S3 EP9: John Robins

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Podcasts, there are millions of them. Some might say too many. I have one already.

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I don't have any, because there are enough. Politics, business, sport, you name it, there's a podcast about it, and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.

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But nobody is covering the most important topic of all. Why is that? Are they scared?

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Too afraid of being censored by the man? Possibly, but not us. We're here to ask the only question that matters.

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We try and say it at the same time, Max. What did you do yesterday?

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What did you do yesterday? That's it. All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday.

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Nothing more. Day before yesterday, Max? Nope. The greatest and most interesting day of your life?

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Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it. I'm Max Rushden. And I'm David O'Doherty.

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Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Hello, and welcome to today's episode of What Did You Do Yesterday?

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I'm Max Rushden. Alongside me, as always, the mighty, the pioneer of comedy, the man who invented it, David O'Doherty.

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It's me, the inventor of comedy. Well done for doing that. Yeah, no problem. It's about giving something back.

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And boy, what a guest we have today, Max. Yeah, John Robbins, obviously known from Edison John, his podcast, How Do You Cope?

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I would say this is the... Deepest episode that we have done. I mean, the bar is not...

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It's low for that, let's face it. And you think about it. Like, there is a spectrum of John Robbins, and it runs from the hilarious clips you may have seen from the Edison John BBC radio show and podcast, then to the incredible intensity of How Do You Cope?

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His own podcast, where the guests are... In fact, we get into that today. And I feel...

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We do get that spectrum here. We brought the spectrum out of him, I think, Max?

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I think so. I think we probably... I wouldn't give us too much credit in bringing it out.

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Just this is his day, right? He lived his day, and we lived it with him.

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And I think it's probably why he is so loved, right? Isn't it? Because of that.

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And we talk about sort of what honesty is, right? We do get the meaning of life in this podcast, which I guess we don't normally...

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We normally just get to how many times you go to the toilet. But we do get to the meaning of life.

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Yeah. And I think it was really interesting for us as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've sort of taken on that journey where normally we sit on this and just go, oh, so do you like chicken?

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You know? Yeah. There's an authenticity to John Robbins that I feel it's something that he's really thought about in the last few years.

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Look, you'll get all of this. I think it's a great episode. Yeah. This is what John Robbins did yesterday.

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And look, there are, you know, he touches on addiction in this episode. And obviously some of you have been affected by that.

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So it's worth us letting you know that. And we'll put some helpline numbers. Some information stuff on the show notes, the description of the pod page.

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But here's what John did yesterday. John Robbins, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

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Hello, everyone. A star, David, of a previous episode, of course, because John starred in the Alex Horne episode where you met a man on a golf course who only ate bison or something like that.

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Yes. Well, we went to play at my golf club and a guy who I played sort of like competitions with was there and he said he'd only eaten meat and eggs for two months and had lost

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a lot of weight and I think, you know, suffered enormous changes to his digestion.

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Have you seen him since? Because, I mean, it'd be great to get, I know this is your day, but I'd love an update on the meat and eggs man.

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Is this why you're here? No, I'm not. I've not seen him since, but he does, I think he works in the, well, a water company, spends a lot of time down the sewers.

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So I think in a sense he's able to cut out the middleman in terms of any sort of extreme dietary effects on his digestion.

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Ironically, my main memory of it, and this was said by Alex Horne in that episode, he's down to 12 shits a year.

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He shits monthly. Yeah, which I don't. I mean, I've spent a lot of time Googling this over the years.

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You know, what's normal? What's abnormal? I think we all do. And, you know, it's between twice a day and sort of twice a week tends to be within the realms of sort of like margins of error.

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I know someone who's once a week that I just cannot imagine it. You'd have a ceremony, wouldn't you?

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If it was once a week, it would be a real moment. I just can't imagine.

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It's like a totally different lifestyle. It's like someone who says they go running every day.

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And you're like, how on earth does that work? Yeah, yeah. It's good of us to start.

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We get occasional complaints that we talk too much about. Oh, yeah, sorry. Fecal matter.

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So we have not, if you're one of the listeners that doesn't like that, you could just start now.

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We'll put a time code on it. Well, also that listener needs to thank me because you actually asked me to come on this show about three months ago, maybe longer ago.

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And I was in the middle of a intimate bum procedure journey. Oh, yeah. I wasn't really willing to talk about what I was going through.

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And are you out the other end? I mean, that seems the wrong way to phrase that question.

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I've completed my intimate bum procedure journey and can definitely get through what I did yesterday without talking about the toilet.

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While you were in that journey, though, that would have severely constricted your monthly numbers.

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Surely. Like, is there an element that maybe that's what the bison eater, in fact, you know, has a problem down the far end?

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No, it wouldn't have restricted my numbers. It just really brought a lot of prayer to the whole process because I was in so much pain.

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It would have been for a more specialist podcast. Anyway, what time did you wake up yesterday, John?

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Half past five. OK. Or sort of six. Five, six. OK. Wow. Is that just natural body clock or an alarm?

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No, natural body clock. I usually wake up at half six. I would say that's my usual time this morning, half seven, but yesterday, half six.

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Does John Robbins use curtains or do you just allow the Lord to come in and punch you in the face?

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No. Well, this does get into an issue I've had today. I use curtains and an eye mask.

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So I always sleep in an eye mask. Because my eyelids are very thin. So I can be woken up by a sort of a single LED charging light on a plug.

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However, I've just had my bedroom repainted. In order to do it, the guy took the blind off, but he's not reattached the fitting properly.

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So the blind now, I have to physically take off and on every time I want to close the blind.

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And I'm in a... Classic anxiety spiral where I am so worried about scratching the paintwork when I take it on and off.

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But in order to avoid that, I would need to find a screwdriver and do 20 seconds of work, which I'm not willing to do.

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So instead, I go through this ridiculous ritual every morning of physically taking the blind off, scratching the paintwork, hating myself for that, but not being willing to go downstairs, get a screwdriver and readjust the fitting.

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Yet another reason. And why I should be your butler. Like, I love that stuff.

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You know, I love to fix things, particularly a 20 second fix that'll make such an immediate difference to your existence.

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God, that's me. That's me in a single task. I like to think of myself as the sort of person who's very practical and solution orientated.

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But I really will just take the bodge approach until I am forced to do the thing, you know, because my wall is now covered in scratches and I will eventually do it too late and end up with the worst of both worlds.

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Yeah. How many years do you think? Because I would leave that for maybe three to four years.

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Well, Hillary's blinds are coming in a week's time to fit a new one. Question.

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Have you medically checked that your eyelids are thinner than? Yeah. Great question. Great question.

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Yeah. I've got very stretchy skin. I don't know if you can see it there.

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So I've got that thing you can do where people like pull. Yeah. Neck out.

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And that does stretch to the eyelids, which I just can't get them closed enough.

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Right. So you think when you close your eyes, it's sort of not me closing my eyes.

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I can't see anything now, but you basically can still see. I could drive. Yeah.

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Yeah. It's kind of like, who is the body where you can see inside us as to how all the organs work?

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That's what I've always said about you. Like I would see you. Do you remember in the 90s?

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It used to tour around event spaces and you would see- The plasticized corpses. Yes.

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That's what you're in my phone as. I think of it more as like, you know, the wonderful story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl.

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No. What happens in that? The guy who teaches himself to see with his eyes closed.

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Wow. It's an amazing, amazing short story made into an unbearably twee film by Wes Anderson.

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We'll put details in the show notes. Okay, so 6.30, you're awake. The blind is doing its job, but there's the paint scratches on the wall.

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Do you hop out of bed or do you reach for the phone to scroll about the doom of the world?

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Here comes what defines my day every day. Okay. The first thing I do is wordle.

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Good. However- It's too early. I sometimes make the mistake of doing it before I've fully woken up because I'm so desperate to do it.

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Okay. I've done it. I've done it every day for maybe three years. I've got a WhatsApp group.

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We post our scores. I have a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is now open. I am the dominant force.

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I've got 51 game week wins. A game week is 10 days. Okay. Interesting. However, because I'm so desperate to do it, sometimes I'll do it while my brain hasn't quite woken up.

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So the ideal situation is I wake up, I go for a wee, I go down, make my cup of tea, I come back up, I wordle.

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However, yesterday I was literally rolled over on my side in bed with my phone, which meant that I went storm, story, stalk.

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And it was stalk. And I hadn't eliminated all of the possibilities because usually what I'll do after my first two words is I will then work out using my brain all of the possible words that it can be.

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And then I might try a third eliminator to get it in. Four, or hopefully, the dream, get it in three.

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However, I just hammered them out. Storm, story, stalk. I've got it in five. My friend Phil got it in two.

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Come on, what's going on here? I got it in two. I hate you. And yesterday, in a very middle-aged man moment, I was trying to explain to a young Italian waitress.

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I had to explain what wordle was and then explain how I got it in two.

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How? How did this come up? Because the word was stalk. And the word that I began with.

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I always begin with a different word. I began with spork. The thing that is a sort of spork and a spoon.

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Who guesses that? Who guesses spork? Why? Why do you hate that? I hate the fact you're boring an Italian waitress by trying to explain what wordle is.

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It was terrible. I just presumed everybody knew what wordle was. But once you said, what's wordle?

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Then I was already committed to trying to explain. I gave up in the end.

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I hate the fact you're clearly doing wordle in a restaurant and not in championship conditions.

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No, no, no. I'd done wordle in championship conditions. I was talking about the wordle.

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Oh, God. This gets even more detailed. With a friend of mine, Ollie, who would actually, he hates tactical wordle play.

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You know, when you do a different word to eliminate some letters. Well, he's a fool.

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Well, he and the rest of my friends are purists and I play tactically. They'd actually recently started a new wordle WhatsApp group without me.

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What do you mean purist? What's purist? Purist is you don't go tactical. What does that mean?

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Spork. It means spork. Well, it means that if you've got S-T-O-R, you wouldn't just go, right, it could be storm, story or stalk.

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Let's come up with a word with those three letters so you know what it is.

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That's how you play the game. Well, you and I sing from this hymn sheet, but I'm very much the pantomime villain in the WhatsApp group.

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Well, they're just playing hard mode without playing hard mode and hard mode is just guessing words.

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It doesn't tax me. Right. But I also hate the fact you change your word every day.

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That makes me itch. No, I think you have to change it every day. That's part of the thrill.

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The thrill for me is to try and get it in one. And I go, who gets his spork?

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I feel sick. Robbins, what's up with you having your phone by your bed? I thought you would be the number one person I can think of that has eliminated that.

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I went on a silent retreat about a year ago. Alex Horne told us about it.

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I came back very strict, you know, physically turned the phone off 8pm to 8am.

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And I was very evangelistic about this. And I did it for five. Five days.

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And I think I just have to, my therapist talks about this because she works in a sort of a Buddhist adjacent modality.

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And she was like, if you try to impose unrealistic conditions on your life, you end up hating your life.

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I get that. You have to let some things slide. I would love to be the no phone.

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Phones between 8pm and 8am guy. But then, you know, I live alone and live alone for 10 years.

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My phone is really important in terms of my mental health. You know, like the best part of my day, which I'm sure we'll come to.

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It's like catching up with people on WhatsApp about nine in the evening in my bed.

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That's my social life a lot of days. And I think it's easy to go, oh, just phone equals bad.

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Sure, sure. So my excuse is that in case one of my ancient parents... has fallen into a hole, I therefore need to have the phone beside me.

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Because it has happened once or twice. They're in their late 80s that someone needs a hand at a curious time.

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You should get your dad out of the hole. You've got to get your dad out of a hole.

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Why do you need an excuse? Because it unfortunately then opens the door to just looking, as I did this morning, doing that surfy thing where you just keep...

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keep clanging Instagram stories up, up, up. And it takes you through everything from my various interests of bicycle repair into people looking in rivers for small pieces of Roman pottery into what's happening in Gaza and then more terrible American culture war bullshit.

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And I wake up furiously and I'm angry as I put Dirk on... What's the current medicated shampoo that I am evangelical about into my hair 20 minutes later?

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An utter waste of that 20 minutes. That's the trap, John, that I am not yet strong enough to not walk into.

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Yeah, but I think we are living through a period of optimization fatigue. Like, I am constantly being told the five things I need to do every morning, the 10 things...

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The 10 things I need to cut out of my life, the best way to have vitamin B, how to optimize my exercise.

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And I think sometimes you go through that period of obsession about, OK, I need to be eating this stuff.

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I need to be cutting out this stuff. I need to get this much sleep.

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And then you come out the other side with perhaps a more compassionate view to go, I just need to live in a comfortable way and a comforting way and a compassionate way.

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And if... If that means I spend 20 minutes scrolling through my phone, I don't have to beat myself up about that.

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Because what's worse, the 20 minutes scrolling or the mood it puts you in where you're like, fuck sake, John, you've just fallen into the trap.

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You've just spent loads of time... The criticism is worse than the thing. My algorithm tells me that all I need to do to get fit now is hang off a bar for two minutes a day.

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So I've really... I haven't done it yet, but I feel like this is where I'm going to go.

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It's just find a bar and hang off it for two minutes. And I'll be ripped.

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Oh, he's now telling me that I'm too old to do sit-ups and I should do Tai Chi as well.

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So I'm going for that too. I don't know if you've reached Tai Chi levels, but I'm in for it.

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Like, who would have thought that, you know, 15 years ago when there was that real stepdad energy thing of like, don't people spend an awful lot of time on their phones these days?

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We're essentially... We think we're having a much more evolved version of that conversation. But essentially what we're all still doing is going, don't people spend an awful lot of time...

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Yeah. ...time on their phones these days? Right. So you Wordle. Yep. You're sad about getting it in five.

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Yeah. Do you then go on to the other word games or is it Wordle and up?

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I do Wordle. I've recently discovered, discovered, discovered. That sounds like another one. Yeah. I've recently discovered Waffle.

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Okay. Which is great. So I do that every so often. But the only other game I'm religious about is Octurdle.

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And I do that when I do my first poop. Right. Okay. So we're not there.

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Yeah. We're not at Octurdle. We're not there yet. Yeah. Okay. Octurdle. So that's eight Wordles at once.

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And that's the best I've tried. There's a thousand Wordles at once. Stop it. And there's an optimised amount of guesses where you can do that very quickly because it auto-completes.

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So I then, and we won't linger on this, after my cup of tea, that sounds the alarm for the Octurdle.

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Yeah. Do that. Then a cup of coffee. That sounds the alarm for the second Octurdle.

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Got it. Regular as clockwork, twice in the morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the rest of the day is my own.

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Hot drink poo, hot drink poo. It's a nice way of doing it. And then I went for a 5k run and I sort of had to talk myself into it because I have,

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over the past couple of weeks, had quite low mood. And the various things I do to sort of deal with that, sometimes I have to force myself, into the mindset that you will feel better today if you move as early as possible.

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So I said out loud in my house, another great thing about living alone is you can just talk to yourself all the time.

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But I said, you're going to go and run and you're not going to think about whether you want to do it or not.

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And went out for a run and felt much better. Is this a silent run as in no headphones or anything?

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I listened to Three Beans. It's a salad podcast. I tend not to listen to music because I don't have enough songs that sort of fit my running rhythm.

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They don't write them that slow anymore. Well, do you know what I found? Because I'm with you in running.

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I hate doing it and I haven't done it for a while. I went for a run the other day and that was my first in about a month.

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So I play football and my knees get painful. I can't do any exercise until the next football match and it's sort of like three months of just not being able to walk properly.

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I also have to force myself out and I'm pleased. But if I want to run fast, I have to listen to TLC's Waterfalls.

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That's really quite slow though. It's not a fast song, but the beat, without sounding like an old man.

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You know what I mean? I think that's a reasonable pace. I'm thinking I might be doing two steps in one of those, but that, my 5k is, I would say five minutes faster if I have TLC's Waterfalls compared to, you know, any other sounds of the nineties.

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John Robbins, I had this thing because cycling is generally my, what I enjoy doing and I do enjoy it, but it does involve putting on a little outfit and checking your tires, et cetera.

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And sometimes that's one too many things, just enough to put you off doing it, if you know what I mean.

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And I did get around that last winter by getting a machine that clips onto the back wheel of of a bike and talks to your laptop, which means you can go into your spare room and

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ride against divorced Belgian dentists on the laptop screen. I follow a YouTube account where the guy does a lot of this.

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What's it called? Zwift. Zwift, that's it, yeah. Wahoo is the other, yeah. But also, again, it's like being conscious of that critical voice in your head.

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So I started doing CrossFit about four years ago. And it is one of the most important things I ever started doing, because it just introduced me to some form of exercise, because I did no exercise before that, apart from walking.

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But my head always tells me I'm not doing it enough and I'm not good enough.

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And I've started running in the past year. I'm going to do a marathon next year.

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I now have to do lots of stretching before and strength work in order to make the running easier.

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So you're like, oh, running's great because I can just nip out for 20 minutes and I can fit that into my day.

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And then you're suddenly like, no, I've got to do fucking 20 minutes of stretching before.

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It's another thing that I don't want to do. And I get angry at myself if I do it because I start doing it and I'll think, you don't do this enough.

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You're not good enough. I get angry at myself if I don't do it because I'm like, you're pathetic.

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You can't even do your stretches. And then my sort of feet hurt and stuff.

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Yeah. And then I don't warm down. And I think, well, I can't do 80 minutes.

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of exercise every morning. There just isn't enough time. So it's trying to find that compassionate voice that goes...

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Swimming pools. We all need swimming pools. And it's so boring swimming, isn't it? And you can do breaststroke for ages and not actually exercise.

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I'm sure about this. But there's so many barriers to swimming if you don't have your own swimming pool.

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It's like, I've got to get there. I've got to dress. I've got to be wet.

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I've got to be dry. I've got to be in a changing room. I've got to have a locker.

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I've got to leave. I've got to... Scan a card. I've got to... I'm not going to do that.

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What's the minimum sport you can do? He's got it. Is that it? Do you reckon it is?

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Trampolining or something? I think it's probably cycling because you don't have to... I mean, obviously you need a bike, but you don't have to wear the outfit.

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No, you don't. You can't go running in jeans and like flat shoes. Yeah. Yeah.

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That's something else. If you see someone sprinting towards you in that outfit, something bad has happened.

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Do you ever have this where... I don't know whether it's my brain, but whether...

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Whether it's Wordle or running or CrossFit or golf, I immediately get obsessed with it and begin comparing myself and researching it through professionals and then get angry at myself that I'm not committed or as good as professionals.

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And I then lose interest. And I forget the fact I actually have a job that has nothing to do with golf or running or CrossFit.

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You're not Wilson Kipkater, are you? Yeah. I'm getting tips from people. I'm getting tips from people who spend six hours a day doing this and get paid for it and then think, why am I not like that guy?

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Yeah. I definitely benefit from having done loads of sport in school and a couple of years after school when I was in university.

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Like my mother was a tennis and hockey international. So there was always a lot of just going out to do a thing, be it a game of tennis or a run or a cycle.

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And if you can just... Somehow normalise it so it's not an event at all.

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It's just as dull a thing as having a shower or a cup of tea because you never regret it.

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You know, afterwards it has released whatever happy chemicals into your brain. What's that atomic habits thing, isn't it?

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Make it a habit. We're only up to 8am. Okay, so the run is finished.

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We're motoring through this day. I presume you shower now? Yes. Socks on the clothes dryer because they're too wet to put in the dirty washing.

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What's the thinking there? So you come back from run and you're like sweaty top, sweaty shorts, sweaty pants, sweaty socks.

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If I chuck them into the dirty laundry, they're just going to sort of... I don't know.

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I don't like that idea of them being wet in there. They're not going to dry.

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So I hang them out for a couple of hours and then put them in the dirty washing.

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I understand. I might avoid the laundry basket, but I might put the sweaty running kit straight in the washing machine.

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It will then be joined. Later, by its dry, dirty compatriots, and then be washed.

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That relies on you having a wash good to go every time you go for a run, because I don't want it getting moldy and mildewy sat in a washing machine for two days.

26:09 - 26:13

I mean, I have two young children, so, I mean, the washing machine is basically on 24-7.

26:13 - 26:22

Hang on. What wash do you use as your regular default wash, John Robbins Express, or the one-hour, surely not the eco night wash?

26:22 - 26:32

David, David, David, you have gone into my pain cave. LAUGHTER Because my washing machine...

26:32 - 26:37

My life, in many ways, has been a search for things that don't exist. Mm.

26:37 - 26:46

So, if I'm ever selecting something, for example, I need a trowel for weeds, a special trowel that's thin.

26:46 - 26:56

These things exist, but something about me wants one so perfect it doesn't exist. So, it has to be the perfect price.

26:57 - 27:03

Right quality, but not too much quality. It's got the right reviews. It looks right.

27:03 - 27:09

And it's not there. No-one's made it. Yeah. Because no-one's made John Robbins' perfect weed trowel.

27:09 - 27:16

Sure. So, what I do is I then end up just needing a weed trowel still.

27:16 - 27:25

It's in my Amazon basket. But I can't bring myself to spend £8.99 because I want one that's £15.99, but not £40.99.

27:25 - 27:31

But Amazon is now... We've gone into this place where it assumes you want the cheapest, crappiest version of something.

27:31 - 27:40

Right. And all of the brands are like Senko, Hawaii. And you're like, where is this stuff?

27:40 - 27:52

We're Spear and Jackson. What happened to the old brands? Does that mean every time you buy something on Amazon, you have to take a cheap trowel out of your basket and then add it into your basket again?

27:52 - 28:01

I just wait until I'm in so much pain, like emotional pain, over a weed trowel that I just think, fucking hell, man, buy the trowel.

28:01 - 28:05

It doesn't matter. Which means what wash do you put on then as a result?

28:05 - 28:13

This is the thing. I want a wash that's not provided by my washing machine because the quick one is too quick and the regular one is too slow.

28:13 - 28:19

And the only one that is an hour and a half, which I think is a reasonable wash time.

28:19 - 28:26

No, it only goes up to a maximum of 800 spins because it's the synthetic mix wash.

28:26 - 28:31

But that means... That means it comes out too dry. So I'm thinking, why have you made this...

28:31 - 28:37

You've made elements of the wash settings alterable so I can alter the temperature sometimes.

28:37 - 28:48

I can alter the spin speed sometimes. Allow me to design my own wash. I want a 40 degree cotton wash that's an hour and 45 minutes that spins at 1200.

28:48 - 28:57

But you've denied me that and given me every other option. So my washes settings are either three and a half hours or 60 minutes.

28:57 - 29:05

1200 is too high. 1200 because it starts to wear out the clothes. I'm an 800 man and I'm also...

29:05 - 29:11

I don't put them in the dryer. I hoist them. I put them on a ship's hoist.

29:11 - 29:15

You know, one of those things that you dry your clothes on. Because you live in a Moretti advert.

29:15 - 29:23

And you pass the bottles along the Italian street to your neighbours and you all meet for pasta in the evening in some impossible dusk.

29:23 - 29:30

And drink beer like no Italian person. Never have I ever met, ever. Yes. Yes, I do.

29:30 - 29:37

800 is sufficient. Well, fans of the podcast will know, David, that it's been established, John, I have a very generic face.

29:37 - 29:47

I look like lots of people. And there's a generic man on ITV, sort of goes on This Morning, called Dr. Alexander Van Hoogen-Fuggenfluggen or something like that.

29:47 - 29:56

And he was explaining that 40 degrees is completely wrong. I'm nervous about adding more to your thoughts about washing machines, but it's not hot enough to make a difference.

29:56 - 30:04

And it's too hot. It is environmentally bad. So I have now, as a result, I listened to this man who looks like me and I sometimes just do nought degrees,

30:04 - 30:10

maximum 20 degrees. I know. And it's no different. I had an ex who every single wash was nought degrees.

30:10 - 30:17

And it meant that the colours in her clothes always looked amazing and was never a problem.

30:17 - 30:21

And I think, why don't you do that? And just something in me, I'm wedded to 40 degrees.

30:21 - 30:28

And also, my carbon footprint is so low because I love it. I live alone and I don't have kids.

30:28 - 30:44

Yeah. So I allow myself some really extravagant environmental harm. Big spin. Big spin 40. If I can't be asked to rinse out glassware, like a pickle jar, it goes in the fucking bin,

30:44 - 30:56

like the actual bin. And I don't care. Right, so we've put the socks on the dryer, on the clothes horse, and we're now in the shower.

30:56 - 31:01

Is that right? Yeah. In the shower, yeah. Cold shower or warm shower, John Robbins?

31:01 - 31:10

Warm shower. Cold dart at the end of it? No, because cold is a really unpleasant feeling, so I don't add unpleasantness to my day if I can avoid it.

31:10 - 31:17

And now where do we go? Well, there's no skirting around the fact we go to an online AA meeting.

31:17 - 31:23

Right, okay. And we don't have to be very solemn about that. The Automobile Association, right?

31:23 - 31:27

Yes, I like to check in on the latest recovery prices, whether they do start...

31:27 - 31:33

Start at home. How much extra is it to have your battery covered? How is the meeting?

31:33 - 31:38

It's good, it's good. How long does it take? How long is an AA meeting?

31:38 - 31:43

Well, if it's an in-person meeting, anything from an hour to an hour and a half.

31:43 - 31:59

No support and no interval. Yeah. And the bar is closed. Is it a very different experience between an in-person meeting and an online meeting?

31:59 - 32:13

Very good question. Online meetings sprung up in COVID and they have huge advantages in that you can log on to one at any second of the day in whatever country.

32:13 - 32:18

And there's one in LA that has been running since the start of lockdown continuously.

32:18 - 32:22

Wow. So it's still going. The meeting is still going now. It's never been offline.

32:22 - 32:30

Wow. That gives enormous access to support for people all over the world. I just find that so powerful.

32:30 - 32:39

There is something about, it's not as big a difference as the difference between an in-person comedy show and an online comedy show.

32:39 - 32:46

Right. Yes. Because there's just enormous difference in the sort of atmosphere and you're changing the very thing.

32:46 - 33:01

They can both be very powerful in very different ways. Yeah. I have done counselling with online and in-person and in recognition, I don't remember the difference between which ones.

33:01 - 33:19

I'd say that's a very useful comparison. It's a similar difference to that. Every so often there is a certain power that comes from being in a room of people who all have exactly the same problem and can't go anywhere else to meet people

33:19 - 33:31

who know what their problem is. And sometimes I just find the act of sitting moving because there's something so punk about it.

33:31 - 33:38

It's like no one's in charge. No one's made you be here. No one is ticking your name off a register.

33:38 - 33:52

No one is selling tickets. There's no record of this. And yet all of these disparate people have decided that at 8pm on a Tuesday they're going to this community centre or this Churchill or this cafe or whatever it is.

33:52 - 33:56

And they're going to sit and they're going to help each other and share their problems.

33:57 - 34:03

Their solutions. And it's, I can't get that anywhere else in my life. Is it tiring afterwards?

34:03 - 34:08

Do you take a moment to sit there or can you just carry on immediately afterwards?

34:08 - 34:19

I can carry on immediately and probably take a moment during it. I guess one of the downsides of online is that you can easily be distracted because you've got tabs open.

34:19 - 34:30

You know, you're on your device. The world is knocking at the door of your device with notifications and fucking screaming time analysis and all this crap.

34:30 - 34:40

I have to accept that sometimes I will open the BBC News website, which bear in mind, when we talk about my day, I would say every 90 seconds, I'm just reloading the BBC News website.

34:40 - 34:49

That and vaping. I'm vaping throughout this day on the toilet. Right, okay. On the way into the shower, out of the shower.

34:49 - 34:54

Not running, not running. Come on. I vape during a football game, but not whilst running.

34:54 - 35:02

I have considered getting a small undertake with me so we're constantly applying nicotine and independent news.

35:02 - 35:10

So hang on, when you're playing football, you'll vape, but presumably during stoppages in play or will you vape, you know, while you're going for a header?

35:10 - 35:16

I usually play in goal. Okay. So I'll have my vape by the goalpost and if I come out, I might nip back and get it.

35:16 - 35:22

But I did Alex Horne's charity game this year. You were there, David. You would have seen me vaping as I ran.

35:22 - 35:36

Very impressive. It was the game where there were additional rules and one of the rules was when the song Sit Down by James played, only the keepers were allowed to play football.

35:36 - 35:45

And it was... I think I've seen this. Friend of the podcast, Charlie Baker, and exactly 100 yards away in the other goal is Jay Robbo.

35:45 - 35:57

So this song comes on and we all have to suddenly lie down on the pitch, including some semi-professional and professional players and these two keepers.

35:57 - 36:04

Are just suddenly like a sort of death match sprinting towards each other. I'd say it was the highlight of the game.

36:04 - 36:10

You don't think the highlight of the game was when I came up for a free kick in the 96th minute and scored a goal as a keeper.

36:10 - 36:19

That's embarrassing for you. Or it might have been my unsavable penalty where I'd actually hit the underside of the bar and I didn't even celebrate.

36:19 - 36:24

I just turned and said, the postman has delivered the mail. That's what I do.

36:24 - 36:31

The meeting finishes. And where do we go? Well, we go obviously into a realm of unending spiritual peace.

36:31 - 36:40

Mixed with vaping and checking the BBC News website every 90 seconds. Then I had a call with my dear friend, Lou Sanders.

36:40 - 36:49

Another sort of spiritual injection. We talked about our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes, our desires, our dreams.

36:49 - 36:55

Has she bought that house in Margate she was looking for in series one, episode something of what did you do yesterday?

36:55 - 36:58

Oh yes, yes. And I'm going there this weekend. That's what we were talking about.

36:58 - 37:04

So I'm going to stay for the weekend. We're going to do the park run and we're going to do some writing.

37:04 - 37:08

And I've written a book and she's read it and she's going to give me some feedback.

37:08 - 37:20

Actually yesterday, this is what, another thing that happened is I started to get emails from people I'd sent a draft to and I couldn't open them because I was just sort of,

37:20 - 37:26

it's the first time anyone's seen it. Oh wow. And I could neither cope with praise nor criticism.

37:27 - 37:34

I just had to leave them sat in my inbox. Okay. And is it the J. Robbo story?

37:34 - 37:40

Is it my way? I'm afraid it is. Well, what I've learned is that there is no J. Robbo story.

37:40 - 37:47

There are just, you know, a thousand versions. It all depends on how much you trust your memories.

37:47 - 37:59

Wow. But also you might read it and think, God, that's really honest. And because I'm talking about alcohol a lot and the impact it had on me, I think, oh, how is he so honest?

37:59 - 38:05

And that's what people have said who've seen it. But in a sense, you're never able to be fully honest, ever, in anything.

38:05 - 38:13

Really? Because you're always being conscious of not telling other people's stories. And there are parts of yourself you don't want to share.

38:13 - 38:24

And I think that's what's like powerful about 12-step meetings is that I've never been in a place where you can be 100% honest apart from there.

38:24 - 38:40

And it's like mad. What people are able to say in that space that you can't share with the outside world because the understanding isn't there, the empathy isn't there, and the impact could be too disruptive.

38:40 - 38:57

So you're constantly walking a line between sharing and concealing. So, John, if the world was set up such that everyone was as honest as they were in a 12-step meeting, it wouldn't work then.

38:57 - 39:10

Because everyone would be being rude about other people or being too honest. Well, I remember a really interesting criticism Adam Buxton had of, you know, that Ricky Gervais movie where he's always honest.

39:10 - 39:17

I can't remember the name of it. Something Lying. The Lying Something. The Lying King.

39:17 - 39:25

It was The Lying King, yeah. And he made this really great point, as he says it makes the assumption that if people are honest, they're always going to be rude.

39:25 - 39:34

And I think that says, there's so much about Ricky Gervais. Wow. Is that like his version of an honest world is where people are mean to each other all the time.

39:34 - 39:39

But I suppose, aren't you, like if you honestly think someone looks nice, you are likely to say it.

39:39 - 39:45

But if you honestly think someone looks terrible, although people quite often say that to me, given how tired I am, you're less likely to say it.

39:45 - 39:53

You know, like you're more likely to conceal rudeness than you are positivity. Yeah, but what about, you know, the person you love who you've never told?

39:53 - 40:02

The person who you've thought about every day for three years? That it would disrupt their life for you to say to them, I think about you when I wake up.

40:02 - 40:13

The things we don't say to our parents, maybe, that we sort of wish we had said, or we say on the deathbed, or all of those things, you know.

40:13 - 40:23

Were the world as honest as a 12-step meeting? The reason those places are honest is because everyone in there has lived experience of the same thing.

40:23 - 40:35

And you can't impart, you know, 26 years, 10 years, two years of lived experience on someone in a conversation who doesn't have that lived experience.

40:35 - 40:41

And so much of what is healing about being away from any addiction is just time.

40:41 - 40:49

Right, yeah. And the experience that comes with time, because I could talk to you for two hours about how to get sober if you were struggling with alcohol.

40:49 - 40:56

You would not take any of it in because it took me two and a half years or it's taken someone 40 years.

40:57 - 41:04

So it wouldn't work, to be that honest. It would be helpful, but that's not to say you can't impart little sort of fragments here and there.

41:04 - 41:09

But over time, you put all those fragments together and you create a sort of a new way of living.

41:09 - 41:16

So where are we? I don't know. I think we might be in heaven. Here we are.

41:16 - 41:19

We're in Nirvana. This is the one other place where you can be totally honest.

41:19 - 41:25

It's this podcast on your day yesterday. We are now all floating. You're not looking at your inbox.

41:25 - 41:30

You're washed. Having a chat with Lou, of course. Yeah, chatting to Lou about Margate.

41:30 - 41:35

We're going to stay in Margate. Yeah, yeah, got it. She and I, two weeks ago, we are allowed to say this.

41:35 - 41:52

There's an NDA element to it, but we went on a popular quiz show that will be broadcast on Christmas Day with major celebrities who are all dressed as Martine McCutcheon was dressed as the Snow Queen.

41:52 - 42:01

And I was dressed as a Christmas cracker and Lou was a Christmas pudding. So we were very, very much the comedy sidekicks on that show.

42:01 - 42:06

That's so nice. Lou's good at quizzes, it turns out. Lou is terrible at quizzes.

42:06 - 42:13

I don't know what to know anymore. One of you is not being honest, as we've established on a serious subject.

42:13 - 42:19

Lou is obsessed with using quizzes to prove that she's not in some form of mental decline.

42:19 - 42:26

So whenever we're spending time together, she'll insist on doing a quiz. She will then fail.

42:27 - 42:34

In hilarious ways. And then get more worried about cognitive decline. Wow. I will give one example.

42:34 - 42:43

It's not fair to say she's terrible at quizzes. She does practice. She actually practiced quizzes, but she bought this card game and it was like an estimation.

42:43 - 42:47

You had to estimate. So it's like, how many metres tall is Mount Everest? And it was closest wins.

42:47 - 42:55

Yeah. One of the questions was, how many homes were destroyed during the Blitz? And Lou's guess was four.

42:57 - 43:02

They were big houses though, to be fair to Lou. There were four massive, massive houses.

43:02 - 43:13

We've spoken to Lou Sanders. Where does this day go next? Well, we move, David, into your realm.

43:13 - 43:25

I have a podcast called How Do You Cope? Yes. It's a podcast where I talk to people about, you know, just difficulties they've been through, how well they've coped or not coped.

43:25 - 43:38

And I interviewed someone yesterday for that. That person was Philippa York. And Philippa was a Tour de France cyclist before transitioning to female.

43:38 - 43:48

I spoke to Philippa about this because her previous name as a man is very present in her world because it's what she's known for.

43:48 - 43:53

So if I use her previous name of Robert Miller, she wouldn't mind that at all.

43:53 - 43:58

And we talked about holding space for that name and that previous identity. In her life.

43:58 - 44:09

So I was interviewing her at two o'clock and I was preparing my questions because I'd read her book, The Escape, which is written with David Walsh.

44:09 - 44:16

It's an incredible book. Shit, I have to read this. However, I am a cycling thicko.

44:16 - 44:24

Sure. And every time I've ever watched cycling on TV, it seems to find a way of being absolutely baffling.

44:24 - 44:34

Whether it's people not moving on events, or people touching hands and then going really fast and then going really slow.

44:34 - 44:37

And you're like, why don't you just go a bit faster, you idiot? Have you not done this before?

44:37 - 44:47

What I got from her book, the way it's structured is her and David Walsh drive the course of three Tour de Frances.

44:47 - 44:57

I think it's 2020, 21 and 22. And through those journeys, they have discussions which are transcribed about her career and her life.

44:57 - 45:04

About her career as Robert Miller. Wow. About her childhood, about her transition, about her retirement.

45:04 - 45:12

And this is all wound in with what's happening in the current tour that they're, or the stage that they're on.

45:12 - 45:18

Fuck. It's one of the best sports books I've ever read because in a sense, it's not a sport book.

45:18 - 45:37

But if you don't understand the Tour de France, the references to like the tactics and the mythology of it are so confusing because you're like, they're saying, well, Poglic lost 30 seconds in the climb, so his tour was over.

45:37 - 45:40

And you're like, how is it over? I thought it was a thousand kilometres long.

45:40 - 45:46

Or they'll be like, they dominated the sprint. They're the best sprinter I've ever seen.

45:46 - 45:50

And they will live in the hearts of the French people for a thousand years.

45:50 - 45:54

And then you look them up and they've never won it. And you're like, well, that person's rubbish then.

45:54 - 46:06

If they're just good at the sprint bits. This stuff makes sense. Well, what certainly doesn't make sense is how you've amalgamated Roglic and Pogacar into the same cyclist, Poglic.

46:06 - 46:13

You've cloned the best cyclist of all time. And all this stuff about, I mean, I don't want this to become me, David explaining the Tour de France to me.

46:13 - 46:21

So it'll just take forever. But it gives an insight into, you know, as a cricket fan, I know what it's like for someone to go, what, five days?

46:21 - 46:25

What do you mean five days? What do you mean they drew and it was amazing?

46:25 - 46:37

However, I think, I think with the Tour de France, perhaps more than most other sports, because it's so badly suited to TV.

46:37 - 46:46

It's like it's not been compromised for TV. And they're even talking about reporting on it.

46:46 - 46:50

You're sort of at the start and the end because you can't really follow it.

46:50 - 47:03

So you're sort of being told what's happening, trying to pass that on. So anyway, I watched a few clips of, Robert Miller cycling in the 80s and of 80s coverage of the Tour de France.

47:03 - 47:08

It's like David's dream. It's like David's absolute dream. It's what he does every day.

47:08 - 47:16

To get a feel for like what it's like. Wow. To put images to that book I'd read because I didn't want to Google it while I was reading the book.

47:16 - 47:25

God, there's a stage in the 1988 Tour de France. Here we go. Well, this is my fear is coming true now.

47:25 - 47:30

No, no, no, no, no. You may have. You may have seen it. Like winning a stage is a really big deal.

47:30 - 47:50

So Robert Miller, as she was then, is in a breakaway up a mountain with Gilbert Duclos LaSalle and the gendarme, because the cars come through with the cyclists, the fucking gendarme waves the cyclists into the little lane to the side.

47:50 - 48:00

And so the guy who's in third place ends up winning the stage. And there is an interview with Robert Miller where like, the whole year has built up to this,

48:00 - 48:16

slumped over a bike, just with the ultimate kind of like biblical level of agony, as in it was a small piece of bureaucracy that has ruined this, maybe my last chance to ever win one of these.

48:16 - 48:23

Oh, that's as much as I'll say. Was the interview amazing? Philip York's one of my heroes.

48:23 - 48:34

It was. I was conscious of my own experience with the extreme anxiety of talking to someone who's transitioned and getting it wrong somehow.

48:34 - 48:45

Yeah, sure. I was aware of how present that was in my mind. And you know, when you are so focused on getting someone's name right, you often get it wrong.

48:45 - 49:03

Yeah. That sort of anxiety. But she immediately put me at ease. And one of the things that's great about the book is that David, who is interviewing her, these conversations they have are totally freewheeling.

49:03 - 49:13

And, you know, nothing is off the table because Pippa has the right to say, you know, fuck off, or I don't want to talk about that.

49:13 - 49:17

But I said at the start, like, how do you feel coming into a media environment?

49:17 - 49:25

Because she's had some appalling experiences with the tabloid press, like really life alteringly brutal, horrible treatment by the Daily Mail.

49:25 - 49:31

She said, look, I've been asked, I've been asked everything from the most sensitive question to the most inappropriate question.

49:31 - 49:35

So there's nothing, you can't really get this wrong, which was really generous of her.

49:35 - 49:52

I noticed, so when they're talking about Robert Miller, the cyclist, he hated journalists and was known for being cold and not giving them interviews because he wanted time to prepare for the race and time to recover from the race.

49:52 - 49:58

So the less people spoke to him, the better. So he wasn't sort of well-liked, amongst the press.

49:58 - 50:12

And there were elements of, when you're interviewing someone about quite intense stuff, which I've done quite a lot now, some people, you press a button and they just go and they just talk.

50:12 - 50:22

And, you know, you might be lucky to get 10 questions in, in an hour. Some people stop and Pippa is one of those people whose answer ends.

50:22 - 50:33

So you just have to get into that rhythm of, okay, I need to have my next, next question ready to go because this isn't going to become a really freewheeling conversation.

50:33 - 50:40

Someone is going to answer my questions, which is fine. You know, neither of these, sometimes it'd be quite frustrating when someone just goes on and on and on.

50:40 - 50:45

But once I'd got into that rhythm, it's like a sort of game of tennis.

50:45 - 50:54

My backhand needs to be ready before the ball comes. It was amazing. And she relaxed because I'm used to that environment.

50:54 - 50:57

I know what that studio looks like. I've sat in that chair every week for 30 weeks.

50:57 - 51:03

But someone coming into the first time, you don't know what, they might be terrified, often are very nervous.

51:03 - 51:10

But I did manage to get a little message from Pippa for you, David. Oh my God.

51:10 - 51:20

Here we go. What? It's like surprise, surprise. Hello, David. This is John Robbins and hello, Max.

51:20 - 51:26

I'm coming to you from yesterday with a very special guest to my right. Hello, David.

51:27 - 51:33

I used to ride the Tour de France, but I don't anymore. Now I just commentate on it and make snarky remarks.

51:33 - 51:42

Max, Pippa York, winner of the, what jersey was it again? Polka dots. I think it was white with red dots on it.

51:42 - 51:47

I think it may have had something to do with the hills. Anyway, I'll be chatting to you tomorrow, dears.

51:47 - 52:00

Bye-bye. That's so great. There you go. Do you know what? It's really interesting, the art of interviewing, which I wouldn't say I have ever mastered at all, but when you know you've got to have your question ready,

52:00 - 52:06

but at the same time, you've got to be listening because they might say something which means your question is not the right question.

52:06 - 52:13

That is much harder than you're right. One of these sort of freewheeling, you might not get as much out of them because they're just talking and talking and talking.

52:13 - 52:23

But having that sort of double focus of, my next question is, if there's a silence, I ask this, but actually the next question might just be why or what, or having done lots of these,

52:23 - 52:30

you will know better than I will, I guess. For how do you cope? So it's sort of, I have two extremes, Ellis and John, which we record on a Friday.

52:30 - 52:35

I mean, literally we're talking five minutes prep for three or four hours of recording.

52:35 - 52:43

And I love that because it's just purely improvising. With how do you cope? I take that research and preparation very seriously.

52:43 - 52:48

And I'd like to think that comes across in the interviews. So I have all of the questions.

52:48 - 53:05

So I'll have about 20 questions in a specific order. So that's what I'm doing before I go into London is I'm copy and pasting all of my questions from a Word document into an order that I feel will drive a story of the interview.

53:05 - 53:12

And sometimes that goes awry and people will answer a question you haven't asked right at the start or will take it.

53:12 - 53:26

So I need to know it inside out so that I can move across and sort of a mixture of controlling it to an extent, but also being flexible enough to let it be its own thing.

53:27 - 53:34

I can't do that if you haven't read everything and watched everything and lived in that person's world for a few days.

53:34 - 53:48

There's an incredible summation of the difference between your How Do You Cope podcast and the What Do You Do Yesterday podcast in the one crossover guest between the two, which is Tom Rosenthal,

53:48 - 53:55

where he was incredibly open and vulnerable, like from his first answer onwards, where you go, how are you?

53:55 - 54:06

And he goes, I'm good. And then, oh, he literally contradicts himself. When he did our one, he prepared a 25 page PDF with photos of everything that he'd done yesterday.

54:06 - 54:19

It was, they're both like beautiful windows into the same person where in a stupid environment like this fun podcast, he needed to keep some sort of control on the whole thing.

54:19 - 54:27

So he'd be like, I bring you to page 13, diagram three, where you will see my bank statement or whatever it is.

54:27 - 54:34

They're both very honest versions of the same person. And that's really interesting in terms of like writing a book about yourself.

54:34 - 54:44

So if Tom's writing a book, is he going for the Tom who does the spreadsheets and the PDF, the sort of humorously neurotic Tom?

54:44 - 54:50

Or is he writing a book about the spiritual explorer Tom who prays before he goes on stage?

54:50 - 55:00

So what is being honest about who you are? In a sense, there is never perfect honesty because even if you're honest, you try and meld those two people together.

55:00 - 55:06

So like my editor for my book is often like, his main note is, could we have more humor here?

55:06 - 55:18

And you're like, well, yeah, we could. We could make this all humor or we could make it no humor because what I'm talking about is both funny and serious.

55:18 - 55:27

So how do I tell you a story which is at times very traumatic in a funny way?

55:27 - 55:37

I have to give space to both of those things. So I have to let you get to the end of a paragraph feeling like, fucking hell, wow, that's full on.

55:37 - 55:42

But I also have to get you to the end of some paragraphs going, that was funny.

55:42 - 55:51

But I can't do both all the time. And they're just two strands of a personality which as all personalities do has a thousand strands.

55:57 - 56:07

Sports, finances and economy counted as never. Listen to elite athletes share their keys to win inside and outside the field in the sports bag.

56:07 - 56:12

And if yours is to understand the economy without turns, Economist Café is your obligatory stop.

56:12 - 56:18

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56:27 - 56:34

No, they're good. Have you forgotten how good they taste? Well, I'm usually a toast with Vegemite and hummus guy.

56:34 - 56:44

Interesting. I'm a savoury breakfast guy. Okay. But I was walking down the cereal aisle and I thought, do you know what, John?

56:44 - 56:51

To hell with the man. They can't put you in a box. They don't know you.

56:51 - 56:57

You're going to buy some cornflakes. Because we never had sweet cereal when I was a kid at home.

56:57 - 57:03

My mum was quite into sort of healthy eating. So if we ever went away, I would be allowed to take a variety pack.

57:03 - 57:11

Yes. And just the best thing in my life. Cocoa pops, Shreddies, Frosties. Bricicles. I mean, sugar in a box.

57:11 - 57:15

To your brothers and sisters. Because me and my sister, we'd have the variety pack.

57:15 - 57:21

But it was like the new system, or the system they try and introduce with penalty shootouts, A, B, B, A, A.

57:21 - 57:26

If you went first, you got first pick. And then the other person would get, so you'd get the cocoa pops.

57:26 - 57:31

But then... My sister would steam in and take the ricicles and the crunchy nuts.

57:31 - 57:41

Cornflakes are well down. I mean, they're sort of last pick cornflakes. Like opting to bowl because you think there's going to be clouds coming in and then just the sun shines all day.

57:41 - 57:49

Your sister is batting on an absolute road. And it's like 400 for three. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

57:49 - 57:56

My sister's eight years older than me, so we were sort of never going through the same things at the same time.

57:56 - 58:06

Right, not variety. Variety pack rivalry, I'm with you. I think she'd moved beyond variety packs being the sort of make or break of her week in Bridlington.

58:06 - 58:12

So in a sense, it was win-win. I get it, you get all eight. Okay, so cornflakes for breakfast.

58:12 - 58:18

The research you're doing is what, before lunch? So I had to leave at 12 to get the train.

58:18 - 58:32

So 10 till 12 was when I was, I'd already done all my questions. Right. But 10 to 12 was just putting them in the right order and coming up with some kind of, So we're at 12 and we're heading to the station to get into town.

58:32 - 58:43

Yeah. How's the journey? We're going to go back into booze territory. I was behind a woman who was talking very loudly on her phone and it was annoying me enormously.

58:43 - 58:49

What was she talking about? I remember exactly. She said, what was that thing? Where are the notters pocket?

58:49 - 58:55

Yeah, that's it, where are the notters pocket? Yeah, you got to write these down because I forget them and I want to tell my friend.

58:55 - 59:02

I'm thinking, fucking hell, my journey into town's quite long. So I'm like, I'm going to be 56 minutes of this.

59:02 - 59:10

Wow. And then she took out a quarter bottle of vodka from her handbag and just took a swig of it.

59:10 - 59:27

And I was like, oh, okay, I see you. I know you. And it's hard to explain what it's like to see someone and know them better than they know themselves.

59:27 - 59:37

Wow. Just in that instant. And I'd say this woman was like late twenties. Part of you just wants to sort of go and grab them.

59:37 - 59:43

And like I was saying, in part, all of that stuff that I've learned over two and a half years of not drinking.

59:43 - 59:52

And I know I can't. And I know she's in that madness. And I know so much about her future.

59:52 - 59:57

And yet I don't know anything. And I want to influence it. And I want to say, I can help you.

59:57 - 1:00:06

And I want to say, this is going to end badly. I want to say to a stranger on a train, you're going to die, but I can't.

1:00:06 - 1:00:14

So I'm just watching her get through a quarter bottle of vodka in the space of a 50 minute train journey at midday.

1:00:14 - 1:00:21

And towards the end, there's these two guys to her left. One is black, one is brown.

1:00:21 - 1:00:35

And she starts being too friendly to strangers. And racist in what she would say was a fun, jokey sort of, I'm just having a laugh.

1:00:35 - 1:00:39

We're all, you know, having a laugh on the train at fucking quarter to one.

1:00:39 - 1:00:46

And she's hammered. And she was like, how old are you? And the guy said, he was sort of trying to joke.

1:00:46 - 1:00:54

He said, I'm 12. And she went, 12? I've done 12 years in prison. And I'm just sort of, at the same time, feel so much compassion for this person.

1:00:54 - 1:01:03

But also I want to get away because I don't want to be around that shameful thing of I just want to move further down the carriage because I don't want to be stuck here in this.

1:01:03 - 1:01:08

And also, should I be saying something? Should I be intervening? I know I can't because she's drunk.

1:01:08 - 1:01:13

I'm just sort of seeing how her day is going to go. It's one o'clock.

1:01:13 - 1:01:19

Fucking hell. And she's falling off a train at Great Portland Street. And who knows where that day is going to end.

1:01:19 - 1:01:27

She could end up in hospital. She could end up in awful situations. And just wanting to help her.

1:01:28 - 1:01:33

And not being able to. And it's a strange triggering of so much stuff as well.

1:01:33 - 1:01:36

Because part of me, there is a part of me that is jealous of her.

1:01:36 - 1:01:50

Wow. It's mad. Sorry, that's quite a lot. No, that's what happened yesterday. Since starting your recovery, do you see stuff like this more in the world?

1:01:50 - 1:01:56

You know what I mean? Are you more aware of it? I've always seen alcohol everywhere.

1:01:57 - 1:02:05

Wherever it is. It was interesting talking to Pippa. Because I wanted to say this, but I don't think it would have been appropriate.

1:02:05 - 1:02:11

Because I didn't want to diminish her experience of transitioning. Because it was enormously traumatic.

1:02:11 - 1:02:19

And I hadn't quite appreciated the trauma of transition. I thought it was a sort of a great thing.

1:02:19 - 1:02:27

Yeah. You know, to sort of finally be the person that you weren't. But the 10 years from when she decided to leave.

1:02:27 - 1:02:32

She decided that she needed to address this issue to her surgery at the end of that 10 years.

1:02:32 - 1:02:39

And it's not like an overnight thing. It's stages and stages. And coming to terms with the impact you'll have on other people.

1:02:39 - 1:02:45

And agonising. And getting to a stage of hormone therapy that you think might be enough to stop there.

1:02:45 - 1:02:50

And realising it's not enough. And you have to go a step further. And I didn't know any of this stuff.

1:02:50 - 1:02:56

But she was talking about how. I said, so now. Now that you are living.

1:02:57 - 1:03:06

In what I'm guessing is the right gender. Is everything okay? In inverted commas. Maybe perhaps a slightly naive question.

1:03:06 - 1:03:11

But she said, no, I still get triggered every so often. But it's much less now.

1:03:11 - 1:03:20

And she was talking about seeing a young woman. Maybe going off to uni. Or being free.

1:03:20 - 1:03:31

Being in a park with your friends as a 25-year-old woman. And getting triggered. Sort of seeing the part of her life she didn't get.

1:03:31 - 1:03:38

Yeah. Because this came later in life. And I have empathy with that as an alcoholic.

1:03:38 - 1:03:46

Because when I see alcohol, I get triggered. And I see it all the time.

1:03:46 - 1:03:52

So there's a phrase which is, for the normal drinker, the alcohol stays in the bottle.

1:03:52 - 1:04:01

So alcohol is only present when alcohol is present. But for the abnormal drinker, it doesn't stay in the bottle.

1:04:01 - 1:04:12

It's in your mind. So if I see someone drinking on a train, or if I go past people in a park drinking, I see the part of myself that I miss.

1:04:12 - 1:04:19

I see the part of myself that I hate. I see the part of myself that I can't have anymore.

1:04:19 - 1:04:23

And I see the part of myself that I'm glad is no longer in my life.

1:04:23 - 1:04:29

So it's a very confusing place to be. And I've got to live amongst alcohol forever.

1:04:29 - 1:04:35

It makes me emotional to think about it, because that is the problem of my life.

1:04:35 - 1:04:51

Everyone has lots of different problems. That's the main one. How do I exist in a world with alcohol, in a body which alcohol is its best coping mechanism, or the one it's used for 30 years?

1:04:51 - 1:05:03

It's a very strange existence, and holding that strangeness and not being too critical, or necessarily needing to find a solution to that strangeness, is a daily practice.

1:05:03 - 1:05:14

Fucking hell, yeah. I think, like you say, it's really interesting that you don't want to bring your own story when you're interviewing somebody who has their own story.

1:05:14 - 1:05:21

That's what the podcast is, to learn from that. But the comparison is legitimate, I think, in that thing that would be top of your mind.

1:05:21 - 1:05:33

I always think about the complete lack of compassion around the trans culture wars, and that nobody just talks about, actually, for young people, it's hard enough to be a young person for lots of people,

1:05:33 - 1:05:40

let alone thinking all the time, I'm also in the wrong body. You know, like, add that right at the top of all your thoughts.

1:05:40 - 1:05:47

And I suppose the same for you with alcohol. It would have been, and maybe still is, I don't know, but it certainly was at the time, just at the top of your mind,

1:05:47 - 1:06:01

while you're trying to get on with everything else. I think what the kinship I have with Pippa, which I had not realised until that conversation, we both know what it's like to live two lives in one lifetime.

1:06:01 - 1:06:18

And the reason I didn't mention it is because, A, I don't want to bring myself into those conversations all the time, because I think that's a, it's something people struggle with when someone is talking about something intense or something difficult that's happened to them.

1:06:18 - 1:06:24

The temptation is to go, oh, I know what that's like, because, like, bring it back onto terra firma.

1:06:24 - 1:06:30

And people get very frustrated by this and they say, like, my mum passed away and I'm really struggling.

1:06:30 - 1:06:35

Oh, I know what that's like, because my dog died. And you're like, it's not quite, you don't know what it's like.

1:06:35 - 1:06:46

We never know what it's like to have lived someone else's life. So to make it about ourselves is a defence mechanism that's not often appropriate.

1:06:46 - 1:06:50

But also I don't want How Do You Cope to constantly be me going, yeah, it's like alcohol.

1:06:50 - 1:06:54

Yeah, it's like being an alcoholic. Yeah, it's like not drinking, because it's not like that.

1:06:54 - 1:07:09

But I felt a commonality with someone, and anyone who's made a big change in their life will know what it's like to be two people at once and to have been a person that they still have a relationship who they are not anymore.

1:07:09 - 1:07:17

But also I think I didn't want to sound like I was diminishing her struggle.

1:07:17 - 1:07:27

And I was also aware that I didn't want to dignify the culture war about, in inverted commas, the trans debate.

1:07:27 - 1:07:39

By sort of going over a lot of that ground, because what the trans debate isn't, ever, is listening to people's lived experience.

1:07:39 - 1:07:46

It's a projection of a fear or a confusion or a lack of empathy and understanding.

1:07:46 - 1:08:04

And I think it's important to put into that debate as much testimony. And I think of myself as liberal accepting, switched on to, all these things, woke in the best possible sense of the word, like awoken to other people's experiences.

1:08:04 - 1:08:11

But reading her book, it was like, oh, wow, there's so much I didn't understand, so much I hadn't considered.

1:08:11 - 1:08:20

And I love being able to put myself into someone's world for a bit to get a bit more empathy with them.

1:08:20 - 1:08:30

- It sounds to me exactly like how I have 18 bikes and they're all around the house and Helen's quite angry with me because there's six in the sitting room at the moment.

1:08:30 - 1:08:41

John, I'm trying to do the thing there where I relate it back to the only real tension in my life, which is how Helen is angry with me 'cause I have too many bikes.

1:08:41 - 1:08:45

Now, John, have you had lunch? 'Cause you've only had a bowl of cornflakes. - Yes, I had lunch.

1:08:45 - 1:08:55

So our podcast studio is at a sort of shared working vibe hub. - Right. - You know, the sort of hotspotting, everyone's got a MacBook, everyone's got 10 MacBooks.

1:08:55 - 1:09:03

- No chairs, funny shape. - No chairs, no tables, no desks. - No, okay. - It's actually a zero gravity hotspotting space because that- - Oh, okay, now it's fun.

1:09:03 - 1:09:10

- That encourages a sharing of ideas. I don't know if you ever tried brainstorming in zero gravity.

1:09:10 - 1:09:16

It just pops, it flies. - Just you flow into someone else's meeting, that is the issue, isn't it?

1:09:16 - 1:09:21

- Interesting, Max. You've fallen into a very outmoded way of thinking. - Oh, really? It's like the QI buzzer's gone off.

1:09:21 - 1:09:29

- We don't have meetings, we have commonalities. - Yeah, got it, okay. - Fuck's sake. - We have not got to talk sport yet.

1:09:29 - 1:09:38

Those commonalities, I'll just point that out. - Everyone's constantly pulling each other's MagSafe plugs out of their laptops because you're just floating around.

1:09:38 - 1:09:50

Everyone's desperate to find a charging point. I had a mushroom and halloumi flatbread and they forgot to put the halloumi in.

1:09:50 - 1:10:04

- Oh no. - And I had to go to the kitchen and I had to do that bit of public theatre where you go, "They look at you and they're like, "something's wrong because he's at the kitchen entrance." So he does that look, eyebrows up.

1:10:04 - 1:10:16

And I go, "Is there halloumi in this?" Whereas that's not me being honest. So in the honest world where we're all honest, I'd say I asked for halloumi and there's no halloumi in this,

1:10:16 - 1:10:22

but I'm scared that that sounds is going to upset them because they've made a mistake it's perfectly legitimate to make.

1:10:22 - 1:10:27

The lady who took the order has forgotten to write halloumi or he's forgotten to read it.

1:10:27 - 1:10:33

So instead of going, "I haven't got the thing I ordered," because that would be too mean.

1:10:33 - 1:10:40

I go, "Is there halloumi in this?" And he says, "No." And then we sort of fudge a solution.

1:10:40 - 1:10:47

He makes some halloumi and brings it over. That delays me because I'm someone who likes to be like half an hour early to everything.

1:10:47 - 1:10:54

So I'm thinking what if Pippa comes into the cafe while I'm still eating my halloumi and that's going to look unprofessional.

1:10:54 - 1:11:00

What if I am bloated for our interview? What if I am burping? But it all goes fine.

1:11:00 - 1:11:15

I then go up to the studio and I then, part of my process before these interviews is printing out the questions onto A5, cutting them out and sticking them into a notebook.

1:11:15 - 1:11:21

I find that quite soothing. So I have Pritt stick and scissors and a notebook full of questions.

1:11:21 - 1:11:30

- Because his podcast, Max, is a filmed podcast, unlike this. - We'll put out some videos in five years time.

1:11:30 - 1:11:38

- Well also, here's a fun little fact. I also received a notification on my phone that the company who makes my podcast no longer exists.

1:11:38 - 1:11:55

- Oh, right. - Because Amazon have discontinued Wondery. So all the while through this podcast, I'm getting like pinging messages are coming to my phone that's on silent on the other side of the room going,

1:11:55 - 1:11:59

is that we still making this? Is this going to be put out? - Whoa! - What's going to happen?

1:11:59 - 1:12:06

And no one knows. - What a philosophical freeze on while you're having this other philosophical conversation as well.

1:12:06 - 1:12:16

Is it resolved? - No. - Is your? - It's that thing where the press release goes out before any of the detail has been confirmed.

1:12:16 - 1:12:26

Because obviously you can't make 150 people redundant and restructure a company before telling people that this is going to happen because the first person you make redundant is going to say,

1:12:26 - 1:12:30

oh, by the way, Wondery, you're making lots of redundancies. I think something's up. - Shit.

1:12:30 - 1:12:36

- So it's that thing of we control the story, but there is no story yet apart from the headline.

1:12:36 - 1:12:44

So we're going to give you the headline. - Yeah. - And then we're going to fill in the actual columns of the story over the next two to three weeks.

1:12:44 - 1:12:51

- I was once doing, I was on TalkSport and there was some issue with Twitter and TalkSport had decided to stop using Twitter.

1:12:51 - 1:13:00

So they announced it in the five o'clock news and I was doing Drive. So they came out of the news and I had to say, does that mean I'm not allowed to talk about it now?

1:13:00 - 1:13:11

Like, is this, what if somebody messages me? So I'm so on air going, could somebody tell me what, I've had a tweet about us not being on Twitter anymore, but can I read the tweet because- - Why did they stop using Twitter?

1:13:11 - 1:13:19

- I think it was about one of the presenters being abused in some way. You know, it was like the bad form of social media and social media companies not taking it seriously.

1:13:19 - 1:13:24

It was quite a long time ago, actually. - John, does this influence the interview in any way?

1:13:24 - 1:13:29

Like I always think of this moment in primary school, this is very Irish. This is very Irish education system in the '80s thing.

1:13:29 - 1:13:45

I remember once doing out long multiplication, like doing the 10 sums that were in the workbook and finishing a copy book, as you used to, and then just walking up to the front of the classroom and putting the copy book in the bin, like mid-class,

1:13:45 - 1:13:53

and then just going back and moving on to the next thing. Do you have this fear as you have this conversation with Pippa York?

1:13:53 - 1:14:07

- It's not fear, it's a lack of control and not knowing. And I definitely have a, you know, you could say it's an alcoholic trait, but wanting to be in control of everything.

1:14:07 - 1:14:17

I guess what I have been given, one of the good parts of my life now is that I am able to be aware of that need for control and to get things done and get things sorted.

1:14:17 - 1:14:28

So one of my defects is that I will, you know, if someone texts me something where there's any uncertainties, I will immediately reply with a solution and be like, "Why can't we do this?

1:14:28 - 1:14:30

"Why can't we do this? "Can you tell this person? "Can we get this done?

1:14:30 - 1:14:38

"Why haven't you replied?" I am now able to sit with uncertainty for a little bit longer than I used to be able to.

1:14:38 - 1:14:49

So it's not necessarily fear. It's almost like a spiritual exercise in not affecting anyone by my need for control.

1:14:49 - 1:14:54

So not firing off that reply, which is like, well, what's happening? Get him on the phone.

1:14:54 - 1:15:00

Is to actually just notice the need to do that in myself and be able to go, you know, this will all still be here in two hours time.

1:15:00 - 1:15:07

This is not today's problem. That's a good mantra I have. When stuff starts to agitate me, I go, it's not today's problem.

1:15:07 - 1:15:15

And if it is today's problem, I'll sort it in a sort of timely way, but not in a aggressive or overly energetic way.

1:15:15 - 1:15:19

- Unless it's a blind and then it is today's problem, but you give that a couple of years.

1:15:19 - 1:15:27

- The blind is today's problem. - Yeah, it is. - And I can either solve that problem or I can let it bother me for another two weeks before the man from Hillary's come.

1:15:27 - 1:15:33

- Hillary's gonna come. Okay, so we do the episode. Are you then straight back home, straight back on the train?

1:15:33 - 1:15:37

- Nah, he's in London now. He's in swinging London. Are you going to a hotspot?

1:15:37 - 1:15:41

What are you doing in London? - I'm getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

1:15:41 - 1:15:48

I mean, literally, I know to the 10 seconds how long it takes me to get from the studio to the station.

1:15:48 - 1:15:57

I'm very much someone who, if we're wrapping up something in London and you're saying like, "Oh, what train station are you going to?" I'm already on the train.

1:15:57 - 1:16:03

I'm on CityMapper thinking if I can end this conversation in 30 seconds, it means I can get a train eight minutes earlier.

1:16:03 - 1:16:16

I'm saving myself eight minutes by wrapping up this conversation now. And it struck me yesterday, I am never someone who just, someone says like, "What station are you heading to?" I never just head to the station and get the next train.

1:16:16 - 1:16:21

I'm always looking to try and get the train before the next train, which is pointless.

1:16:21 - 1:16:26

It's a pointless time-saving 'cause I'm going to be home on my own for six hours.

1:16:27 - 1:16:38

And yet my great obsession is making that six hours and eight minutes. - But I love the idea that you've had this really intense, really valuable, interesting conversation with Pippa and you go,

1:16:38 - 1:16:43

"Thank you so much for your time." And then you go, "Right, see ya, that was good, thanks." - That's me.

1:16:43 - 1:16:50

- You sprint out, you jump out a window. - Pointless efficiencies could be the title of my life.

1:16:50 - 1:17:06

- Interesting. So is there a moment where you get home though, where you sort of shut the door and then lean again against it as it's shut and just you raise a fist and slowly bring it into your chest, "We did it." - Oh, definitely.

1:17:06 - 1:17:15

Then there's part of my brain when I'm on the train, checking the time of the train afterwards to think, "You've absolutely, who are those idiots?" - You nailed it.

1:17:15 - 1:17:27

- Those idiots on the 452 when you're on the 446. What awful lives they have. You know, that guy who came down the steps to the station, hadn't he checked?

1:17:27 - 1:17:35

The door's closed. Hadn't he checked? He didn't even know. And I'm John Robbins and I'm sat on the 446 and I win.

1:17:35 - 1:17:46

And then you get to your car and there's temporary traffic lights outside of the station and you're still there when the next train comes in and you're like, "I'm not sure you have one, John.

1:17:46 - 1:17:55

I think you might be an idiot." - You're home, John. - Yes. - Dinner. He's a man with a big casserole that he's about to put on.

1:17:55 - 1:18:01

- I definitely get home and I feel the, sort of the anxiety of the city leave me.

1:18:01 - 1:18:08

Moving out of London was definitely met a need in me to, I just felt tense in London all the time.

1:18:08 - 1:18:21

So I get back here and I live in a sort of rural-ish area. So I'm very close to woodland and stuff and, but I get home, there's a question about dinner,

1:18:21 - 1:18:31

but I go to a chip shop actually and have some chippies. And then, annoyingly for the variety on this podcast, I go to another 12-step meeting.

1:18:31 - 1:18:37

- Do you take your chips? Do you take your chips in? - Yeah, he's got the, he's eating a smoked cod.

1:18:37 - 1:18:44

- Dipping my curry sauce. No, I sit and have my chippies, then go to the meeting.

1:18:44 - 1:18:53

- Can I ask you this? And please don't answer if you don't want to. Would this have been planned or would it be a spontaneous thing that you would have felt?

1:18:53 - 1:18:57

Is it fulfilling a need in you or is it a habit kind of a thing?

1:18:57 - 1:19:06

- Both, definitely both. I knew I was going to this one. Like everyone's recovery from anything they want to stop doing goes in like waves.

1:19:06 - 1:19:16

So it might take a little bit of pain to make you think, I haven't been to a meeting for a week or I haven't been paying enough attention to my recovery.

1:19:16 - 1:19:25

I think a misunderstanding I had and a lot of people probably have is they think, well, when you've stopped drinking, that's sort of, it's all sorted.

1:19:25 - 1:19:43

That's really when the problems begin because you've removed- - Removed your coping mechanism. So you then are faced with all of the reasons you drank or ate or didn't eat or whatever it is that is your thing that's damaging your life.

1:19:43 - 1:19:56

You take it away and you realise it was a solution, not a problem. And you're left with, you know, that dis-ease, that whatever it is, restlessness, that anger or that pain or that whatever,

1:19:56 - 1:20:03

you're using all these different ways and different things to sort of treat yourself. So that's why it needs to be regular and continuing.

1:20:03 - 1:20:13

But, you know, sometimes when I was first sober, I would try and get to a meeting most days and I knew where all the meetings were locally and I would sort of have, well, I'll go to that one then,

1:20:13 - 1:20:23

that one then, that one then. But now it's more that like, I'll start to go mad and I'll be like, okay, you need to get to a meeting 'cause you're, a bit like needing to go for a run.

1:20:23 - 1:20:34

- Sure. - If exercise is part of your wellness routine or whatever, and you have four or five days where you're not able to do it, or maybe two weeks or you get ill or you're on holiday and you get back and think,

1:20:34 - 1:20:41

why did I get so upset about that blind? And you're like, oh yeah, that's why, 'cause you're mad.

1:20:41 - 1:20:47

So you need to go to the place that stops you being mad. - Can I ask a question, which might be a stupid question?

1:20:47 - 1:20:55

When you're in a meeting and you decide you wanna say something, and I obviously have no idea how these things really work, apart from what I've seen in the movies,

1:20:55 - 1:21:03

because you're also a comedian, so throughout your life, when you have had the stage to talk, your instinct is to be funny.

1:21:03 - 1:21:11

Is there part of you that sort of goes to that place sometimes in what is presumably very serious-- - Do you try new material, John?

1:21:11 - 1:21:28

Are you using them for new material? - I would need to say that I can't say anything about what is said in meetings, but I can say that people share their experience and of both drinking and of not drinking in order to help other people and help themselves.

1:21:28 - 1:21:38

I think that my way of talking now comedically is so similar to my way of talking.

1:21:38 - 1:21:45

I'm not like putting on a persona to have this conversation with you guys. We have talked about both very serious and very funny things.

1:21:45 - 1:21:53

And we've talked about serious things in a funny way. So it's not like I'm switching on comedian or switching off comedian.

1:21:53 - 1:22:02

- It's not Lee Evans. - No, but it's also not, there are some comedians who whenever you hear them talk, it's like they're now talking comedically.

1:22:02 - 1:22:08

- Sure. - I don't really have that separation in my head. And sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes that's a bad thing.

1:22:08 - 1:22:19

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. - You know, there's a lot of humour in recovery. - Yeah. - And often it's when you're talking about the most appalling stuff.

1:22:19 - 1:22:29

And that for me is like, I love that. That's really nourishing and to me as a comedian, but even, you know, while I was drinking that was what my comedy was, I would say.

1:22:29 - 1:22:39

- Yeah. - How can you make an audience laugh when you've just said the most depressing thing that they will have heard recently?

1:22:39 - 1:22:45

And those are the moments in terms of writing and performing that I really live for is like.

1:22:45 - 1:22:55

- So John, has the attending meetings, has this influenced your onstage style since you started attending meetings then?

1:22:55 - 1:23:05

Or is it something that had developed before, how do you think you found that honesty and that switch between, you know, making jokes and then being very, very honest?

1:23:05 - 1:23:19

I mean, that's kind of what I always thought your comedy was like. - Yeah, I would say, even when I think back to my first Edinburgh show in 2009, it was a show about the breakup of a relationship.

1:23:19 - 1:23:27

I wanted what I was talking about to have meaning. It was like every year I just removed another layer.

1:23:27 - 1:23:33

I always thought when I first started, the comedy was about adding stuff, adding stuff and being something.

1:23:33 - 1:23:39

Whereas actually it was about removing artifice again and again and again and again. - Fuck, yeah.

1:23:39 - 1:23:53

- Until you are completely authentic to whatever it is you want to be. I've only done one show since I stopped drinking and that was very difficult because it was a show that I had written when I was drinking and when I was probably at my most unwell.

1:23:53 - 1:24:04

But bits of it were really funny. So it was like, can sober jokes John with all this knowledge, do routines that drunk John in his ignorance wrote.

1:24:04 - 1:24:17

And there was a whole routine that had to go about this book called "The Boy, the Fox, the Horse and the Mole", which I just absolutely savaged.

1:24:17 - 1:24:23

And I don't know if you've read the book, it is what it is. It's a sort of picture book.

1:24:23 - 1:24:30

- Inspirational picture book. - Sort of life advice, but I was like, I just can't do that routine now.

1:24:30 - 1:24:38

It's too mean spirited to something that means a lot to people, even if some of the observations I made, I stand by.

1:24:38 - 1:24:52

So that had to go. And then that tour and that Edinburgh, I did two shows a day, six days a week in the Edinburgh Festival, and then went on a 50 day tour and it was way too much.

1:24:52 - 1:25:00

And I went completely fucking mad. And as a sober person, you're thinking, "Hang on, you're meant to be better now." - Yeah.

1:25:00 - 1:25:08

- But you're like, "You've just done like a hundred shows in three months. "Of course you're fucking mad." - Yeah.

1:25:08 - 1:25:15

- Like that's insane. - And exhausting. - What part of you thought that was normal? - Yeah. Okay, so we have the meeting.

1:25:15 - 1:25:20

Is it straight home? - Yes. - Surely the telly's going on. - I don't have a telly.

1:25:20 - 1:25:27

- Wow. - I haven't had a telly for over 10 years. - He's got a projector. He's got a giant projector.

1:25:27 - 1:25:31

- He's got a cinema screen. - You know that screen they have at the Oasis gigs?

1:25:31 - 1:25:37

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're watching "Cool Runnings" on that. - It's more a monitor. - Yeah, okay.

1:25:37 - 1:25:44

- I mean, I watch bits and bobs on catch up and stuff, but I really don't, I don't say this in a sort of superior way.

1:25:44 - 1:25:50

I just don't have any interest in telly. - Fine. - Bits of it, I have a great deal of interest in.

1:25:50 - 1:25:55

- You should watch "Death in Paradise." I must say, I can't live without it. - There's a murder every week.

1:25:55 - 1:26:01

A white guy has come for me. - In England, he fixes the whole thing. - And it's some really nice music.

1:26:01 - 1:26:11

The sun's out and at the end of it, they solve it. And everyone at some point says, "Sure, you don't think I'm capable of murder?" "Yeah, he owed me $5,000." I love it.

1:26:11 - 1:26:17

- I used to watch a lot of films, but I just don't, I honestly, I just don't have the patience.

1:26:17 - 1:26:21

I just think, "Oh, fucking two hours, are you kidding me?" - So what do you do?

1:26:21 - 1:26:39

This is special John time. - So I go for a walk in the woods. I will sit for a portion of that walk and meditate might bring up too strict an image of some kind of very observant practice,

1:26:39 - 1:26:48

but I will take like 15 to 20 minutes of just being in that natural environment and sort of decompressing, I suppose.

1:26:48 - 1:26:55

- Is it proper woods or is it like plastic bag in the trees, porno mag in the leaves wood?

1:26:55 - 1:27:05

- You can never escape the plastic bag of dog shit in the trees because some people are just awful and they're awful through and through and their awfulness will just forever be a part of your life.

1:27:05 - 1:27:11

- Do you think if they throw it and if it doesn't stay in the tree, do you think they keep throwing it?

1:27:11 - 1:27:18

- I think they think the biodegradable means it biodegrades in like 20 minutes. - Yeah. - Whereas actually it's like five years.

1:27:18 - 1:27:28

- Yeah, yeah. - Like imagine if you saw someone dropping like all their McDonald's meal on the pavement and they said, don't worry in five years that will have decomposed to an extent.

1:27:28 - 1:27:33

- The best way would be to say, okay, well you and I are going to wait here until that moment.

1:27:33 - 1:27:46

- Like it's all practice. So walking past a bag of dog shit, I mean literally like the worst, most offensive thing you could do to the world is to put dog shit in it, in a bag.

1:27:46 - 1:27:53

That's a hate crime. If you put it through someone's letterbox, you put it on someone's, on a gate and somehow that's like acceptable.

1:27:53 - 1:27:59

But you know, how do I deal with that? Do I let that bubble away in my head and ruin my day?

1:27:59 - 1:28:04

Or do I just accept it and move on to my place where I get a bit of peace and serenity?

1:28:04 - 1:28:13

But it is proper woods. There's deer and there's kites and there's rabbits. - Piglet and Winnie the Pooh.

1:28:13 - 1:28:36

- There's our piglet, it's been set free somehow. And all of the nonsense of the world we have created over the past sort of 500 years and the stress and anxiety and the questions and the criticism and the worry just disappear.

1:28:36 - 1:28:48

- That's great. - And that's so powerful. - Yeah. - And you know, we had to create cities and we had to create trains and times and tickets and contactless and taxes and all this stuff, we had to do that.

1:28:48 - 1:28:56

But I definitely think that we, for thousands and thousands of years, we lived in the natural landscape.

1:28:57 - 1:29:02

You're never able to see it and never able to be in it. You lose something of yourself.

1:29:02 - 1:29:06

- Back in those times, people just threw dog shit into the trees, not in a bag.

1:29:06 - 1:29:17

- But like what you were saying about the doom scrolling and the Instagram stuff, I am unable to control my access to that by turning my phone off.

1:29:17 - 1:29:34

However, I am able to counteract that by regularly getting into an environment where that no longer applies and feels mad like when you're sat in a wood looking at the sky and feeling the wind.

1:29:34 - 1:29:43

And people may roll their eyes when they hear this and think, yeah, whatever, this is boring and I don't have time for that or whatever, and that's fine.

1:29:43 - 1:30:02

But when I'm able to like watch a deer forget I'm there and just watch the world be in its seasons and its weather and its noises and its smells the idea of Instagram is so ludicrous to that world.

1:30:02 - 1:30:09

- So you set a timer on your phone, you take a quick photo and you go #blessedwoods, #deer.

1:30:09 - 1:30:17

- I get the headspace app up, I get the sleep app up, I get my screen time app up to tell me whether I'm truly in touch with this landscape.

1:30:17 - 1:30:29

There's a brilliant poem by Mary Oliver. And again, I don't know how much your algorithms throw mindfulness or wellness stuff at you, people may not engage with this sort of thing,

1:30:29 - 1:30:37

but the famous line is, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" And that's been often quoted.

1:30:37 - 1:30:53

And that line does not make sense without the rest of the poem, 'cause it sounds like it's saying, "Well, you should be going skydiving and you should be going to Hawaii and seeing the sunset." And it's not what it's saying because earlier on,

1:30:53 - 1:31:04

just looking at a grasshopper and really taking in everything about this grasshopper, and she says, "I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

1:31:04 - 1:31:17

I do know how to pay attention." So when she says, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" She's saying, "Are you gonna look at this grasshopper?

1:31:17 - 1:31:30

Are you gonna really see it and sit with it?" And she says, "I know how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I've been doing all day.

1:31:30 - 1:31:46

Tell me, what else should I have done?" I love that so much. That I get whatever life is, whatever the meaning of life is, I get from that moment of just paying attention to the natural world.

1:31:46 - 1:31:54

- This is the perfect time where Ian Rushden has entered the chat. Hey, what's going on?

1:31:54 - 1:32:01

- Good. - Yeah, what are you doing? - I was just playing some Mobilo. - Just playing some Mobilo?

1:32:01 - 1:32:09

What did you build? - I didn't build anything. - So Aussie, sounds so Aussie. - the Helen Copter's already been built, hasn't it?

1:32:09 - 1:32:14

- Yeah, but where is it? - Is it downstairs? - Yeah. - I'll be downstairs in one minute.

1:32:14 - 1:32:20

- Oh, no, no, no, no. - Oh, you can stay here. The other child is not napping, hence Ian is joining us.

1:32:20 - 1:32:26

- Not to impart too much weight onto what your kid just said there, but he said I was playing with my Mobilo.

1:32:26 - 1:32:36

- Mobilo. - Mobilo, whatever. - Yeah. - And he said, "Did you make the thing?" And he was like, "No." Like, there doesn't have to be an end point.

1:32:36 - 1:32:45

And kids are so good at paying attention and just staring at ladybirds and grass of the sky.

1:32:45 - 1:32:55

- Yeah. - And there doesn't have to be a sort of a solution or an end point or a, nothing has to necessarily come of it.

1:32:55 - 1:33:02

- Yeah. - And often a good way of dealing with my head is to try and just be more like a child.

1:33:02 - 1:33:12

- Yeah. - Just looking at something. I'm just sort of exploring it. - It's where I spend a lot of my, you know, I hang out with a lot of kids and I do a lot of readings for kids.

1:33:12 - 1:33:27

And, you know, it is a brain space that I have tried to get back to in recent years, which is when you fully engage with kids, when you actually crouch down to their level and start talking to them,

1:33:27 - 1:33:36

it's not about what have you achieved today? You know, it's about this, whatever we're doing right now, and to really get stuck into that.

1:33:36 - 1:33:45

- Which is unscrewing a microphone holder, if you're interested. So we leave the woods, not that I'm now in a rush to end your day, John.

1:33:45 - 1:33:48

Are we home to bed or let's just say, please say you're home to bed.

1:33:48 - 1:33:58

No, what happens now? - Well, luckily for you, Max, I am home to bed. I really, I could never ever have predicted this about myself.

1:33:58 - 1:34:06

I used to get back from a gig at like maybe midnight and I would drink for three hours on my own in front of my laptop.

1:34:06 - 1:34:10

- Wow. - And I would look at the clock and it would be like quarter to 3:00 AM.

1:34:10 - 1:34:14

And I'd think, fuck, how is it quarter to three? Why can't this last forever?

1:34:14 - 1:34:27

And now I really value getting into bed at like nine and doing cryptic crosswords and listening to amazing music.

1:34:27 - 1:34:38

Last night I listened to an acoustic guitarist called Nathan Salzberg, who is brilliant. And I listened to an instrumental musician called Sven Wunder.

1:34:38 - 1:34:50

- Ah, Sven. - Who takes like Eastern European sounds and scales and stuff and transposes them into these long instrumental tracks.

1:34:50 - 1:34:58

And I messaged people on WhatsApp. I had conversations. - How long can you be in that place for them?

1:34:58 - 1:35:05

- Like minimum, ideally, the dream is two hours. My back does start to hurt after a while.

1:35:05 - 1:35:16

So my personal trainer, who I saw for a while, told me to get a breastfeeding cushion to support my back when I'm sitting in bed doing my crosswords.

1:35:16 - 1:35:26

The problem is the breastfeeding cushion is so comfy that I now spend even longer in bed in this breastfeeding cushion.

1:35:26 - 1:35:39

- I do love that you found this positivity in what most people would consider the dead time of, it's like the thing we said at the start about staring at your phone and that kind of a thing,

1:35:39 - 1:35:53

whereas to, yeah, work out, I love that too. I love going right back and like, who haven't I responded to in the last three weeks and getting in touch with people that do bring me a sort of joy.

1:35:53 - 1:36:00

- Yeah, it'll be going through like, so me and Josie Long, are having a never ending boggle game together.

1:36:00 - 1:36:10

- Yeah. - And so we leave each other sort of faux aggressive slams about the most recent boggle game.

1:36:10 - 1:36:21

And that might turn into a really tender conversation about our lives. - Yeah. - And it might end in a call and it might not.

1:36:21 - 1:36:28

And I might be catching up with a silly WhatsApp group where it's just running jokes that have been running for 10 years.

1:36:28 - 1:36:38

- Yeah. - And GIFs and memes and screen grabs of cringe worthy comedians tweets. All of those things, I love that sort of interplay of all that stuff.

1:36:38 - 1:36:52

And it happens via my phone. And I'm not gonna give myself a hard time about, you know, picking my phone up and then doing a crossword clue and picking my phone back up again and listening to music and sending someone the song I'm listening to

1:36:52 - 1:36:56

and then putting on the song they send me in reply. - Yeah. - There's a community in that.

1:36:56 - 1:37:06

- I thought Boggle was a speed game. - Oh, it is. - Oh, okay. - And Josie knows that more than anyone else because when you come up against the speed king.

1:37:06 - 1:37:12

- Come over here, yeah. - You don't forget that Boggle is a speed game. No way!

1:37:12 - 1:37:18

- And there's Josie Long. - Oh, I played Boggle yesterday and I beat Josie Long. - We just had that bit, yeah.

1:37:18 - 1:37:29

- So we're just finishing the podcast and Nish Kumar and Josie Long have just, there's Ian Rushden, - Oh, did you mention that I beat him at Boggle yesterday?

1:37:29 - 1:37:35

Did you mention that? - No, we were just about to get on to that. - I actually beat him at Boggle yesterday, so let's do that.

1:37:35 - 1:37:41

- Josie, have you checked your messages? - Oh, no. Hi, by the way. - Hello, Josie, dear.

1:37:41 - 1:37:47

This is so insane that you're on here. I'm just getting up the messages 'cause there's a new message for you, Josie, about the score, of course.

1:37:47 - 1:37:51

- Nish, I'm doing thumbs down. - Thumbs up to the kid, thumbs up to the kid.

1:37:51 - 1:38:12

- Okay, we're just finishing. We've had a beautiful day. - Hi, Nish. - That's my conversation with Josie where I've just written something that I think Louis XIV said, which is, "Après moi, le deluge." "After me, the flood." - Now, we are in danger of going longer than Ross Noble,

1:38:12 - 1:38:16

which is something we never thought would happen. I know, Ian, it won't be long.

1:38:16 - 1:38:20

Are you asleep? Are you asleep, John? Tell me you're asleep. - How do you get to sleep?

1:38:20 - 1:38:26

Do you have music playing or do you just raw dog the end of the day?

1:38:26 - 1:38:40

- Well, because Max is in a rush, we can skip the hour-long masturbation and- We can skip the hour of tawdry, hairy-handed sons of the soil.

1:38:40 - 1:38:56

I'm being humorous, of course. I'm not afraid of humour, guys. I don't flinch from being lighthearted, as Max, I think, smells a nappy or a bum or something.

1:38:56 - 1:39:08

- No, no, he's currently doing gymnastics on the doorframe. - Max, this is the second podcast we've done where you have failed to control children for two hours straight.

1:39:08 - 1:39:14

- I generally can't. Doing it for an hour is impressive for me, so. - Yes, no, you did very well, both of you.

1:39:14 - 1:39:20

I listen to "Danny Champion of the World", the audio book, every night. - Even when you finish it, do you go back to the start again?

1:39:20 - 1:39:32

- That's the exact noise that girls make when I tell them that. I dip in and out.

1:39:32 - 1:39:42

Depends what chapter I want to hear. Usually it's when they're heading into the wood or some tender moment between a father and a son, which I've been searching for for 43 years.

1:39:42 - 1:39:48

- And is that what you were doing actually when you were in the wood, poisoning pheasants?

1:39:48 - 1:39:55

- No, but I did in a sort of quite nice "Danny Champion of the World" style.

1:39:55 - 1:40:13

I harvested some poppy seeds from the poppies in my garden and put them into a plastic packet and I walked along my walking route and I strew them into the weeds covertly without the landowner's permission.

1:40:13 - 1:40:19

- So the game is, what will happen first? Will the poppies grow or will the dog shit in a bag disintegrate?

1:40:19 - 1:40:31

- Perhaps even acting as fertilizer to the very poppy seeds. - Good point. - In 20 years' time, when I go on my walk, the poppies I planted might be there and that will give me great pleasure.

1:40:31 - 1:40:39

- And then you will get your cartel to turn those poppies into heroin and become a Mr. Big Stuff.

1:40:39 - 1:40:49

- Well, that's how we eventually get spiritual enlightenment, is once we've got enough heroin to finally escape this terrible world.

1:40:49 - 1:40:57

- And we doze off listening to "Danny, the Champion of the World" narrated by Stephen Fry.

1:40:57 - 1:41:02

- No. - Alan Carr, Alan Carr, Joe Pasquale. - Have we got time to go down this rabbit hole?

1:41:02 - 1:41:08

- I mean, I don't. - I had all of the Roald Dahl audio books when I was a kid.

1:41:08 - 1:41:16

Unfortunately, they sort of update them every 10 years. So some of them, I can't listen to the modern ones 'cause it's like people I know.

1:41:16 - 1:41:22

So it's like "Lolli Adaphope." And I'm like, I can't listen to "Lolli" while I'm going to sleep.

1:41:22 - 1:41:28

So I managed to find cassettes on eBay of all of the ones I had as a kid and got my friend to digitize them.

1:41:28 - 1:41:35

However, "Danny Champion of the World" on Spotify is narrated by Peter Serafinowicz and he does a very good job.

1:41:35 - 1:41:39

So I flipped between him and the one I listened to when I was a kid.

1:41:39 - 1:41:45

- John, thanks so much for doing this. - No worries. - John Robbins, what a beautiful day.

1:41:45 - 1:41:53

And I don't think I've ever said that at the end of one of these episodes as our guests normally go kicking and screaming into the night.

1:41:53 - 1:41:58

Thank you very much for coming on "What Did You Do?" yesterday. - Thank you very much for having me.

1:41:58 - 1:42:16

- So there is John Robbins' day, another long record where we end up with Ian sitting on me and your room full of other comedians.

1:42:16 - 1:42:30

But I thought it was so interesting, like such a fascinating insight into, and I don't mean this in a glib way, because you always reflect on yourself, on how people, we all exist in the world and we live our lives,

1:42:30 - 1:42:44

we live very different lives within the same sort of remit of existing. And just how the simplicity of my life, because I don't have the anxieties that John now copes really well with actually.

1:42:44 - 1:42:53

- And I do also like that it's this constant thing with John whereby he's aware of how his brain could go.

1:42:55 - 1:43:03

To end the day by sitting in a forest to the point where the animals just start ignoring you and treating you as part of nature.

1:43:03 - 1:43:11

It's powerful stuff. - We didn't ask if he was vaping and checking the BBC News website every 90 seconds while he was in that forest.

1:43:11 - 1:43:18

We missed that question. But yeah, thank you, John. I think it was a very different episode to the ones we normally do, but I think it was probably richer because of that.

1:43:18 - 1:43:24

- Yeah. - That was my view of it anyway. We're talking about this is like a day, a day after we did the episode.

1:43:24 - 1:43:33

- Also, only episode we've ever recorded with a voice note from genuinely one of my heroes of growing up.

1:43:33 - 1:43:38

So yeah, thank you very much, John Robbins. If you'd like to get in touch with the pod, here is how.

1:43:38 - 1:43:45

- To get in touch with the show, you can email us at [email protected].

1:43:45 - 1:43:53

Follow us on Instagram @yesterdaypod, and please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast platform.

1:43:53 - 1:43:58

And if you didn't, please don't. - Thanks, David, in it for life, everything is showbiz.

1:43:58 - 1:44:00

- Everything is showbiz.

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S4 EP12: Bilal Zafar

WDWDY #63: Faulty Bike Seats

S4 EP11: Tom Cashman

WDWDY #62: Dublin Show Post Mortem

S4 EP10: Phil Ellis

WDWDY #61: Exceptional Perineum

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WDWDY #60: Yesterday waits for no man

S4 EP8: Fern Brady

WDWDY #59: Fun Facts and Days Before

S4 EP7: Michelle Wolf

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S4 EP6: Susie McCabe

WDWDY #57: Sandwich and soup combo

S4 EP5: Richard Herring

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S4 EP4: Vittorio Angelone

WDWDY #55: A Soapy Explosion

S4 EP3: Christopher Macarthur-Boyd

WDWDY #54: A Yesterday Like Any Other

S4 EP2: John Kearns

WDWDY #53: Do yesterdays dream of electric cheese?

S4 EP1: Bret McKenzie

WDWDY #52: Duelling Cheeseboards

The Great Christmas Bunny Emergency (Part 3)

The Great Christmas Bunny Emergency (Part 2 )

The Great Christmas Bunny Emergency (Part 1 )

S3 EP27: Rob Auton

WDWDY #51: In Fairness To Lube

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S3 EP9: John Robins