'I'm Ready To Forgive My Mum' Davina McCall On Chaotic Childhood, Addiction & Finding Love Again

42:52And as Hannah, my wonderful wife teaches me, she's a therapist. So she basically talks about that concept of scripts that, you know, every one of us creates a script of how life should be like. And that script is informed by so many little things that are probably not even true, but you've seen them in a certain way at a young age that made them look bigger than they really are. And you never revisited them. And now somehow when I look at people like your mom, I go like, man, I love you. Right? Because in a very interesting way, you just were true to yourself. Yeah. And isn't that a gift to be able to say, you know what, I'm a little turned on by beautiful men and I am wealthy.

43:43And my health in a way is depriving me of a certain thing that's important for me. And basically put all of that together and your mom becomes the person that she is. if any of us had the same conditions they would behave exactly the same and yet because we don't have the same conditions we think of them as oh what are they doing with their lives they're doing exactly what they should do based on the conditioning and the scripts they wrote and their biology and their circumstance and their country and their upbringing and their sexuality and their hormones and their everything so interesting I mean what's funny is that everything that you say I completely knew even before last year I kind of understood that other people would feel like that.

44:31What's so interesting I think as a child of somebody like that that I remember as a little girl I would constantly just call other people's parents mummy. I'd go to people's mums and I'd think I'd like you. You to be my mum. Yeah. It was a bit sad when I look back at it. And I think I was just calling everybody's mum, mummy, hoping that they might want to kind of do some mummy shit with me. Like, it was quite a confusing time, my childhood, I think, trying to love, love my mother for that kind of mad person, but at the same time, needing something and knowing that she couldn't fulfill it. and that's why I had a very close relationship with my sister because your sister is Caroline so she she was my mom's first child okay from another father yeah born when when my mom was 16 so she got pregnant at 15 and they were very strict Catholics and they made my mom marry Roland and then they got divorced quite quickly you can imagine yeah I mean madness my mum Caroline went to live with her parents in Paris and then my mum met my dad and moved to the UK and then I went to live with my grandparents my dad's parents in the UK but me and my sister kind of came together and I used to go over to Paris you know every holiday and my sister would fulfill the kind of motherly role so I slept in my sister's bed she had a double bed and we had a flat in there was a flat in Paris and I would sleep with her and she'd literally she was six years older than me but she used to kind of stroke my forehead to help me get to sleep and stuff because our mum would be crazy and then we'd get into bed and I'd be like oh god give me cuddle like she'd stroke my forehead just to get to sleep like a mum would she's she was amazing my sister she was a very solid influence on my life and I'm very lucky to have had her what I think is interesting about children and parents is how many kids have quite a dysfunctional relationship with their parents with their parents i'd probably say how many don't is the question it's almost the funny bit is that you're you're told that you can only drive a car when you have a driver's license but you can sort of raise a kid yeah without kid raising license you know most of And I don't, you know, I mean, I look back at my life with my kids because if I had raised them now, holy cow.

47:04I know. It's funny, isn't it? Yeah. Different story, right? Totally. Like I can see so many things with so much clarity. Yeah. And I was like literally stumbling in the dark all the time. Right? What would you do? It's one word, really. It's all about love. You know, all of that crap that they teach you about responsibility and raising them to be tough and raising them to be this and raising them. what are you talking about? I feel like it's love and boundaries No, actually No boundaries Look, I mean, the reason why kids try to break boundaries is because they're not loved Yes, I mean, I feel my I think the two things that I did right was love I did love my kids The one thing I probably wish I'd done more was just carry my little, little baby around with me non-stop everywhere, like on me Correct, yeah and I think at the time it was quite kind of you know you got to put your baby down in this room to go to sleep and stuff I wish I hadn't done that would you believe it this is the if I any regret in my life my top regret is that when we were raising Aya we were told this thing it's like if she cries just put her down she will stop crying idiots idiots why would you ever do that right and in a very very interesting way all she needed was to feel safe yes and what we were we were making her feel more unsafe right and abandoned almost and that's the biggest regret in my entire life right you see the problem is this the problem is that if you manage to find unconditional love to your kids not conditional it's not based on what they do and allow yourself to experiment along with them right like enough attention for i think the one thing that made me to be honest is my wonderful late mom she left us a few weeks ago my relationship with my mom is so full it's quite interesting actually how are you i'm uh i'm in reflection very deep reflection um you know i've been on on my mission for a very long time now right so people heard of my work in 2017 but 10 years so 2014 when ali left our world was the time when i basically said this is it my life has changed and i'm blinded by this like and i have no regrets zero regrets right i'm blinded by what I do.

49:35I see no reason for my life other than this. And what I'm doing is working. It's quite interesting. But I have to wonder if I could have spent more time with her. I have to wonder if, not how much she would have enjoyed spending more time with me, but how much I would have, how much I deserve to have spent more time with her. and I'm a freaking machine people don't realize that because I'm really chill I'm very very calm and chill all the time but I do 12 hour days on average and I don't consider any of it work at all so there is almost no reason why I wouldn't give me three hours to write okay that's not work that's Like, thank you so much for the cuddle, okay?

50:31But I have to say, in reflection, I'm starting to wonder exactly how many hours should have gone in other things, right? But why was I saying that about my mom? My mom, I'm not a typical child. You know, I'm a bit on the spectrum and highly, you know, when you're a little bit there, you always sort of like master a very clear skill. and you really start to almost become obsessive about it. And my skill is making things. I like to make things. Oh, do you? Oh, my God, I make so many things. You have no idea. Like what, out of what? Everything. Like I'm a Jesus-quality carpenter. Can I say something?

51:13This is so funny. My partner, Michael, is exactly the same. Yeah, it's... He makes things. Makes things. All the time. Yeah. He made a kitchen. Exactly. He made a set of taps. Yeah. with a welding thing that he learned on youtube he's just made a coffee table outside tiled it yeah and you know and do you find that therapeutic i cannot survive without it that's exactly i was just about to tell you and you know what's crazy is that if you really want to kill us stop us making things yeah and i it's just ended i mean a book is a thing so i'm making a book or you know i I used to play music, but I also needed to compose music.

51:51I used to, with carpentry, like 90 % of the things I make, I don't need, but I need to make them. You know what I mean? And I think the thing that my mom really, really changed my life with is she just allowed me to constantly experiment. So I would go like, and I remember vividly, I said, I want to play the keyboards. And so they got me this piano-like thing. and three weeks and I said, no, it's not for me. I want to play the guitar on the same day, okay? And two days later, I had a guitar, right? And I became really good at it. But that's idea of they would never go like, no, you shouldn't have.

52:32And they never told me what to do, right? I want to learn carpentry in my age. The only way to do that was books. So on their next trip somewhere in the world, they would come back with like a box of books and basically give me all the tools and say, go ahead, cut your fingers, hurt yourself. And that was it. So when it comes to kids, if you ask me, I think that's the role of a parent. Do you have regrets, though, about the time that you didn't spend with your mom? Is that something that's torturing you? This is my podcast. I'm just interested because... I know, for sure. I think when people go, I always think to myself, am I doing something that I will be proud of if this person was to leave?

53:16When my mum died, I knew she was dying and we were estranged. And I could possibly go to South Africa, which is where she lived, on my own and go and say goodbye. And my kids were little and I was working on Big Brother. and I thought that that would be four, five days without my children. And then I've got three days work. So it'd be quite a long time not seeing my kids. And I made the decision not to go. But I kept thinking to myself, if she dies, is this a decision that I'm going to be able to live with when she goes? And I thought, yes, it is. So you see, I think regret is the most stupid emotion on the planet because if i take you back to the moment you're regretting and i give you the same set of information with the same set of conditioning with the same brain capacity that you have you'll make the exact same decision right the decisions appear to be stupid in retrospect when you've developed for a few years after and you've you're given a different set of information right so do i regret that i didn't spend the time with my mom no if i'm if you give me now the same set of information and the growth of my mission and the growth of my portfolio of books and so on and so forth i would have probably made the same exact decision again you know the decision is different now because she's left okay but what good is regret i think i mean i don't i don't have any regrets around that for sure not none whatsoever i mean but the the emotion that needs to become your focus is sort of an awareness that gets you to ask what now am i going to do that with my brother okay am i going to go through that same cycle again because i you know when i went for the funeral then my so i lost my brother and my sister-in-law in january and february and then I lost my mom in May.

55:22Were your brother and sister-in-law married? Were they? Yeah, yeah. And they both died? She died a month before him. Of separate? Totally unexpectedly. Things. Yeah, so he had cancer. And he was actually doing reasonably well, but sort of relapsed a little. And then the stress took her with a heart attack. And then a month later, he left. Wow. Right? And then my mom left in May. And yeah, it's been a year. and then I sat with my Khalid, with my brother, who's an incredible human being, like an incredible in every possible way. And I was like, so it's you and I now. Are we going to do this right?

56:03You know what I mean? That I think is much more valuable than regret, right? Because the typical me without that insight would go like, okay, you know what? Let me write a book about grief so I can help a million other people, okay? or can you allow yourself to be a tiny bit selfish and say i love this man i mean khaled specifically my second eldest brother has completely shaped my life like like caroline to you khaled was that to me he was very clear in terms of trying to give me guidance being six years older than i am around how i can become a better person right and so am i going to use that i think that's really the question.

56:47The question is, what are you going to do with your life right now, now that you know what you know? interesting year tell me about michael again just with a change of a topic yes um you little 18 year old in love you know you know what's what's interesting i think about um michael is all the work i'm doing he's we're doing together on yeah you have this podcast now our lives yeah well we've we did a podcast just for fun really because um when we we've worked together for 26 years he was my hairdresser on all the tv shows that i did oh 26 years yeah so he did my hair on big brother did he always have something for you but he didn't say it nothing no way we were married to other people we we would talk non-stop to each other in the chair you know hairdresser of course yes he did my hair four times a week we were probably working together maybe three or four times a week we knew each other very well all you know we'd share like properly share about everything to each other but nothing just kind of getting laughing but we would also recommend things to each other so ridiculous things like I don't know if you've seen well this isn't ridiculous but movies music but even things like kitchen utensils or instruments or different types of food or a show that we'd been to or and he's very well read and he's also very clever so he'd always teach me a lot and I really respected his mind you know I always thought you're such an interesting person he always would come with some amazing new theory or something he'd read so when we we sort of started going out together i said we should do a podcast and just recommend things to people so like we did together but record it and that's what we do so like last week we recommended a podcast i mean i've recommended um there's a fantastic website we were talking about parents and people having difficult parents.

58:53There's a great website called myhorridparent.com. And it's written by a psychologist who particularly has helped lots of children with their difficult parent-child relationships. But also adults come to terms with, you know, a big thing for lots of people is if they've had a particularly difficult relationship with a parent and then they have to care for them. It can be very difficult. It's like that unwillingness to want to care for someone that didn't take care of you. But then you're a good person. You feel like you should be doing it. But it's kind of social, you know, we recommended that website because I thought it was a really good social website that people should know about.

59:36Or things like, you know, our favorite kitchen gadget is the Xylas Chopper. So it's kind of basic, really, what Michael and I do. But we really enjoy it. And sometimes I don't know if you have this with Hannah. you know you don't spend an enormous amount of time with her all the time if she lives in another country but for me and Michael we're very busy he's got his business I've I've got mine and sometimes our podcast is a nice time to sit down like you and I have and just actually look at each other and go oh hi oh hi it's you so so believe it or not we're we constantly talk about that that if we just film our 9 a.m.

1:00:15coffee. The three-hour chat. Yeah. I'd love to hear that. That would be lovely. I mean, she's a psychologist? Yeah. Psychotherapist. Psychotherapist. Psychotherapist. She's a psychotherapist and you're you. I'd love to hear that chat. Oh, you have no idea. Oh, my God, the stuff we talk about. Like, it's incredible, really, on every topic. And I understand she's so smart. Yeah, she sounds amazing. No, but what we decided to do is, so finders keepers, the love and romance thing. Yes. which I keep getting tons of requests. So we decided not to write it. We decided to start a very interesting approach to it is we're going to turn it into a podcast.

1:00:52About relationships. About relationships. Don't take this as a commitment, people, please. But that's what we're thinking now. We want to create a membership, right? And in that membership, you know, we create a community that is a little more than the content. So, you know, one big struggle with everything that I do is I never want to put a paywall, you know, be in front of it. Yeah, I get that. So we thought we would have a 45-minute conversation, you know, let's say twice a month or once a month or whatever, and record that and have it as a podcast. Record it live with the members in the room.

1:01:28Have it as a podcast and then, you know, the rest of the conversation and the Q &A and so on is available for the members. and basically take it instead of a book to actually write it in front of people. Basically, we take a topic every time and cover it together. But the thing is, because it's such a beautiful love story in itself, is that it's almost as if we're talking about our own relationship in public, in front of everyone, which is so scary. How do you feel about your ex-partners, but then talking about each other in a public domain. Because you brought that point up. I think I've been, I had a lot of junk in my life, to be honest, right?

1:02:14So there were people that came into my life that were not a good fit for me at all, and also not nice people. But these were very few, okay? In reality, I think all of us, I've been blessed with amazing, incredible, many are many are still my friends right and we were just not a good fit yeah that's and that's absolutely okay right without mentioning names but i mean i'm very very close to some of my exes okay and this is this is basically a result of a level of awareness and maturity that people come into your life in different capacities and somehow you end up like okay maybe there is a romantic excited to this as well.

1:03:01And sometimes it doesn't work, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And I think it's also important to say, yes, I had really bad mistakes in my life, but there were not so many. And it's okay to have been with someone that I believe is not a good person. Okay. The trick is this. The trick is, what is this one? Yes. Right. Can I celebrate this one fully can i actually really understand that even though it appears to be massive luck to find someone that's such a good fit that it that it's actually it also is i think it's really beneficial for people to understand that hannah and i are working on our relationship all the time yeah it's always about that conversation and always i think when when you can feel that it's worth really working on and you're both prepared to make that sort of commitment then actually it doesn't really feel like work you know you kind of making an effort with each other or saying okay well let's try and do something together you know one night a week or go and do something or yeah um it doesn't it doesn't feel like work I think I suppose the problem for me is that if I talk about Michael what ends up happening is our relationship becomes public property quite quickly so the papers pick up on it somebody else picks up on it then our kids read about it and then it suddenly feels a bit tainted in a way by being sensationalized or even worse trivialized and oh well she says he likes this for breakfast or oh they do this for every and I think to myself I don't want it to be that I kind of want there's a part of it I want to keep to myself And I don't really want kind of our long term ex-partners to have to endure me banging on about my new kind of found joy.

1:05:00Do you know what I mean? I think that's very thoughtful. I think it's also very in tune with how weird the world we live in is. For me, I think it's because of a brain defect. My life is completely public. Like totally. like i i if you ask me about anything that happened in my day-to-day i have no ability to say anything but the truth well i'm quite bad yeah i mean this this relationship is something that i've ring-fenced yeah but i've literally everything vomited everything exactly like you spoke about your your your drug years and you're you know like you're like and and and i and i did do that a bit like you i think and i can see this in you i think we're quite similar we are in many ways in that something happens to you, you find a pathway through it, you want to share that because I want to help everybody that's going through something similar and I am so with you on that.

1:05:56And I've done that with drugs. I've tried to do that a little bit with sharing my experience with my mother and that's why I was excited to talk to you about this kind of new development that I've had of beginning to let her accept her into my heart in a very honest and open way. And I hope that other people that might have this kind of really difficult relationship with the parent might, if they can't really find that peace with the parent, that maybe they might see that there might be a path to it at some point in the future. And definitely around the menopause and definitely around midlife.

1:06:32I mean, going from 40 to 50 was the beginning. You're 50? 56, come on. You're 56. Come on. No, seriously. Stop it, Mo. No, I'm not flirting with you. You're not 56. I am 56. Holy shit. What are you doing, woman? Just tell me. Tell me. I'll pay. Yes. Tell me what that pill is. I'll tell you what it is. I think that pill's exercise. Oh, come on. That's it. And I am. Don't continue. I am. I'm happy. Happy. that Bill is happy yeah and it's been quite interesting going through the journey of my granny used to call it the change transitioning from a childbearing woman to uh going through this big change two to eight years of changing your whole life your whole being your body changes your mind changes you almost feel out of control of everything and then you get through to the other side if you can grow with it if you have the right support if you get the right education if you can learn about your body if you can find a community I've tried to help with all of those things to help women get through to the other side because it's really nice when you get here and I think that not enough women you know when you're in it it's like it's hard and I've constantly been trying to change the way that society perceives women in midlife you know that we are slightly irrelevant or we're out of touch or and the older I get the more outlandish clothes I want to wear I really like taking the tube in an outfit that people will look at me and just go what is she wearing like i you take the tube like i do oh yeah i love it yeah yeah do you know what i get mo it's quite funny i don't know when people recognize you do they just kind of nod at you like you're right you're all right yeah um i get that from women so sometimes i'll be sat opposite a woman and say she is 40 plus she'll just look at me and just go like thanks Like you.

1:08:54Like. Yeah. Thanks. I like you. I'm like that, winking. I've got you. So it's like being part of the furniture. When I was presenting Big Brother, I couldn't take the train. I found it overwhelming. I thought that everybody would try and talk to me. Interestingly, since I've started taking the tube all the time again, since I started dating Michael, and I was really nervous about taking the tube. And he said, you'll be absolutely fine. He said, come on, we're going to go and get on the tube now. I got on the tube and I got off. And it was as if I'd never been on the tube before. I got off. I was so excited.

1:09:34I was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing ever. I got there so fast. It was really quick. It was so efficient. This is amazing. And it reminds you of the reality of what it is to be human. Yeah. I love that. But also, I've had some of the greatest social interactions of my life on the train. Yeah. Hannah and I were on the train a few weeks back and I almost never have her next to me without touching her. So, yeah, I, yeah, it's love languages. My love languages. Have you ever done love languages test? No, but Mo, no, Mo, you're going to love this. I love I love this. But you know the love languages.

1:10:14I do. I do. OK, so there's a love language test that you can take online. I know it's free. What are yours? Well, guess what's my primary love language? uh somewhere between words of affirmation and touch so very nearly touch is number one number two is acts of service no yeah i thought that was so you give acts of service and yes if if somebody was to like unload the dishwasher for me i would be really grateful like somebody that does something to for the house or to help or my uncle and auntie were over for the weekend and my auntie said right what can I do and I was like wow thanks so much I love you yeah it means something to me quality time gifts I score zero on yeah I don't care about and Michael's is quality time first so what was really helpful when I knew Michael's was quality time was if we FaceTime each other i don't walk around the house you know i'm just gonna go and put this over here i sit down yeah i go okay hello yeah eyeballs yeah that definitely definitely very high on hannah so so when when you know when we have our morning coffee i have all of those plants and fish tanks and i love my little hobbies and and i'm like you know i get up and then try to feed the fish i can pay a lot of attention to hannah if i'm feeding the fish it's like i'm just dropping a little bit of food pellets in the tank and that would really get to her it's like don't like if we're together just eyes here yeah yeah so if if you know like i love i get reassured if i get you know yeah i'm here yeah yeah yeah i mean so so that time we were in the in the tube and and and like i'm always touching hannah so i'm it's always you know sort of it looks very romantic almost all the time and she's a gorgeous woman horrible taste in men uh but but but but the but but the thing is that in front of us there were those three guys okay and they're like constantly looking at us at us and it just feels so uncomfortable yeah and then we get off the tube and we're you know on the platform and they get off the tube with us and then one of them says i'm so sorry to interrupt you but i love your work so much oh wow and you know and and it was so humbling because through the entire like four stations we were hopping basically i'm like why are they looking at us yeah like can you please give us my some privacy yes and and no i i think it's but we misjudge people so much yeah I remember once there was a guy sitting opposite me and he had a hoodie on and it was really far forward so you really couldn't see much of his face at all and he had headphones in and he was sitting forward in the seat so his head was kind of almost on my lap you know he was kind of really forward and I thought to myself this guy wants to look frightening menacing but actually I bet he's a complete softy and he looks up and he looks at me and he goes oh he pulls his hoodie off and he goes Davina and I thought oh my god this is hilarious he came and sat next to me I said I love you and I said well I love you too then he gets his phone out he starts filming it and he goes I'm gonna post this on Twitter and I said yeah you do that and he said are you gonna make dinner for me and I said no I need to know you better before I'll make you dinner but when I know you better I'll make you dinner and he went okay well that's a deal and we had this conversation for like three stops and then I said follow me I'll follow you so I followed him we messaged each other quite a bit like I go you're right how's it going and he was like yeah yeah when are you gonna cook me dinner I said no no no and I looked at his Instagram and everything I saw he did a bit of music and he you know he's like a young kid 20 23 24 and then eventually I I said, right, I'm going to make you dinner.

1:14:21No way. Yeah, I said, I'm going to make you dinner. And then COVID happened. We all got locked down. And I never really spoke to him again. He kind of just disappeared. But I thought, wouldn't that be funny? Wouldn't it be nice for a kid if you said to them, like, okay, come over. I'm going to make you dinner. And you could kind of, I don't know, like, I liked him. I thought he was ballsy. I thought, like, he had a great energy. I thought he was really funny. This is the problem. The problem is, why do we isolate? I mean, I don't. I speak to everyone. Like, you know, but people somehow, and even some of the people that advise me go like, why are you responding to everyone?

1:14:57Because I'm so freaking lucky to have so much. I feel so. Yeah. But I think we're extroverts. I'm not an extrovert. I'm the opposite of extroverts. You must be an extrovert. You talk to everybody. I do, but that's because I think humans are a miracle. But you could call me curious or maybe an empath or something. Impath. but but uh if you i'm an extreme extrovert like you get your energy from others yes i love it oh my god they drain the hell out of me i'm like feed me feed me oh seriously connection yeah yeah i love it it's written all over you no i know i if you if you allow me i'd go to a deserted island with a um you know like a few carpentry equipment and you'll never hear of me again so how are you in lockdown then good oh my god best best time of my life michael was the same he loved it yeah i mean it was the death of me i hated it people blame me for this but you know i have a new year's i don't call it resolution i have a new year's intention every year and you know what what my 2020 was yeah silence and space and then the universe was like okay we'll give you that i swear and i'm i'm not i'm not don't blame me it's like you know if i if i if i it's quite weird isn't it silence and space i got the best two meters yeah totally totally totally wow yeah yeah it is what was your intention for this year uh this year was a joy you see this is interesting because in my stages of trying to empower my feminine side i always wanted to have flow i had flow as part of my of my of my intentions for the last three years but this year i i for the first time decided that I am now in total flow, but I don't enjoy it that much.

1:16:44Do you mean like energy? No, I mean, I let life take me anywhere. Oh, okay, yeah. Right? So you see, the masculine side of me would over-calculate everything. Leads me to a specific point, right? The feminine side is like so chill. And does Hannah have a masculine energy to her at all? She has both, yeah, very clearly. Yeah, it's interesting. Michael also has a feminine energy to him In that he understands women and is with women a lot Ah, that's true because of his work So he has an amazing, powerful feminine, brilliant feminine energy to him And I've got this kind of quite funny masculine energy about me Which I've always had And it's interesting how that but but you see this is i think this is i think the most the biggest thing that most people don't understand we all have both but it's whether you're prepared to accept it or it's it's it's whether you're you empower it or not yes right so so so the question for most of us is so most people will say if you're a feminine woman look for a masculine man and if you're a masculine man right because there are certain parts of my masculinity that if hannah steps on i would not be pleased right but there are also certain parts of my femininity that i want to express very openly and it's almost it's not as as clear as there is f and m and you know if you're a few no there is almost it's almost like a gear yes right it has to fit the entire configuration which makes it very difficult to find someone that matches you right unless you start first of all you have to become aware of you and then you have to be a little flexible for the gears to literally click together if you want yeah it is um it's hard relationships this one isn't so far yeah how long have you been together uh now uh eight months yeah but you see this is the thing the thing is again I'm I'm so clear sometimes when it came to relationships in the last few years before Hannah I think the last time I was confused was anyway it doesn't matter so that we don't pinpoint to a certain person but I'd clearly say 2023 and a big chunk of 2022 as well I was much more averse to getting in a relationship than I was desiring.

1:19:30So I was really, really protective of myself. And basically my intentions when I went on a date were to say no. So I would go to find the reasons to say no, not find the reasons to say yes, which is quite interesting because I think one of the reasons why most of us make mistakes is if you're in the rush of that romantic bit at the beginning you tend to look at everything that's right and you forget to look for what could go wrong and i think by the time i met hannah for the first time we met on the podcast you know that right so we were we recorded an hour and a half about love and romance we were yeah we were doing lethal lethal like and and they you know how can you expect me had you fallen in love with her by the end percent oh my god how brilliant i asked her out i asked her out at the end of the podcast oh my god i love that yeah i just couldn't because we were basically talking about our experience of love and romance but also our work like our real deep analysis of the topic and like every time i swear to you this is the truth around 40 minutes in i can't pinpoint the exact moment in the podcast but i found my brain clearly in my head saying oh god please make her mine i don't know exactly what you said but i can vividly remember remember that moment where i'm no longer listening to what she's saying and i'm just saying oh god please make her make her mine okay and of course once you say that my brain goes like okay i'll make sure that that's how this happens right so so i'm gonna hunt that that one down basically and yeah it's quite uh it's quite interesting because I knew exactly what I didn't want in a woman.

1:21:13I knew exactly what I wanted in a woman. I knew exactly what my weaknesses were. I knew exactly what the assets I bring were. And so when she was presented to me, I was like, yep. Take, take. 99 % match. Yeah. Okay. And it wasn't, I mean, she's a gorgeous woman. So you can be infatuated, but it wasn't that at all it was like tick tick tick tick tick okay and i have very high demands by the way that doesn't make anyone that i dated before you know not an amazing woman it's just that i have very high demands and tick tick tick tick tick so i basically on on the first date which i messed really badly oh my god how oh no that's a story for another day but i messed the first date I messed it up so badly and what were you like when you left were you like god no no I was I actually didn't even notice that I was messing it very badly did she tell you she tell yeah yeah yeah it's the it's the thing that she holds against me for the rest of my life I really love her already I love her she told you she did because she went to a friend of hers okay yeah and and said oh my god he's a freak and her friend said how and she you know hannah had a picture of me based on my work okay that sort of almost didn't include the fact that i'm a man and that she's very attractive yes and you know that uh i was completely nervous for the first time in my life okay and that friend said at the end of that long conversation i shall owe them my life forever that a friend at the end of the conversation said but you're still sound different like give him another chance okay so so that friend saved us basically because she said well the way he behaved is not what you expected him how you expected him to behave but give him another chance and i aced the second did you i aced yeah yeah yeah well done yeah i was i was i slept well i was ready i was fully present and i wasn't trying to push her away because my traumas of previous dates yes were basically saying i am better off alone right than letting someone in so anyway hannah don't listen to this one please because she's going to uh i don't know if i shared too much this was your podcast well done you're you're doing really well as a podcaster i'm really pleased with being interviewed for the first time on this podcast um any other questions you want to ask me before i'm really just enjoying myself i'm having such a nice time it really is a lovely time isn't this what it's all about yeah yeah any major new projects that you want to tell me that you're working on well i happen to have a podcast coming out myself uh towards the end of the year okay under flight studio you know i know with steven um yeah yeah yeah oh look at you look at you blow up and i'm really excited about it because we are going to be talking about the best way to flourish in midlife so how to go from wherever you consider midlife to be this happens at different times for various people but it's kind of where you you get to a point where you think okay i'm in a different act now and what do i need to do to maximize my happiness my health my potential but there are loads of things that I'm finding that I want to tidy up before I die and and these might take decades to sort but coming to terms with my mum is a really good project that I'm really enjoying you know thoughts on as I was saying earlier spirituality on forgiveness on guilt on you know lots of these things that hinder us later and like you were saying regrets are ridiculous I loved what you said about that so yeah I mean you know I always think you should do the podcast that you you want to listen to correct yeah yeah the stuff that you're thinking through so I'm just gonna kind of just enjoy making it and if anybody else enjoys it that will be absolutely amazing it's a no-brainer that you that you actually should be a podcast host i mean i i'd often thought about doing one on the menopause but i think it's too restrictive and i really don't want to i don't want to exclude men yeah because men also have challenges during midlife it is a challenging time especially for men we know that men more men commit suicide in in midlife than any other i think that there is a certain kind of set of kind of goals that men feel that they should have achieved by their mid 40s 50s and if they haven't then it's a very very difficult time from and if they have it's also a very difficult time so why because the my midlife crisis was basically when i've achieved absolutely everything everything and then i looked at it and said was that what it was about right because you you set out with your goals in life at a very young age and by the time you reach them you're a very different person and you suddenly go like oh shit these were the wrong goals totally wrong goals did you set yourself new ones listen look at me now i mean most people actually become so stubborn you know how how you would buy an item and it doesn't please you so you buy another one thinking that you bought the wrong one, but buying is going to please you eventually, right?

1:27:06Similarly, with tasks and targets we give to ourselves in our life, we just simply say, ah, okay, so I wasted the last 25 years on this. It didn't work. Maybe I can do it differently and it will work. And so you keep repeating the same thing. I didn't go through that at all. I remember vividly, of course, also a few years after that, Ali left and he completely settled me into the realization of like holy shit these were the wrong targets right uh but but i before ali left i started to i think when ali was 15 so that must be six years before he left i suddenly completely understood what i was doing wrong uh you know i was i was just dedicating my life to the wrong objectives and you you achieve them and that's even worse because suddenly you were like holy shit i remember when i um when i when i was young and i wanted to become famous because i was desperate to try and get my mother to say to me i'm so proud and i thought um the thing that would make her proud i i thought because she was so flamboyant that she would think it was great if i was famous and i remember i i thought i got onto mtv and then i thought i need to have my own show and then i got my own show and that was my absolute goal and i must have been maybe 25 26 when I got there and I called my mum and she said oh you you always pull these funny faces and I was like yeah that sounds like stabbed in the heart I put down the phone and I cried and I thought what are you doing why do you keep trying trying it's not gonna happen it's the wrong objective let it let it go and i literally felt that the the weight of that pressure on myself leave me but then i was like what do i do now is so driven by that objective yeah exactly i was lost without it yeah exactly and then i realized that i i'd made this career for myself but i actually really enjoyed it and to let myself really enjoy that's the right objective throw myself in it yeah and then um always as well there was an underlying um i had a fear of not having money so money was an incentive for me and actually i would say in the last maybe five years maybe maybe a bit longer six or seven years i have realized that i would be just as happy i just need enough money i don't need a lot of money exactly and i always thought that i needed money trimmings i've got no interest yeah in that anymore and that's a really nice place to get to because trying to make money is a desperate horrible hamster wheel that you get into yeah and you're not concentrating on the things that matter in life on family on love or even relaxing you're not enjoying the moment yeah um so to take the my foot off that wheel and feel safe without thinking i'm going to make millions and millions of pounds i'm going to retire with like tons of money i don't need that anymore yeah and yeah it's nice yeah but i've i've gone you know i've had to go on a massive journey to get here but that's what's that's what's so nice about getting older is that you know mother nature gives you wrinkles or or like extra skin on your and you know saggy arms but it also settles your mind for anybody that's been slightly I've never been tortured I mustn't say that but for someone who's I was really insecure when I was younger I bumped into somebody at the theater the other day I hadn't seen for 35 years and I looked at them and they said oh it's lovely to see you my god you know I haven't seen you for so long and he said wow you were quite mad and I was like yes I was and I thought back to little me I wasn't that little I was probably in my early 20s and I really wanted to go back and give myself a cuddle I said you know the person that you knew then it's still me but I'm much happier I'm in a much happier place and it's almost like you've got to get to know me all over again because so much has changed and if I could talk to like a young person now who's having struggling a bit whenever I meet any teenagers or anybody in their late 20s I always want to go just one foot in front of the other you're going to be fine it will be okay I think when you're in it you think I'm never going to feel better my life is always going to be like this it's always going to be turmoil but you will get there but it doesn't come free it doesn't come to everyone as well you're only going to be fine if you're always willing to reflect and if you're stuck in victim mode that's never gonna happen yeah it's it's if you're always if you're willing to reflect okay and and review and you don't have the ego of like i'm gonna stick to whatever i chose and try to prove myself right you're always going to be fine.

1:32:27As long as you're not trying to prove yourself right but you're trying to find what's right for you it's always going to be fine. And I think what happens for most of us is that we make a choice like going to university and deciding to be in a specific discipline and then spending the rest of your life trying to be in that discipline. Maybe it was the wrong discipline and it's not going to be right. well this is one of one of the big lessons i've learned i think in life is that um especially with young kids so i've got i've got three kids and i tell all of them it doesn't matter what you do yeah start something and then revise and something else will uh will present itself to you and then it's up to you whether you choose to take that path or not but things will always you just got to start give it everything you've got but don't fret about what is the thing i should do just start something and it will arrive you know what happened today no i actually have no idea if people will enjoy this podcast or not because i have no idea what we spoke about no me either but i made a wonderful friend yes well i felt i felt like that too yeah okay guys look if you if you're not if you didn't well we welcomed you to our introduction so our chat yeah so now Now you've attended the journey to finding my wife, Hannah, which was podcast number 274 or something.

1:33:55And now my podcast with Davina is my new friend. Honestly, I really enjoy it. I have no idea how much time this was. But that was so cool. You're such a lovely human being. And you actually do radiate the energy of someone who is happy. Well, I feel like it. Yeah. and possibly the most content I think I'm in a content place yeah yeah and you're loved makes a huge difference and I love and you love I love you very much I love you you're a wonderful wonderful wonderful enormous respect as well it's so yeah and I loved that book Unstressable oh you liked that it's really good I've actually turned over pages, circled things.

1:34:47My son has it at the moment in the middle of exams. Oh, my God. Very helpful. I should write an unstressable for exams. Or for teenagers. But actually, it is quite accessible for teenagers. And lots of your highlighted bits are really helpful nuggets, you know. But I like it the way you hand over to Alice. and then Alice has got, she's got her way of talking. You've got your way of talking. I love it. I go, oh, this is an Alice bit. Okay, great. Good that you're, that we wanted it. Oh no, I loved it. And you're very different. We're opposites. Yeah, I loved it. But she truly is like family. Yeah, she's great.

1:35:27She's really smart. She's amazing. Really smart. Amazing, amazing. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was so lovely. And for all of you listening, I honestly loved this so much. I don't know what happened. I don't know if you're going to love it. I don't know if you should love every one of them. It's fine. I loved it. So I'm very, very grateful once again that you give me the opportunity to meet such amazing people. Really and honestly, it's such a joy to do this. It's all because of you, because you're watching. So as the professional podcasters would say, help me get more listeners and watchers so that viewers, so that I can get even more interesting guests.

1:36:09and so go do what people do on social media and talk about this. If you don't, that's also fine. I love you all for listening and I will see you next time.