Begin Again with Davina McCall - How To Manage Grief: Begin Again Moments

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

Grief is something we all face at some stage. In this bonus "Begin Again Moments" episode, Andi Oliver opens up about the deep loss of her brother Sean, reflecting on his life and the impact of his passing. Buddhist Monk Gelong Thubten shares his wisdom on processing grief, offering a compassionate perspective on how we can approach life's impermanence. Together, they explore the power of making space for both love and loss, offering profound insights on navigating the complexity of grief. Follow us here: 📸 www.instagram.com/beginagain 🎥 https://www.tiktok.com/@beginagainpod New episodes every Thursday 7am 💚 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Plans start at just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Hi everyone, so this is Begin Again moments and we have handpicked some really magical moments from Begin Again. This week it's Andy Oliver talking about the death of her brother Sean and she talks about it so beautifully and grief is something we will all have to navigate at some point in our lives and we thought you might really enjoy this one.

was a sickle cell sufferer. I'm a carrier. It's, it's, it was very tricky. And then when he was about, so he was 18 months older than me, when he was about 12 or 13, we found out that he had a expected lifespan of 30. I, I feel like, remembering Sean, I remember him being the most laid back, chilled out, relaxed, calm. And I wonder now, you.

telling me that exertion brought on whether years of knowing that if I get over-excited or I do. But it made him completely unique. Yeah, yeah. This level of chill. Chill was so attractive to me that overenthesistic.

Fast brain. Yeah, I mean, so smart. His brain was really, really, really fast, but he was very chill. And also, I'm his sister. So he was the opposite of me, like physically, energetically. So I would do all the energy stuff. And he would sort of direct me from the sofa.

He would get me to do the most unbelievable shit, right? And we would get it. And I was always like, but, you know, I was quite neurotic. What if we get in trouble? And he'd go, yeah, but we'll still have done it. Just, I can go and get the thing. Get the wine, Nick Dad's wine, you know. Terrible, like, naughty.

He was naughty. He was naughty, but in a really good way. A really unbelievably charismatic way. I also just want to say, I don't know if it's possible on the YouTube channel that we're going to put this on. But at this point, I would love to put a really beautiful picture of Sean Oliver, please, so everybody can see. The beauty. Sean, because, no, really, Andy. He was breathtakingly beautiful.

as, but like his energy matched his beauty. Yes. Like it was just, he was incredible. He was incredible. I mean, the reason I've got my look at my face is because I'm just remembering how annoyed I used to get because he used to sleep with everybody. I just want to let you know, I never had sex with Sean. You're literally one of, one of the only people I know. I did happen to be sleeping with his best friend though.

Yes, that would have been bad. May not stop to him. Just going to say. Just going to say, okay, just going to say. But he did very much love Bruce, so it probably would have stopped him. But he was unbelievable. I mean, I would get friends and I'd go, please, can you not? Just, can you just not?

And he'd go, and he actually said to me once, I can't promise that you're in. And I was like, I hate you! And then, of course, he slept with her. Just asleep with everybody. And, you know, with Sean, I just think he wanted to eat up as much life as he possibly could when it was just sex with music, with every. You know, he just had this.

It's interesting because he was, as you say, incredibly chilled out about everything. He just didn't have those kind of trigger points that a lot of people do. He just didn't have them. But he had an urgency about living. But was he aware of his life expectancy? Okay. From the age of about 12, he knew that.

Wow. Because that's really going to affect. Yeah, it's massive. But in a way also, I think that we couldn't really conceive of what it meant. No. Because 30 seems so far away. Yes. When you're 12. 30 is like some

far off land, you know. But we knew it was, that meant it was young. But it was still hard for us to get ahead to run. And when he died, he was 27. Can you tell me a bit about that, mate? Oh, worse like my life to be now. I was at the Globe,

which was a sort of dive, bar in tarasots, no, what square is it? It was at the bottom of Powis Terrace, which is where I lived. And it was a little dive bar place that we all used to run and run around in. And it was the first place I ever cooked food and people paid me was in the globe. Remember when I used to do all the food? Yeah, I do. And there was a party in upstead.

Carmen Monroe, who is the black English actress, Caribbean English actress, was in there. And I love Carl Monroe. She was in there. And every time I see her face, it reminds me of that night now. and I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. Remember nobody had mobiles then. It was 35 years ago. Nobody had mobiles.

The phone in the globe rang. And it was somebody calling me from the hospital. I still don't know who it was, actually. I don't know who called me. I can't remember. I just remember a voice that you've got to come to the hospital now. Sean's sick. And I got in a cab.

I don't know who was with me. I actually I remember the phone ringing and from the phone ringing to after Sean's funeral it's all a very weird surreal hard to place

hard to put my finger on thing this nebulous way thing I remember odd bits of it at funny times and I went to the hospital and Sam was there Sam Robinson his girlfriend

who they were engaged to be married he loved her so deeply. Like, Sam was the tamer. She was the lion tamer, you know. He just adored her. And Sam was there. I think Hussein was there, who was our friend,

dear friend and manager, Sean's manager. I can't remember who else was there. Maybe Miranda was there actually as well, Sam's sister. Miranda might have been there. There were a few people there anyway. And he'd had a sort of

stroke and we were all out in the waiting area and the doctors came back through and as soon as they walked through and knew and they went to Sam because she was his girlfriend I think and sort of sat down in front of him and said he's just had a what do they call it a basically had a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously and it killed him because he was having a sick or cell crisis and the whole thing was just too much of his body, the whole thing overloaded, and it killed him. And I ran past them, and he was in the bed. No, I'd already seen him, because I said to him, I spoke to him and I said, well, you'll be home in a couple of days.

When you get home, I'll make you some soup. And he was conscious, and then he went back out, and we went back out again. And he was weak, I remember that he was weak. And he did, because he was like, because he didn't want to be there. it there. Yeah. And he was like, when can I come home?

And I'll be home a couple days and I'll come and I'll meet you some soup. And he was like, all right, fine. And then they came in space that he said he told us he died. And I went, ran back in

and I grabbed him. And I could tell he wasn't in there. Yeah. He'd gone. He'd left. And he had he was cold. Body wasn't, it just wasn't,

he didn't have the vitality. It didn't have the soul spark in it anymore. and my mum was on the way and she didn't get there in time. And I stood in the car park waiting for her to come. And I couldn't call her and tell her. There was no phone, you know, so I just stood in the car park waiting for my mum to come. And she got out of a car and she was just so hopeful.

And I said, he's gone, Mum. She just crumpled. It was some worst moment of my life. I've got tissues that I've taken all out already. And, uh, having to tell her that he had gotten, you know, it was just a face. I'll never figure out of face. And you know, it nearly broke us, Deereena. It nearly broke you.

It nearly broke all of us. Because he was such an extraordinary, you know, death does that to people, obviously. but Sean was a special person. And I saw everybody feels that about the person they lost, but Sean really was a special person. Do you know what, Andy, I, he, what, I've been thinking about him a lot, obviously, because I knew I was going to talk to you today. And I thought that how lovely for Sean that it's 35 years, right?

Yeah. 35 years later, we're still feeling the whole. Yeah. that Sean left. Yeah. And I was in bed with Bruce. The phone rang. I picked it up.

It was Nana. Oh, my God. And I put the phone down. And I thought, I've got to wake you up. And tell you. And give you the worst news. Oh, your life.

Of your life. That your best friend since you, I don't know how old. They were teenagers, too. Yeah. Has gone. And I, I was like, I don't want to wake you up.

To change his life forever. Yeah. But the beautiful thing out of that is that he made in his very short, short life, 27 years, a massive impact. You know, on his gravestone it says, he who burns twice as bright burns half as long. And there's a shooting star on his gravestone. And it's never truer, never a truer word was spoken.

And when it relates to my brother. And I, you know, the further away I get from it, the more grateful I am that I had him at all. Yes. And the further away I get from it, I understand that life is what happens to you when you're here. And what you do with that period of time. Some people live till they're 95 and don't make any impact at all. No. You know, there's a sadness to that, deep sense.

sadness. And I think of Sean's funeral. Remember the funeral? There were people that you couldn't get into the crematorium. There were people, it was sunny day. It was like the royal death that happened on Nabok Road. The whole place went still. The hearse came up the road. It's amazing. Lined on the streets. And all around the outside of the crematorium, there's like banks. And there were like people four deep on the banks outside the crematorium. And that's a testament to my brother. and what he did with the time that he had here. And that's a beautiful, powerful thing.

And his children are incredible. His grandchildren are extraordinary. And I get to have them and be them. And I get to be his sister forever. You know, that's the other thing. I'm like so proud that that was my brother. And that I got to have that with him, that we got to tour the world.

We got to be in this incredible band together and do all this extraordinary things in this really short space with time. You know, so I, as an older person, I have so much gratitude for having him at all. And I remember, I don't know if I've told you this, I think I might have told you when you and Sarah came to do staring it up with me in Makita. Margie Clark, as an actress, she was in that film years ago,

something about Libera... Letter to Brezhnev, if it was called. She was the lead, and it was a brilliant Libra Pundian actor, just a fantastic woman. And I met her. after Shawna died. I was with Viv Goldman walking up Port Vela Road and there was a big bus there and Margie was filming

and Margie brought us onto the bus and Viv said, oh this is Andy and I was, you know, she was explaining to Margie while I kept bursting into tears and Margie said Andy's brother died a few weeks ago and it was literally a couple of weeks later and Margie sat down and she took my hands and she said I lost my brother 23 years ago and I was like like it was like water to a diet woman. I'm hearing these words because I looked at her and knew she understood. And she said,

it'll never go away, but you'll find somewhere to keep it. She said, people will say lots of things to you and you probably swap them all to fuck off. And I said, sure. And she said, this is all I can give you. And it was the greatest gift anybody could ever give me. And it's turned out to be absolutely true. It's never gone away but I find somewhere. I've found a little quiet place within and that's where it lives. The pain of it and every now and again it comes up like just now and it feels very recent and real and all over again. I mean we were discussing before we started how mad it is that the last time I saw you because life is just so mad isn't it? Yeah we have to tell you. I was on your podcast and it was a year ago and it was a year ago to this week.

And we realized then, oh my God, it's actually the anniversary of your brother dying this week. And we've done it again. And we've done it again this week. Without knowing or realizing. We just realized at the car. Yeah. Last night, a lady in bed, I went, hang on, what day is it? I was like, my God, we've done it again.

So this weekend, it will be 35 years since you don't die. Absolutely right. So that to me, see, I feel like they are stardust. They are stardust. The people we lose are stardust. And they live in us. They live all around us. believe this really firmly. We've both lost enough people at this point in our lives.

You know, I'm not a religious person, but I do have a spiritual sense of the world that I cling to sometimes like it's a lifeboat, you know, that sense of that which we cannot put our fingers on, that which is intangible. And that's what, again, coming back to these things about books and music, Those are the things that books and music help me to connect to is the stuff that we cannot imagine, the stuff that's bigger than us, that's greater than us, that is outside of our control. There's nothing to do with what we decide and what we choose.

It just is, you know. And after, I think, any great loss in your life, connecting to that is the thing that keeps you alive and keeps you going and keeps you inside your own body. because somehow grief makes you leave your own body. You kind of float above yourself. You know, it took a good couple of years before and re-entered my body after Sean died.

I was like hovering above for quite a long time. I felt when my sister died, I felt like the whole world just stopped spinning. And I'd go places and I'd think, oh, the world's still spinning for you. Like, I can't move forwards. Yeah. I'm literally stuck.

Everybody's getting on with their lives, which they're meant to do. Yeah, which everybody's meant to do. But it was quite hard to explain that to somebody. Yeah. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life.

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Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. I wanted to talk to you as well about grief. Because I feel like grief at this time of our lives is something that we have to deal with a lot. But it can be, especially for somebody, I've had a life of loss throughout my life. But a bit like you, I'm so grateful that I've had it bit by bit. But sometimes people get to this stage of their life and they lose a lot of people.

in like a five-year period. Like a domino effect. Yeah. What can people do with that? I mean, possibly a similar thing to what you're saying earlier, but what, have you got any advice or something? I mean, I think we need to recognize how much we're conditioned to deny the facts of life and death. You know, we're so conditioned to have this weird sort of,

a fantasy of immortality. Yes. I mean, intellectually, we know everybody dies, but we don't know it emotionally. We don't, we don't, so we're so shocked when it happens. And we use, even in our language, we use expressions like, if I die, as if there are options. Yes, not when?

I had never thought about that. The fact we can say, if I die, really does suggest that there's a a part of us that thinks, well, you know, there's a side door. I could avoid that. Yeah, yeah. The other thing is people are very, they really struggle with the word. They've died. Yeah.

They're dead. They've passed away. They've left us. I mean... We are frightened of death. Understandably, of course. But I think it's more, it's worse than it needs to be out of fear of death because of the denial. So one of the major things in Buddhist practice is,

to actually sit with death as a meditation, to actually meditate on impermanence, to think about, to sit and think about how everything is impermanent, this body is impermanent, everybody's, we're all going to die. Now, the phrase we're all going to die, does that mean we have to be depressed about it, or could we actually use that knowledge

to live better lives, knowing that time is fleeting? and knowing that death comes at any time, could that make us more really value the time we have and value the relationships we have, not waste so much time? And then when death comes, when we're dying or our loved ones are dying,

I'm not saying it's just going to be easy, but maybe easier to accept because we were ready for it. We're less, maybe less sort of suppressed about it. As I said to Andy in that episode, grief doesn't mean forgetting. It's about holding on in a new way, about making space for love and loss to live side by side.