Episode 170: Amanda Ross

0:04Hello, I'm Sophie Ellis-Bexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. greetings from thursday morning it's actually a really nice morning uh i had this idea of um oh bless you to that stranger that just walked past i had this idea of filming my introduction because basically next year i'm thinking right we've got to start filming the podcast everybody's bloody doing it so we're gonna set that all up anyway i was like right maybe I'll film my intro outro and that way you know could be an introduction so yesterday I started filming and oh my god it's hard enough walking past people when you're doing a voice thing voice recording but filming yourself walking and talking just it's just too high up on the cringe cringermeter thing so yeah that's not happening I'm just talking to you like this same as normal um hope you had a really good week uh how's mine been actually really nice very steady no big shakes no big drama and the last few days the weather in london town's been pretty gray in the mornings and today it's really beautiful it's one of those nice blue sky days so i'm very much appreciating that and here we are at the last um episode of this series of the podcast can you believe how long this has been going now?

1:57Nearly six years. That's incredible. When I started the podcast, I thought, right, I'll just do 10 and see how it goes. And I have a little trick, which is that I always, every series record over 10. Sometimes it's by one or two, sometimes it's by more, but it basically means I'm committed to the next 10 because I have to finish on the end of a series, so to speak. So I've sort of, I don't know, I tricked myself into always keeping pushing forward but golly I've loved it and will and continue to love it um so today's episode uh I has to come with a trigger warning because my guest this week speaks very eloquently articulately and openly about the abuse she experienced as a child and I've known Amanda Ross for years actually longer than I thought I thought I met her I knew it was on the Richard and Judy um TV show which was in the early noughties so that was an entertainment show um in the evenings I think it was like half five on channel four I believe and I knew actually I've said channel four was it yeah I think so uh anyway so I knew we'd known each other for about 20 years but it turned out I actually met her before I even met Richard 2001 when I was promoting my first album how crazy is that that's a long time to know someone and so Amanda is the owner of a brilliant production company called Cactus TV and she's a TV producer very successful like in quite a sort of what would I say consistent and slightly stealthy way in a way because I think she becomes part of culture without you really noticing what's happening so for example as she mentions in the interview the Richard and Judy show that I was part of a couple of episodes a few episodes back in the noughties she started on that book club and that was so successful that at one point it was responsible for over a quarter of the books sold in the UK at that time because of recommendations from that book club so that's pretty astonishing isn't it I'm gonna sit on a bench while I talk to you that's nice and I've done that before and um she hosts actually her production company runs Saturday Kitchen which has been running now for nearly I think she said it's nearly 20 years is that right oh my word that's crazy so you know Richard and Judy ran for nine years she had a book show Between the Covers which has now gone to a live format for the first time um and actually while I've got you I'm going to tell you a bit more about that because it's really cool so for the first time this year they did a live tour of between the covers and it's coming back next year it's a place called penny hill park and the next one's on friday the 6th of february some really lovely people are doing it so amanda ross is actually hosting it she's gone back to our presenting roots and she's on stage with alan davies alex jones and some best-selling authors like Jojo Moyles and Abby Darifah.

5:12It's a book club, essentially, but what a lovely thing to do. I think it's incredibly cool that she's doing that. So you can sit in the room with all these lovely people, so you've got comedians, authors, presenters, and they will have people talk about their books, and you'll be able to hear the conversations and all the stories and behind the scenes. So that's really lovely, isn't it? What was that I say? That was great. Making sure I got it right for you. Friday the 6th of February at Penny Hill Park Hotel, which is in... Sorry. So, yes, the point of all this, me telling you about the things that Cactus TV and Amanda have done, is because, as I say, I've known her for a really long time, but I actually didn't know about her childhood.

5:58So I found it pretty devastating, really, because it's funny, isn't it? when people talk to you about something they've experienced as a child all you can really think of is them when they're small and what a thing to go through so yes a trigger warning for you there Amanda and husband Simon adopted two boys they have two sons they adopted them in 2010 and the boys are now nearly 17 17 I think she's in December and 19 and they are biological brothers adopted through the care system and amanda speaks so brilliantly about that process about her journey to parenthood she sounds like such a lovely mother i love the way that she's been taking her boys to restaurants since they were small i love the way that she has included them in her work and i think she's a brilliant example of a really committed parent and also on with their priorities completely in the right order so while she might have experienced some very profound instability as a child and maybe did not have the map for what parenthood looked like my word has she now found her feet and you'll i think you'll hear in her voice how when she speaks about the way she's raised her kids she she knows she's done what worked for them as a family.

7:27It's really inspiring and I did get emotional. And I will pick up the leaves while we listen. So see you on the other side.

7:41So good to see you, Amanda. How are you? I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm actually here in the spinning plates. Yeah, well, we've got so much to cover. And before we started recording, we were reminiscing about how long we've known each other yep and it's actually longer than your husband I met you before you met your husband in November 2001 and you were on the the fourth episode ever of a show that I was doing at the time that was considered to be quite risky and out there Richard and Judy on channel four we took them to channel four at five o 'clock in the five o 'clock slot and you were on show number four and wow for your first album and which is absolutely incredible and you were completely amazing that's generous I mean I remember I remember the show really well I remember doing it later on after you did it loads of times yeah we were on for nine years you did it loads of times yeah um because I my first memory of that show would have been probably the second time or maybe third time I came on and I uh so this was a live show this it was sort of like a little sitting room.

8:51I think I know where you're going. So I was on the show and I don't know if you would have been aware, but I had a really bad cold and my mum had recommended Sudafed, which I've never had again since, because it affected me so much that I took this stuff and my pupils went tiny and my heart was racing. And then while I was on the show, Richard Madeley said, I think we've got your little boy here. Should we bring him out? And I kind of went, and I turned around to see Sonny must have been about two and he came trotting over and his little corduroy brown corduroy trousers had a massive radio pack on the back he'd been mic'd oh my god with oh my god and he started taking apart the set so I was that there with this pseudo-fed induced uh racing heart watching my son taking out there was like um sticks and pebbles in a fake fireplace yes yes you're remembering this very well yeah richard madeley said something like um what do you say sticks and stones won't break my bones but names may hurt me and i remember thinking i think he's misquoted that and please can my son put down that stick he misquotes a lot he misquoted a lot a lot a lot through those nine years and it was like what's gonna come out next we never knew but that's part of richard's charm we have to also give him his due to the what he said to me on show four which i've been reminded of oh god it's down there with the maidly quotes of because he is considered the alan partridge the real life alan partridge i do love richard nine really wonderful years best best best of times with rich and judy on channel four but he did do you want to say it or shall i say it he said to me where did you get your face and i was dying dying in the wings thinking what where is he going but there is a lovely story about you on that because it was one of your first tellies and you've always been so brave and so out there and absolutely everything you've done you've just like trod your own path and this illustrates it in that um we were doing some item I can't even remember what the item is now but you had to consume something that was going to dye your tongue and your management at the time said please don't do that because you shouldn't dye your tongue and you shouldn't do that because we're going on somewhere else whatever and you were like no I'm gonna do this I'm here I'm in this I'm gonna do this right from the beginning and you did and you did dye your tongue and you stuck it out on telly and there we go but um the dye's gone now look as beautiful as beautiful now as you're a beautiful then and I think he meant where did you get that face as being how could you be so captivatingly beautiful that's how I've excused myself for that comment live over all the years well it hasn't commented me I actually even at times thought it was really funny I've always had a soft spot for Richard and Judy how can you not come no you can't you can't um and if we fast forward to now and obviously we will talk more about what you've covered but why don't we talk about because your life is so rich and busy and in fact I always knew the things you're associated with but the more I was you know researching I was thinking actually what a pioneer what a success how many things have you you know influenced and you know the nation with with what you've been programming but what have you got on at the moment that's exciting you?

12:08Well I've always tried to do books on telly and I started the Rich and Judy book club which um was pretty influential we made lots of book millionaires and at one point I was responsible my picks were responsible for 26 % of all book sales in Britain but I've tried to keep that going ever since not the Rich and Judy book club because that's now a money-making exercise in WH Smiths but since I carried on doing things with books on telly and to do that you can't make any money out of it which is totally right and totally fair because all of your recommendations should always be impartial but so my current incarnation is a show called Between the Covers and we did eight series on the BBC um but legacy telly as we're now known anything on terrestrial is considered to be dead so the future I think is live shows and a million years ago I used to be a presenter and I really enjoyed it so last year I went back on stage with um with uh Joe Brand and Stephen Mangan and Casey Ainsworth and um David Nick no that was that was last week was David Nichols and Joseph O 'Connor and we did six theatre dates and they went really really well between the covers live and I hosted them so now we're doing between the covers live events with the exclusive collection at Penny Hill Park and I did one a couple of weeks ago with Ruth Jones and Stephen Mangan again is one of my favourites most people always amazing yeah David Nichols and a new author called Florence Knapp and we've got the next one's planned for February which I'm really excited about because I've got Jojo Moyes who's incredible, Abhi Dare who wrote The Girl with the Louding Voice and I've got Alex Jones from The One Show and Alan Davies because I have to have a sexy man in there because our audience are largely women and what's so wonderful about it is it feels, between the covers live, feels really empowering as an event for women because I say come along on your own because you'll meet people through books and you do and friendships are forged during the day and people come up to me saying oh we've just met we're going to be a book club now and it's just really it's really great because I think it's really hard especially as you get older as a woman to go out and meet new people and if you're meeting someone clutching a book it's a really easy way to start conversations not about you it's about the book that's so true in fact I saw a woman at the bus stop a couple of days ago and she was literally just finishing a book I read last year that I loved and I really wanted to sort of always wait till she'd finished to go over and say wasn't it great did you say anything I didn't because I could see that she had maybe a few too many pages to go before but she was literally like the last chapter I think that would have freaked her out so he barely expects her coming up to her at a bus stop and saying what are the chances of that happening what do you think about this book I know maybe just thinking I've literally just finished can you give me five minutes because sometimes when you finish a book you want to just assimilate but I wonder if you feel this as well I I didn't really know too much about that that book world but there's a generosity with authors I think is not yeah it's not actually the same in other industries and people who love books yeah authors they actually really support each other and want to talk about books and big up other authors and getting people involved in different types of reading and I think it's got a really lovely warmth to it yeah I think it absolutely has and I think it comes from the point that to actually write something is such a hard process and it's solitary and when you're out there and ultimately everybody wants their books read and so if anybody reads them that's great but I think there are too many books published in Britain I really do because so few can punch through and so and but books are timeless they are really you can read any book at any time and it will speak to you in some different way so yeah no they are I find it much a much nicer a wealth and telly i shouldn't really no but it is a bit sort of sort of more cozy around the edge i suppose it's like you said it's the intimacy of the exchange yeah because when you if you do write something or read something it doesn't matter if you know billions of other people have read it or will read it you're just is there's a purity because it's it's just you and the page to start with and just you and the page to finish with which is very personal isn't it no it is very personal and i don't i if i've really loved a book i don't like seeing an adaptation of it or a movie or anything like that I'm a big fan of an audio book you're a purist no I really am because it's those characters live in my head and yeah I'm a very slow reader and because I act books out in my head and I'm much slower than all my team reading but then we'll have a meeting about a book and I'll say what about this bit what about that bit and they'll it will have passed over them and it makes me happy and grateful that I immerse myself yes Yes.

16:52No, I know. That's so lovely. And it's actually nice to hear that you don't read super fast because I think sometimes when you know someone is very well read, you assume they're flipping through a book a day. Oh, goodness, no, I really can't. But it's also, I do, as I've got older, I've got braver about giving books up because I used to not do that. I used to think, oh, I've started, so I'll finish. But because I'm a slow reader and because there are too many books and because I'm never going to read in my life every book I want to read, I do give up I give it a good chance but if it's not speaking to me it's like no page 50 if it hasn't got me hooked by page 50 I'm allowed to put it down that's quite a lot though is it yeah I think so if you think a long book is like 400 pages and a short book is like 200 and something 50 is about a quarter of a lot of books I suppose so but for me I usually have forgotten that rule by the time it's caught me yeah maybe for me it's just a way of like getting myself involved and actually I probably have stopped sooner if something's really arduous.

17:50But you said about too many books published but there's lots of everything. Lots of books, yes. Lots of podcasts. Yes. But also lots of TV. But you have your shows, your series run for, I mean, how long has Saturday Kitchen been going now? Next year will be our 20th anniversary. 20 years, 52 weeks a year live on BBC One and I'm very proud of it. Yes, right to say. around nine years we had 14 years of the saturday and sunday slots on on um itv but i think the the reason we keep things going is we change things up before the viewers or listeners decide that they need changing because now particularly now when there's so many different places to go if you've lost a listener or you've lost a viewer you've lost them because they won't come back because there's too much else out there to try so i if something's really working at its height I'll often change it then and some of the teams go oh my god all commissioning editors will be oh and it's like no because people can't get bored of it because if they do get bored I mean there was a thing called I don't know if you remember years ago on on Saturday Kitchen there was a thing called the omelette challenge yes and it was a game and that ran for ages and then one of the commissioning editors said to me oh you might think about one day you'll want to replace an omelette challenge the omelette challenge and I said right okay that's it I'm accessing it this week and she was like what and I said well if you're thinking that the viewers will be thinking that and if one person thinks that then more than other people would be thinking that and she was like oh no you can't axe it until you've got something to replace it and I said no what people don't didn't realize about something like the omelette challenge and it was my husband Simon's idea is my business partner um is that there aren't a million omelette challenges out there we did a show for ITV where we auditioned we had 40 odd episodes and we auditioned a different omelette challenge type thing every show nothing worked and we you're not going to replace it but if you do it in the right way and you just don't mention it people don't notice and so I just dropped it that week yeah replaced it with a different kind of item nobody noticed about you know about three months in people's oh what's happened to the omelette challenge and it's just if you've replaced it with a different kind of thing.

20:11Whereas if we'd have done it with another game, everyone would have thought, oh, that's not the omelette challenge or compared it. But you have to, you've got to try and keep reinventing and keep doing things anew. And I think before people notice, and I think that's the thing I find most exciting about my job. And that's why I've remained closer to production than anyone else that I've encountered in my position, because I got into television because I wanted to create and have fun and making things and be visually part of the process I didn't get into television to run a production company where which did happen for a while at the height of Richard and Judy and when we were absolutely massive as an indie it was I was doing all of the empowering for other people to do all the interesting bits I really wanted to do that I used to do like filming summer director as well as being a producer and I've done some I was being taken away from that in doing the deals dealing with problems and all that kind of stuff and I just thought no and especially when it came down to having kids and having to then choose exactly what you did go out of the house for I didn't want to go out of the house just to look at contracts and do boring stuff like that.

21:30I think that's incredibly relatable about sometimes when a job starts as, you know, the passion, which is live TV and the nuts and bolts of it. And then the higher up you go, the less you actually are hands on. Yeah. And actually, when you've said that, it is actually remarkable because I've, you know, I've been lucky enough to participate in lots of TV. But it's very unusual that right from the start, I would always meet you when I go along. And if you're a guest on something, you very rarely see the people, you know, the head honchos. It's not the norm to have a character to it. And I'm also really glad you gave an example of what you mean about changing things before people notice.

22:05Because that's a really interesting and exciting instinct. But also so cleverly done. Because the character of the shows you're talking about, I have them in my head immediately. Yeah. As a viewer, I know what all those shows stand for, what kind of thing I can expect. but those little nuances of those decisions and changes have managed to keep the character and the style but also keep interest and I think that's a really brilliant and probably wildly underrated quality in a long-running tv show thank you thank you but I mean something like Richard and Judy show four that you were on was very different to show 14 to show 44 to show 104 to show a thousand and four exactly it was on for we did thousands of them and it ate content and five nights a week lots of different strands and Simon and the team and everybody came up were great at coming up with amazing strands and particularly Simon that a lot of people then copied and they became long-running shows on telly there was a really funny story about a company called wall to wall who make who do you think you are we did a we did um a strand like that on rich and judy and a researcher phoned me up because it was in the days before digital and re-watch and blah and you had to put a vhs in the machine if you wanted to watch a show again and they um put through to lots of different people and ended up getting put through to me saying oh can you please send us um a tape of your um strand and i said oh why so she said well i'm development researcher at Waterwall and we think it'd make a great series and I went well if you're gonna rip off our idea bloody rip it off yourself I'm not gonna make it easy for you to do that and there's lots and lots of things like that like Gogglebox we did um we filmed on Richard and Judy people that's how we did film reviews is we filmed real people watching movies and being able to chat and how we did telly reviews and all sorts of things like that but I don't I think there's not necessarily a thing as an original idea in telly but there's different ways of doing things and different ways of shaking it up and you can't be precious because channel at the time um rich and judy was the biggest ever commission that channel four had done and it was massive and just that show without any of our other shows made us consistently in the top 10 independent production companies by size and now we're tiny but we're still in the top three suppliers to BBC by volume but we it you can't be precious about things you can't um because you'd just be eaten up the whole time you can't do that yeah it's a fascinating world but also I'm thinking about as you're describing all these things you're up to I'm thinking about how all-consuming those roles are and quite often for people in your line of work they are not necessarily even thinking about family life so did you always want to be a mother no I really didn't and I had a very difficult childhood and I didn't think I knew how to be a parent um I was abused as a child and my mother who's passed way now so has my father and my stepfather and I was I was sexually abused by my stepfather but my birth father was and I use the term birth father because I ended up adopting and that's how you refer to the parents in that my real father birth father was schizophrenic but he wasn't diagnosed and he used to have very violent episodes and he when I was 13 he had a girlfriend who was 16 and people used to say to him oh which one's the daughter which one's the wife and so in one of his episodes he thought oh I'll get rid of the one that's easiest to get rid of so I grew up in a place called Essex and he took me out in a car to a place called Canvey Island which was like marshes in the middle of nowhere chucked me out the car and tried to run me over because he thought he would get rid of me.

26:12And I jumped into a telephone box. I'd had so many episodes all my life. From the age of four, I'd been told by my parents it was my fault that they were so unhappy and it was violent and everything else because I had been born. And I didn't realise that children didn't ask to be born. I didn't realise that it wasn't your choice as a child. and I ran and I got into a telephone box and he was ramming the telephone box and I called the police and I called my mum and eventually attracted attention and he drove off but then he drove to my grandmother's house, his mother and he got all the photographs of me that he'd ever had and he burnt them and he put them in a jam jar on her mantelpiece and he said, these are the ashes of my dead daughter so from then I was dead to him But meanwhile, my mother, when I was 11, she'd moved in with a man who had been my dad's boss at work.

27:17And he groomed me. And basically, I was desperate for love. I was age 11. I hadn't had any affection. And she used to, she empowered him to do so. And she used to encourage me to sit on his lap and, oh, just sit on his lap, just give him a cuddle. And I was so grateful for the attention at first that I really didn't know. I couldn't think when it crossed over, when it was wrong. And then when it does cross over and you feel it's wrong, if your mother's watching, you can't think it's wrong because your mother is saying these things are OK. and I don't want to go into all of that now because it's a waste of time and there's so much positive positivity about becoming a parent and being a parent is amazing but because I hadn't had parents I convinced myself that I didn't know how to be a parent and I didn't want to be a parent and when I first got married I said very firmly to my husband I didn't want to be a parent and it wasn't until my 30s that I actually had therapy for the abuse and I discovered through my brilliant brilliant brilliant therapist who I love beyond love Lorna who's empowered me in my life and I'm seeing her again now because I think she's amazing we had a big long gap but I've gone back again now um and she taught me that it wasn't my fault and she taught me it wasn't my fault but first of all by making me watch Good Will Hunting which is hilarious but she taught me it wasn't my fault so then I just thought do you know what maybe I can do this maybe I can be a parent so my husband and I embarked on trying to be parents and I had a lot a lot of miscarriages and my problem has been not that I couldn't conceive I did conceive but I couldn't carry them because my immune system was very very strong and I was constantly having miscarriages and we went through a long journey to try and have controlled pregnancies with IVF and sadly that was all ended very sadly I even tried surrogacy and that didn't work either and I decided I decided actually I think it's fair to say this this is my truth and not my husband's truth and he might see it differently but um I decided I was ready to adopt before he was I think I felt that it was more important to him that our children were blood related to me that means absolutely nothing at all my I've adopted two boys from the British care system they could not be more my children they are totally my babies and I say to them they're more special because I chose them and it's I encountered through the adoption process so many people obviously who wanted to give away their kids and they find it too easy to have children and the children are literally in life spin and because it can be too easy for some people it wasn't easy for me and there were thousands and thousands of children I could have chosen from from the in the British care system and I picked them and I've always said to them they were born in my heart not in my tummy they were born in my heart and they are I totally knew well I didn't completely know what I was getting but I knew those two boys are my two boys and they couldn't be more more more my two boys oh wow well thank you thank so much for sharing all of that with me um it feels really inappropriate I'm emotional because it's your story no I'm emotional talking to you because I just um I'm so sorry you went through all that when you were small and and here's to Lorna who sounds oh she's incredible I mean how she's managed she'll listen to this yeah was sending and I don't know I'm sending out a big shout out to her for truly excellent support with you and all the conversations you must have had.

31:29Well, she was brilliant. I had to sort of wean myself off her in the end because it was I had I think it's about three years in the first lots of sessions in my 30s. And she helped me completely come to terms with what had happened and to find a way forward with that. and actually what happened to me was part of the process or part of how I actually got my boys and I will tell you that in a sec but she um I've it's not easy having adopted kids who come from very difficult backgrounds and it's their story and I'm not going to tell their story because it's their truth and they sort of don't want they don't want to know the truth of their story either because we are their family but I do need support and so in the last couple of years I went back to Lorna and I was I was in a I was in a dark place and I contacted her and I said I don't know if you're even still working because it had been 20 odd years and she said yes I am and so I started again with Lorna and she's very much part of my life again and amazing I don't think I'll ever give her up now no but i think i'm a big advocate for therapy i think it's oh my god me too and i think what is coming to me that's so special and i think what made me emotional not least you know all the awful things you had to deal with and thinking about yourself in that way and understanding that you know you weren't wasn't your fault you were born that's a huge thing to have to um find um acceptance and and put yourself back in the shoes of you over the years to give your to reframe and bring out the strength that you needed to to to see yourself in that way that's huge but also the fact that you can talk about it is massive as well not that there's any shade on anyone who would feel uncomfortable but just it's powerful i want to empower other people because I want there is nothing wrong with me because I was abused and for years I thought there was I thought I totally thought it was my fault but I just want to tell you the fact that the positive the most positive thing that came out of that was when my husband and I were going through the adoption process it and I have to say it is too hard to adopt in this country It really is.

33:48There are thousands and thousands of children who are looked after. And even after you adopt a child, and I've never, ever wanted to use this term because they're my babies. And I hope you can feel the passion in my voice when I say they're my babies, is they are looked after children. They're not. There are the year I got my boys, it was like a handful of what's termed babies adopted in this country. It's just it's too tiny. And we went through three years trying to prove that we could be approved as parents. There's too much discrimination against people adopting. I think there's too much emphasis put on racially matching people because it doesn't matter.

34:37love matters nothing else matters and unfortunately there's not enough people from the ethnic groups that want to adopt as there are people up for adoption from those groups but the final and we are sort of we were at the bottom of the pile in that um 75 percent of kids up for adoption at the time we adopted are black or mixed race or some kind of other ethnicity and 93 % I think it is of people who want to adopt are white and they want to racially match you and we went through three years of difficult process and having they made us do so many hurdles they said things like our house would be bewildering to kids from British care system because it was too big I grew up in a council house in Essex it's not bewildering to me and just not my whole life but quite a lot of my life was spent like that and it's not bewildering to me but lots of silly silly silly hurdles and it got to the very final meeting and the social worker said to me is there anything about your childhood or about anything that would make you be able to deal with kids from a difficult background because basically every child up for adoption has had a terrible journey it's a fact and um my husband looked at me and he said okay it's your truth you can tell it if you want to and I said I was abused and she looked at me and it was like hallelujah and she said have you had therapy for it and I said yes and she said what did you learn from your therapy and I said that it's not my fault and she said okay I can approve you and so my abusive stepfather actually did give me something good he got me on the road to my boys so but yeah shocking isn't it it's really wrong and really shocking yeah it is and I'm also um and just so you know if I ask anything that you don't feel comfortable to answer to me like absolutely just tell me because I'm so guided by you with all this and I appreciate the sensitivity and also the people involved with this but I do think as well it's important I'm to be honest about it and be honest about the journey and hopefully if there's I mean I don't know if you can ever empower anybody to think that okay I can do that I can find space in my heart for someone else or that kind of thing that or to give them the confidence to keep going because so much in the adoption process makes you want to give up and I didn't I well you've known me long enough to know I'm not a quitter I do know that but well I have a little bit of experience well my sister Dulcy um it took two years to adopt her when I was in my late teens so that's on my dad and my stepmom's side so I saw a little bit you know from the viewpoint of a teenager who's obviously pretty self-obsessed in those years aren't you but I remember you know the conversations that the constant meetings the interviews the paperwork it went on for a long time it's quite a dominant factor I'd say in in that household for like yeah my latter teen years and um I'm also thinking about so how did you go from having no children to having two immediately yes immediately wow because um we were approved for three a group a family group of three because we're slightly older but the other thing that was really important to me is I didn't want I knew I was going to be an older mother anyway and I was going to be the older person at the oldest person at the school gates but I wanted my boys to be I didn't I didn't particularly think I was definitely going to have boys but the boys spoke to me and I wanted them to be of an age that I could have given birth to them and both my boys actually coincide with miscarriages that I had um because I did um start the adoption process when I was at the very end of um an IVF process and you're not supposed to do that but I knew it's going to take a long time um and so I both my boys could have been my birth children and maybe they are I mean I don't want to sound twee but that is pretty magical actually and I totally understand what you mean about that they are your babies they're your boys and they were meant to be I I I my heart is hugely uplifted by that and I know that you also have to try to navigate all the other children that you will now be aware of and how that system works and the insights given you that's that's tough isn't it once you've had that but also I'm thinking about you know we started off by talking about all these incredible achievements with work how on earth are you navigating work at that level with all of this well it was it was just when because I'd made that choice I didn't want to miss a minute that was important to them but my eldest came to me when he was almost four and the youngest was 14 months and I at the time we we'd sold cactus and we were part of a group we ended up buying ourselves back because it was wasn't a happy relationship we started in indie because we liked being independent and as part of a group we weren't allowed to be and um i was actually told by one of the chief executives of the group he didn't support me my journey into adoption because i was a 24 7 girl and that i wouldn't be able to do most 24 7 girl how do i go to this story who was this person i don't think i no not the person what i mean like what role there was someone in they were one of one of the seniors in in the group that owned our owned us at the time but we ended up buying ourselves back with because and which we haven't been happier since yes but um you know working mothers make more work than absolutely anyone so i did take when i first got the boys i took the adoption leave and i did that and and had that time and then because we and then we brought ourselves back and then because we had our own company we could structure our working day around it so um we I don't think I ever missed anything to do with any of their schooling or anything ever because I have my priorities right because I didn't want to I didn't want to um miss out on something I didn't want to have like later on in life oh you didn't come to that and I did this or I was you know I was on stage and I fell over and you didn't see it or anything like that yeah and it was actually some someone else who ran a tv production company at the time that I knew who actually is a woman called Elaine Bedell she now runs a Southbank centre and I remember her saying to me when I did this she probably doesn't even remember it um that she'd done a show with Lily Savage when um she was producing a show with Lily Savage and she'd missed something from um her child's life or something or a play or something like that yeah and um she said it sort of it occurred to her driving home oh my god later on i i want the memories to be about my child i don't want it to be that i you know was with lily savage so i've always made sure that i prioritize the boys and i can honestly say i haven't missed anything i'm so impressed which i'm really happy about but also now I need my work for my sanity because the way we have to parent and on how we parent and how isolated we feel in certain situations and my boys were they hadn't lived together before they came to us um and there are a lot of difficulties that go with it so quite a lot of the time at home I don't feel like a person I feel like I'm bottom of the pile and in and you have to be as a mother you do have to put yourself last but sometimes that last position feels such a long way behind everything else that's happening that I go to work to make me feel like a person again and to give me the strength to come home and deal with things all over again so is it like you go to work and kind of yeah inhabit that other side of you yeah I go to work and someone like you comes into one of my shows and you're talking to me and part of my inner self thinks oh my god sophia lisbex is listening to me or thinks I'm even vaguely interesting because at home I'm just so insignificant oh no but I relate to that as well because sometimes with um especially like your so your boys now are in their late teens yeah and I've got a couple around that age too and their world is all about themselves but also if anything that's bothering them it all comes to the surface during the teenage years I actually like parenting teens but it does mean that sometimes you can be the place they put everything that you know if they're gonna if they've got any frustration anyone's upset them yeah they will you can be the one that they can speak to however they feel in that moment and you just got a shoulder a little bit no you absolutely do as a mother anyway um but there is a an extra level with adopting kids because it's called attachment disorder and they um they constantly push back but particularly against the mother figure because they want to prove all the time that you love them love them love them yeah so it's a constant test but it makes a lot of sense and that you won't leave that you really you're really committed it makes complete sense I mean I do start my day very early much earlier than everyone else and I do at the start of every day look at pictures of how things were in because there have been incredibly incredibly happy times but they've been incredibly incredibly unhappy times and it feels like sometimes but I think this is true for most parents of teens there's nothing in the bank you could have done something amazing yesterday and they're not going to thank you for it today or feel like but I mean with my kids it feels like it's like they're not going to thank you for it five minutes later there's never there's really really nothing in the bank and so and that can be really really hard so I think it's really important for all parents to remember really good times and really positive things so that when you are going through something difficult yeah and what about your memories of the the early years then when you were first finding your feet as a four it was well it was literally straight in at the deep end yeah and um the I think the most difficult thing and I think this is okay to talk about is that my boys were placed in different foster placements and they were brought together by the social services thinking it was a good idea that they would be together but they didn't know each other and the eldest was almost four and it had been handled so badly his transition in that he was desperate to have a family of his own and it was a not a great foster placement he was in and he no one had told him he was going to get his baby brother coming with him.

46:08So he was, when I first met him, it was mommy, mommy, mommy, take me home, take me home because he was desperate to be adopted, but nobody had broken it to him that he was going to have this baby brother coming home with him. So Simon and I came up with this idea that we should, because when you first adopt children, there's a 10 day process. Well, this is how it was then in 2010 and it was a 10-day process and we had to go to the foster parents house every day and we went very early in the morning and stayed all day and so they would get to know you that was torture it was hell because my eldest was desperate to be adopted and so it was very difficult for him every day that we went home the baby because he's 14 months and he had a very different foster parent who's very trusting and from day one it was so much easier with him for that and she allowed us to take him with us to go to the other foster placements so that we could have them together and then try to see each other but we did we did do bonding separately with my elder child by himself so he felt very much he was important he was wanted and when it was time for them to come home we decided to pick him up the day before the younger one so he had and and when you're three nearly four 24 hours is a very long time he had a very full like that was the time yeah that he felt this was it and we took him out and got him to buy things for his younger brother's bedroom so he could and buy clothes and little things like that so that he felt like he was going to get him and bring him into the house so it felt like it was very much that was the thing but yeah it is we've had to have separate lives a lot with them because they don't get on and uh maybe they will one day i'm sure well also i think as you get older i'm so overwhelmed by how special it is that you and simon have he's been incredible yeah but everything that you've I mean I can understand that for you that meeting with the the lady approving the adoption it would feel a little cynical that you've had you've shared something about your childhood that's very difficult and she's gone oh great that works exactly that but the flip of it is as someone hearing it all now how incredible that you do have such a complex understanding of all these different emotions like that's so one day they will definitely be able to say to you thank you for that because that's that is exceptional that is an incredible thing that they that you can see things in this 360 way I mean I'm I wouldn't I wouldn't wish that on you to be able to understand it that way but that is special because for those children that have come through it and you're making me think as well my father-in-law he was through the foster care system as well yeah Richard's dad I'm thinking well I must have a better conversation with him about his experiences as well but um I don't know it's just so complicated and I think as well for people you know your your team your family extended family it's funny isn't it because on the one hand there's so many ways to become a parent there's so many ways to become a family so I would imagine part of you would always want just just just take it as the normal or another family but at the same time you want to go and also we've had to deal with these other things so that's complicated so navigating that as a family is also a lot to deal with I think.

49:56I took advice before we adopted from there's a chef called Michael Caines and he's a patron of an adoption society and he's adopted and he the piece of advice that he gave me which has been invaluable is don't ever ever hide anything from them be totally out there with them and he said the more open you are with them the less they'll want to know and that is absolutely brilliant because I say to them on a regular basis and have said it right from the beginning if you want to know anything ask us if you want to know anything at all ask us and we'll tell you and they don't want to know they we are their parents which is amazing to think and it's part of me of course i i i know i'd probably be jealous if they wanted to know if they wanted to find um i don't know but uh because that's only natural but they don't because it's there for them on a plate yeah they really are not interested well no mystery no secrets yeah no no nothing like that absolutely that transparency and kids can deal with that much better actually can't they it's the it's the it's the question marks and the gray areas that can really confuse and and fill imagination so i think demystifying that way is very respectful also the other thing which is i'm what makes me very happy about how we have handled it is that because we've always said to them we chose you and you're more special because you're adopted they don't feel there's any stigma at all and I have encountered people who have been adopted who feel like oh it's different or oh it's not the same my kids think it's better my kids think it's you know hey it's it's really great it's really you know because it's it's not a doubt it's like we absolutely wanted them yeah I get that I completely get that and actually thinking back when you said about them sometimes not going like loads of siblings don't get on oh no exactly yeah no you shouldn't say that's like a an anomaly I could probably give you daily examples of that yeah the other thing you were saying about how have I managed to spin my plates juggle my life is that I've always included them in it and with Saturday Kitchen of course I get invited to restaurants a lot and I have to test out restaurants a lot I took them from day one out to eat and I feel as a parent you if you're paying you've got the right to have your kids in that restaurant and have the same I don't believe in kids menus and I don't believe in kids menus anywhere I won't ever let my kids look at that they've um you know it's they what we eat and they always have done and I I've had arguments with with air stewards on planes saying you didn't order from the children's menu i go no because i'm paying the same for their seat they can have the same i even once on british airways had um them come around and say to um they said oh to my eldest what do you want he said oh i'd like the salmon please and this one is about six or something and she said oh well i've only got one of those left can we not save it for an adult and i went no you can't save it for an adult he wants the salmon he's paid the same for the seat to write him the salmon wow they must have amazing taste buds if they were eating well i'm very proud i'm very so very proud of my eldest because i'm very proud of both of them because they've both found their thing that they want to do they've both found their passion and i feel very even more proud because it's they're so closely related to my passions which is really fantastic and which wouldn't necessarily be the case which is just great but my oldest um his placement I think this is okay to say his placement was very difficult and um when he came to me almost for the weight of a healthy one-year-old and he had very restricted eating he really only liked bread and butter but I taught him to eat by teaching him to cook and um he's now going to be a chef which is amazing yeah he's got an amazing apprenticeship um with an amazing chef and he's you don't say of course yeah some contacts yeah i've got some contacts yes it is yeah i've got some contacts also how glorious how glorious that all those things he was exposed to yeah yeah have obviously got this really positive association and he's like i want to keep oh that's so incredible well i came up with this so that's hoping one of mine i'd love her cook and yeah a hairdresser would be helpful maybe some kind of plumbing or electrician plumbing oh that would be fantastic yeah that kind of thing useful useful trades but also someone to cook please i came up with this thing though to teach him how to to make him eat things is that i started the thing where you have to taste everything and because i came up with this idea that okay everything in life is an individual you're an individual your brother's an individual you can't say you don't like all boys because you you're very different to your brother and you don't like your brother but you can say you don't like this boy or you don't like that boy if you've really experienced or tried that boy so think about the same with the carrot there's two carrots have grown up side by side but in different pieces of ground so you can't say you don't like all carrots but you can say I don't like this carrot because I've tasted it so I made him literally taste everything and down to peas all peas they're everybody and everything is an individual and you have denied that individual's right for what they've been born for what they're living for so I started off that he had to just lick things and then he got really bored and then it was like you had to have a nibble and then he got so bored of me doing it that you just eat it and then this is such good teaching yeah and then after not very long he then ate absolutely everything and one of my proudest when I knew yes I've I've got a foodie is because what I used to do this the Friday pickup from school at 3 30 and we'd go we'd walk home across the common and go past we've got very lovely butchers and um we go in and and on a Friday and like choose what we're going to have and Gary he's Gary from Moen's he's this very lovely part of our lies in his part of Saturday kitchen as well and um he'd say okay what are we having today and my son looked at rabbits hanging up and he said oh I think and this is when he was six oh I think we'll have rabbit and so he says to him which rabbit would you like and he said well I'll think I'll have that one because that one looks happy and happy meat tastes better so I just thought okay yeah i've got a foodie this is it that's incredible i don't even know if my kid would recognize what my youngest would recognize what a rabbit looks like hanging up on there oh it would just like a just like a rabbit okay fine no skin yeah it wouldn't be wouldn't be difficult i mean we're no we're no strangers to the butcher but i don't know if he choose a rabbit but it's so it's so satisfying watching them eat properly isn't it oh god yeah it's just like why are we so hardwired to love seeing our kids enjoy food but it's also so so much fun cooking with them and it's so much fun uh getting things messy and I've never been precious about my kitchen or anything like that and it's like okay that's it and other people's kids used to come around on play dates and we cook and do things like that which is really great that sounds so good and do they do you have conversations with them about the way the entertainment is going yeah absolutely that's pretty fascinating isn't it well I've taken them into work right from the very very beginning and my youngest started working with the sound department from when because he was fascinated by sound from when he was about seven and he was micing up celebrities and things like this because it was just he's really really really fascinated by the technical side of things and he's got a theatre scholarship for school which I'm really really really proud of so he's found his way but you also do drama as well yeah I did drama and theatre arts at Birmingham University there you go it's all coming full circle yeah yeah so he's got his thing that way too and what about the way they consume tv and because I do find that interesting with my elder boys to see how you know like when I talk to them about what my mum did with Peter back in the 80s it just sounds alien to them well it's mind-blowing that there's that point interview that it was like I I find it really hard now because I don't know who the Blue Peter presenters are and it's really sad but in your mum's day it was a national status straight away you're everybody incredible every generation yeah so she she had no autocue so she would learn the scripts and then do live tv which i think is so impressive but also i i don't even know if the kids would even think about that sort of thing first them you know they all want to be youtubers but youtubers is just the tv presenters of their generation isn't it that's where they're getting the information but i wonder if it it must kind of that part of your brain that's doing your yeah innovations must be thinking oh this is interesting i think one of the most frustrating things about the way telly and things like that are going is that um there used to be amazing appointments to view and there's so few of those now and when my kids were younger we tried so hard to find things that we would all watch together and movies and things that we'd all watch together it's practically impossible now really to find things that you can all watch together and then if they are watching with you I'm sure yours are exactly the same every parent everywhere they just want to be on another device doing something else and I'm going concentrate do that do that and when they're watching tell that's usually me I always like to do two things at once yeah yeah so actually we did all watch traitors together there have been a couple of things that crossed over but you're right it's not it's not a great deal in the same way that kind of yeah those lovely like Saturday night all sat on the sofa kind of thing I don't think we really no we did used to have that we did did used to have that with things but yeah maybe films still but it's all moving at a pace um well before you I mean thank you so much for sharing so much and I know there'll be people listening for whom this has resonated hugely so I really can't thank Thank you enough for trusting me with your story.

1:00:12Well, hopefully it's helpful and empowering because I think the biggest thing, the biggest message I try to give, I've got a majority of women working with me and always have had. And the biggest message I try to give people is children. If you've got children, that's it. They have to come first. And that's, it's hard. And it's hard as an employer, of course, but it is important you can't miss those moments but also if you've got a family just do everything with them and that they're there because because that the time that you have is so brief actually so if there are you know a choice between you could go out somewhere where you can't take your kids or somewhere where you can take your kids just take your kids but also you can take your kids anywhere it's all about attitude and things like that and yes be respectful of other people and what we've always done is we've always spoken to our kids and it really frustrates me now if I'm in a restaurant and that people park their kids with iPads and they're not talking to them and you think well how do you expect them to have a conversation how do you expect them to know about food or to in food is such a brilliant coming together and and things like that so it's easier to spin plates and for your kids to feel like they're more part of your life if you include them that is so wise and actually just thinking about you in your workplace if if you've come from a childhood where you felt you had so many things to resolve how do you deal with the tv world and find your, I don't know, resilience within that.

1:01:58I don't. I've got a very, I have a, Michael is healers, I want everyone to like me and, of course, everyone doesn't like you. And I'm very insecure in a lot of ways, but I'm very, very, very lucky that I met my husband and business partner when I was 25. And he's still... Your partnership is amazing. Yes, it is amazing. He's still the person who I care about his opinion more than anyone. if he thinks I look horrible I don't want to wear that dress I even down to that point of thing it's really frustrating yes we have very very very different lives now I think a lot of it as well is we accepted that we both really like doing completely different things so we don't try and make the other one do those things because it made us both miserable when we tried to do that yeah And, but he supports me totally in what I want to do.

1:02:51And like now with Between the Covers and Doing Live, and he's saying, no, do it. Just, you know, get on stage and do it because do you really want to regret? And you've got this chance again to do that. And the first time around, because I was, when I was a presenter the first time around, you weren't as a woman allowed to be a producer and a presenter or anything. You had to choose which box you wanted to be in. And I started my own production company and it was like oh which are you today and I remember going to free auditions and they'd say I literally had producers saying to me so who are you today then what is this and I decided I mean at the time there were far few less jobs for presenters and I didn't want to be out of work a lot of the time so I decided okay I can write and I can produce and I'm going to do that so I took a step back but always part of me is like god I love it I really really really love it so to have this chance again with the resurgence of live and then to have people like ruth jones and steven mangan and joe brand saying to me amanda you can do this get on stage and with me and they have a ball and ruth and and david and joe have all said to me we love doing it with you because i don't i don't i have a producer's head on it all the time in that i'm keeping it right and keeping the time on I'm not like a typical present I'm not like I'm not doing it like a presenter I'm not leading the last laugh I'm not I'm I see my role as host is to get the best out of them yeah you've got an overview yeah and they and Stephen particularly says oh it's great because I can just go anywhere I know you're gonna bring me back and it's really and that's really good fun and that's and so it feels like a team and yeah it it's um and you know know it's really it is hard because um of course it would be easier to get exposure for stuff sometimes if you say okay the star leading this blah blah blah blah but it's we don't need that and we can keep the costs down and I can just over the producer yeah I can produce it and do it and do it on stage but also it's a different way of doing things because particularly as well book programming it is all about conversation and my role is to keep that conversation going not to come out of the last joke.

1:05:09I mean, you said it's an Achilles heel that you want people to like you, but actually maybe it's been one of your greatest strengths because it's led to such long relationships and things running from people wanting to keep working and be engaged with it. I think it's a flip of that. I think that is the truth. I mean, the thing is as well, I do something as a producer that no one else does, I know. And new people who come into the company, there's a couple of things. There's new things that people who come into the company are like, whoa, what is this? How is this? and you know when you come to a cactus production everyone has a name badge and I think that's because you come in somewhere and you meet 11 people within two minutes and it's so much nice to be able to say hey Mel rather than uh excuse me sound woman yeah or that kind of thing yeah and that's really empowering and people when they first come in are like oh I'm too cool to do that but then when someone like Tom Hanks has said hello Sophie you think I don't care he said my name i think the world should wear name badges i would i would be voting i'd be oh god i i hate going to events now and there isn't a name badge i'm so bad with names me too and you sometimes you get as you say you get given like seven names at the beginning you don't know how much you're going to need it i know people say oh do those little games to associate oh that doesn't work really can't do that i can't you know i don't know anyone's name and the other thing i do which um everybody really likes is at the start of every production day whatever the production i make every single person come into the studio and that includes our washer-upper Janet on Saturday Kitchen who's very important I won't start this until she comes in and I make everybody come in and stand in a great big circle and it's people in front of the camera people behind the camera and everything and I say okay everybody take a look around make sure you can see everybody's faces because every single person in this room is as important as everybody else we are all cogs in the wheels of entertainment and if we have fun making it they'll have fun watching it and that and then I'll tell them what all what's in the show what's happening that day perfect and then at the end of everything I always say well if we have fun making it let um they have they'll have fun watching it so let's have some fun and everybody feels like and it's very hard for someone in front of the camera then to be mean to someone behind the camera after you've done that no it's all for one and one for all and also the have fun thing is super important um I'd like to end on this necklace if I may because while we've been talking this beautiful silver necklace with a very large heart I mean this is a necklace and a half really isn't it this is this is more of a statement of intent yeah my husband bought it for me and it's by a designer and I can't remember the designer but yeah so what tell me about this heart necklace because when you brought it you brought it when we knew what we were talking about today yeah well when you adopt children you're advised the first few meetings and the first time and maybe as long as possible to wear the same clothes so that they recognize you and its familiarity and that kind of thing but my husband had bought me this um lovely heart necklace which is a really big heart it's huge yeah lovely and I wore that from day one and I wore it every day for the first few months I had them because I said to my boys and I think I said at the start that they weren't born in my tummy they were born in my heart and um I've got wonderful images of um my baby um clutching the heart and just being there or going to sleep on me holding this metal heart and it's very special well I'm really glad you had it was very fitting to have it on the table for our whole chat because I think it sums up so much it's um it's symbolic and it's perfect just like your family oh well thank you Sophie Ellisbext is the best person in the world I know at spinning plates No, I don't know about that.

1:08:51No, I'm just so, I was already impressed with you, but now you've shared even more. I'm even more, yeah, in awe of what you've achieved, both in terms of, you know, your professional life. raising, I mean, when you were talking about, you know, your, your path to parenthood, I think part of as well was making me so emotional is, um, when I knew I was seeing you today, I was looking last night through pictures online and your Instagram, and there's some really sweet images of your boys, either cooking in the kitchen or playing, or there's one was, one of them's in the garden throwing a snowball.

1:09:25And I just, it's just really moving that, that, that, that is where it ends up. that's really special so cheers to the here and now and this beautiful necklace and your lovely conversation thank you thank you

1:09:45it is hard to put into words how well firstly how privileged i felt to be sat opposite amanda while she was being so open and showing such strength. And secondly, my admiration for her has only gone up. I've always liked the way she conducts herself with work. She's always so warm and welcoming and engaged, which I have to say in TV doesn't always happen. You normally just turn up, you've got your dressing room and you leave. but Amanda over the years has always made it a much more personal experience which is really special and rare but to have created this family unit that's got such strength and to have helped our boys really become all that they were meant to be like I mean that is excellent motherhood isn't it and it was so special to me that we talked with this beautiful silver necklace in the middle of us with this I don't know the heart would probably be the size of my palm almost and um it was really symbolic and I think the fact that Amanda had slipped it into her handbag to bring to my house to show me was indicative of how she intended to you know explain and celebrate and explore her story.

1:11:15So I celebrate her parenthood, I should say, and what she's done with her work and actually herself. Also shout out to Lorna, who sounds like exactly what you're hoping for in a therapist, someone who can really find a sense of peace and resolve with what's gone before and build a life. It doesn't mean you're beholden to it. um yeah incredible really incredible all around and so moving it's funny I've done so many of these conversations now what is that 160 170 conversations and it's just never really lost on me that it's an exceptional space to hold with someone but especially when it's such an honest open conversation like that it can only enrich empower help people conversation is so important isn't it but for me it's given me so so much and I would say that this conversation ranks among my favourite I've ever done so thank you so much Amanda and I know it also meant a lot to Claire Jones producer who was sat with us making her lovely notes and trying to cry quietly like I did hopefully because it was so moving.

1:12:36Anyway, that's that for this series. A couple of days ago, I went on Instagram and I asked you for suggestions for guests. And why didn't I do that sooner? It was bloody brilliant. So successful. Loads and loads and loads of ideas. Some truly excellent ones. A couple of people who've clearly not really listened to anything I've been up to suggesting guests I've already had. That's fine. That's fine. It's been going for a while. But honestly, some brilliant ideas. So I've been following all of that up. And I'm recording actually the first one for the next series tomorrow. It's already shaping up well.

1:13:13You know, I like to find some unexpected tales, some interesting careers, some extraordinary examples of working women, happen to be mothers, all of that, you know. And listen, I'll make you a promise now. next series I'll re-record the intro so I have the correct ages of my children I mean it's only taken me five years to get round to it so listen in the meantime shout out to Richard for doing my brilliant editing to producer Claire they're both Joneses don't you know no relation thank you to you for lending me your ears thanks to all my guests this series it's been a lovely mixture from forum dancers to prime ministers to tv producers to madlakers so much fun and i think i will be back in january now because we're in the middle of november and i need to get my things in order so have an amazing christmas uh i've got one last song being released from perimenopop which is there's a song called time which is so pretty it's kind of the the heart of the record really and we've done a little bit of a more seasonal version especially for Christmas which I've never done before but I was singing it on stage in Berlin actually when I was thinking wow the sentiment of this song really is what Christmas is about how it's not about presents and things it's about spending time with people so you know we thought let's get a little festive all right have a lovely rest of the year I'll see you in the new one that's a lots of level All right.

1:15:17Amen.