Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball - Dig In: Fairy Lights, Fish Tales and Geriatric Pregnancy

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

This week on Dig It, Jo and Zoe share your brilliant dilemmas and stories, from planning weekends with a new partner to teaching kids the value of pocket money.  SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE SUBSTACK Stay up to date with Dig It — new updates every Friday straight to your inbox. 👉 https://digitpod.substack.com/subscribe GET IN TOUCH 📧 Email us: [e-mail] 📱 Text or Voice Note: 07477 038795 💬 Or tap here to send a voice note or message on WhatsApp:⁠ ⁠https://wa.me/447477038795⁠⁠ GET EARLY AND AD-FREE EPISODES Become a member of The Potting Shed for early and ad-free episodes and bonus content 👉⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://digit.supportingcast.fm/⁠⁠ SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS This episode is brought to you by Ancient + Brave and Airbnb. 💪 Ancient + Brave — Discover the power of creatine, supporting energy, focus, strength, and even brain health. Perfect for midlife wellness as well as fitness, this tasteless powder blends effortlessly into your daily routine. Get 20% off your first order with code DIGIT at ancientandbrave.earth 🌍 Airbnb — Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at https://www.airbnb.co.uk/host/  CREDITS Exec Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan Assistant Producer: Eve Jones Technical Producers: Oliver Geraghty Video Editors: Connor Berry and Jack Whiteside Dig It is a Persephonica production

Coming up on diggits. Darling, I've lit myself up from within. Oh my God, come and see what I've done for you. What was he thinking? Do we know what happened then? Did they extract it? Yeah, did they find the body? I feel like we've only got part of a story.

Oh, my God. I did at one point just go, I'm just too old. I cannot do this. I definitely said that at one point. Steve was like, listen, she's got to come out. So you're going to have to push all of that right after this. At Pluralsight, we don't just teach. skills. We are building the tech workforce who deliver results fast, accelerated by top tier content.

Lead with confidence, lead with expertise. Visit us at plural site.com to tap in and learn more. Happy Monday, Joe. Hi, happy Monday. We survived the weekend again. We've survived another weekend. It is time to dig in where we answer questions from all our lovely diggers. We've had an email from Catherine. She says, I'm recently divorced and newly love, which I never thought would happen. Bless her. Everything's going brilliantly. We have so much in common. But the one big sticking point is our weekends. Go on, Catherine. He hates making any plans and just wants to see where the day takes us. While I feel like after a long week at work, I want a well-thought-out weekend of fun things to do together. We love spending time with each other,

but our ideas of the perfect weekend couldn't be more different. So two questions. which one of us is right and what kind of weekend people are you? meticulous planners or happy drifters? Well, congratulations on falling in love again, giving us all hope there. That's a lovely thing. Joe, are you a meticulous planner or a happy drifter when it comes to weekends? I quite like the question which of us is right.

Obviously, you're both right. The way you do your weekends is right for you. It's just not right for your other half. But you're both right in your own way. So it's all about compromise, isn't it? It's all about kind of making him happy or her happy, making you happy and just kind of making it work. I mean, I'm just not a big planner. I really feel quite suffocated by planning and it gives me the hebi-jeebies.

I just get a little bit stressed when people start talking about planning, whether it's next month or six months down the line or a year, whatever. I love spontaneity. I mean, I think I've never been brought up being organised. My parents are not particularly organised and that's kind of the way I like it. And because the weeks are so busy, sounds like you have really busy weeks as well. And so when it comes to weekends, I don't want to organise fun. I want it just to organically happen. I want to suddenly go, I really fancy going and having breakfast in such and such a place.

So I really fancy going and having a swim or popping over and seeing somebody. And I like that element. So, yeah, the actual, the idea of having a very busy week and then having a very busy weekend when you've got stuff that's structured just makes me go, it's too much. So I would definitely go for the more relaxed approach. I'm a little bit of both, to be honest with you. I think I'm a little leg in both camps, which sometimes I quite like to make a plan because everybody's so busy and sometimes I'm not sure when I'm going to see my kids or if my friends

are around or, you know, if people in the household are working and I work on a Saturday as well. So that sort of takes out most, it takes out Friday night and Saturday daytime. Saturday night I definitely like going to the pub or, you know, seeing friends if, because you've been, everything's been so work, work, work. But I quite like a weekend when there's nothing to do and no plans and you see where it goes. Or sometimes making plans like in late November, it's my birthday and it's my friend's birthday all the same time and we always get together. So that we've started planning that now because it's difficult to get all your mates together and all your kids together and stuff like that. But I think if your relationship is going that well and you've

found each other, you'd probably want to do a little bit of leg in both camps here, I reckon. Maybe. What if you did a bit of planning for Sunday, for example, you said, let's go to this place for lunch on Sunday, or let's go for a nice walk, or we'll go to the pictures and see something, but maybe Saturday will just riff it and see what we fancy. I think that's absolutely the right advice. And also, in the beginning, you're so busy falling in love and, you know, everything is great and la la la la la la and of course once you start getting to know someone you start to find out about the differences and their foibles and the way they are and sometimes those things can be jarring and you think oh you know my brother always calls it doomsday it's like you go for oh well

it's never going to work it's never going to work you just have to find the rhythm don't you in a new relationship and try not to go full doomsday which us balls tend to do well it's never going to work that it's over that's it fine done catastrophizing catastrophizing I love That's one of my favorite phrases, yeah, I hate people who catastrophes. I mean, I don't hate you. You would if you lived with me, Joe. We've already established we can't live together. Yeah, I wonder what we'd be like on holiday together.

I'd probably drive you crazy. We'd have an amazing time. We should do that at some point. Oh, my God. She's crazy. But yeah, Catherine, also thank you for giving everybody hope, you know, to hear that you've come through a divorce, which I imagine it was a real time of it, to come out the other side of that and find someone to share.

your life with is such a lovely thing and we'll give a lot of people hope. It just gives hope, yeah. And Catherine, let us know how you get on. By the way, if you are loving Digget, make sure you hit the follow on Apple or Spotify, which will mean that you'll never miss an episode, which is going to be a great thing. They will download quite simply to your phone as soon as they're out. Lovely people have been in touch on Making Friends. We've had this voice note from Lee. Hi, Joe and Zoe. I'm still playing catch-up with this point. podcast, I've only discovered it this week, but I was just listening to the lady that wanted to know how to make friends. I had a really awful falling out with my best friend several years

ago and had a few wilderness years where I had lots of friends but didn't really have a best friend and I really missed that. But I took up Brazilian jiu-jitsu at the age of 48 and I've made some really fantastic girlfriends ranging from 20 to me at 52 now. And we're all going to Lanzarotti in a month together. Six of us all ranging between 20. We've got some in our 20s, we've got some in our 30s, and then there's Grandma Lee going with them at 52.

It was the best thing I ever did. Joining a group, you know, there's not that many women that do Brazilian jiu-jitsu, so, you know, we all have to bond pretty quick. And I love it. And we have such a great time. And maybe Brazilian jiu-jitsu isn't for everyone, but certainly joining a brand-new sport,

a bit like you said, we discussed, Stephen's golf, is sometimes a real opener, a real door opener to new friendship groups. And I love it. It was just such a great avenue for new friendship groups. Oh, thanks, Lee. Who knew that Brazilian jiu-jitsu existed? I've seen jiu-jitsu. I remember someone teaching me some moves once. I wasn't a natural. I've never been a natural at sports like that. But that is so encouraging to hear, you know, making friends in different places. And I love that, multi-generation of girls off on holiday together. How wonderful. And how is disco Steve getting on with the golf, by the way? Well, it obviously hasn't played any golf since we spoke about it at all. But, but, you know, he's had a lot of people getting in touch with him. And

one day maybe he will actually play golf. But he's been keeping himself busy. You know, life is he's in a good place. And I think I genuinely cannot tell you people who are listening right now, how much it buoyed him up, hearing from everybody and having this, like, lovely, support coming in and hearing from lots of friends who he hadn't heard from for a long time. So he hasn't yet played golf with Gareth's health gate, but maybe one day that will happen. That will happen one day and we'll see the photographs. Yes, please. Have a great trip, Lee, and love to your Brazilian jiu-jitsu girls, by the way. They sound like a brilliant bunch of women. I guess the thing as well with joining these groups is that you

choose something that reflects your personality and your interest. So if you're going to go for something pretty quirky and hardcore, like Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You're going to meet people of a similar mindset, aren't you? And so the chances of you getting on and going on holiday together, that's going to happen. So that's something to bear in mind. All right, and another thing to, and to, and listen to and entertain. I've just seen the snippet of this. This is a message that we got from Alex. Alex emailed us, and this is on things stuck in places that they shouldn't be. Alex says, I'm a nurse. And I had somebody come in over Christmas with a full, I could barely read itself with a full set of fairy lights stuck in you know where.

Oh my God. When I say to people, I've seen it all. I often think of this guy. It was a guy. So a full set of fairy lights stuck up you know where. Were they plugged in? Was it like a little Christmas tree glowing from? I bet there were a battery operated, don't you think?

Oh, God. Would you think it was a surprise for someone? Darling, I've lit myself up from within. Oh my God. come and see what I've done for you. What was he thinking? Please do not try that at home. I mean, who would even think to try that?

That's absolute madness. I'm not going to feel quite the same when I get the Christmas lights out this year to unravel them to go on the tree. I'll be like that. Was it a small set? I'm not sure of the pleasure you'd get from that either, surely very spiky. Honestly, I just, I really hope that it was to entertain someone because I cannot think of how that would be.

remotely pleasurable in any way. Apart from to go, ta-da. Also, we have quite a lot of nurses and doctors and people who work in casualty in all those places and I bet somebody else has also seen fairy lights or something of a similar ilk, which of course they're going to tell us now. Details in the show notes if you want to share,

because we'd love to hear. Faye has also been in touch. She says following the story of Zoe's nose visitor, this is when a spider or a moth or something clad up my massive nostrils other night, Something similar happened to my husband. He was working in someone's loft and felt a spider crawling in his ear. He could then hear it crawling around.

He came home for work in an absolute frenzy and proceeded to shove a cotton bud in there. He retrieved some legs, but nobody. Horrific. We ended up in an A&E. I took the cotton bud as proof of the said spider. This was totally unnecessary. Turns out they just believe you. Do we know what happened then?

Did they extract it? Yeah, did they find the body? I feel like we've only got part of a story. Oh my God. I can't think of anything worse apart from fairy lights up you, Jaxie. Oh, God. It reminds me of someone telling me a story about someone and a fish. And the fish had gone into someone's area and it was frozen when it had gone in the area.

And obviously the body heat had unfrozen it. And then it had to be filleted to get. it out because as you pull out the scales and the gills would go into the area you're trying to pull it out of. So they'd effectively had to fill it the fish to get it out. Wasn't a puff a fish. Can you imagine? Sorry, was this a friend of yours or was this? No, I believe this is not a friend of mine. This was a friend's friend who was a nurse told the story. A&E knows. Okay. Elliot has been in touch on having babies later in life. I had my son via IVF at 42 and may never have seen a post-40 baby as an option until I saw Joe Wiley pregnant at 43. Oh, that's amazing. That's so amazing.

Yeah, that really is. God, I was so aware of the passing of time and I knew that I wanted another baby. This is Coco, we're talking about who is now 16. And I've got the three others and there's quite a healthy gap between all our kids. And I did keep saying to disco, Steve, you know I want another baby. And he was like, oh, I was really happy with one baby. India was great. And then you wanted more babies. And now the other two are great, but we don't need another one. And I was like, no, I really do. For some reason, to feel complete, I wanted a fourth child. And that went off quite a few years. And in the end, he gave in. And I did get my cocoa, which I was, I'm, you know, God, I love her so much. I'm so thrilled. And it's been so good for the family to have the broad range.

of ages. The number of times that people come up to me, they're like, and they're all with the same dad? I'm like, yeah, no, we just, we just, modern families, that's the way it can be. And you guys, you are all so amazing. I love it when you put pictures up of you all together. There was a picture of you all together at the wedding recently. Oh, yeah. And I just looked at you all, I was like, God, you're a gorgeous bunch, aren't you? Oh, I'm so lucky. I'm really lucky. We had 15 for dinner yesterday. There were 15, we ran out of forks. I didn't have enough forks at home and people were eating on their laps. And that's because I got the family.

And then they extended like grandparents. And then the plus ones of all the kids as well. I was like, oh my God, we need to got to get a bigger table. But also, can I just add to that? When I was 43 and I do remember going and saying I was pregnant and feeling slightly embarrassed about it. And then the doctors just aided this all along by writing geriatric on all my notes. And then saying, well, you could have a...

It's crazy, isn't it? You are geriatric. What is it age 40? You're a geriatric mother. And then saying, oh, you know, obviously, you can. can have a cesarian because you're of a certain age and you know it might be a bit hard for you to push and I was like oh thank you how quickly did you deliver cocoa I did at one point just go I'm just too old I cannot do this I definitely said that at one point Steve was like listen she's got to come out so you're going to have to push and I can't do it um so yeah she came out relatively quickly in the end and I didn't have a C section so it was all right but um but I'm glad I gave hope to other people and you know I've relished every second that we have of Coco. She's a gem. She really is. Amazing, lass. A feisty gem, but she's a gem. You want them to be feisty though. You know, life can be tricky. They've got to have spirit. And yeah, if you want to

get in touch with this and we love hearing from you, it's just having a nice debate and conversation, hearing your experiences. Send us a voice message or a text to our WhatsApp number. It's in the show notes. It's as easy as anything. So head to show notes, text to the WhatsApp number or send us a voice message. If you'd like these episodes ad-free, why not become a subscriber to the potting shed? You'll get longer episodes, you'll get bonus content and access to our members chat room where we can all share tips. You'll also get early access to live shows when they happen. But most importantly, you'll be supporting the show. To subscribe, head to digitpod.com.org. Or you can tap the link in the show notes. This episode of Digit is sponsored by Ancient and Brave.

Zoe, you know I love a wellness routine. And I'm I've added creatine to mine. Oh, tell me more. I will. True creatine plus from Ancient and Brave. I just pop it in my tea or a smoothie. No taste, no drama. And you don't have to be training for a triathlon, right?

Absolutely not. It supports strength, recovery, energy, and new researchers saying it even supports brain function, and it's good on West Days 2. Love that. Plus, it's got taurine, vitamin D, magnesium. It's like a little daily lift. Plus, they're a B-Corp, proud members of 1% for the planet,

meaning that 1% of all their sales, which they've now increased to 2% goes directly to environmental causes that protect our planet. So it's wellness for you and the planet. Go to ancient and brave. Dot earth slash planet and use code Digit for 20% off your first one-off purchase. That's code digit at ancient and brave.org earth slash planet. This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. You've been running around a lot lately, haven't you?

Because it's that time of year. It sure is. Collecting, dropping off the kids, work deadlines, barely enough time to do the laundry. Honestly, it feels like that for a lot of people I know at the moment. I was chatting to a mate last week. She's got a lovely flat, travels all the time for work, so the place just sits empty. She wants to host it on Airbnb, but hasn't got the headspace to manage it all. I totally get that. My friend said the same. She loves the idea of making a bit of extra money, but couldn't see how she'd fit it into her schedule, which is really busy. And that's where the Airbnb co-host network comes in. You can team up with somebody local who helps take care of everything. Okay. So if you're busy or maybe you just don't know where to start, you can essentially pair up with someone who will do it all for you.

Exactly. So from writing your listing to messaging guests and managing bookings, a co-host can do it all. So basically, you can make hosting work even when life gets a bit full on. Yes. And if that sounds like a win to you, find a co-host at Airbnb.com. co.k-o-ek slash host. We've gotten an email from Erica. Hi, Erica. Erica says, I'd love your advice on something that's been on my mind. My son has just turned seven and has started asking for pocket money.

I think it's fair enough. And I'd really like to use this as a chance to teach him about saving and the value of money. The tricky bit is that I grew up in a very poor family where money was always a huge source of stress. My parents tried to shield me from it. I could always feel the anxiety in the house, and it's definitely stayed with me. I still feel nervous around money and the idea of not having enough. On the other hand, my husband had a very different upbringing. He grew up comfortably middle class and tends to throw money at every

situation without worrying about it too much. So I'm caught between my own money anxiety and his overly relaxed approach, and I really don't want to pass either of these extremes onto our son. how did you go about teaching your kids the value of money? I have failed at teaching my kids the value of money, so I think Joe may be better be better on this question. Well, yeah. I said to Steve last night, I said I think Zoe and I'll say exactly the same thing that we're in a fortunate enough position at the moment

and we're not particularly good with money. We tend to spend a bit too much money. I'm speaking for you now, but I definitely have tendencies to splurge a bit too much. And I've always done that all my life. I come from a family who didn't have a lot of money growing up, really. We were okay. We were fine, but we didn't have loads and loads of money. And then when I started earning money, I don't know.

I've just always got in debt, actually. You know, when I was a student, I would spend too much money. I would have an overdraft. I've just always been pretty bad at managing money. Whereas Steve is very on it. Like, he's really, really keen that finances are taught properly. So he's taken over the job of teaching the kids how to appreciate money. And they really do.

They're very, very good. about spending money. They've been very mindful about earning money, getting pocket money, doing jobs to get money. We've always drilled that into them. And now that they're beginning to work, they're trying to think about investing and saving money. And they really appreciate the value of money. But they've got that more from Steve than they have from me. I worked from a really young age. I started babysitting when I was about 12 or 13, looked after people's kids, always had jobs. I worked in the supermarket. I worked in a wine bar. I was a lifeguard that only lasted for a week. wasn't very good at that because I'm really bad at swimming. How did I become a lifeguard? But I always had

jobs and always had my own money. So when I left home, you know, didn't need any support from my family and was fiercely independent. So, you know, it's been very different from my kids because my kids have grown up with two parents who worked and had good jobs and then a decent living, you know. And Nell works in the cafe and she really loves it and she likes being independent and having her own money. Woody's worked from quite a young age as well, but I've recently had big sort of chats with Woody about him getting himself together because he's just really disorganized. Like I, I'm quite disorganized. He'd always get parking fines. He'd have things and I just would automatically sort it out for him. But I think by doing that didn't really teach him how to look after

himself and how to budget because it was just chaos. So he's only recently at 25 finally getting his head around budgeting and making his money last because of course he works as a DJ so in the summer he does really well in the winter there's not a lot of work so I think trying to teach your kids young about you know my granddad always used to say kids don't know the value of a pound you know you've got to learn how to save it how not to be crazy frivolous you know my dad was never instructive in talking about money at all at all at all I mean he worked he was an electrician so he'd bring in the money and I remember my mum trying to teach me a bit about money I think it was the work ethic that I got from them, the fact that if you want to have money, you just got to do a job,

it doesn't matter what it is, whether you're a cleaner, whether you're working in a shop or in a cafe as a waitress, whatever. If you want to afford to buy the clothes, then you have to do the job to earn the money to pay for it. And I was like you, I think, just very, very disorganized. I've just never understood money. I never, we've talked about this, I never passed my GCSE maths. It's just figures, if there's a form of dyslexia where it applies to maths and money, then that I've got that because I just don't get it, don't understand it, and I try really hard. And also, when anyone talks to me about stuff like that, it's like, you know, when you're trying to sort mortgages out and anything sort of complicated, I very much am shut down.

And I really feel that it is something that all kids can benefit from learning at school. Oh my God, I feel so passionate about this. Yes. Yes. I think it's crazy that you don't teach kids useful. stuff like that at school. As well as, you know, I do understand you've got to learn about trigonometry and you've got to learn about Pythagoras and all this sort of stuff and, you know, triangles, whatever. But why not teach kids in school about saving? It's so difficult

at the moment for people to get on the property market or to understand how to make their money work best for them. I mean, thank God for Martin Lewis, you know, giving people really good a rise. But it's, I just think it would be so handy to learn about things like that at school. I mean, I did economics and thought it was really dull, but that was sort of world economics. And actually what you need to do is learn about the bills you're going to have to pay when you grow up. Because when your kids start out, they're like, what? Sorry, I've got to pay the water people.

I've got to pay this and the other. All that stuff we could really do with learning. I'm still a little bit like, la la la la, you know, really hopeless until the bills come through and there's a red thing on it. And I think, oh, I better deal with that. I better deal with that. No, I was absolutely clueless when it first came to paying bills, getting a mortgage. It was just completely not a language we ever spoke at home.

So thank God I had Steve to take care of all of that. You know, I try now to be a little bit more proactive. And I'm really, really proud of India, my daughter, who has worked so hard and she's very, very savvy. But she's learned, you know, she's read books and she's looked stuff up and she's worked out how to save money and she's not been extravagant in any way, shape or form. And I'm just so impressed with how financially savvy she is.

And now I can see she's educating the other kids as well and just going, no, don't do that, don't do this. Yeah, I feel a bit of a failure when it comes to managing my finances, really, but I'm very, very proud of the kids and the way they've learned. Erica, I think because you're so worried about it and you're concerned about it, and I can see exactly where you're coming from and where your fella is coming from as well. But you're obviously a great parent and you'll find, you know, the right way of doing it and good luck. And let us know, you know, if there's a good rate to give a seven-year-old as pocket money, advice, please.

Oh, it's been lovely chatting today. Nice to talk in our little dig in on a Monday morning. Always feels so much better after our chats. I do too. I've really enjoyed it. Hopefully we've helped people listening as well and that is it for today. But if you want even more questions and some answers as well, simply become a member of the Potting Shed and then you will get your longer episodes. Here as chat more.

If you have any questions or comments, we really would love to hear from you. Yeah, details on how to subscribe to the Potting Shed. So if you hear us say that and you're like, I just don't know what you mean or how to do it, it's all there in the show notes and also details of how to hear. you get in touch and how you say hi to us as well. We will see you on Wednesday. See you Wednesday, Joe. Bye. Digit is a Persephonica production.