The hidden gems of South America | Jewellery Designer Annoushka Ducas

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow world for partnering with Travel Secrets, the podcast. Today, my guest is the lovely Anushka Dukas, co-founder of Links of London with your wonderful husband, John, and now your amazing jewelry brand, Anushka. She has traveled the world. I cannot wait to hear her travel secrets. She has invented the brilliant breakfast for the King's Trust, which is amazing, which I'd love to hear about. So many celebrities wear your amazing jewellery and I'm so happy to welcome you. Welcome lovely Anushka. Thank you Tanya.

1:05What a lovely thing to be asked to do. Well travel is a lovely thing to talk about and before we actually get into your travel secrets perhaps you can just tell me a little bit about yourself and how travel has impacted that person that you've become? So I guess because I'm an only child and my father lived in New York since I was about six months I spent a huge amount of time with my mother who was my best friend, mentor, everything but being an only child it enabled her to take me wherever she went and she was that she was Russian she was an avid traveler and whether or not I was traveling in the back of a plane uh transporting horses from one place to the other place uh travel's just been a really important part of my life and um and I think it's influenced so much about kind of what I do now and your jewelry and who you are yeah and I think traveling you know you what you don't realize is that you are you you watch how people wear their jewelry how they dress etc and it's something that you don't even realize it's happening, but it's something that's kind of you absorb, I guess.

2:17I was going to ask you if you were Russian, because your name is so wonderfully Russian, isn't it? Yeah. So your mother was Russian? My mother was Russian, yes. Oh, lovely. And did you go there as a child? Yeah, I went, I used to go there, you know, with her when I was, I can't remember, probably seven, eight. She used to buy Russian horses from right deep in the countryside so um and in fact my kind of earliest jewelry memory weirdly is that she used to wear a wooden ring and I have a collection called touch wood and it's all because of that ring and we used to go um buy these horses and bring them back to England and then she would they're Russian quarter horses and she would uh ride them and bring bring them on as very serious kind of show jumpers.

3:04How amazing. So she was a show jumper, was she? She trained them and sold them on. How very interesting. That's wonderful. And have you been back to Russia since you were a child or was that just during your childhood that you went there? No, no, I have been back. I have been back a few times, but to Moscow and to St. Petersburg, mad about art and mad about seeing all those places. But those memories are kind of very alive. How amazing. And when I was doing some research about you, I saw that you went to the Sorbonne and you did the course Civilation Francaise, which I also did. God, I've forgotten all about that.

3:40Yes, I know. But I loved it. I did it for a year. But, you know, going to the Sorbonne and having these lectures in these amazing, amazing buildings and learning about Madame Bovary and everything. It was just fantastic. It was amazing. Actually, what I remember is less about that and more about every pâtisserie in Paris that I visited. I remember more about the nightclubs as well. Staggering home at three in the morning and having a croissant on the pond turf. Much more fun. Much more fun. Yeah. Well, let's get into your travel secrets. What is the number one destination that you feel everyone should go to once in their lifetime?

4:18Well, it's kind of thinking about this as a weird one because I really thought hard about it. And it's going to be a very difficult place for people to go to now. But it is Iran. And I was lucky enough to go to Iran just before lockdown. And it was the most extraordinary place that I've been. It was an extraordinary experience. The people are so hospitable, so well-educated and just warm. and everything about it from the hospitality, the food is completely delicious. And whether you're going to, for me, I mean, the Gold Museum is probably the best museum in the world for jewellery. Is that why you went?

5:10It's kind of why I went. Actually, some great friends of ours were, he was British ambassador there. So there was a bit of a time that we had to go whilst he was. But the Gold Museum was a real reason to go. It has the most extraordinary collection. of jewelry and the Shah had kind of craftsmen from Paris and he had them all sitting in his palaces making these extraordinary things. But from the Gold Museum in Tehran, you can then take a taxi and then a cable car up to the ski resort built in 1978. So I'm a big skier. Oh, really? We wanted to go and see this extraordinary ski resort, which is literally 40 minutes away.

5:58So this poor guy, never put on skis in his life, had to come with us. So we had to have the whole situation, you know, rented ancient skis. And I said, how's this going to go? He said, I can't leave you. So he hadn't skied and he had to ski with you. And it was minus 20. I mean, so there you go from Tehran, center of Tehran, where it's, you know, plus 25 to mine. It was extraordinary experience. Anyway, we managed to persuade him that we weren't going to be doing a runner anywhere. It'll be fine. But it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. And then, you know, to go to these extraordinary places, Persepolis, you know, which was the center of the ancient world.

6:40It was extraordinary. And no people, no people, no crowds. You know, that was the Parthenon, you know what that's like. Absolutely. So it was a very, very special place, and I feel very lucky that we were able to go because I guess now it's a bit tricky. I've never been, and I must say, did you feel safe? Totally, totally safe always. How lucky, and it is such an ancient civilization, isn't it? And to see it with no people, how wonderful. Yeah, I mean, you know, ancient history A-level. And I think we had about two paragraphs on our arm for some reason. I know, I know. When you go somewhere like that, does that inspire your jewelry making?

7:23I mean, how does it work with all of your collections? You've got those amazing charm bracelets. I remember when you had Links of London. Yeah. It was brilliant because I bought all my godchildren the charm bracelet. And then every year I would just buy the charm. And I know that you do things like that slightly differently at Anushka. but how do you come up with the things that you actually create? Is it because of places you've been to? Do you know, it's really random, but very often when I think back, it's not that I'll leave the place and think, oh, ping, that's an idea for a collection. I take massive, massive amount of photographs.

8:01So they do tend to inspire something, but it might not be for 10 years. It really might not be. but it's it's just yeah it can depend it could be a color it could be the shape of something you know we were when I went to Russia with my mother I my memory is so much about the onion dome churches but not the ones that everyone thinks about the you know beautiful colored ones in St. Petersburg especially but the the wooden domes that are in the countryside much more naive and things so but who knew x 40 years later that would inspire inspire something no how amazing and also probably the Fabergé eggs that you saw with the shapes yeah the colors and all of you know all of those things so it literally it could be just the top of a railing it could be anything um but I guess inevitably but it's it's it's not not something specific it's not something specific interesting and i'm sure that we'll get into you know the philippines and the golden golden pearls later and i'm actually wearing my golden pearls for you today absolutely gorgeous just for you yeah um but let's get into your next travel secret what is the most unexpected travel experience that you've ever had or place and my most unexpected travel experience was getting arrested in Croatia so we went to some auction and a few glasses of champagne later my husband had found he bid to take a boat in Croatia a boat called Lally that's a kind of 120 year old boat anyway so we arrived four children small they were all kind of you know under 12, I think.

9:58We arrived there, we get through customs in Dubrovnik, and that's fine, where we were then hauled, hauled aside and arrested. You hadn't even stepped into the country. I hadn't even stepped into the country because we had said we were going on a boat. And what boat, et cetera, et cetera. And what transpired is they were totally convinced. When you say we bought it at a charity auction, and that doesn't translate terribly well in Croatian, they're like, you know, you can imagine. So they thought for some reason that we were chartering through the black market. I mean, these things I couldn't, you couldn't make up.

10:41I'm like, I've got my four small children here. Anyway, we weren't allowed on the boat. We were checked into a hotel, fairly average hotel with these four children. and they said they'd let us know the next day what to do. So we were supposed to be in a convoy with other people. Oh, no. So you weren't even doing it on your own. You were actually meeting other people. We were meant to be meeting other people. Anyway, the next day they said we had to go and see the Harbour Master. Anyway, to cut a very long story short, the Harbour Master, my children said to me, what you don't remember, because I said you've got to go in the Harbour Master.

11:20You've just got to cry. just all of you cry but what I did is I gave them carvel which I put under their eyes to make them cry my daughter said you got I mean that's what you did anyway I've totally forgotten that anyway so that seemed to work but we were allowed on the boat but we weren't allowed in Croatian waters we were only allowed to uh to stay in Montenegro so what a shame well it was it was absolutely wonderful actually as it happened I'd never planned to go to Montenegro and um it was absolutely wonderful but it was pretty unexpected in terms of your question. I think that's very unexpected indeed and actually the best way I think to see Croatia is by boat.

12:02By boat yeah. You know you can go into all those lovely little beaches and things so we have some fantastic hotels in Croatia called Adriatic Luxury Hotels and there are four of them in Dubrovnik and they're all beautiful but actually the best thing is when you stay there is you You take a little boat and you go off into all the little coves and things. Well, when you go to Montenegro, it's the same. You want to go and do that. I haven't been to Montenegro. Apparently, it's absolutely beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. Surprisingly cold water because it's really deep. So I was always, you know, I love boats.

12:34So jumping off boats is great. Are you big sailors? I wouldn't say sailors, but we live by the coast. So we can sail. Where do you live? We live in West Sussex. So just literally just on. Near West Wittering and around there. Yeah, Bosn. yes fantastic yeah so my kids all grew up sailing and stuff but i'm a bit more warm water type situation yeah lying on the deck that's better that's more my style we used to do that we used to go on flotilla holidays in greece and we were such bad sailors my poor father my sister and i would be lying on the decks with you know like oil all over us and he'd be saying hoist the mainsail and do this and we'd be like oh in a minute we're getting and he was being like we're going to crash into the rocks.

13:14Well, it's really good viewing that. If you ever go to Idra in Greece and you watch all these people coming in and it's really stressful. You're just sipping an apple. My father actually got given at the prize giving a cat of nine tails for the most mutinous crew. And he said, you see, it's not just me. It's actually everyone notices that you're a useless group. And you said you're a big skier. So do you ski a lot? We ski a lot. Yeah, we ski a lot. in the um in the Trois-Valets so we have a chalet in the in the Trois-Valets very lovely so we ski a lot yeah very nice which is really yeah I'm very lucky I grew up in Switzerland so we I was at school over here boarding school but we had every Christmas for a month and every Easter for a month so I have skied so much which is lovely and I broke both of my legs last year skiing no not skiing walking down Knightsbridge in I fell down a pothole so I haven't skied since but I think it's fine I mean if you've grown up skiing you'll be fine oh my god I know strike quite a tale I know I know crossing a zebra crossing interesting let's go on to your most overrated or underrated travel I uh recently actually been to we went to Bolivia um we went to which we we did a big trip went to Colombia with the children for two weeks which was heaven and then we went on and did another couple of weeks so we went to um um the atacama desert and drove through the through the mountains into bolivia um and then went to la paz i mean have you been to bolivia no oh my god it you the salt flats have got to be you know on your they're definitely on my bucket list yeah and make sure you go when it's um wet because the wet season is when you get these endless reflections and it's extraordinary and lovely birds and wildlife no not no not much really so literally no no it's really that so we rented um my husband said what the hell are you doing i rented two bikes to go cycling so he likes to have um wherever we go he buys stuff dressing up covered so we bought you know proper proper ponchos and we also managed to buy I say we, he bought a giant llama teddy bear like this, which we had on our bike.

15:45I mean, I'll show you the pictures. Hilarious. That's hilarious. But when we got to La Paz, which is the highest capital in the world, I really wasn't, I had very little expectations of what we were going to see because we kind of needed to go to La Paz to get home. but I so it was so unexpected and so enjoyable very high but we met this rather amazing Bolivian artist son actually called Gaston Ugalde whose father did huge amounts to promote the Bolivian salt flats but we in La Paz we we went round his father's studio which is full of the most extraordinary art my husband's um chairman of pallant house art gallery which is if you've ever come to chichester has the most important collection of 20th century british art outside the tate does it how amazing in chichester yes we visited um gaston galde's um studio and he makes the most extraordinary um cactus out of bolivian textiles and oh my god just it was absolutely inspiration actually and also the other thing La Paz is you'll be interested in this you get public transport is built by uh the Swiss they're all cable cars 12 cable cars across the city which is and and it is run Swiss style marvelous which is utterly extraordinary because the streets aren't like that so the minute you step out of the cable cars are very different it's more what you expect and there's a quite a um the other thing that was really interesting about it was a there's quite a restaurant scene there uh which i hadn't really expected and we went to um a rather wonderful restaurant called ancestral i think ancestral i think it's called um and that was one of the it was one of the most delicious meals i've had in a long time actually very unprepossessing in a basement somewhere you'd never know this is in la paz this is in la paz yeah Oh, good tip.

17:50Yeah. Yeah, good tip. So I need to go and see the hotel that's being built, his art gallery, and definitely go to that restaurant. Yeah, you definitely do. So you can be my guide. Awesome market. I'm mad about markets wherever I go. Oh, are you? Interesting. But this one is biggest market in South America. And market for clothing, bags, food. Food, household goods, woven, you know, textile. I mean, it's literally everything. I can't remember the figures are but it's crazy the amount of money that is passes hands every day and as your husband is a what did you call him he buys costumes and things wherever you go dressing up dressing up yeah so he came back with lots of stuff I would imagine well he came up this bloody toy llama which I had to carry literally across this so did you bring the llama back yes yes I had its own seat on the plane oh my god I've had to spend the last three months in a freezer because uh when we came back from iran we came back when we bought a whole load of stuff that gave my entire house moths oh no so the llama's been in the freezer so let's go on to food and drink you talked about that lovely restaurant in la paz but it's so important in travel what do you like eating where do you like eating what is the best meal other than that that you've ever had um let's just talk about food and drink so food i mean i i had a fish business before so before links of london started because my mother had a fish business so i spent a lot of time with all the kind of best restaurants in london with all the best i'll start again i spent a lot of time with all the best chefs in london at the time you know anywhere from the gavroche to the connor to kensington place to all of these you know anabars etc etc so i spent a lot of time So I'm kind of really interested in food.

19:46Terrible cook. But for me, actually, the best food is the simplest food. And my kind of dying meal is, you know, literally chicken stock, pasta, egg in it, and a bit of parmesan cheese. Just delicious. Delicious. Yeah. um so i really when we're away i like to go to the more local restaurants less interested in any kind of fancy Michelin stars although come on to that but um so for me that's that's what i really enjoy most and and it's always worth talking to the locals about that i couldn't agree more that's how i like you too so it's quite interesting because when you kind of look up trip advisor and my children are really, I don't know about this, my kids' generation, they're kind of 30 to 23, they are absolutely obsessed with finding out the best restaurants wherever they go.

20:45Oh, how interesting. It is really interesting. And they tend to be bloody expensive, all kind of very trendy or whatever they are. And I'm always like, no, I just want to go around the corner to the bistro that, frankly, the doorman tells me is delicious. I'm more interested in that. So I'm not very good at recommending a particular restaurant. But that's just the type of food you like. I'm most interested by your mother. First of all, she's selling horses and then she's selling fish. I mean, what an amazing woman. Well, she had to change from horses to fish because all the quarantine rules changed.

21:22So that's why she changed. My godfather was Mark Burley. And she was saying to him one day, look Mark the fish in Annabelle's is absolutely bloody filthy uh and he said well if you're so clever you go and you go and find the fish so he's a bit surprised a few months later where she literally went into Annabelle's 11 o 'clock at night with a turbot in a bucket give that to Mr. Burley anyway that was the start of a of her fish business and you helped her well no what happened actually is I ended up um that's how I started Links of London because I was living in Hong Kong and she rang me she said look I've got 60 chefs all the best chefs in London I need a present to give them have you got any ideas not really I was selling property uh but I rang her back and I'd been to the Philippines and I said actually why don't we find a picture of the fish in a book we'll make them into cufflinks so you can give those to the chefs and it was cheaper to make kind of 120 pairs sold I moved back to London sold her 60 had these extra 60 and in my lunch I I went to Harvey Nichols and said, you know, I was lunch hour from Hampton.

22:29So, you know, went to Harvey Nichols, said, you're interested in these cufflinks. Bear in mind, you're kind of 1989, 90, where you could just buy silk knots or very expensive. Yes, if you were lucky, yeah. And the buyer said, well, yeah, I can take these, but I need a collection. So anyway, so I went back to her a few weeks later. Amazing. And that was the beginning of Links of London. That's amazing. So fish is a kind of unlikely story. Yes. No, I think that's fantastic. And when you were in Hong Kong, you were working in property, were you? So how long did you live in Hong Kong? Three, three and a half years.

23:07Did you like it? Loved Hong Kong. And do you go back to Hong Kong? Yeah, actually, we had 10 links of London stores there. And then I still have an Anushka shop in the Mandarin, actually. Oh, do you? Lovely. I mean, Hong Kong gets under your skin, I think. I think it really does. It really does. And what a place to, you know, I was young when I was there. I was kind of 20 to 23, 19, 20, something like that. But, you know, so I didn't go to university, but university was that. So it was, you know, traveling every weekend. We'd go to the Philippines or we'd go to Vietnam. You know, it was an amazing jump off point.

23:46Everything on your doorstep. And, you know, we look after the Peninsula Hotel Group and we're sitting in one of the residences at the moment. and the peninsula in Hong Kong was obviously the first one and they have Shanghai, they have Beijing, they have all those amazing, they have Bangkok in Thailand. And when I stayed there, it was just so extraordinary. I loved it. I mean, Asian service is like no other service really. And yeah, no, it's absolutely wonderful. Good fun. And talking about the Philippines, I remember hearing you telling a story about some golden pearls or something that you sourced in the Philippines.

24:22You did a lot in the Philippines, didn't you? Or you do a lot in the Philippines? Well, actually, so Links of London, 98 % of everything we made was in the Philippines. Oh, was it? So it's interesting you say that because actually after we sold it, I really missed going to the Philippines. But one day I got a call at Anoushka and this Filipino lady said, I'd like to come and talk to you about pearls. And I feel really indebted to the Philippines, actually, in every way. they they you know without without their extraordinary craftsmanship and etc you know links wouldn't have happened so I saw this lady because I thought I'd love to see her know very little about pearls actually and she um she said I'd like to I'd like to look at golden pearls which are which come from the Philippines farmed in the Philippines so um so I looked at these gorgeous pearls and and actually I went back to the Philippines gave me the perfect what better excuse yes have to go look at the pearls i have to go look at the pearls it's always a good excuse for holiday though you know those two things um and i mean those pearls that you're wearing i i you probably don't realize but every oyster has to be taken up from the sea scrubbed once a month in order to stop contamination getting inside uh so uh the oyster farmer has to do that and i saw all of that happen in the Philippines and I mean I knew very little about it and when you open the oyster you just open it a little bit and you the the lip of the oyster will determine the color of the pearl it's really it's absolutely fascinating that really is fascinating but the other thing that's really interesting is and I didn't realize until I actually went back is normally pearls are sold in kind of buckets at auction the pearl farmer who's busy scrubbing each or each oyster to make sure that the pearls are um uh you know not contaminated gets naught point naught naught god knows what of the value of that pearl so for me going there i buy the pearls from the philippines the pearl farmer gets the vast majority of the money.

26:37And you see the kind of communities that are based around this. So it's just a very, it's a really important part of what I do. Absolutely. That sounds a very nice story and very important story. There's the most divine hotel in the Philippines, which I'm sure you know, the Amampulo. Oh, my God. It's the most breathtaking beach, isn't it? I mean, and you go there. We went there. It must have been maybe the first month that opened. We just happened to be there. And it's almost like you never see anyone else. Let's go into your best travel tip. I think a really good holiday or travel kind of experience is combining three different things, normally a city, adventure, and chill time.

27:26but that's really important for me because I think then you come away feeling you've learned something you've relaxed you've you know had a wonderful time and my other for me actually familiarity is what's most important and we've been going to the same house in Greece for 20 years we don't own the house we rent the house and every time I say to the children and they still come with me now. I mean, that's the joy. Yes, lovely. Every time I say, should we just go somewhere else? This has been going on for years. They're like, no, we're not coming if we go somewhere else. Because that familiarity, when you get there, I mean, for me, that's just like I don't own the house.

28:15It's not my problem. But I know exactly where everything is. I love the welcome. Everybody knows you. you relax absolutely instantly because you don't have to acclimatize you've got to find the best restaurant the best shop the best beach the you know so it's probably a bit unexpected but and but I think it's so that is you know well you and I think exactly the same because we go to the same hotel every year in August we go to the Colôme d 'Or in Saint-Paul-de-Volce my husband's been going there since 1965 and our son is 21 and exactly the same we say to him shall we go somewhere he says absolutely not the same people go so he's grown up with them yeah he doesn't see them any other time of year but that is the time that he sees them and we know what's on the menu we know our table we know our room and you the minute you walk through those doors you can just decompress you don't have to think about anything it is so wonderful where is the house that you rent in Greece which place in Greece is it?

29:20It's in Schiathos and it's just it's gorgeous Colom d 'Or god that is just you feel like you there's so much history there and the art and I know you are huge art lovers and you look around when it rains probably twice during the summer when we're there so you eat inside and you know you're sitting below a Picasso and looking over a Matisse and then there's a mirror there and you think god it's extraordinary and they used to give them the art instead of paying for their food so it's I mean that would never happen nowadays would it? There's another restaurant there's a restaurant in Venice like that exactly the same they used to pay for their food uh by giving by in Venice yeah it's there it's not Harry's Bar no no no no it's a restaurant you never will have heard of um and it's um it's exactly that and I remember going as a child I went with a um a great friend of ours uh who was a sculptress called Fiori de Henrique's and she used to she she used to take us there well that sounds a lovely restaurant and I think Venice is amazing and having a godfather like Mark Burley must have been amazing did he take you to Venice I mean he was such an amazing traveler and raconteur and bon viveur wasn't he yeah he was we I didn't go to Venice with Mark actually but I went to we we used to go to mad places Lichtenstein especially to go and taste food we used to drive actually from home home at that point was in kent and we used to take the ferry or the hovercraft i think and to go to all these slightly random restaurants in kind of northern france to test a particular type of butter or a particular type of um mousseline or something or other um and that's what mark barely used to do did he yeah we used to suddenly say right come on we're going yeah we had such a fun time I tell you what I need and he may have given it to you and if he did I want you to give it to me, the chocolate mousse, the chocolate no, ice cream, the chocolate ice cream recipe at Annabelle's is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted.

31:24Well I'll tell you what I think you'll probably go because Robin Burley's just opened an ice cream shop in Chelsea Green Do you think that he will probably have it though won't he? I think 100 % I know exactly, off Elston Street on Chelsea Green. Yeah. Burley's Bakery for ice cream. Next door, he's opened an ice cream shop. I'm going to go this afternoon. Yeah. It's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. Yeah, it is. How lovely. When I worked for him, I'd always have an excuse to go to the kitchen to just check out how it was going. What did you do when you worked for him? Oh, it was his PA.

31:57Were you? It was my first job, the most terrifying job of my entire life. How funny. Do you have your godfather? Yeah, no, yeah, absolutely. I mean, terrifying. he'd say that literally day one he'd say initially can you get me so-and-so on the telephone and I made the mistake of getting so-and-so's PA on the telephone and putting the PA through he went bananas anyway it was I mean I learned so much about attention to detail how things should be done um that again you know saying all of that but you don't realize that when you're when you're doing it but when I look back I really I really realized how much I learned and actually he had the best idea I mean the Annabelle's and all of those clubs Harry's Bar really were beautifully done he had exquisite taste didn't he yeah he absolutely did but that is a very funny story putting the PA through and no he wanted the person that's really funny let's go on to your most poignant travel adventure or travel trip?

33:03I think we were lucky enough to have found ourselves in Kenya when the second lockdown was announced. So we landed, I think, in Kenya on the 19th, I want to say it was the 19th of December. And that was, so we had, we were, all of us we were celebrating on 30 something 30 30th wedding anniversary i think um so i had all the children which was fantastic and we found ourselves in the mara everybody else had cancelled their holiday um so we literally had the mara to ourselves um so i found that utterly extraordinary because it really was us and the leopard, not us, 20 vehicles and a leopard. So that was pretty, that whole experience.

33:57But more importantly, we, I said to John, there's no way I'm going home to sit at home in lockdown. So we ended up staying in Kenya for three and a half months. Oh, how amazing. With all your children? Some of them. Some of them stayed for a bit. And then my youngest, yeah, stayed for the whole time because he was just, he was one of those ones that had just gone to university and it was really bad. So, yeah, he stayed with us three and a half months. Now, I think what was so extraordinary, the world had stopped. And we were, we spent, we ended up spending most of the time in Larmu. We'd rented various houses in Larmu.

34:38But the world had kind of stopped and it allowed, there was, it was totally unplanned. you know i just have one suitcase um and there was no pressure to do anything other than suddenly find your own routine find the silence find the kind of quietness and this sounds so crass but really reconnect with all the simple things in life the nature animals the sea just totally simple food everything was just I found that I'll never be able to re-gate redo that you can't kind of write that but we found the most wonderful routine and then having spent a few months a few weeks in Lamu in Africa you could move around a bit so we ended up we ended up three of us going to Rwanda to see the gorillas.

35:39Oh, did you? How amazing. I mean, also, nobody. There was nobody. So, you know, normally you spend an hour with the gorillas, so I understand. It's been on my bucket list for my whole life. We were there three hours, four hours, with a baby gorilla of two weeks old. It makes me cry now, actually. It was just the most extraordinary, extraordinary experience. I've actually always wanted to do that and we've got a wonderful client called Volcano Safaris right and the gentleman who runs it is just fantastic and they give so much back to the community and it's actually very expensive to go and see them because of the permits and things but and the conservation everyone that goes says it really is poignant and totally life-changing it absolutely is and one kind of pushed past me and you know pushed me over very gentle not nothing But it was just, what's that film with the...

36:36Gorillas in the Mist. I mean, it was when you see, when you kind of, that was the experience. It was just utterly extraordinary. When I had David Gandy on, his father was very like David Attenborough. He used to take him all over the world. And he said he took them to see the gorillas. And the guide actually said to him, put your camera down, just look. Yeah. And really experience this because you're never going to have this again. So of course they got lovely photographs, but he said it was much more about, watching and seeing and he said it was fantastic and that and the quiet the absolute rights you just sit and listen and quiet and then breathe everything everything about it was just anyway all I can say is you must do it yes no I actually really have that really was extraordinary so la paz the salt salt flats and but I think and the other thing about Africa is you know it get you really gets under your skin Africa um and I think the uh the you asked me earlier about kind of inspiration things and and having spent a bit of time in the Mara and seeing different tribes all across Kenya because we we we did a bit of going around Kenya is you know just the the simplicity the meaning the wisdom that those tribes impart is pretty extraordinary and I ended up much later doing a collection.

37:57In fact, these arrows are very much part of that. So this is called a part of my flight collection. And that was all about changing direction, the arrows that the tribes are using, the kind of, you know, they have to get an arrow and put it into an animal's heart, directly into their heart to prove that they are warriors, et cetera, et cetera. So all of these kind of influences that you don't really expect to come back, but actually that did inspire a whole kind of collection. Did you say you had a collection called Flight? Flight, so it's all about the feather at the end of the arrow and the arrow, you know, and where.

38:38And at that time, it was all about, we thought, new direction and new lockdown was all about new openings. Not sure we learned much, but here we are. I don't know. I mean, you look back and you can't believe it happened. And I didn't. That's what I mean. I mean, it seems that life's back to, you know, well, normal-ish. Maybe.

39:01Before I let you go and ask you what's next for you, tell us very quickly about The Brilliant Breakfast and about entrepreneurialism and helping women because I'm so in admiration of what you have done with that and with the King's Trust now was the Prince's Trust. Obviously, you're an entrepreneur. It's very much in your family blood. Just quickly tell us a little bit about that. So I am passionate about helping young women. I think, you know, I was very lucky. I was very, very close to my mother. She died very suddenly when I was 23. But in the short time that I had with her, I think she was able to teach me so much.