Hugh Bonneville | The Secret Spanish Restaurant That’s Worth The Journey

0:00And we walked through the most uninspiring part of town on the outskirts of Cordoba through a sort of industrial estate It looked like a sort of bomb had gone off. And I thought, this isn't right. He's leading us down some ghastly alleyway and we're going to get sort of mugged. And suddenly Richard Curtis appeared in the bar in his pyjamas. It was so sort of grimy that A, you want to wear your socks in bed and B, you expect to see one of those homicide sort of chalk outlines. Of course, the first burning question they ask when we open the floor to questions is, where's Paddington? Oh no! And so I have to explain that it's Marmalade Day and that he's at 32 Windsor Gardens chopping oranges.

0:38Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them.

0:59Today, my guest is the brilliant British actor, Hugh Bonneville, famed for so many iconic roles, Lord Grantham, Mr. Brown in the wonderful Paddington series, W1A, Iris to Olivia. The list goes on and on and on. And also an author of a new children's book, which I have here in prominent place, Rory Sparkles and the elephant in the room. Rory Sparks. Oh, Rory Sparks. Sorry, I didn't have my glasses on. Well, I hope you're going to tell us more about that. And also your wonderful memoir is also just fantastic. So author, actor, huge traveller, I cannot wait to hear your travel secrets. Welcome and thank you for joining me.

1:44Well, thank you for having me. I'm not sure I've got many travel secrets. Oh, travel tales. Travel tales, that's probably more accurate. Before we actually get into the travel tales, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how has travel impacted the person you've become? Well, I was very fortunate as a child that my parents loved packing up the car and going down through France camping. That was a big childhood memory. And often we'd go down to Spain to a place called Tamarou on the Costa Brava. That was our final destination. so I've got memories of big heavy canvas tents, camping gas, beans in a pan and strange French campsites and some sort of meals along the way in roadside hostelries that sort of thing and always having to sit on the armrest in the middle of the back seat.

2:38Were you the youngest? I was the youngest of three. Oh that's the worst seat but have fun. That's a good view, especially when you go hurtling through the windscreen, because we didn't have seatbelts in those days. Never did me any harm. And what's that place like in Costa Brava now? Do you know? I don't know. Actually, some friends went back not so long ago and reported back. And it felt pretty built up then in the mid-70s. So goodness knows what it's like now. But it was all around that coastline of Agua Blava and Agua Gelida. was it Agrigilita was a new development but um I used to love it there and they're just splashing around and my dad took this incredibly cumbersome canoe with us that was a big canvas thing that needed construction at each end you know when we got there so I mean good goodness knows how our Volvo 220 coped how extraordinary and did your parents grow up abroad do I remember hearing well my mum was born in Alexandria that's on her birth certificate and my dad did his national service in Singapore and Hong Kong in the Navy.

3:42So that's why my dressing up box was full of exotic garments, gelabas and strange shoes. And so I just wrote endless plays about emperors and sultans and things I knew nothing about. Do you think that's where the acting bug came from, the dressing up box? Definitely. And my brother and sister were very good amateur actors and I saw them in school plays and thought they were rather brilliant. My son was exactly the same and wants to be an actor. And we had the most amazing dressing up box. And he used to, whatever he did, he wouldn't do until he had the costume. Whether it was play football, he had to wear an Arsenal thing.

4:17Whether he was a prince, he had to have a cloak. It's hilarious. I don't know where they've all gone, actually. But he loved the dressing up box. So it must come from that. Yeah, and it's certainly good. Well, anything that unlocks the imagination, I think, as a child is really beneficial. And I was exposed to a lot of plays early on. and went to the theatre a lot. I was very fortunate. My parents were into the arts in the small, with the small A, you know, they weren't I for Luton. They just liked, you know, it was part of their diet. And I'm passionate that people who aren't as fortunate as I was should have access to the arts.

4:52I think it's so important. Well, I know you're very involved with the National Youth Theatre because I've seen you at amazing things when you're helping with the charity auctions and things like that. And my son was a member of that or is a member. And I think it's an amazing institution. Paul Roseberry is a great guy. And it does give access to people who wouldn't normally have access. Well, that's right. I joined it when I was 15 or so. And soon, you know, that was my first exposure to children from all over the country from different backgrounds. And I soon realized how what I'd taken for granted was absolutely not there for everybody.

5:28being either school plays or going to museums or going to concerts or experiencing a ballet or or even architecture going to a country house it was not part of everybody's diet I just assumed it was and that's how privileged I was that my I feel privileged in the sense that my parents were engaged with that sort of thing just as part of as it was as normal to my you know mum and dad as him playing squash on a Saturday and it was just part of what happened so yeah when I joined the National Youth Theatre and realised that there was a very different life out there it was a bit of an eye-opener and made me appreciate what I'd had a lot more and it made me in later life when I became a patron of the youth theatre really try and encourage them through a sort of bursary scheme we set up to how to gain more access for people who couldn't get to a local hub to do auditions or who literally had grown up in an environment in which oh the arts are for other people or theatre is for other people or self-expression thereby is for other people which isn't shouldn't be the case no and actually i'm on the board of rada and i was on the board of the english national ballet for the reason that you've just said so it was billy elliott you know that whole thing of people wanting to do ballet and also rada i'm in charge of fundraising so it's for you know access basically and helping people to be able to do it thank you for watching Travel Secrets.

6:48I hope you're enjoying it as much as I'm enjoying doing it. Please take a second and subscribe now. Let's get into your travel secrets. What is the number one destination you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime? Well, you're probably going to ban this because it's actually a bit close to home, but I would say the South Downs. Oh, really? I've lived in that area on and off for 40 years. My parents moved down there and I spent a long time living just outside Midhurst and the South Downs really and it really came home to me I suppose in the pandemic how important open space is in our lives in our you know for our souls and having walked the South Downs way I sort of ran it very badly once with some friends for a charity thing a fundraising thing it's called Trail Walker and you do 100 kilometers of the South Downs in teams of four and so you can only go as as fast as your slowest member which was you but we raised some money for you know the Gurkha Welfare Trust and Oxfam and it was great you see some people you know running as canaries and they don't do very well and the Gurkhas run it in nine hours I mean they are so incredibly fit uphill and down Dale we took I think it was 16 hours but we It was pretty good for blokes in their 40s.

8:05But I love going there. I love recharging batteries up there. It's not a campsite or anything like that, but all the sort of arterial runoff of it, all the pubs and towns that you go through from way over in Hampshire, near Winchester, all the way over to Alfriston and the east, it's all part of this beautiful tapestry of the south bounds and I've I feel very very blessed to have spent so much time there so for your international listeners come to England and go to the south bounds I think that's a very lovely tip and do you have a home down there I do I've recently bought a house near near Winchester is there a good pub uh yeah there's a great pub called the pub with no name is there I highly recommend it oh that's wonderful I think Jodie Kidd has got a pub down there.

8:56She has a pub slightly further east. She was on the podcast and she was talking about it and it sounds divine, you know, pub, Sunday lunches, dogs, everything you want it to be. Well that's the quintessential English pub and I love that vibe that we do get right over a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, we certainly do and I love Goodwood, that's down there as well isn't it? Absolutely, I've been very fortunate to spend quite a lot of time at various events at Goodwood and again fundraising I've been on the full disclosure I've been on the South Downs National Park Trust which is a fundraising or rather a charitable umbrella because obviously each district each county has their own councils that have the park in it but there's nothing there's a umbrella to try and fundraise or rather to maintain the part in the national park as an entity and to support it so That's everything from, you know, mending gates to enabling children to have nature days up on the Downs and explore the biodiversity of the Downs and that sort of thing.

10:03And the Duke of Richmond is very passionate about it. Obviously, it's his backyard. And so he's hosted a number of talks and fundraising events to raise awareness and, you know, reminding people of how valuable the Downs are. Yeah, beautiful. What is your most unexpected travel tale? I think it's probably going to Cordoba in Spain and with my ex-wife and my son and we went to my son is very good at sort of finding things off the beaten track and this wasn't off the beaten track but he'd said let's go and do a really good restaurant and so we found this one his name now of course escapes me but it'll come back to me and instead of taking a taxi He said, let's walk.

10:50And we walked through the most uninspiring part of town on the outskirts of Cordoba through a sort of industrial estate. It looked like a sort of bomb had gone off. And I thought, this isn't right. He's leading us down some ghastly alleyway and we're going to get sort of mugged. And then you sort of go through this, as I say, this dingy side street. And then you walk into this paradise and it's a restaurant called Noor. And it's very highly regarded. and we had the most extraordinary meal with this sort of tasty menu that was a ballet of execution and absolutely delicious. To the extent that my son, a couple of years later, when he went back on his year off traveling with his mate, he saved up all his pennies and took his traveling mate there because he loved it so much.

11:34On his gap year. On his gap year, you know, which is quite something for an 18-year-old. That's like, a quarter of it is beautiful though. It is. I mean, I'm sure there are bits which, as you say, are a bit dodgy, And it's got all those lovely paradors The Spanish, you know, paradors And they're not even expensive to stay in They're amazing I haven't actually stayed in one of them But they are legendary Yeah, they're very good Cordova, Granada and what's the other bit? Sevilla Sevilla, yeah All really, really beautiful Very nice indeed Oh, well, I'm going to put that on my list Because I haven't ever been to that restaurant So that's a very good top tip Do, maybe take a cab Yes, I will I'm not going to walk through the industrial estate No, I will definitely take a cab An Uber, an Uber what is your most overrated or underrated travel experience oh golly that one as i said this is something i've wrestled with i can't think of an overrated one um underrated i suppose but well can i say the one that took me by surprise really was when i was making a film with garenda charda who i know you've chatted to and we did a film called viceroy's house and we were filming in Jodhpur because the the viceroy's house of the title in Delhi is obviously a government building so we needed somewhere that looked a bit like that and the Maharaja's Palace in Jodhpur does it's now a hotel and it was a rather surprising experience for me because I hadn't appreciated we were all that myself and a couple of my co-stars were actually going to stay in the in the hotel where we were filming so it was the easiest commute to work I've ever had literally walking along the corridor to Matt Batten's office.

13:11It was rather extraordinary. Having said that, I put on about two stone when I was there because the food was so scrummy and so ridiculous. And, I mean, I love Jodhpur. I love Rajasthan. I travelled there when I was in my teens, in my gap year, and absolutely adored it. And so when Gurinder, I remember I was filming, it was the last season of the TV incarnation of Downton Abbey, and she came to see me at Ealing Studios. And she said, I'm going to shoot this film in India. And I said, I'm in. That's all I said. She didn't even need to tell me what it was about. And because I'd enjoyed it so much.

13:49And so this was another wonderful experience. I love India. I love its contrast. I love the fact that, you know, every, there is such apparent chaos when you go to the middle of, I don't know, Udaipur or Jaipur or somewhere. And it is like a sort of teeming anthill. And yet everyone seems to get to where they need to go Weaving in and out of Be it cows or Motorbikes with huge amounts of gear on them And here we have road rage And traffic lights And you know Ordered anger It's very strange Which is why I love I know India has a million problems As any other country does But there is something about the spirit Of I don't mean just fate but just an acceptance of life or an ability to just get on with stuff in the chaos that I love.

14:41And obviously the colors and the smells and the every day is a different festival from some different branch of a different religion or a different creed. And it's just so fascinating, endlessly fascinating. And I find it a heady atmosphere. And I loved working there as a grown up. I love being paid to travel, basically. So to go abroad and to do a job is always exciting. So I haven't really answered the question. I've found the question. You have. And actually there is, I think, an overrated one, which I think I've heard you talk about once, which was you went to the Grand Canyon. Oh, gosh. On route somewhere.

15:15I can't remember. What was that about? No, this was on a road trip a few years ago. And, you know, like everyone else in the world, I was dying to see the Grand Canyon. So I booked a hotel right on the southern lip called El Tavar. Now, El Tavai is one of only a handful of hotels that are extant on that bit, therefore has a captive audience. You know that your clients are going to probably move on the next day. So really, you don't have to try too hard. And believe me, they don't. I think I heard you say something like you felt that there was going to be a chalk of a dead body or something. Yes, it's the sort of place, it was so sort of grimy that, A, you want to wear your socks in bed, and B, you expect to see one of those homicide sort of chalk outlines of someone who had been killed there the night before.

16:05Not happy, not going back there. How sad, though. Isn't that awful? It was very sad. And I could, even the guy who served us at dinner, you could see that he just sort of... Was bored. It was sort of, yeah, longed for it all to go away. Dear me. What a shame, because I've always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's pretty spectacular, but it is pretty crowded, particularly in the time of year we went, which I can't remember what month it was, July or August. Of course it's going to be heaving. But I think that's true in any sort of area of the world. If you know you've got a captive audience, a little captive clientele who don't have many options, then you don't really have to try too hard.

16:44That's very sad, isn't it? Where were you going on your road trip when you stopped there? We were going north to south. We started in Wyoming at Jackson Hole, and we ended in, we went to a beautiful hotel, Amangiri. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, which is stunning. So lovely. Christoph Henkel owns that hotel. He owns Dunton Hot Springs as well in Colorado, which is where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out when they were robbing the bank in Telluride. It's just like 10 wooden cabins, but it's amazing. But Amangiri is incredible. Amangiri is incredible. And then we ended up in Vegas. And my son had always wanted to go to Vegas.

17:25And I did say to him that, you know, you can't drink until you're 21. You can't gamble either. But we did go and see. I was slightly yawning at the prospect of going to see David Copperfield. I thought, oh, yeah, it was absolutely amazing. Was he? I was blown away. It was wonderful. This was several years ago. And then my son and I did a road trip last year and across east to west. all the way across the states and went back to Vegas when he was 21. So he could have a drink? Yeah, so he could have a drink and a bit of a gamble. I saw O when I was there, which is the underwater Cirque du Soleil.

17:59It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Gosh. It's worth going just to see that. It's making me feel uneasy. The idea of people going underwater and sort of holding their breath. Oh, no, it's too exhausting. Oh, no, no, I couldn't do that. I just love it, I must say. Let's go on to food and drink. We've talked about your favorite restaurant in Cordova, but food and drink is so much part of travel. What do you like eating? Where do you eat here or abroad? Other than that one meal that you've had, let's just talk about what you think about food and drink and travel. Well, I think inevitably the local food is what stays with you when you think of a place.

18:38It's sort of, oh, I love my paella in Spain or whatever it might be. Having said that I love going to I go to Vienna regularly I'm not a fan of Austrian food And I don't sort of go out of my way But I had the best Korean food I've ever had Was in Vienna A wonderful chef who was based there I think she's gone back to Korea now So you never know I think these days The palate is so sort of broad In terms of I mean London let's face it Has become a fantastic destination for food in the last 20 years. It was always laughed at, sneered at by the French. Well, you know. Good luck with your food in London.

19:20And now it's a whole different ballgame. So I've got quite a broad palate. I think many of my friends would say I've got no taste buds whatsoever. I'm not a cook. But I know what I like, Tanya, and I eat lots of it. Well, I like Austrian food because I like schnitzel. Oh, do you? I love your schnitzel. You know, I mean, one leather sole goes a long way, I think. Oh, no, I like skiing in Austria. Oh, really? You see, it's all that sort of boiled meat as well and the boiled potato. I don't really go for that at all. And the sauerkraut. No, it's not me. Not you? No, sorry. What is your top travel tip?

20:03I think my top travel tip, and it's taken me a while to learn this, is that they do have shops in other countries. so you don't need to pack absolutely everything including the kitchen sink that you you know that they may have plasters abroad that they may even have soap or toothpaste and hair shampoo and hair shampoo so you don't need to take three weeks supply of it um so i think that's that's something now there's this thing i keep hearing about and i've never operated was it called five four three two one or something about how to pack your suitcase oh i don't know what's five you have five of this four of that three of that two of that one and i don't know what it is but it's probably i've never even heard of it yeah i must look it up it's a thing i'm going to look on tiktok it will be on tiktok won't it it will be i'm sure and it's about how to pack efficiently for your next trip um but i've got better actually because i do every time i unpack in a hotel if i'm going somewhere you know like going somewhere for the summer for a week or so in the summer and i have unpacked you know six pet not six pairs but several pairs of shorts and too many shirts and too many how many swimming trunks can you wear at one point you know maybe um but i So I always sort of swear that I'm going to pack lighter the next time around.

21:12And I am actually finally getting better at it. Do you do hand luggage? If I can, if I possibly can. My dear late dad, he decided in his late 80s that he was going to go and see one of his oldest friends in America. And that to get round having to wait at the luggage carousel, he was going to barely even take carry-on. he just got a huge old fishing coat and absolutely rammed it with everything that he could he looked like he's just burgled you know a department store and it was so impractical um and i think he was stopped at customs and everything had to come out but he had literally well because also he actually must have been before anyway he did have everything in in this and it was all had to come out and be shown and he said i don't understand why they wouldn't let me through i didn't have a bag you know but um and he arrived with his sort of poacher's jacket bulging at his friend's house um who looked at him whenever the very strange expression very very funny i can't even do hand luggage when i go for a weekend i'm going to paris this weekend to a girlfriend and i'm going to take proper luggage okay so so you would that would involve what a carry-on and a suitcase no i won't do a carry-on i'll just do a suitcase but then i have my handbag as well yeah okay and We're not even doing much.

22:26We're doing a jazz club, a lunch, a music. I mean, so I don't need that much. I'm sure I can do hand luggage. I'm going to try. So what is it? Shoes. So if I go in trainers, I then have to have high heels for the evening. Then a big coat, because it'll be cold. I mean, how do you get that in hand luggage? Right. Well, no. You could wear the coat, I suppose. You could wear the coat. Okay, so you have to have high heels and you've got your flat shoes. Okay, I'm getting a picture now. It's a nightmare. When I went to Istanbul with Richard E. Grant, I told you we went with our mutual friend, Bruce and Bruce.

23:00Bruce and Bruce. Bruce and Bruce. He only does hand luggage. And he was so cross because we all took check-in and he had to wait for us. He was furious. I can imagine. I can imagine. Not a happy man. Why do you need all this stuff? Yes, exactly. What is your most poignant travel memory? I think it's waking. I was on holiday in the Maldives at Christmas and I woke up to two missed calls from my brother and I thought my father's died and I rang him and my mother had died. And so that was a heck of a moment which is imprinted in that where were you went, JFK was shot sort of way. It was an extraordinary sensation, particularly when I assumed the other way around.

23:49and so then there was a whole sort of few days of organizing getting home and that sort of thing and then the journey home when there's nothing one can do when it's like when you know when you've lost someone there's nothing you can do but but the journey to get to the place where you are then with your other relatives has takes on a strange significance and you know and you go through the the rolodex in your brain of the life that's gone and what needs to happen next I became quite good at death frankly because over the next few years I lost my brother and then my father We're frankly we all do it So I became very good at the administration of death, you know that thing of right We've got to do this we've got to do that the practicality Yeah, and so actually the the necessity of grieving can get kicked down the road and And what that entails whether you are close to the person or not But, you know, when you become an orphan, when both your parents are gone, that's a significant shift.

24:52But I can remember literally hundreds of letters coming in about my mum and not reading them. My brother and my sister did. And I sort of put them in. I was so busy dealing with death certificates and this, that and the other. And we were all organizing the funeral, et cetera, that all these letters came in. And I literally put them in a plastic bag. And it wasn't until I did that film with Gurinder Chadha in Jodhpur. And I took all the letters with me So this was two years later And I went to an amazing hotel Which I loved A very peaceful hotel called Mihirgar Which is about an hour south of I think it's southwest of Jodhpur Which is a little sort of oasis In the desert really And it was very, very peaceful And I had a weekend off filming I thought now's the time just to go on my own I didn't have anybody with me and I'll just go and read all those letters and have that cathartic experience and it was, it was beautiful and I realised you know how much my mum had meant to so many different people from all walks of life and that was really wonderful but to be in this hotel which as I say was only about 20 or 30 rooms and I met the owner and I said how come you put it here in the middle, it's literally plopped in the desert and he said we used to come here as kids and have picnics here because it was a little rise I think in this otherwise fairly scrubby desert you can see one one sort of mountain about 30 miles over there and that was it um and he said we used to come here as children and um have picnics and I just swore that if ever I could I would I would build a new home here.

26:28How amazing he did. Yeah he did I don't know I don't know and this was 10 12 years ago so I don't know if it's still there but I'm sure it is but it was beautiful and incredibly peaceful and I loved it. And you managed to grieve there? And so, yeah, I did. I did. And it felt right and it felt good. And, you know, grief is a funny thing, isn't it? You know, the way that it sort of comes, ebbs and flows like waves on the shore. And sometimes the same memory can trigger laughter. And then the next memory, next time that same memory occurs to you, you can be a veil of tears. But it was, yeah, I had a good cry, let it out.

27:05But really it's that setting that has stayed with me. so from the poignancy or the evocation of that pain of being in the Maltives and looking at your phone and then to the sort of the tying up of it in a way was in India My mother died a month ago actually so I think you're absolutely right I was so involved and have been in everything from the funeral to organisation and she was very ill, she had dementia so it was time but I think I probably will need to do what you've done at some stage because I think I've just got wrapped up in that. Yes, there's a pace, an energy that comes with dealing with the passing of someone, the practicalities, the formalities that put a veil, a gauze between you and your emotion, I think.

27:57Your mother sounded like an amazing woman. Didn't she work for MI5 or something? She did for MI6. MI6. Yeah, which I only found out way, way down the line. She was a stay-at-home mum when I was small. And then when I was about 10, she said she was going to work in this office for three days a week. And so I had a tantrum and said, how dare you? You don't care about me. What am I going to do at tea time? And I don't want to go and have to have tea with other people around here. You do it. And so I was a really stroppy little boy. And she worked for, I can't remember how long, maybe 10 years. And then many, many years later, when both she and my dad had retired, I opened the newspaper one evening and it said MI6 building to be sold off.

28:42And I said, well, that's my mum's office. anyway cut through to the chase I told this story on Desert Island Discs and then I got a call from MI6 bizarrely through Frank Gardner at the BBC who said the MI6 at Riverhouse are doing the series of lunchtime chats with civilians and would you like to go along and talk about people who have influenced you in your life and all that so I did and at the end of this chat I I um a man came up to me who was not that much younger than me and my mum had passed away by now and uh he said I work with your mum and so that was a real sort of uh pivotal moment because I'd never I never knew that she'd a worked in the in this environment or b anything about what she did and um so he talked about how when he was very young he was you know just sort of just joined and she was in charge of that little bit of I think it was called P section and um uh he said oh we always used to sort of hang around doing our crosswords and then we'd suddenly hear her footsteps coming along the corridor we go quick there's Pat there's Pat and get to work and it was the way he described the footsteps and I suddenly remembered my mum's footsteps and we were sort of linked by this sound and it was very very evocative yes it was it was amazing Anyway, I said, mum says you just did filing He said, well, it was sort of filing, yes Maybe a little bit more than that But you had no idea how extraordinary No And at the funeral I said to my dad Did she ever talk about it?

30:22He said, no, absolutely not, never And then my sister came up to me and said You know, there's a few people here from the MI6 here I said, really? And two of them live in the mum and dad's valley locally. I said, you're kidding. He said, yeah, her over there and him over there. And I said, what, Derek? He's the most boring man on the planet. And she said, well, yeah, duh. And I remember mum and this guy always used to sit in the corner at sort of village parties. And I'd think, oh gosh, he's got stuck with him. And they'd be having a gossip. And he came up to me at the funeral. He said, I gather you know.

31:02And I said, yeah, I had no idea. He said, oh, yeah, we used to just catch up on all the office gossip while we were here. And then his wife came over and rescued him from the boar in the corner. That is hilarious. That is so funny. Actually, talking of Derek, I have to actually say, I think the first time I came across you was in Notting Hill as Bernie when you said to Anna Scott, oh, I've done a bit of amateur acting myself. And how much did you make in your first film? And she says$15 million or something. That was wonderful. Such a long time ago, but such a brilliant film. It was quite funny.

31:37I saw Richard Curtis the other night who wrote it. I was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival and I was just at a nightcap and we're just going up to bed and suddenly Richard Curtis appeared in the bar in his pyjamas, which was quite extraordinary. As he does. As he does. I hadn't seen him for a couple of years. He was trying to get something photocopied ahead of a talk the next morning and looking for a nightcap himself. But I love his pizzazz of coming down. That is so funny. It's just so Richard, actually, isn't it? Very four weddings and a funeral. Yeah, completely. Really is. Were you talking about your new book?

32:11I was, yes. I was doing, I've been hawking my book around Rory Sparks and the Elephant in the Room. And it's been fun, actually, talking to children in schools and at these festivals as well. And, of course, the first burning question they ask when we open the floor to questions is, where's Paddington? Oh, no. So I have to explain that it's Marmalade Day and that he's at 32 Winter Gardens chopping oranges. Oh, how sweet. But actually, how wonderful that you've got done a children's book. Didn't your father used to tell you amazing stories when you were little? He did. You're quite right. He was a surgeon.

32:48And more often than not, when he got back from the hospital, I mean, for all of my childhood, I thought my dad was just a man in a suit who smelled vaguely of antiseptic. You know, I didn't really understand what he did. but he was good at coming to bedtime coming up and telling me a story all about this you know and the hero of the story was Hugh Daboo Daboo who had these amazing adventures with a squirrel and so I thought he was pretty amazing but he always had the same intro to the story setting the scene and of course I later realised it gave him time to think about what the heck the story was going to be about What was the intro?