Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - BONUS: The Funniest Dad On The Internet (James Breakwell)

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

James Breakwell tweeted conversations with his kids, and it turned into a million followers and a series of books. Ahead of Father's Day, he chats about his family, the power of 'Bare Minimum Parenting', and re-acts kids dialog.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to a bonus podcast from Jono and Ben on the hits on Sunday is Father's Day And we thought we'd talk to a man who's been called the funniest man the funniest dad on the internet He's a dad of four girls. He tweets the conversations the hilarious conversations. He has with his daughters He's got over 1 million followers on Twitter and he joins us right now. Good morning, James Bregwell Good afternoon. How are you doing? Yeah, good. Lovely to have you on. It's weird when we say good morning you say good afternoon, but that's international time zones, baby.

Hey, welcome along. Now, you've been dubbed the internet's funniest dad. We've got Father's Day coming up on Sunday. Now, is Father's Day the same time in America as it is in New Zealand? Okay, I'm terrible with calendars. Hopefully nobody in America listens to this. I believe a Father's Day in the it is in New Zealand? Okay, I'm terrible with calendars. Hopefully nobody in America listens to this. I believe a Father's Day in

the US is in June. Ah, right. So we're doing it at different times of the year. Now, you're a dad of four girls. 18th of June. 18th of June, okay. Well, you're a dad of four girls, and you basically tweet your conversations you have with your kids, and it's blowing up. You've got a million followers on Twitter.

You've written a bunch of books. When did you first get the idea to sort of put the conversations out there? I just started tweeting about all the things in my life and as I had more kids, they took over more and more of my life. So it was kind of natural. It was the creep of children as they work their way into everything that you do. But as they learn to talk and as they learn about the world, they just have some legitimately

funny stuff to say, and I think everybody's kids are that way, and that's why so many people relate to it. You are sort of breaking down the dialogue, Blo, but it's sort of like a police interview, isn't it? Word by word, reenactment of the conversation. Have your family become a bit gun-shy about talking to you now, James? Oh, no, not at all. The kids like attention, although they don't care about

Twitter at all. They like Instagram. They like me taking their picture, and they love YouTube, and on YouTube, I have almost no followers, but they're big fans of the video. That's where all their real heroes are. Now, one of your books, which is on parenting advice, you describe it, I read, as kind of like advice after three shots of whiskey. That's the sort of field you're playing in. What would be some advice you could pass on to the two of us as parents? What's a good tip? I think less is more in general. One of my books is Bare Minimum Parenting,

The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child, and that's really my philosophy. I'm not going to be that parent who has to go to every sporting event. I figure go to a couple of sporting events for your kids and make it really memorable. So when they look back, they're not going to remember every game anyway. You take them out to pizza after one game, that's the one they're going to remember for the rest of their life,

and then you can skip the rest. That's genius. When you say make it memorable, are you causing a scene on the sideline? Are you sort of attacking the referee? Like how are you making it memorable? I mean, my approach would be pizza. My kids are very easily bribed with food, but if you want to go the other way,

then the kids will remember why they don't want you there and you also get out of the game, so either one can be good. I do like bare minimum parenting because, you know, you do love your kids, but there's things like the end of year school assembly where you watch 320, it feels like every child in the school gets an award.

I couldn't care about 99.99% of these awards. Yeah, my school during COVID started doing a thing where they took the talent show or the award ceremony and they taped them and put them on YouTube and then you could just skip ahead to your kid. It was brilliant. The technology has saved up.

James Breakwell with us. He's been labelled the internet's funniest dad. His Twitter account is Exploding Unicorn, where he re-enacts conversations or dialogue with his kids. James, I'm going to put you on the spot here. I'm going to read out some of your tweets and stop by the last line and see if you can remember what the line is, something your kid said. George, can we have a quick go at that?

I'll tell you right now, I'm going to fail it. I look back at my old tweets and I can't remember any of them. That's okay. I'll go ahead and make a tweet myself. Let's go for it. How many tweets do you think you've sent out over the years? Oh, 20, 25,000, something like that. Okay, so you really, okay, I really am putting you on the spot.

Okay, your seven-year-old asks you, what's for lunch? You reply, leftovers. They mope. You say, what's wrong with that and your kid says probably there's a reason we didn't eat them the first time okay you say how did your group project go your child says good there was just one problem you reply what and they reply the group yeah you're nailing these. You're nailing these. You're hating on yourself, James. All right, let's get one more. Your seven-year-old dumps their toy dinosaurs all over the floor.

You reply, you can't leave them everywhere. And they reply, why? It was their plan at first. Yeah. There you go. You nailed it. Three from three. James, after 25,000 tweets, you've still got a memory on him.

I guess so. Lovely catching up with you, James. If people want to follow you on Twitter, it's Exploding Unicorn, spelled X-ploding with an X at the front. Hey, thank you very much for your time, mate. Lovely catching up with you. Oh, thanks for having me. You've been listening to a podcast from The Hits.

For more audio, search up Megan Pappas on the 3 p.m. pickup or Brad and Laura on The Hits. Available now on the iHeartRadio app.