Al Murray

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1:14Class is always in session at acast.com. D-U-B-E-S-O-R. I'm coming to you backwards and forwards. This is Rosebud. I'm Joss Branforth. Cue the music.

1:51Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth. It's a Friday. It's a Friday in September. And I have to tell you something. Sometimes I feel a bit blue in September. Is it the beginning of the new school year? It makes me feel, oh, a little apprehensive. Going back to work, summer is over. I wanted a chuckle today. I wanted somebody who usually makes me laugh as a guest. And I found that very person. It's a comedian. He's called Al Murray. He has been making me laugh now for almost a quarter of a century, and I think he first became famous in the late 1990s. He's now a household name. He's not just a comedian, though being a comedian is quite enough.

2:30He's also somebody who's a bit of an authority on the Second World War. I know because he told me that his grandfather died at Dunkirk. I also know because he told me that when he was a boy, his dad took him to see the film A Bridge Too Far and that made him totally fascinated by maybe I'd say obsessed by the Second World War. As a consequence he has a hugely successful podcast called We Have Ways of Making You Talk which is an exploration of every aspect of the Second World War and this is a big weekend in his life because it's the We Have Ways Festival. It's his podcast in festival mode. It takes place at the Black Pit Brewery in Buckinghamshire, and people who are fascinated by the Second World War get together.

3:17They listen to his podcast. They share stories. They look into the history. They explore all the aspects of it. And I wanted to explore all the aspects of Al Murray, the pub landlord. If you like his comedy, and I do, you'll find he's on a nationwide tour any minute now as the pub landlord. but I wanted to discover who Al Murray actually is, where he comes from, what his family was like, what are the roots of Al Murray. And there's much more to him than you might expect. I think you're going to enjoy this. Welcome to Rosebud with me, Giles Brandreth, and with my very special guest, the pub landlord himself.

3:55Yes, it's Al Murray. Cue the music.

4:13Al Murray, before I begin, the Al is short for? Alistair. Alistair with an I or an A? With an A. An A? Spelled properly, yeah. What's the difference? I've no idea. Is one of them Scottish? Yes, the A is more Scottish. I think so than the I. So you're with an A, is that a middle name? James Hay. So James is my mother's father who was killed in a war she never knew. And then Hay is a Murray family first son appendage name. Had I had a son, I wouldn't have bothered. So my father is England Bernard Hay. You've let your son miss out on this wonderful heritage going back. Absolutely. And yet you're somebody who is locked into the past.

4:59Anyway, we'll come to all that. We'll come to all that, yeah. Alistair Murray. Yes. I've got that bit now. Born on the 10th of May, 1968. That's correct. So the light is very flattering here. Well done, you. Good. I have to ask you, Al. Have you been called Al all your life? Yes. Well, although I had a nickname when I was a boy. My family used to call me Buzz. Ooh. And that was what everyone called me. I think I've still an aunt who's like sort of hold out. He still calls me that. But basically, they all called me that. And then when I was about 17, 18, I said, no, no, no, we're not going with a childish nickname anymore.

5:36And I'm Owl from now on. But why were you buzz? I think because I made peculiar noises when I was small. My dad is a great nicknamer. He gave everyone multiple nicknames. We all had, all of us as children had nicknames. Everyone had nicknames. And it was a sort of thing he, I think probably it was easier than remembering our names. You know, so we all had nicknames. Well, Al Buzz Murray. That's a good showbiz name, Buzz Murray. Buzz Murray. Yeah, yeah. Actually, it's more of an agent's name. Yes, possibly. Al is also an agent's name. It is very much an agent's name. Who's looking after you? Oh, I've got Al.

6:14I'm with Al Murray now. Oh, really? I'm sorry. Sorry to hear that. I used to be somebody quite good, but I've slipped. I'm now with Al Murray. Anyway, Al Murray, born 10th of May, 1968. What is your very first memory? It is, I think, of a birthday party when I must have been turning three, I think. But maybe, maybe earlier even, because my parents had a climbing frame. They've lived in two houses in the village they live. And I was born in the cottage on the high road, as was my younger sister. We were both born at home. And there was a climbing, and I remember being on that climbing frame at what was a birthday party with a little Tommy gun with a turning handle that made a tack, tack, tack, tack, tack noise.

7:01Well, I'm sure we're going to be talking a great deal about the Second World War. And in your first memory, we have a Tommy gun and a climbing frame reminiscent maybe of the wooden horse. Possibly. In that film. What is the film that featured the wooden horse? Was it called The Wooden Horse? It's called The Wooden Horse, yes, about the fellas escaping. Yeah, exactly. With a wooden climbing frame. That's right. So where is this home and who are these parents hosting this party? So this is in Stukeley in North Buckinghamshire. And my parents are Ingram and Juliet. Ingram? Ingram, yes. Ingram? Yeah.

7:32Now, you'll have to unpack that a bit. Ingram, Bernard Hay, Murray. That's right, yes. Where does the Ingram come from? Well, my grandparents, his parents, Rafe and Morissette, he was English and she was Austrian from an Austrian family. and they met when he was working for the BBC in Vienna in 1936 or something like that, because he was one of the very first radio correspondents at the BBC. And in fact, he did their first outside broadcast, outside news broadcast. But basically, he was in, I can't remember where he was, but he was in somewhere in Eastern Europe, held his microphone out the window to relay the sound of the crowd, as he reported on after Czechoslovakia was broken up, after the failure of the Munich Agreement, and he was recording the sounds in Slovakia of the crowd.

8:26This is your grandfather? Yeah, yeah, Rafe, Rafe Murray, yeah. Rafe Murray, he was now. Rafe Murray reporting. And he sounds like that. Because here we are. Exactly. And I'm here, I'm in what used to be called Czechoslovakia. Exactly, yeah. And there's also a clip of him reporting on the Crystal Palace fire. And it's, again, it's, and the flames are unbelievable. I cannot believe what I'm seeing in my own, you know, the licking on the side of the building, it's gone, you know, like that. But more slowly, actually. Yes, more slowly, yeah. With more dignity. With a little bit more dignity than maybe I am relaying here.

8:58But he was, so he was in at the Beeb and was a multilinguist, spoke many languages. And so he'd gone out to be, you know, the BBC's man in that part of the world. And he met my, lodged in my great-grandmother's house and met Morissette, who was an artist, who was a couple of years older than him. and he brought her back to Britain. So I think the Ingram comes from somewhere in middle Europa as a name. Really? Yeah. Because it actually sounds very English, doesn't it? Well, yes, yeah. Middle European. Or Northern French. But I think they were, I mean, I don't know. Funny enough, I've never said to him, where on earth is your unusual Ingram?

9:40But you say this, you speak of them in the present. They are both alive, your parents. They're both still with us. Touching wood? Touching wood. acquired material. Yes, they are, yeah. And what age are they now? Dad's 80, he'll be 89 in May, so 18 and then shortly. And he's in excellent, he's very, very mentally acute and is in full possession of all marbles. And what's his story from when he is born up until you're born in 1968? Oh, so he went to boarding school. And when was he born? He was born in 1937. May of 1937. Yeah, he's the first born immediately after. They get married. Yes, yes, absolutely.

10:17So in those days, people got married and then had the children. That's the way it worked. Yes, well, yes. And he was the eldest, and then he has three siblings. And my grandfather then was immediately recruited into the Foreign Office when the war began and went to work for SO1, which was SOE adjacent, so Special Operations Executive adjacent, and then went to work for a thing called the Political Warfare Executive, who did black radio, propaganda, message controlling to occupied Europe and to Germany. So I was involved in the fake radio stations they ran. And then my grandmother, because she was also multilingual, because she was a German speaker, was used on those radio stations as a participant.

11:00And though she was Austrian by nationality, she was married to him and therefore she wasn't interned or anything. No, she wasn't interned. And that is a question my dad has said. I've always wondered why she was never interned, because she wasn't interned. They obviously thought she was okay. There's no suggestion that your grandfather, when he was working for the BBC, was also working for the foreign officers there? I'm asking. Oh, Giles. I mean, people working for their secret services and the BBC at the same time, that's never happened. No one's ever been double-hatted like that before. Have you inquired about that in relation to you?

11:36I think he probably was. And the thing is, all the people at PWE were... PWE? Political Warfare Executive. People like Sefton Delmer, Tony Crossland. Lots of people were working at the BBC and in Fleet Street and for this propaganda outfit at the same time. And there was great cross-pollination across it. But then my grandfather was involved in the effort to get Tito on side out of Alexandria. At a Cairo, rather, and all that sort of spooky stuff. And he was part of the political mission that went to Athens in 1944 with Churchill, with Macmillan, to try and get the Greek government installed, an anti-communist Greek government installed.

12:19So he was involved in all sort of murky stuff. And you knew him? I knew him, yes, I knew Rafe. He died when I was sort of 13 or 14, so I knew him. But as this sort of benign grandfather, rather than this fellow in a trilby with a briefcase full of secrets. Exactly. I mean, you're giving us the flavour of him as a character from the third man. Yes, well, you know what? I think nearly but not quite is the thing with Rafe. And then he went back out, he came out, then he set up a thing called the Information Research Department that was a Cold War propaganda unit that was set up immediately after the war.

12:55And they are the people that got George Orwell to write a list of left-wing people who couldn't be relied on. Which is quite interesting. And Orwell did, Orwell, you know... Betrayed everybody, did he? Yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic, really. But Orwell's supposed to be a great hero to us. We love his use of the language. We have that fine statue of him outside the BBC. Yes, yes. Yes, he's a great hero. He's a great hero. But he betrayed his friends, essentially. Yeah, basically. He said to the... It's like McCarthy, inviting people to denounce people as communist sympathisers. He did it on the quiet.

13:29He didn't... They asked him, they said, who really should we be keeping an eye on in that sort of left-wing comment sphere? And he figured a load of people. It's an interesting little story. So my grandfather was involved in that. And then he became, then he was at the consulate in Egypt. He spoke Arabic as well as German and all these other languages. And was involved in the Suez Crisis. So was involved, was present at the dinner where Anthony Eden dressed down Abdul Nasser where so Eden's it's an awful story this and Eden's foreign secretary at the time no it's when he's prime minister and so Eden in 1956 he spoke Arabic Eden but what he'd do what he did when he met Nasser is he did the whole meeting through the interpreter and then dressed Nasser down in Arabic when he not got what he wanted out of the meeting and it's a very very bad form and my grandfather was at that dinner and thought the Prime Minister behaved appallingly.

14:29When he was running his office in Egypt, dealing with Tito's people, Randolph Churchill turned up. This is the son of Winston Churchill. Yes. Who was also a member of Parliament. That's right. Had a bit of a drinking issue. Yes. And also the problem of being the son of the great Winston Churchill. Yes, and fancied himself a commando. So he turned up and says, right, you've got to parachute me into Yugoslavia right now. and and i've had some i've had some briefing note for some bloody fool in your office um who who told me this that and the other and and he's he doesn't know what he's talking about and he's and and what i need is 50 copies of the daily telegraph to take with me or the daily express to take with me to show the yugoslavs that that you know that they are in people's thoughts and this that the other i need these weapons and i need this that the other and and the thing is is the memo he was complaining about my grandfather had drafted himself had written himself and because Randolph Churchill wasn't a details man he hadn't realized that he was talking to the person he got the memo from and he assumed it was that my grandfather was was somewhere lower down the pecking order rather than the boss so he's going one of your subordinates sent me this bloody memo and they had this they had and and and the thing is is they're in this officer's mess with with this American contingent with them and the Americans are shadowing the British to see what they're up to and it turns into this two hours of absolute flaming argument between my grandfather and uh and churchill junior the absolute blazing row and in in the report eventually he he writes um to bruce lockhart uh uh writes back to london a description of what happened he says uh my only regret is he was too big for me to throw down the stairs he was so obscenely rude called me call me things that no you know no one no man should ever endure and all sort of thing and it's really interesting because because i i didn't know my grandfather in that capacity at all and and that he's at the heart of this moment with the and imagine having that fight with because randolph churchill did very much regard himself as the prime minister's son he could go anywhere do what he wanted and you you couldn't say no to him and that my grandfather's in this row with him saying no i'm awfully sorry sir you you you know that's that's not going to happen and you don't berate us for our working practices we do know what we're doing we have got this figured out you know uh it's an extraordinary moment no wonder you're besotted with all of this because your grandfather had an exciting life and you had rather a dull one well you could you could you could argue it that way entirely jiles but but what's quite interesting is his brother uh rave's brother stephen stephen murray was an actor oh forgive Forgive me, not just an actor, but I knew him.

17:08You knew Stephen? I knew Stephen Murray, and I had dinner with him not long before he died with the actress Eileen Atkins. I remember him particularly as being wonderful. He took over from Ralph Richardson in a play at the Mayfair Theatre, and I got his autograph. Wonderful. Six characters in search of an author was the play. You see, I think... How marvellous. I probably met him a couple of times as a toddler, because we're not a Cheat by Jowl family at all. So I never knew him. Sophie, the fact that you knew Stephen, I know his daughter, but the fact that you knew Stephen... I knew your great uncle better than you did, it turns out.

17:41How fantastic. It is fantastic. Oh, well, there we are. He was a very fine actor. Yeah. Very good looking when he was young. Yes. And a great character actor in older years. Yes. The Navy Lark as well was the thing that sort of rescued him because he had a leer that failed and then he had quite a difficult career after that. But that's amazing. How wonderful. So, this interesting family, your grandparents, they bear fruit, and their eldest son is Ingram. Yes. And what does he do with his life? He does his national service in 1956. So he, we're talking about the Suez Crisis. Dad did the landing at Alexandria in the Suez Crisis, which is quite an interesting story.

18:26And he loved being a soldier, but his father forbade him going into the army. Because in those days, just two years natural service. That's right. Which was compulsory up till about 1959. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's in the last sort of tranche of people. And he really loved it. He had a great time and became a territorial soldier kind of immediately, became a reservist immediately and a paratrooper. So a life of great adventure and all that sort of stuff. And he was very into it. And did he look like a tough guy? I mean... He looked like they... Soldiers back then weren't all huge. They were wiry sort of tough little fellows.

19:02and he wasn't a small man, but he wasn't sort of built like they are now. But yeah, and all of that, all of his sort of, all of his crew were like that. It's quite interesting. If you walk down the street that has, it's Whitehall, isn't it? Yeah. Where there are the statues outside the Ministry of Defence of the different generals from the Second World War. Yes. You see that physically they're not what you expected. No, no, no, no. They are small. I mean, particularly, of course, Montgomery. Montgomery's a slight fellow. Yeah, yeah, little man, little wiry, like Terry of a man. But Dad then went to work for British Rail.

19:35Because I think he hadn't got the qualifications to go to the Foreign Office or something like that. And as a nationalised industry, it was a sort of quasi-civil service job. Tell me about you and your dad together. What were you like? Well, Dad, like I said earlier, we're not necessarily a close family, but I think I regarded Dad... I remember going to see him parachuting or something. I very much regarded him as this dynamic force of... Yeah, kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, you know, when you get into teenage years, you revise such views. But a very sort of... He's a very driven man. He's a very clever man.

20:16Do you have photographs of him in uniform around the house? Yeah, I've got a picture of him... The picture I've got of him at home from when he was a young man when he was doing that is of... They have a selection thing for parachuting called P Company, which is like this really brutal physical series of tests they have to do. And they have a 50 % failure rate, and they have to run around carrying a log and all this sort of stuff. And I've got a photograph of him doing that when he must have been 30, when it's his boys doing the thing, and he was with them, doing it with them, running alongside them, taking part, being part of it.

20:52and that is my young dad memory of this sort of dynamic guy with a big bead of sweat on the end of his nose from when he's exerted himself. That photograph is my memory of him and his horrible tracksuit that my mother loathed with his red beret on and all the lads pulling the thing along and that's my sort of image of him from when I was a child certainly. And how come this person, you, grandson of somebody who was both a spy and a pioneer broadcaster and special operations during the Second World War and the son of somebody who took Alexandria almost single-handed certainly was going to be parachuted in.

21:36These are right figures. How come you ended up as a comedian and podcaster? Oh, well, I think in the end, the core difference between me and my father is I am not, he's a physical person and I'm not. I've never been sporting. I've never like rowing or playing squash or anything. It's just, it never got passed on to me. But being serious, what have you got from him, do you think? Oh, well, he has a keen sense of humour. He's very curious. He has a curious mind. and I think I have in the end inherited his work ethic. I remember being berated by him quite a lot when I was a young man for being bone idle.

22:25But you know, when you're as hard working as he is, everyone's bone idle really. And I know, I think, because I'm often asked, I've talked about this with my wife quite a lot, about why I work so hard. It's because actually I know how lazy I am. And were I to stop, I would look out the window for the rest of my life and pick my nose. Do you feel that your father and grandfather led more worthwhile lives than you are leading? Oh no, there's nothing greater than the joy of laughter, Charles. But you sometimes brood about that. You sometimes think... No, no, you know what? The thing I shy away from when I think about what I do is being self-important about it.

23:05When you see people talk about how they're satirists and how important they're satirists, you think, oh, get over yourself, right? you know we're in it we're in we're all in the entertainment business one way or the other but but i don't think i don't think i don't think um the path better trod would have been one of public service in my case because i think i'd have been i think i'd have been bad at it but do you admire your father very much so yeah very much so although i mean a big part of how i ended up doing is he would he worked like i say he worked incredibly hard so he'd get up at he'd commute from from where they still live, Stukely, he'd get up some mornings, he'd be up at five, he'd be on the milk train, and he'd be home and eating his dinner on, get in time for the nine o 'clock news and eat his chop in front of, and I remember looking out and thinking, not much, not much interested in that kind of life, if I could possibly avoid it, and whether that consciously drove me into being a comic, because one of the reasons to become an entertainer, I think, is the the lure of the idea that you won't have to get up in the morning, and then you find yourself in Salford doing BBC Breakfast, again, having had to get up at half past five.

24:16So that part's backfired. But I think watching him do that maybe made me think, I don't know, that's my destiny. Tell me about your mother. What is her maiden name? Ritchie. So she's Juliet Ann Thackeray Ritchie. Oh. Yes. The Thackeray is my great, great, great grandfather, is William Makepeace Thackeray. The Vanity Fair, Pendennis, Esmond, Yellow Plush Papers, Punch, the Punch author, the absolutely brilliant essay about going to watch Hanging, which I think everyone should read. Anyone with a view on capital punishment should read that. And so lurking in the family background is, on that side, was William Thackeray.

25:04And I had a great aunt, Belinda Norman Butler, her name was, who was very much the keeper of the flame and the sort of guard dog of the, that's probably too harsh, but like she was the person really like being vigilant that his memory be kept. And how right she was. we're speaking of one of the the greatest novelists in the history of the english language well not exaggerating i mean thackeray is up there certainly with dickens and trollope as a victorian novelist yeah so i mean you're speaking to somebody who is a devotee of thackeray who has the complete works and has certainly read all of his fiction yeah not i think all of his journalism yeah well i mean i i haven't read all of his fiction but i've read most of is journalism.

25:50I, for a very long time, because this was this thing in the family picture, I was like, I'm just not interested. Who cares? It's a long time ago. And then I remember sort of saying to myself, well, I ought to at least read Vanity Fair, right? And the book is staggering. And he wrote it, first of all, while doing the cartoons as well, because he felt, I need to do the illustrations. I need to be, because I want people to know what I think these people look like. And then the novel starts to become a success because, of course, it's serialised and he's writing in installations. Then the task gets out of his grasp.

26:29It turns into this thing beyond his original plans as well, which I think is just brilliant. You know, he's pursuing the novel as it unfolds. And I think what is really brilliant about Vanity Fair is that, obviously, it's one of those big moving parts novels. and with all these different characters and they're written in the satirical style so their names tell you who they are and all this sort of thing. I mean, I think the social observations in it are so acute and universal. He does that. He pulls off that brilliant trick of it's apparently parochial but actually it's universal. It's apparently set in 1815, 16, whatever.

27:08But it's not. He's writing about his own period and he'd do that, he'd back project. He's writing about that but he's writing about now. The book about... depictions of social climbing, of the interactions of class, the effects of money on people, how politics operates. It's just a brilliant book. And I think he's such an interesting man and his writing is so interesting. And he's a brilliant satirist. He starts off as a satirist. I've got his inkwell, the Punch farewell inkwell that they gave to him on his departure from Punch. I must come around and see it. you've been to his house yes yes yes i have gensington high street yes yes i was invited um i went about about 10 12 years ago um and look around and of course it's the israeli embassy now so so you you go to this peculiar security environment as well but there's he had a writing room built that has a and it's all victorian mod cons so he has his writing room built where there's a window with a fireplace under it so you can look out the window at the same time sitting by the fireplace and warming yourself and the you know it's flewed around the the chimneys are flewed around the window.

28:18Quite wonderful. And am I right in thinking, among your other forebears, is this on your mother's side, is the Duke of Athol? No, that's my father's side. That's the Murray's. I mean, I went through a period on social media of people telling me that. Oh, is that not right then? Well, I don't know. It's not a thing I've ever been curious about. Wanted to pursue? No, no, apparently. But like, you know, I think we're... I know. If a kind of arts and coronets I would have to enact, I think, involves six or seven hundred people. What is curious to me, though, is that the pub landlord, this will be a revelation to many people, has among his forebears this duke, this extraordinary writer in Thackeray.

29:00Spies and soldiers, high drama, it's extraordinary.

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31:13So what sort of woman is your mother like? She's still with us? Yes, she's still with us. Mum is a source. She's brilliant. My sisters and I always talk about how we were scared of Mum, not Dad. She would be the one who would deliver the stern word finally and sort us out. But Mum volunteered her whole working life at the Citizens Advice Bureau, so she was deeply involved in that. and involved in that whole culture. And it's been interesting to her since she retired, talking to her about working in the CAB and inevitably the politics that would come into that area of voluntary public service. What were they like together, your parents?

31:58I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I've ever really thought about what they like together. Because they're alive, it's more difficult to describe. Yes, they're very affectionate with one another. And Dad, if he turns his hearing aids on, I think is good company. But they're like, they're sort of characters in a play, in a nice play. Yes, I think. Quite a comfortable play. Yes, possibly. Well, yes. Where there's a nice drawing room. There's a garden beyond. There is, yeah. The kitchen's a bit untidy. But you come into their room, it's basically the sofa's comfortable. Yes, it is. Yeah. And they understand each other.

32:35Yes, I think they do. She looks after the domestic side on the whole. Yeah. and they were loving but there wasn't intimacy like we now expect well no I mean we are not you know my father and I shake hands yeah and the thing is it just doesn't bother me I don't want anything else from that we shake hands when we see each other and we're always delighted to see one another and that's plenty and it's plenty enough for them You know, there's no need to... Do all this huggy-muggy stuff. Yeah, with my children, we are very tactile. Yeah. But, yeah, the thing is, I detect no flaw in such a way of... As a child, what's your recollection of your sweetest moment with your mum?

33:26A happy moment. She would cook me a fried egg for breakfast. And that was the sort of... That was the thing where you knew you were being looked after properly. and what sort of little boy were you as a before you were 10 i was very homesick when i got to school didn't like it you went to a prep school did you yeah yeah really in bedford really didn't like it and i and i and it's interesting because i sort of i think i found that out about myself i didn't didn't know that i was going to find that a wrench and so i think i was probably more of a home body, close to my family boy than I realised.

34:09I know I was, I like reading, but I know I was sort of cheeky and stuff, I think. Were you actively unhappy at the prep school? I really didn't like the first two years. I hated it. Really hated it. Did you tell your parents what could you do? Oh yeah, I'd write. I used to write home three times a week. Oh really? Because normally you only write home on a Sunday morning. I would carve out the time during prep. because I'd get my prep done and then I'd write mournful letters home, like, I can't bear it here. And which of them replied and what did they say? Mum would write back, sort of, everything's all right, don't worry.

34:40Dad's handwriting always was illegible and remains illegible and it's a family joke that no one can read his postcards. So a letter from him would have been no use to anybody. But she basically said, stick with it, you'll get used to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These things get better. Yeah, and the thing is, is by the end, you know because I boarded from when I was nine till I was 18 by the end I I really liked it I my last two years of boarding school were fantastic so where do you go on to after the we stayed at Bedford so Bedford had a Bedford school has had a prep prep department so you do you do you know you do that and then you go to what they call the upper school by the last two years by the upper by the lower six and upper six you know everyone's settled their differences you've gravitated towards the people you're going to be friends with rather than you're with the people you you're living with and and the last couple years i absolutely i had a whale of a time and who were the sorts of people you were friends with so i had uh the sort of core bunch of us at the end were the lads we did we played music together and we did plays together oh what sort music jazz mainly but what were your instruments i played the drums there was a the fellow called Ned Bolting, who's the Tour de France correspondent, who became an expert on that.

35:57He played clarinet and a bit of saxophone. A fellow called Dickie Wetherill played the piano. But there was a loose group of us, and then a couple more lads would come and go in and out of that group. But we would play music together and we did theatre together. And we genuinely had one of those drama teachers who... Was an inspiration. ...turned the lights on. you know you think oh right there's a there's a there's a there's another another world out there what were they called he was called mike morrison and mike he won't mind me telling this story mike mike um uh i mean i i found out where he was where he was working because i wanted to thank him basically this is about it's about 20 years ago this i wanted to thank him i wanted to say thank you you know you set me on this course and you know i wouldn't be doing what i'm doing now which I enjoy so much if it hadn't been for you because it sort of turned us on to the idea that we've maybe maybe you could write maybe you could perform or whatever and and and I wrote I've managed to track it down I think he was working in Tunbridge I can't remember anyway I can't remember where he was working I wrote to him and and saying you know Mike heartfelt thanks you don't forget a good teacher you know everything you did for me and and I wouldn't be doing what I am today and he basically wrote back going well that's lovely to hear thanks very much by the way I'm trying to book a festival is there any way to basically thought there was a way around my agent he won't mind me saying so sure but i hope you delivered for him i've turned up at the festival i was too busy so how grateful you really were well yeah no it's show business not show friends but um it was but this school teacher really made you he showed you the way that you've followed since well i think i think i don't know that i don't know i mean he never he never you know tapped me on the elbow and said try stand-up comedy but he there was just this feeling of of a sort of a bit more possibility because because now you know you look at comics coming through now there's degrees you could do degree courses or and there's so much more performing arts out there as an option for for young people even the idea of going into the media exists when I remember the careers advice we'd get at school.

38:12If you've got a bright boy who's into acting, maybe he'd like to be a barrister. And I'd think, no, maybe I wouldn't like to be a barrister, so what on earth am I going to do? But you were at a school and from a family where the assumption was you'd go to university, and the assumption clearly was that you'd try for Oxford or Cambridge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you did, and you got in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you took that in your stride? It didn't feel automatic, because I tried and failed and I tried again to get in. But it did feel like, that felt like... That's the path. Did you think of going to the army at any stage?

38:47No. No. I knew that wasn't going to work out for me. And again, because I'm not physical, you've got to want to run around for hours on end if you want to be in the army. And I don't want to run around for hours on end. So it never felt like a thing I was ever going to do. When did you learn the facts of life and from whom? Oh, that's an excellent question. It's not going to be your father if you're shaking hands with you. I plead the fifth on this. Is it the fifth? Well, no, I meant, I didn't mean when did you first discover them for yourself. I meant, which we can come on to, I meant who instructed you in the facts of life.

39:27Well, boarding school. You went to boarding school. I did. boys would there'd be someone with an older brother who would have a porn mag basically actually what I was asking was was it your mother, your father or was it the matron or was it a house master who had to give a talk it was left a boarding house discovery a dormitory I think in my first year at boarding school at Sussex Boarding House well done I was only inquiring about how you discovered the facts of life We can now move on to since you've opened the Pandora's box When did you in terms of show and tell discover the facts of life? I don't know I couldn't tell you When did you have your first crush?

40:19Oh I don't know I think there was a French friend of my parents who when I was sort of four I would follow her around, sort of mooning at her. But beyond that, I don't know. But your first attempt at wooing, as it were, was reciprocated. Oh, yes, I had a girlfriend. I did a play with one of the girls' schools at Bedford. We were a boys' school, and that's how you'd meet. You'd either do debating, or you'd do plays if you wanted to meet girls. Or if you didn't want to meet girls, there were girls there. And so there was a girl I went out with from a play. I think that's probably my first... And were you any good at it?

41:06I don't know. As a wooer? Think of yourself. I mean, I'll give you an honest answer. I thought I was rather good at it. It turns out, in retrospect, I wasn't. I thought at the time I was delivering. Well, I think I was probably pretty clumsy. but you know I mean that's all right though isn't it it's okay it's okay to not know what you're doing when you're young well it's okay in retrospect as older animals can look back on the young and be understanding but at the time it's a bit well what I'm really getting at is what sort of a were you awkward as a young boy you were obviously happy doing the drama and the music you were free that freed you but as a lad around the school well that's a really good point actually because i think the reason i gravitated to um performance is it is sort of two two things at work um it looked like it might be fun but the other thing about it i remember being 13 14 and being incredibly self-conscious not really knowing how to present myself and the thing about performing is there's a virtue in figuring out how to present yourself in performing or you're allowed to be Yorkwood or it's it's it's a contained environment the edges the frame of the proscenium arch you know the margins of the portrait the limits of the script the limits of the depiction right so you can set yourself to those and that's I think why I play a character even now doing the public because because it's you don't have to think about that whereas if for myself I'd be bogged down in thinking about how to present myself and I think that's one of the things that really drew me to performance is that um that feeling that that here's a place where where there are rules about how you present yourself there's limits there's margins there's there's edges and i can fit into those and be comfortable having them in a way that even school assembly where we used to think where you'd have to take the you'd have to take down to the front to the monitors you'd have to take down the class register and even that you'd walk down through the main hall in the school, then I would feel self-conscious doing that.

43:11I think everyone was looking at me. And that would be an awkward moment. You think, I'm going to trip, or you would trip, and everyone would. You know, whereas on stage, you don't need to worry about that. They're meant to be looking at you. And you've done this all your life, haven't you? Yeah. Because you like to, in a good way, compartmentalise. Yeah. So that, we were chatting about this earlier, when you're doing comedy, you're doing comedy. Yeah. When you're preparing for the podcast series, that's what you're doing. When you're being husband and father, that's your role. Well, yes, I mean, my wife might dispute that because she often says my mind's on other things.

43:50But yes, that's at least, certainly from a work point of view, is very much that these things are bought in boxes. And I really like that. I find that grants you, you know, once you know what the limits of the thing are, You know, the frame is the most important part of the portrait. I can't remember who said that. But once you know what the limits of the thing are, it's easier to get it right. Looking at your life up until the age of 21, what is the worst thing that happened to you during the first 21 years of your life? Oh, gosh, that's a good question. I would think probably... Well, I broke my arm when I was coming home from a concert when I was drunk, when I was 19.

44:37And it was one of those things that really made me sort of think that I was sort of not serious enough about stuff. And that I was being a bit aimless and feckless. And I don't know whether that really sunk in, but it certainly was one of those moments where I really dented, you know, the confidence I'd... Because one of the great things about going to university is you get, I found, you get to start again. You didn't have to be the person everyone had been at school at for nine years. You could come in and sort of, you know. And did you present yourself differently? Well, I think I sort of, I think I, you know, I didn't know anyone.

45:17So I didn't, I wasn't bound up in any of the things they knew about me. What college were you at? St. Ebond Hall. So I could sort of, you know, you could, you had a chance to reboot. In my day, there were also sporty types. Yes, I know. Well, that's the interesting thing is they were there too. but there was also a kind of underground feeling of the people who weren't into the sport. We all gravitated to each other very, very quickly. And that was great. And I think when I broke my arm, it kind of dented my confidence. What about the best thing that happened to you in your first 21 years? Oh, that would be

45:58falling in with the comedy crowd and the friends that I made when I got to university, I think. Because I remember my father saying this. He said, oh, when you get there, you're going to be, you know, he says, you're one of the bright kids at school and then you're going to get there and you're going to be like average or bottom. So that's the thing that's going to be the big revelation when you get there. And boy, he was right. and it was, it was, but it was brilliant. It was brilliant to be around people who were so funny and clever. Any of them we still know. so the first, the first, my first day at, at, at Teddy Hall I took my drum kit in to put in the music room and as I took it down into the music room in the music room in the basement in one of the blocks there was, was Stuart Lee and Richard Herring who had been in Edinburgh that summer, that August and had, and they'd played to eight people or whatever, but had returned sort of in triumph because they'd done it.

46:58They'd done their own show at the Fringe. And they'd only been in their first year. And they were first year students. They'd been and gone and done it, right? And I said to him, oh, what are you chaps up to? And Stu said, well, you know, we've just been in Edinburgh doing our sketch show and we're doing it next week. And I said, well, how do I get to do comedy? And they told me about this thing, this fortnightly club where you had to turn up with new material. not recite monty python or whatever people have been doing you had to turn up and self-generate and it just felt like brilliant i can do that can you remember the first laugh you got what the line was i can't remember the line was but i know what this i think i know what the sketch was so so basically i then corralled some pals together we bullied them into bullied them into performing with me and we had a sketch called the french revolution sketch because there's a piano and it's a thing where all the heads were after the heads had been chopped off they were plonked up and they all talked to each other and and it was all groaners it was all groaning puns and we all and and it got it got big laughs and and i and i often think with a lot of a lot of people comics if the very very often what happens is the first time you get a load of laughs and you think brilliant this is great and then you have three years of of sackcloth and ashes but just it's that first time and you want that you want that taste again and i remember remember we we had a quite a good run at the end of our first year we did it we did a little show which we put on in a in a theater in one of the i can't remember which one of the colleges and did an hour of stuff together and it was it was just fantastic and then we went to the fringe and and it's that and played to seven people but that but the point was doing it the point was it was possible and you could grab grasp the net the journey had begun yeah yeah still continues is that been the story i mean that That is what changed your life.

48:46First of all, Mr. Morrison, and then Oxford has made you the person you are. I think so. And then, but then the other thing, because it is fair to say, going to Oxford and all that was an amazing privilege and a real lottery win, a life lottery win. But the other big win was if you moved to London in early 1991, you could rent a flat or a room in a house in West Norwood for like, I don't know, 40, 50 pounds a week. You could, there were 50 comedy clubs in London because it was the real alternative comedy boom. And if you hacked away at it, you could learn how to do it by being bloody minded and persistent and cold calling people on the phone.

49:34You'd buy time out, you'd pick the numbers out at time out. You'd sit with the phone and cold call people and you'd gradually worm your way into the regular performers. What was the worst of those experiences in the 90s? I died a couple of really horrendous deaths. And so when I'd got the sort of pub landlord lined up and figured out, and I started to really, really work hard on that. You thought, I need a character. Yeah, well, that happened in Edinburgh by accident. So I was at the Fringe with Harry Hill, who I'd become friends with. And we were doing a show in Edinburgh in a Pleasance Cabaret bar.

50:09And there was a gap in the show that needed filling, because it was made up of little bits and pieces. I was meant to be comparing it. And I said on the night we got there, I said, well, I had a brainwave. I said, why don't we say the compare hasn't turned up and that the barman has offered to fill in? And Harry said, yeah, whatever. So I wrote some things down, went on, and the first things that came to mind worked because it's defined, the limit, the frame. The persona, the character, yeah. And then Harry went on, did his bit. While he was on, I wrote a few more things, went on, they did, they all worked.

50:40so then I stayed up all night writing jokes the next day I cut my hair off because it needed to I needed to have short hair for it and then we went we had a really great run at Edinburgh that year and then and then we went on a tour and by the end of the tour I had an hour of stuff that just as a stop gap literally to fill that five minute gap in that first night in Edinburgh and and it all flowed from there and and so the sort of that's the next thing that is working with harry that moment which completely changed things because i fell on the act and it it worked right away it's never really essentially the core idea of it has never really changed from when those first three weeks where i was bashing it out figuring it out not really even though times have changed and fashions have come and gone in comedy and all this sort of thing the core idea has never really changed

51:43hi guys it's page from giggly squad and oh my god i've been binging the funniest tv show fx's adults it's about five roommates living in new york i mean who would ever live in a house without many roommates they're leaning on each other to navigate love work friendship and family Not relatable to me and Hannah at all. While tackling pressing questions of your 20s like, what if the person who inherited your fake ID is cooler than you ever were? Why does being around your family make you regress into your worst self? And how do you tell your roommates that you have other friends? FX's Adults, all episodes now streaming on Hulu.

52:21Acast powers the world's best podcasts. New school year, new podcast obsession. Hit play on this. What is a cyberdeck? And how can it blend makeup and neuromancer? Why do we name birds, beetles, telescopes, and principles after people? How does Omdahl's Law explain when sometimes, 10 times faster, is not that fast? I'm Dr. Nikki Ackermans, a scientist. And I'm Huynh Twet-Dow, an engineer. And we're here to spill the tea on questions just like this at the intersection of science and technology. And we'll also add in quite a bit of nerdiness and fun. as well as a healthy pour of our experiences as women in STEM on our podcast, Technical Tea.

53:02Subscribe to Technical Tea wherever podcasts are found. We drop episodes every month. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Class is always in session at acast.com.

53:18Before we get on to what your life is now, tell us about how you met your wife. We met at a party thrown by my management company. Oh, my gosh. She was a television journalist. And she was there looking for free drinks from my management company. And we met there and we hit it off immediately. Immediately? I think so, yeah. This was different. Why do you think on this occasion you feel… Because she's a woman of great taste and sophistication and boundless patience. I think clearly a woman with very low expectations. Well, one or the other. Who decided to settle for this 42-year-old pub landlore.

54:02No, she's a brilliant person to be around. And also, you know, I think you can't take on someone who does my line of work lightly. You know, I'm away an awful lot. I'm away a third of the time. and in fact actually one of the things about the pandemic that um that uh really sort of turned my head is I was home for 18 months never I've never been I've never been home for a month you know this sort of revelation of that I really do love I love being at home and my family's fantastic and I don't have to but you know being away all the time maybe isn't maybe although we're back to that now because because things are busy again but but no um she I think taking on someone in our in this trade is pretty difficult and that there is that there isn't the um regular pattern of the working week even or the working year or any of that you know what do you give the relationship oh um

55:04i think well because we we we i think what i give the relationship i really love having a family and And I think that's what I give to it. I think that's the thing I've always sort of... I think going to boarding school means you want to go home.

55:27And I think... So all I ever really want to do is go home. So home is... I think home is what I offer. Because I'm away all the time. That's the sort of thing that's... you know yesterday i woke up in york after a gig in middlesbrough got the first train from york got home put the oven on and cooked sunday lunch because that's what i want to do well sounds all right doesn't it does sound all right why do you think you are so fascinated by the second world war oh that that that i mean that goes it goes back to a lot of what we were talking about with my my father's family but my mother's family you see the thing is is i you know growing up in the 70s there were there was ethics action man war films there was uh dad's army even the country still digesting the war but digesting the war culturally that point rather than in terms of the raw cost it's in the 50s and because dad was a soldier in the 50s all of his officers had been um people who'd fought in the second world war well you know the his first brigadier was a guy who fought at the Battle of Arnhem at the bridge at Arnhem.

56:35You know, he's one of those people. So he was interested in it from that perspective. But on my mother's side, this is something that dawned on me as I grew up. My mother's father was killed fighting in the Territorial Army in what was the Bucks Battalion, so a reservist battalion from Marlow. And he was killed in the fighting in this town called Hasbrook outside Dunkirk in the collapse back to Dunkirk before my mother was born. so there's the footprint of that which is why my second name's James and then her uncle so my grandmother's brother was killed fighting in Burma in a place called Pinway in late 1944 fighting with the Gloucesters and so as well as the sort of fascinating history on the side on my on my father's side there's the grim actual footprint of the damned thing that by the time you grow up you realize it's not an adventure it's not bugles at dawn and and and fluttering flags at sunset it's the grim bitter cost of the thing and so so and that that's what we digested and I wonder what on earth my grandmother made of me playing with an action man when I was five six seven you know having lost her husband and her brother what what must she have thought of that and me making model Spitfires.

57:57What must she have, how did she process that 30 years later when I was a little boy? And that as I've grown older has become really the thing that's the,

58:09that Trotsky famously didn't say, it's an attributed term that, you may not be interested in war, but war's interested in you. And that's how I feel about the Second World War. It was the event that doesn't matter who you are or what you thought of it, one way or another it was going to get you, it was going to involve you, it was going to change your life, flip it upside down one way or another. And that's why I find it relentlessly fascinating. And the other thing that I find really interesting about it is the school of history that was predominant when I went to university was very much, you know, long durée, this idea that there's sort of tectonic plates of history that the people on top of the froth and that the things are going to happen anyway, you know the the the giant uh dialectic forces at work that mean you know comes from a marxist hegelian reading a history war is all about contingency you know the the the book book before last that i wrote wrote about the battle of arndham there's too much stuff in there that involves people's personalities the clashes of personalities for you to be able to honestly attributed it to the tectonic plates of fate which is you know what some might some would like to argue about how history works there's too many moments where someone could have turned left rather than right that would have directly changed the outcome of the days that followed and therefore the hinge of fate that followed that those events for it it i i feel very often it refutes that um that um other way of looking at history and that's that i think is really is really really interesting whether it whether it succeeds in refuting i don't know but it does i have to say i've only i've only i'm afraid recently come to we have ways of making you talk but it's very intriguing in 2026, even though it's about 1939 to 1946.

59:57Well, today James and I have been talking about the episode... This is James. James Holland. Tom Holland's brother, for those who aren't aware. So the rest is history, which is the big plump stablemate of ours at Goalhanger. Interestingly, they came after us. It was Jim and I doing We Have Ways that led Tom to saying, what's a podcast? Could you explain that to me, please, James? And then them doing theirs. So I feel faintly responsible for some of the rest of his stuff. Am I right you stood against Nigel Farage at Clacton? Was that for publicity, for fun? It was for fun and also... Margate, was it?

1:00:36Yeah, yeah. It was for fun and it was to try and engage with the political process one way or another. Not to my contemporaries, but saying all sorts of things about Nigel Farage, weren't doing anything about him. is how I felt. And also, Russell Brand, that autumn, had said, what's the point of voting? There's no point of voting. It never changed anything. And I thought, well, no one... I haven't got his platform, but what I can do is encourage people to vote. They don't have to vote for me. They should get involved. Vote. Vote one way or another. And how did it go? Who voted for you? 318... Not too bad.

1:01:08...of the most sensible people on the planet. I have to tell you that I did a little bit better than you, because when I stood as a Conservative member of Parliament in 1992, to the monster raving loony party agreed to stand their candidate down in my favor well well i mean so it's probably how i got in it's worth your 300 it's that sort of consensus that maybe the country could do with a bit more of giles what did you actually did you learn anything about politics from that yeah i did actually what did you learn the thing i learned is um i would not want to be a politician and the reason is everyone wants you to fail the driving impetus is they want you to fail that your rivals within the party want you to fail so they can succeed the press want you to mess it up because that's a better story um the public in the end will consign you to the dustbin once you've served your purpose which may even be just to vote against someone else so uh you're meant to drink deep a drink a deep draft of poison when you become a politician I think and that was the because we were doing we were doing a satiric campaign we were our campaign was openly a joke the whole thing from start to finish and the political journalists wanted that to fail as well they want they they trade in failure failure is their meat and their drink I've got such a good flavor now of the public you and there's much more to the public you than I realized because I've seen the pub landlord I've seen you being hilarious I knew about the podcast.

1:02:39I've only just started about it. I was intrigued that you've written these serious books. But what I would now like you to do is close the door. You're on your own in a room. You are William Makepeace Thackeray. Yes. And you're writing a paragraph about Alastair Murray that's going to tell me something I didn't know about him. Not about what he's done, but about who he is, the nature of this man. well in the style of thackeray i suppose no don't hide behind that okay give well you can if you want because you're so clever you probably can't of a of a of a gilded family with a long history of public service and sacrifice yet nevertheless an encounter with the theater in the form of his great uncle in an effort to run as far and fast as he could from where he came he's nevertheless ended up in the public eye far more than any of those any of his predecessors who maybe lived modestly in the shadows of service the part of him that enjoys showing off has been amply rewarded and fulfilled and now as he starts to grapple with ideas of history, the show-off remains undimmed and he chooses to ride two quite different horses that often pull him in different directions.

1:04:17And at the centre is his family and his home that keep him on track. What's your flaw?

1:04:31Sometimes I wing it when I shouldn't. And that's when I can come unstuck, when I think I can wing this and I haven't prepared properly. Are you a sensitive person? I think I can be, yeah. I think my daughters would say that they sometimes do that, oh, dad thing. Like when I start on a subject or an attitude that they maybe think they never need to hear from me again. But sometimes it can be things I'm sensitive about. But I think what my daughters like from me is they know what they're going to get. Yes, but this is... I mean, the reason I'm asking this is that my children and my wife sometimes say to me, stop talking.

1:05:23Just for a moment, stop talking. We know what you can do. We know this is how you've survived all these years. You've just kept going, kept working, kept being jolly. Stop talking for a moment. And what is there? So what I'm trying to get you to tell me is when you're not winging it, when you're not being the pub landlord or Al the family man, what is there? I don't know. You know, I don't have an answer to that question, Giles. It's a problem. I'm going to have to go away and think about it. You've set me some homework. I have set you some homework. I haven't come here for homework. No, well...

1:06:04You've done yours and now I've got mine to do. I'm warning you, it's quite a dangerous thing to do because last time I did it, instructed by them, I ended up just sitting alone in tears. Oh, well, okay. I don't want you to do that. No, I'm sure that won't happen. Well, I hope it won't happen. Good. All right, we've got to our last few questions. Yes. And that is an easy one to begin with, a moment of joy. Share joy. Share joy. And a specific moment. Okay. My daughter at school, they have a project called Rocksteady where they have little rock bands that play together. And she's the drummer in her little band.

1:06:43This term they were called 7-Up. There was another band today, and it was this morning that they did this. they had their concert this morning the only turn concert and there was another band who called themselves Airbus 380 who were from year two I don't know why they called that but it was amusing and they Daisy and her band played they played a version of Running Up That Hill and they're all they're all year three so they're eight five of them six of them playing together guitars, pianos, bass, drums and they absolutely smashed it and the sheer joy of watching her sit there and lay this drum beat down is unsurpassed pleasure.

1:07:19Great. Yeah. And a moment of sadness? Well, I think probably the time I was... I mean, we talked about it earlier. The time I was probably most miserable in my life was when I went to boarding school. I remember the first couple of weeks there feeling completely at odds with the whole thing. I had no resources for dealing with it. I had sort of no idea what I was even dealing with. and um i mean maybe boarding school has changed but but you know in the late 70s it it it was a bare pit of a pecking order the pecking order changing relentlessly updating itself that that we were all different boys of different ages in that house because it was a it was a it was a small boarding house so we're all mixed up jumbled up year wise and it was a very it was a very it was a a hard hard environment and i remember the probably the happiest time i had in that boarding house when I had flu for a week and I read Lord of the Rings.

1:08:16General Patton is it who said I'm going to ask you for a quotation now. Yes. Military quotation your favourite one. Am I right is it General Patton who said have a plan execute it violently do it today. Yes that that's Patton all right yeah. Good. Give me your favourite. Well his other one is really really good which is he said it's not your job to die for your country it's your job to make that other son of a bitch die for his country. I don't know why we're laughing. It's dreadful, isn't it? But what I quite like about that is it's very honest. He's not gilding any lilies there. Yes, Patton's rhetorical style is very bracing and of its time, but very interesting because he knew exactly what he was doing and you had to push the buttons.

1:09:06What have you learnt during your life?

1:09:11I think the main thing I've learned during my life is that you've just got to keep going. KBO is the thing I've really learned. Keep buggering on. Yeah. Well done. Well, thank you for buggering by. You're brilliant. My pleasure. Al Murray, you're a joy. Thank you. Thank you.

1:09:34My thanks there to Al Murray. If you want to go to his festival, it's at the Black Pit Brewery, the We Have Ways Festival this very weekend. If you want to see him on tour, well, you just look up Al Murray and the pub landlord and it'll tell you all the dates that he is doing. I am going to see him because I think he's very funny. He's also very, very interesting, isn't he? Anyway, that is Al Murray. Our thanks to him. Who will our guests be next week? Who knows? Stay with us. And actually, if you want to join us over the weekend, you can because we do Sunday episodes for people who belong to the Rosebud family.

1:10:08And if you want to become a family member, All you have to do is go to patreon.com forward slash rosebud, B-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash rosebud, and it's about a five for a month plus VAT, and it's ad-free, and when you meet me and Harriet, who is my friend and producer of Rosebud, we, well, we do all sorts of things on a Sunday afternoon with a different kind of even more intimate episode. In fact, the other day, on one of our Tuesday More Rosebud episodes, we replayed a Rosebud family episode, one of the ones that's normally just there for the family on a Sunday. But we wanted to share it to give people a taste of what happens on a Sunday.

1:10:46And it was all about dreams and nightmares. And both Harriet and I were in quite confessional mood. And anyway, it was an episode that intrigued people, including someone who's written to us, Deborah Jane Johnson. And this is what she writes. Dear Giles and Harriet, I very much enjoyed the dreams chat and thought I'd tell you about a couple of mine. I had a neurotic, definitely that Harriet, not romantic dream, years ago which featured a night of passion with a colleague of my husband's. At the time, we were living at a boarding school where my husband taught. The man in my dream was the maths teacher.

1:11:30I never thought of him in any other way than as an acquaintance. The day after the dream, I bumped into him and could not make eye contact. I felt embarrassed, despite the fact he had no idea of our lovemaking. I have a recurring dream that I finally realised happens when my life is too busy, and I'm trying to keep too many plates in the air. I'm at home, and I have cats who live upstairs in the attic, and I forget to feed them, sometimes for days. I'm an animal lover, so this dream is distressing. My best dreams are when my sister appears. She died at the age of 46, 20 years ago I miss her every single day But when I dream about her, it reaffirms my belief that she's always close by That's lovely I live in southwest France and couldn't get to Edinburgh for your show, unfortunately I absolutely love the podcast, Never Stop Love, Deborah Well, I hope we do never stop And I hope the show we did in Edinburgh, or version of it, may travel so you may get a chance to see it elsewhere.

1:12:39Who knows? But I love the range of your dreams. The erotic dream with your husband's colleague. Whoa, wow, wow, wow. And then the anxiety dream with the starving cats in the attic. And then that lovely, your best dream, the reassuring dream when your lovely lost sister comes back and is with you. And you think, well, she's always close by. And that's good. Aren't dreams fascinating? Anyway, thank you very much Deborah for being in touch. That's Deborah Jane Johnston. If you would like to be in touch with us, it's simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Drop us a line. Thank you again for your company.

1:13:21We hope we never stop. There's so many people in the world with interesting stories, and we want to share them with you. My thanks again to Al Murray. My thanks to my producer, Harriet Jane. My thanks to Alec Cadell, who edits these and puts them up on YouTube for us because you can see them as well as hear them nowadays if you'd like to. And we are grateful when you leave a comment, particularly a positive one, because that's reassuring, but also it's helpful because it helps spread the word and grow the family. As I say, if you want to actually join the intimate family, the inner circle, you can do that by going to patreon.com forward slash rosebud.

1:13:59But we're here anyway, every Tuesday, every Friday. Next Tuesday, it'll be me and Harriet next Friday I'll be here with a very very special guest next Friday is really one you will not want to miss that's me Charles Brandreth this is Rosebud cue the music

1:14:34Thank you.

1:15:05Rosebud is a Plain Jane production produced by Harriet Jane hosted by me, Giles Brandreth with music by Phil Leppard and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane Room service Have you heard that McDonald's spicy chicken McNuggets made with spicy tempura and a blend of aged cayenne are back? Remember to grab a few extra napkins For a limited time, I participate in McDonald's.

1:16:02my buddy Hayden through his first time reading Matt Deniman's smash hit, Dungeon Crawler Carl. So if you are a first-time Dungeon Crawler Carl reader, or you've already finished it and want to see Hayden struggle to guess what's next, then you'll be right at home. Episode 1, covering spoilers for chapters 1 through 11, goes live on Wednesday, September 9th. We hope to see you there. Bye!

1:16:32Thank you.