thought, oh, I better get out of this relationship. Because she's already making herself cry about the thought of her dog in hopefully many, many years dying. So I can't imagine. Yeah, it was so awful for Jen.

30:57So I talk about it. I've written about it and sort of made jokes about Tatler Allen before, but it was a very, very awful tragedy. What are you working on now? I am working on... I want a sequel to The Year of the Dog, by the way. Well, there might be a sequel. I would love to do a sequel because it's my first non-fiction book. Oh, yeah, we haven't even talked about your novels. You write romantic novels. They're brilliant. They're funny. Thank you. Plus one. I can't remember the others. Plus one. Five others. Six romantic fiction novels. if you're interested with some quite racy, some quite comedy sex, I think we'll say.