Rosebud at Christmas - Mathew Horne

0:00It's Boxing Day! I must say that more quietly, because hopefully you found a quiet corner in the house. You're getting away from everybody else and either on your earphones, your ear pods, or just quietly in the corner of a lovely, cosy room. You're listening to Rosebud all alone. Just you. After the chaos of Christmas, the beauty of Boxing Day. and we've got a special, very interesting, very engaging, very enjoyable episode for you. This is the Boxing Day Special. This is Rosebud. Cue the music.

1:00When I was youngish, Christmas TV used to be Morecambe and Wise. Now, it's Gavin and Stacey. And, well, actually, I've had quite an interesting year meeting different people from the TV show Gavin and Stacey. We've had guests on Rosebud who've been among the stars of Gavin and Stacey. We've had Rob Brydon. We've had one of my favourite actresses, Alison Stedman. Oh, earlier this year, I met up with James Corden. I interviewed him in South Wales at Newport. And it was very interesting. It was a conference organized by a company called Optics. There were lots of people who I think were opticians.

1:40Anyway, we had a lot of fun. And here's a story he told me that I rather liked. My first memory that I can remember vividly is probably my younger sister Ruth's christening. We were a Salvation Army family, so we used to go to the Salvation Army every Sunday. My sisters being christened, so my parents were there, my elder sister Andrea was there, and I couldn't really see. So the vicar, the Salvation Army officer, said, Oh, you can't see, Joan. He said, Let's get you a chair. and he got me this chair and I stood on the chair and I looked at this congregation which was probably I don't know it was probably 22 people and it looked like a thousand and I started like goofing around and pulling faces and people were laughing and I remember turning around and looking back through my legs at everybody and getting these laughs and then the thing that really really stuck with me that I've spent a lot of time thinking about really is going back into the congregation after the christening had finished and being sat between my sister and my mum, you know, with the person's back in front of me.

2:56And I was four and I remember thinking, well, this is so boring in comparison to being up there. That was great. Up there felt amazing. and this just feels boring and really from that moment it probably became a a quest really to to be up there as much as i could what my mum would call showing off enough of james corden i know he wrote it or co-wrote it but it's called gavin and stacey and i like the guy who plays gavin matthew horn and i've seen him in work other than gavin and Stacey. Most recently, he's been appearing in a play by Samuel Beckett. He's very versatile. He's very intriguing. So I thought this Christmas, well, we'd go a little bit beneath the surface when it comes to Gavin and Stacey and give you Gavin in depth, the real Matthew Horne.

4:05Matthew Horne, born on the 6th of September 1978. Thank you for being here. The question is, what is your very first memory? My first memory is aged three. And I was stood, from what I remember, alone at the gates of my nursery, waiting for my best friend at the time just waiting for him to arrive and I've been really fascinated by this question for a long time and I always thought that my earliest memory being age three was actually quite late when I was 15 to 17 I worked in a vintage clothes shop in Nottingham where I grew up and my boss he told me he could remember seeing out of his pram and I thought that was astonishing but he insisted that he could remember that and I always felt that I've been a bit let down by my own memory that my earliest memory was from age three but it involves your best friend yes and who was your best friend and it also involves you worrying about whether they're there whether they've been and gone whether they're not going to come yeah i mean it's really interesting because what does that what does that mean to me to be waiting for this strong connection in my life but i was waiting for tom perry who grew up in the village which i grew up in was born and raised in just outside nottingham and we went to school together and comprehensive school together and university together and we live not very far from each other now.

5:59Is he still your best friend? No, I wouldn't call him my best friend now. But why was he your best friend then? What did you and he have in common? What did you share? I mean, the village in which I grew up at the time was about 2 ,000 people, so not very many people. So your friendship group was sort of everybody, really. but then you'd always have a best friend and for one reason or another it was it was tom and we went on adventures tree walking not at age three but later in life playing football and listening to music and going to gigs and it was very sort of countryside upbringing actually in many ways quite idyllic sounds quite yeah i guess it was it was you know it's a very um regular provincial village three churches three pubs you know lovely what was it called burton joyce burton joyce sounds like the name of a late victorian writer i'm reading some early burton joyce very good Very, very good.

7:02Okay, so who were your parents? So my mother, Glenys Horn, who's no longer with us. She sadly passed in 2019, which is a pretty pivotal moment in my life. She was a nursery nurse, and I was very much a mummy's boy. And I miss her dearly, really. she's a fundamental part of my existence. Can you remember what she looked like when you were young? Was she pretty? Was she tall? Yeah, she's pretty. Short. She's five foot. Oh, very short. Yeah, very short. And I look back at pictures of her now. I did a play earlier this year. I did The Tempest with Sigourney Weaver. And looking at old photographs of my mother and photographs of Sigourney Weaver, they have a very similar face very delicate small features it was quite difficult actually working with Sigourney it sounds like a total name drop actually but we don't mind she was a guest here so we feel we know Sigourney well too or Sig we think of her as Sig well she is Sig yeah yeah so you were disconcerted because she reminded you of your mother yes it was there was a little bit of that and she was a deeply compassionate woman very very maternal tell me about your coziest memory of her of you say you're a mummy's boy what what's a lovely memory that comes into your mind

8:35um do you know it's a really odd memory but back then we used to change the curtains winter curtains and summer curtains i don't really think that happens anymore no i've not heard of that as a phenomenon maybe it's a nottinghamshire tradition nottinghamshire 80s thing i think and i remember lying on my bed on a summer's afternoon having a nap and the summer curtains were up and they were lit because of the sun. They were backlit because of the sun. And I remember the pattern vividly and it was a French toile de joie. And because they're sort of little scenes, I would create little stories from those scenes in those patterns, even though they were the same pattern every summer.

9:32And it's odd because that's always been a strong, I've always had a strong affiliation with that fabric, if you like, throughout my life. It's always reminded me of that time of being at peace. And I remember that these curtains were, I think they were made by my mother. And so it was almost like she was sort of creating these visual stories for me. So yeah, it's a really interesting thing. I haven't really dug much deeper than that who was your father brian horn still going 83 next week the manager of a lace factory in nottingham nottingham as i'm sure we all know we all know this was very famous for manufacturing lace and he worked at this lace factory from i think the age of 15 or 16.

10:35How did he meet your mother? They met locally. They just met locally. I mean, my father met my mother when she was 14 and he was 19. So, yeah, I mean, I guess that would be classed as grooming now. It was different in those days. Different times, right? It was different. I mean, I don't want to cancel my father. I wouldn't do that at this stage. I'm not sure. I don't think that would be a bit much. But he didn't run off with her when she was 14, did he? No, no, he just... He liked her. Hung out with her. That's fine. Well, he loved her. He loved her. How old were they when they got married? How old was she?

11:1621. She was 21. She was 21. Oh, wow. And he was... That's fine. And so... Oh, he was very honourable. Good. Yeah, he was very honourable. Yeah, she was the only one. And they were happy? Were they noticeably happy? Did you feel that it was an easy, comfortable home to be in? Well, yes, it was. And I think towards the end of the 80s and early 90s, it became very in fashion for people to get divorced. And there was a lot of it happening. And my parents stayed together. It just seemed only right that they would stay together forever, you know, and that remains the case. And has he coped okay with her death?

11:58I mean, because I imagine she looked after him. Did she look after him? Yeah, she did. How did you know that? Well, because she's a maternal. Oh, I see. Very good. It's a good idea to treat your husband as though he's one of the children, because men are children, and it is the best way to make it work. She did care for him deeply, and just before she passed away, she was in palliative care, so I got to talk to her about the end, and she said you know your father is going to go to pieces when i go which is incredibly shocking really um to leave me with that but i think she just wanted to forearm yeah and did he or did he actually being of an older generation do his best to keep going she was wrong good he didn't go to pieces and um between us we have managed to get through it and we speak daily um as i think one should um and uh we have a really great relationship and does he live on his own yeah has he has he managed has he got a girlfriend no but he's just content he keeps going does he have passions in his life is he having hobbies enthusiasms uh gardening and notts county oh and the speed limits in the village oh he meant and mrs cooper's bins good oh he's got a very rich full life he's gonna be with us for some years yet he's a curtain twitcher well he's a i had no idea that this was going to be all about curtains it totally is it's all i think it's all wrapped up in the curtains very good was he content with his work was he a hard worker did he go to work yeah he was a both my mother and my father were incredibly conscientious workers and very loyal my father never had a day off work ill um and even after he retired he was doing gardening jobs for cash in hand in the local area because he was such a good gardener and keen gardener um so yeah he was still he was still earning money even beyond retirement but listen if hMRC want to discuss then we can i think a joint operation from both the people on to cancel him for being interested in 14 year olds and hMRC for accepting cash and hands i think actually you dissed your old man's last year's not good it's not good and we were thinking of putting this out around christmas i know this is yeah anyway what give me a memory of him you've given me this picture of your very maternal mother and how you felt enveloped both by her love and our curtains what's your childhood recollection of your father was he around did he play with you yeah he i remember very vividly having my i think it was my 13th birthday maybe maybe i was younger we had a five-a-side football match i was a goalkeeper at the time I was a goalkeeper until I was around 15 when I realized I wasn't going to be tall enough to be a professional goalkeeper.

15:38But yeah, sort of 11 or 12, I had this birthday and all my friends, we split into two teams and we played a five-a-side football match. It was probably six, seven-a-side, but anyway. And my team were losing. and I distinctly remember my father rigging the whole game so that there was added time, added time till my team had won for my birthday. So you're going to have the Football Association and also coming down on him now. The man even cheats at football. The man was a fraud. He was a good, kind father. Well done, Ian. I say he was. He's still here. He'll be listening to this. oh bless him so going back to your parents you are not the firstborn you have an older brother i do and your older brother is how much older than you he is two and a bit years older than me he's 49 what's it what's his name his name is daniel daniel and tell us about him he so he was the first one he was already there when you arrived 76 yeah um daniel is unusual i think in the sense that he has autistic spectrum disorder and severe learning difficulties which is the official term you're allowed to say now when i was a child he was uh retarded or mentally handicapped, which of course you're not really supposed to say now.

17:17But that's all that we knew and all that people knew. So it was an incredibly difficult upbringing in a lot of ways. But I didn't know any different really. And it's only as I've got older, and certainly in the last few years, um that i've started started to really explore what effect that had on me um and what effect that had on my parents especially in light of my mother's passing and it's a fascinating area to me it feels like a long long time ago now but of course he's still around and what was going to happen to him after my mother's death which was a big big thing because he does still to this day need 24 7 supervision he is verbal but his academic age is around four he can't read or write he can't cook for himself so he's incredibly limited in what he can do when you were little when was the first time you became aware that he was a he was a bit different yeah that was really that was unfortunately that was a very negative experience is that I remember as being on a family holiday in Cornwall and uh two two kids from another family in a gift shop and I was with him on my own I think my parents had let me go into this gift shop with him on my own and two other kids were pointing and laughing and I got really really enraged you know embarrassed I suppose I was and probably ashamed actually when I look back but also angry at their ignorance that was the first time I started to become aware that he was sort of anathema in the village as i said i have mentioned in burton joyce it's very small so everybody knew and knew sort of understood the deal uh understood what the situation was and was he everything to your parents yeah he was and out of necessity it was they had to provide ultimate care forever um to him uh because of his survival he would not have survived at all and they did their absolute best to parent him and me equally and do you think they succeeded or were there your times when you were jealous of him or irritated by him I've never, ever been jealous or irritated of him.

20:17Never, ever have I ever felt like that. And I couldn't, because the challenges that he faces and the condition that he's in is not his fault at all. and at the time I didn't feel in any way that I was being neglected or that there was any imbalance in the parenting with hindsight I think perhaps

20:54life was conditional to him and his needs first and foremost but at the time i didn't i didn't feel any imbalance no what has he given you did he give you things when you were a baby and you see well because there was a time in a sense when you were smaller than him yeah um and did he look after you was he a loving yeah i mean i i have photographs of him bathing me but this is before i was three yeah so these are not memories but you know it happened i i know it happened i've seen the pictures um and that's very uh because of course he his emotions are incredibly powerful whether he's anxious or angry or upset or filled with joy or compassion or care and actually still to this day if he hears a baby crying he gets very very tearful and i i don't know whether that has any anything to do with the way i was when i was a kid i don't know but he certainly has that sort of empathy and compassion for other human beings and and babies in particular does he watch television yes has he seen you on tv i mean yeah this is going out uh into the wider world with him was incredibly challenging not just because of the way people reacted to him back then but just the the the elements of his autism which would throw him into fits of anxiety and i remember times when he was just suddenly launching produce in a supermarket because something had triggered him, you know.

22:44So going out for meals, going on holiday and stuff was really, really difficult. And sometimes all he wanted to do was sit at home and watch television and VHSs and then DVDs. So a lot of family time was watching sitcoms because he loved sitcoms and he loved to laugh. So Keeping Up Appearances, One Foot in the Grave, Heidi High, The Birds of a Feather, Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours. This was very much part of my early memories, that introduction to British comedy. Before that was Laurel and Hardy. I just remember watching Laurel and Hardy with him. So my knowledge of British comedy... It's pretty intense and deep.

23:44Because of him. Does he still watch those sorts of shows? Yeah. And does he watch Gavin and Stacey? Yes. And does he recognise that it's you? He does recognise it's me. But me being on the television is not unusual. It's not an unusual thing. It just accepts it. It just accepts it, that that's what I ended up doing with my life.

24:14So what sort of a little boy were you? Other than Tom, what friendship group did you have when you were a little boy? My friendship group was quite narrow, but then I think the place where I'm from was quite narrow. I wasn't from a big city, it was a little village in the countryside and everybody, there was just kind of like two sets of friends. There was very little to do, apart from just be with each other and run around. And you went to the local primary school? Was it a village school? Yeah, yeah, Burton Joyce Primary. And happy? Primary school was a strange one in many ways because my mum was working there.

24:50Ah. Not as a teacher, but as a teaching assistant. But yeah, my memories of primary school are really centered around performing in the shows and plays that we did. And when did that begin? What age would you have been? Oh, King Herod, age five. Ah, it's the age to do it. Surprised you didn't try Lear during the same season. King Herod, age five, how fantastic. Yeah, and then the Artful Dodger. Oh, so already you're being cast in these sort of... Yeah, I was. But then age nine, there was some sort of review type, cabaret type event, and I wrote a sketch and I performed it. And I can remember getting loads and loads of laughs and thinking, oh, that feels good.

25:49And I was nine years old. Is there any heritage of this? I mean, why did you suddenly find yourself enjoying being a performer? No, there's no heritage of this in terms of genealogy. So Lauren Hardy were your role models. Kind of, yeah. I mean, the way I sort of broke into the industry professionally was in a double act, in a stand-up double act. And I don't think that's a coincidence. You get to the local comprehensive, and did you blossom there? did you do well academically did you sit at the front of the class i did all right there but it was only really when i sort of got to gcse level sort of 14 15 when i started to commit to the the drama element of school and we had a big drama room with great facilities in it and two fantastic drama teachers and were these the teachers that made your life they were really passionate about what they did Kevin Troughton and Sue Dobson they were really really passionate about what they did um and they gave me a really fantastic early training and were they the people who saved you because you say you didn't really blossom until that stage because originally when you arrived at the school you had a bad time yeah I had a I had a rough time arriving at that school It's a very strange situation that even after the fact, when I discussed this period with my mother, we couldn't really work out what had gone on, whether it was hormonal, environmental.

27:34How did it manifest itself? It was like a mini breakdown. Yes. At your 12. Yeah, I was 12. What is happening? Are you crying? Are you refusing to go to school? What's going on? Refusing to go to school, I felt a deep sense of fear and I felt really unsafe. And like I was sort of in a really scary wider world situation. Maybe it's because of the coziness and comfort of a small manageable village where everybody knows your business. And now suddenly I'm thrust into a wider world. Yeah. And how long did this last? Two years. And can you, in your head, remember how you felt? Yeah, terror. Absolute terror.

28:24I couldn't understand what was going on. And yet there were girls at this school? Yes. And I've seen photographs. You were a very pretty boy. Thank you. No, but you were exceptionally pretty. You were almost like an advertisement of a pretty English child. So, I mean, I only lost my looks recently, you know, that's why I only do podcasts now even though there's a camera but you what I'm really saying is that you might have been the sort of boy who girls let's say you're 11 or 12 or 13 girls aged 13, 14 and 15 might have been motherly towards you did you find people coming round you because you were pretty and just wondering whether anybody came round to cry and cause at you but clearly not um my mother did her best but it was really I only came out of it when I fell in love so a woman did come to the rescue that's what I was working towards and this, you're quite young when you fall in love aren't you I was 15 and this is the intense passion of your life let's face it it was wildly intense and and now what happened who you don't need the name but what happened how did it happen she is kind of the prettiest girl in the school was she older than you no she's a few she's about about four months younger and yeah we just we got together and that brought me out of it that brought me out of that time.

30:12Tell me about the moment you first encountered the prettiest girl in the school. I'm stating you're the prettiest boy. If there was a prettier one, show me the photograph. So the prettiest boy and the prettiest girl. When did you first lock eyes? Well, I'm not going to show you any photographs of schoolboys, Giles, because we're already on dodgy ground anyway. She was in my form at school. Little and dark and olive skinned brown eyes. Beautiful. And I did feel rescued, you're right, I did feel rescued by her. And it sort of felt, it was a bit like the school celebrity couple really, like those two people were meant to get together.

31:06and it was almost too passionate i mean we were like we were inseparable completely inseparable did you write notes to one another yeah many letters have you kept any of them i've kept all of them and were you pleased with the letters that you wrote yeah i just remember incredibly intense feelings

31:33of love for this girl. I really, it was, and pain actually, the pain of not being with her. A lot of these letters were written when we were on separate family holidays. Yeah, I remember counting the days till I could see her again and receiving these letters in the post. I'm sure those feelings remain with young folk today, but the process by which they're manifest, i.e. letters, will never happen again. That was lovely, too, writing them down. Did you do poetry with her? Did you send her any poems? Did you perform for her in the dramatic sense?

32:26Oh, goodness. There may have been poems, yeah. I do remember writing lots of poetry when I was a child. One thing that I think is interesting about this, and I love this part of your story, not only because I'm an old romantic, but because a lot of people don't understand what Romeo and Juliet is all about. Right. And Romeo and Juliet is partly about warfare between two rival gangs, tribes, etc. but it's also about this very intense young love because Romeo and Juliet are exactly the age that you and your girlfriend are at they're 14 15 16 um in their case of course it ends rather unhappily um I mean does does this make any sense to you what I'm saying it's quite astonishing actually because we had a song our song and that song was Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits and I remember after we'd broken up and we'd both gone off to separate universities after a few years we sort of met again and spent a bit of time together now our lives had moved on in separate directions, but I remember us playing that song and it becoming incredibly emotional about what had gone before.

33:55The intensity of that union was unforgettable. And you assumed you'd always live together? I think we assumed we'd always be together, yeah. So why did it break up? Simply because you moved, because time. time moved on and we wanted to be in different places and yeah did anybody at the school think this was too intense did any of the teachers or did your parents or her parents think get a bit anxious they're so into each other i mean actually yes um i remember uh all the teachers knew about our relationship it was quite volatile at times and everybody knew what was going on in the relationship at all times and um yeah i remember one teacher coming to me and warning me about something to do with the situation and this teacher actually got started crying herself reliving a memory from a past relationship that she was having.

35:12And I remember long walks with my drama teacher, Kevin Troughton, to discuss the relationship. It was all very, very overwrought. But not to be regretted? No. Gosh, no. It helped shape my understanding of love and romance. Tell me how it did that. Explain what you mean by that. I definitely feel like I have an understanding of what that depth of love feels like. And I feel very blessed to have experienced that so young. Because I'm not sure that everybody gets to experience that. Or that it does have its downsides. I'm glad I have experienced that depth of love for someone. And the chief downside?

36:13Is the pain of it. But it does give you, for the rest of your life and the rest of your relationships, a strong indicator of what to do and what not to do in relationships. and when you got your a-levels undistracted by this you still did reasonably well or yeah i did very well my a-levels actually but then i suppose some of my more academic friends would say that they weren't proper a-levels i did uh this performing arts a-level yeah i also did not a proper a-level but go on yeah absolutely i also did you did geography i did geography oh no for You know that probably anyway. I did geography. And then I also did English language A-level, which is linguistics A-level, which is a new, again, another new course.

37:13I adored that course. And was the plan to go to university or to go to drama school in your head? In my head to go to university. And you went to Manchester? I went to Manchester. And what's your... Give me some memories of Manchester. Give me your first dramatic memory, because that's where you begin to form your first comedy partnership. Is that a Magister? It is, but not until the third year. I started... It was a very academic course. It was a theatre studies course. I did quite a few plays there. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, I did there. I did Hamlet there, but I played Rosencrantz. I did Amadeus, Benedict Cumberbatch with Salieri.

37:55Goodness. so I became part of the troop of actors that would do the plays and then there was like a handful of people who wanted to be directors as well and they would direct the plays and then in my third year I'd become friends with Bruce McKinnon who's a six foot five Etonian that looks like the Grinch but not green and he we were we were so close our point of reference was comedy was british comedy and we were very very very close um and we still are towards the middle of our third year we decided to do a sketch show in like the local studio in the university and invite our friends and we did that and we wrote some sketches and we performed them and then all our friends came and laughed and it was great and I went to him and I said look should we do another and he said well yeah but we're sort of preaching to the converted because they're all our friends and the only way we'll know if we're any good is to go and do stand-up and so we went to a stand-up night, a comedy night in Fallowfield in Manchester.

39:15There was, that night, there were quite a few local promoters from the Manchester area, and we were approached by them after this gig, which went incredibly well, even though Bruce was terribly sick before going on through nerves. And I was nervous, but when someone's that nervous, you kind of have to step aside a bit. And let them be nervous. Let them be nervous and just get on with it. So I did that. Anyway, these promoters, we then were booked up with loads and loads of gigs. And it just went from there.

39:53Had you found another girlfriend in Manchester? Yes. There was an amazing girl who was a very, very dear friend. it wasn't like a sort of lossful passionate union like it was with the the school relationship

40:16but again actually it was it was quite an interesting one it was like we were we were friends really close friends and everybody thought that we should be together and eventually we did yeah and that was good another good one well done you're lucky in love mate yeah maybe she sadly passed away oh no while you knew her yeah um yeah she was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003

40:57and then by January 2004 she was gone very very sad we weren't strictly together at that time we had gone our separate ways for about a year but obviously the connection was still there so it was a difficult time and when eventually when did you meet your wife for the first time last week no it's not such a facetious remark as it may seem I've met my wife when I don't think I've yet met my wife after 57 years so I'm taking that on a deeper level than you intended it one can be still striving to know one's wife but when did you meet your wife in reality your current wife your present wife indeed I think I'm not saying your first wife I met my current wife.

41:55Oh. I love that joke. I'm going to start using that much for introducing her as my current wife. Yeah, my current wife. It's factually correct. Absolutely. And I just do that to keep her on her toes. What's the problem, guys? Yeah. So, your current wife. Where and when did you meet your current wife? Seven years ago. Oh, not long ago. Not long ago. I was doing a web series for a friend of mine who's a writer and actor and my wife Selina was on the she works in the art department, set design art department for film and TV and I was rather taken by her and why is this one lasting given that you are a connoisseur of this no no it's not i like you are the angle is you had this i think enviable and fascinating exciting but at times difficult childhood romance which was intense and still is alive you then had at university this friendship that developed into uh you becoming lovers

43:14and some of these things but it it actually ended before the girl died it did so you are somebody who has had very deep and different relationships but knew that they came to an end because your experience has told you that sure and you also know that relationships do come to an end life is a long process of saying goodbye your mother has died of course so why is this relationship with Selena, the one that we all hope is going to last? She, it became very clear that she was the one.

43:54She was, I met her about a year before my mother passed away. And then my mum, then I lost my mum and Selena stood by my side. throughout what was a really wretched time. Our relationship grew and grew and my love for her grew and grew. And I just knew from that experience that I wanted to be with her forever. And, you know, I joke about her being my current wife. She is my only wife and will be my only wife. How good is her English? Oh, it's perfect. yeah because she's norwegian she's norwegian yeah yeah and she has norwegian parents and she has she has a norwegian mother and an egyptian father and what is beyond the support that she gave you when your mother left what that we would understand is different this time in terms of the love ah that is her lust for love she helped open my mind at a time when it was closing off she has an incredible lust for life and a desire and a curiosity and a desire to achieve things and travel and she has many many dreams it will make a joke of it it's oh it's been my dream to do this it's been my dream to do that and and she has an incredibly infectious loss for life which kept which has kept me going in times when i feel like perhaps my life is narrowing in a really bad way do you have terror still do you have ever have bad dreams moments of fear moments of i have terrible dreams anxiety dreams um terror in my waking life has dissipated significantly in recent years um And that's to do with the journey I've been on in recent years.

46:22Have you had a therapist to help you? Have you thought about that? I've always had therapy. You say always. When did that start? Going to see someone, a talking therapy. Talking therapy I've had for over 15 years. I've always been interested and done hypnotherapy. I find it really fascinating and really helpful. And what happens there? You are hypnotized and then you make conversation? No, she takes you, he or she, whoever your hypnotist is, will take you through. You will go in and you'll say, okay, I'm anxious about this. I want to stop feeling like this. I want to start feeling like this. I want to stop doing this, you know, blah, blah, blah.

47:10and then she'll put you in a trance if you like and then take you on a journey and then hopefully that will percolate and sow seeds it's always worked for me do you still need to do it though you have selena in your life now i just i meditate all the time now all the time it's a big part of my life now so you spend time every day oh several times a day And this is breathing exercise, yes? I'm meditating now. And you're now sending us up again. But separately from that, you do meditate, to be serious. I do, yeah. And it just makes you a calmer and a better and a happier person. Yes. Yeah, and easier to be with.

47:56Yes. I mean, do you think, I mean, are you easy? I mean, I've always found you very easy. I don't believe what I read in the Daily Mail, that's all. But Selena finds you easy, and your boy, how old is he now? He's three years and four months. Oh, lovely. It's gorgeous. You won't smother him, will you? I mean, it's difficult. It's difficult. But clearly your mother got the balance right. She was loving and caring, but didn't smother you. She didn't, no. She didn't smother me. I think she did get it right. and it was

48:36it was it is a privilege to to be her son at this stage I was asked for a moment of sadness and obviously I assume the moment of sadness that comes into your head will be your mother's death yeah and were you with her? No, I wasn't with her. I was by her side for seven days while she was in palliative care. And Selena was with me too. And I just sort of... We were waiting for the time. and this was up in Nottingham and something just said to me whether it was some message from her or something that I needed to leave and it was only when I left was she going to go so we left and we came back to London and the next morning I got a call from my dad saying that she'd gone but I sort of knew that when I was leaving that that was the last time I was going to see her and I just yeah I said thank you whispered and who shared the news or did they with your brother that was a team effort really he was very aware that she was poorly

50:22because she was on oxygen and she had the things in her nose and she was also on steroids as well so she was quite and you went to see her and he's he'd he'd been with her he'd seen her deteriorating he was aware but it's difficult because it's somebody with those challenges doesn't understand the concept of death. And so

50:53explaining that he's never going to see her again is incredibly difficult. And it was a team effort. He has quite a handful of carers around him as well as my father and me. And has he coped okay? He's done brilliantly. Good. Well done him. I'm so proud of him. A moment of joy. Give us a moment, Joy. What suddenly comes into your head? Joy was my mother's middle name. Oh. And it will be the middle name of my daughter, who is due in March. Oh. She's going to be a Piscean. You win every prize in life, you know. You've been so lucky. I know that. Yeah, Joy. That's lovely. So you can have a girl. That's what we hope.

51:43Good. Oh, wonderful. So joy is the moment of joy and it's also your mother. Do you have an experience of joy, though, as well, that comes into your head?

51:58A moment of joy is last night falling asleep with my son. That's today's joy. Brilliant. Finally, your best ever Christmas moment. yeah because last christmas it must have been very nice when gavin and stacy was the top viewed show yeah i mean that was insane it was insane i mean it was ludicrous just completely wild it was it was like going back to the era of morgan wise i mean it was i mean everybody chose to watch and i don't believe that that situation or that notion will ever happen again of families of that many millions of people sitting around together and multi-generations of families sitting around and watching a television program on a television in their houses i don't think that's going to happen again unless the ingredients become the same not just the casting and the script but the world where there is warmth generosity love the possibility of happy endings even if there's anguish.

53:14It has all the elements, doesn't it, that could possibly be recreated. But maybe you're right. But I'm talking about the sort of televisual landscape, the way we watch things. Of course. No, no. It is over. But nobody thought it would happen last year. Give them what they want. That's true. Give them what they want and they come, you know. But this year, you know, they've got to make do with Gavin and Stacey and me on Michael McIntyre's The Wheel. It's true. That's your Christmas treat on telly this year. I'm just completely overwhelmed by... I mean, so much of the 80s for me as a child was watching you on breakfast television in your jumpers.

53:54And now I'm here. I know. And even though it's a podcast, it's audio, you've got one of your jumpers on. So that could have been the moment of joy. Watching breakfast television. You know, somebody was actually determined to charm the audience, or at least the host would have said I know this seems a bit funny but for me a moment of joy was the 1980s watching you Giles I was going to open with it but then when you first emailed me you said I'd love you to come and do Rosebud listen to this episode of it and it was the one with Gary Oldman and I thought well are you trying to encourage me to come and do your podcast by sending me a link to the Gary Oldman one or make me feel undeserving you actually achieved both but I did listen to it and he was very um light-hearted but it was it was quite serious as well I did want to say that my earliest memory was watching you with a reindeer jumper but i've saved it for the end it's a beautiful way to finish from i say so and you have been both light-hearted and profound the don't know about that i do think so so matthew horn thank you very much for being with us on rosebud thank you well my thanks to matthew horn there for being my boxing day guest I love Boxing Day to be honest I love Matthew Horn actually but I love Boxing Day too because I am somebody who enjoys leftovers I enjoy leftovers more than the real thing and I enjoy today because this is the one day in the year when I don't look at emails when the telephone on the whole doesn't ring when there are no obligations you can do what you like One of the things I do do is I sort out the Christmas cards.

56:03And when I was a child, we had a competition, and we divided the Christmas cards into piles. There was a secular pile of ones that were not religious cards, then a religious pile, then comedy cards, you know, ones that were amusing, then cards that featured real Christmassy themes, you know, robins and reindeer. And then we gave prizes for the best cards in each section. But what my parents couldn't stand, and even in my day it was a thing, has become even more of a thing, were what people call Christmas round robins, where people write a letter reporting on their year, telling you usually how brilliantly their children and grandchildren have done, what amazing holidays they have been on, how their career is blossoming, or if they've retired, how brilliant their, you know, handicap is at golf, or how they seem to be now the bridge captain at the local, I mean, for goodness sake, get a life, don't write to me about it.

56:56Anyway, I'm pleased to say that people do write to us here at Rosebud. They know the address. It's quite simply hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Some people write in verse. And Ruby Bull, who I know is a keen poet in her own right, has sent us from East Devon, I think, a wonderful verse that is about the curse of the annual round robin. It's called, I'm going round the robin bend. Christmas comes but once a year so Christmas cards we send and we received them from old chums and that's where it should end a simple greeting will suffice glad tidings and good cheer it's Christmas time hello goodbye farewell until next year but sadly there are some of us who feel compelled to write on an A4 sheet of white a list of their accomplishments a minutiae of their life as if we would be interested in reading of their year, such trivia and happenings we just don't want to hear, of how Jamie won a scholarship having passed all his exams and how little Sophie's learnt to write and she's only just left the pram, how they wintered in Jamaica and spent the summer down in Spain.

58:09It's now, you remember acidly, what a pain they were. And on and on it rambles about how their life is great and how successful and rewarding things have been to date. and you wonder why you're bothering to read until the end, and all the while you're thinking, are these people really those we call our friends? As you tear the paper into shreds and put it in the bin, you reflect on how this time of year always tends to bring out the worst in us. Why is that always so? Surely Christmas is a time of year which should evoke a glow of happiness and bonhomie, of prezzies round the tree, together with all the family of whom you seldom see.

58:51and therein lies the problem with this festive time of year it's the hype and the hypocrisy to which most of us adhere so round the robin bend i go when these christmas cards arrive with their bulky telltale sign of what's tucked silently inside how you'd like to tell the cinder please stop and send no more of this tedious load of rubbish which we all find such a bore brilliant ruby bull if you're alone this christmas or if you are wanting to get away from the rest of the family find a corner of the house in which to write us an email it can be in verse or if you're not in a writing frame of mind and have had too much eggnog over the festive season and a feeling oh totally replete find somewhere to lie down and listen to past episodes of rosebud there's more than 100 to choose from i recommend particularly one by roger lewis a writer who really had an anathema to some aspects of christmas and wrote a very amusing book called seasonal suicide notes because he was driven mad at christmas by exactly the round robins that ruby bull has found so infuriating so thank you for listening thank you for being with us this year i think we've probably got one more episode before the new year some more excitements and then Next year, I have to tell you, if you thought we've had some good guests this year, and we have, next year, Harriet and I are raising our game.

1:00:24And now and again, Michelle may be joining us as well. This is the Rosebud family, and you'll be able to join us in the Rosebud family from January. We're launching something called the Rosebud family. It's really, some people call it a club, a subscribers club, because it will cost you$4.99 a month. But for that, you will get ad-free listening, bonus episodes, me and Harriet wandering down memory lane. You'll also get my next murder mystery. If you enjoyed Murder at the Palace, which if you haven't heard it yet, you must. That's the murder mystery we've given you for free this Christmas, our little Christmas present.

1:01:04Next year, there'll be more murder mysteries. $4.99 a month and you simply go to patreon.com forward slash rosebud. Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash rosebud. But of course, rosebud is the gift that goes on giving. It's free twice a week. Wherever you get your podcasts, you will find us throughout 2026. We've loved having you this year. Happy Boxing Day.

1:01:38Thank you.

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