Memory Lane with Kerry Godliman and Jen Brister - S01 E04: Jo Brand (Kerry only)

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

"And that was when my dad took me home put everything I own on a bonfire and burnt the whole lot" Kerry chats with Jo Brand about her favourite photos, rummaged from a number of shoe boxes... Photo 01 - Jo's school photo Photo 02 - A birthday card for Jo's Grandad Photo 03 - Jo dressed for a Stoppard play Photo 04 - Jo on a stage full of comedy talent Photo 05 - Jo's parents' wedding Photo 06 - Jo on holiday camping PICS & MORE - https://www.instagram.com/memory_lane_podcast/ A Dot Dot Dot Production produced by Joel Porter Hosted by Jen Brister & Kerry Godliman Distributed by Keep It Light Media Sales and advertising enquiries: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paramoose. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony and Ziva. We'd like to make up for own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition.

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Paramount Wolf. Hello and welcome to Memory Lane. Each episode, I take a trip down Memory Lane with a very special guest

as they bring in four photos from their lives to talk about. To check out the photos that we're talking about, they're all on the episode image, and you can also see them a bit more clearly on our Instagram page. So have a little look at Memory Lane podcast. Come on, we can all be nosy together. Joe, so I've got your pictures in front of me. Thank you for sending them.

Pleasure. This photograph of you as a kid, is this posed or is this an entirely natural shot? It doesn't look natural and thankfully no, it isn't natural. It's a school photo. I mean, that isn't a traditional school photo, is it? That is quite an unusual because it's been posed and you've got books behind you and it's, you know, all my school photos are in one of those awful booths, you know, with a crappy backdrop. But this is a really lovely picture.

Well, I think it was because they used to do, you know, the big group ones where we all went out on the village green. And then they did individual ones as well, which were inside in the headmaster's office. So I think that's where that must have been. Yeah, I know. They really went to town. Then there was the bikini shot. No, not really. Do you remember this being taken?

No, I don't. I don't remember what happened last week, Kerry, to be honest. Me too. And were you bookish? Do you know what? I kind of was at that age. I was bookish, but I was also quite scared because the teachers in our primary school, which was an idyllic little primary school on a Kent Village Green. The headmaster and his wife, who was also a teacher, they were terrifying. Oh, really?

Yeah, they really were. And in those days, you know, physical punishment was sanctioned. Right, yeah. And so seeing what they did to people, for example, one boy was talking in class and the headmaster made him go and get his shoe bags. Do you remember shoe bags? You used to hang them up on your peg with your pimpsoles. Indeed.

He made him go and get his shoe bag. Then he swung it round his head to get up as much momentum as he could and then hit this boy around the back of the head with it. Oh, God. And I mean, it was shocking. Yeah, that is shocking. It's like something from Roald Dahl, isn't it? Like Matilda when the kick.

gets flung by her platts. Absolutely. And I remember the woman teacher, her approach was humiliation. So she would, I put my hand up twice in the same morning to ask to go to the loo. No idea why, not a big deal. And she said to me, oh, you'll have to bring a potty into school. And everyone laughed at me, you know, as they would. So it was kind of ruled by intimidation, really.

I mean, does that make you angry now when you look back and you think, Because when I, you know, I also have memories of that kind of just, it was an accepted part of school culture, wasn't it? There was a bit of sarcasm, humiliation and things like that. It's horrible to think back on it. Yeah, particularly, you know, when, you know, I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't kind of pick on kids that are well-behaved, but certainly they didn't seem to distinguish between kids that were well-behaved

and kids that were naughty. Everyone just got lashed with the tongue or with something worse. if they were if they were really bad you know so yeah it does kind of make me angry really it's interesting now because there's so much focus on mental health and children's well-being you know in in we talk about that stuff but it just it's relatively contemporary really isn't it oh completely i mean i would say probably last 15 years maybe if not even a bit less than that because it's interesting because i've got teenagers um as have you i think yeah my daughter's 13 yeah Yeah, yeah.

And so you get to see, you get a real insight into the difference in approach in secondary schools these days. And it's kind of unrecognisable, really. Yeah. But in that photograph, you don't, that's the interesting thing about photography is it doesn't always tell the truth because you're, you don't look scared. You know, now you've told me maybe I can project into it. But is that you look like a happy little girl, really. You look content and happy and well looked after. Well, I was happy, apart from, you know, some days at school and some days at homes, my dad was quite hard work at times. He had a terrible temper. And so I was scared sometimes at home and I was scared sometimes at school. But not all the time. And I was happy, really. I mean, it was, you know, we lived out in the middle of nowhere. Where did you grow up? I was playing the woods. I grew up outside a village called Benenden in Kent. And the only reason you might have heard of it is because there's a very posh.

private girls school there that looks like Mallory Towers and Princess Anne went there. I didn't. But us plebs from the village, we were allowed up there in the summer holidays. I always used to try and have a little whittle in the pool just to show them for us working class. Did you have a sense of class? Did you sort of think it's us and them? Yeah, very much so because my parents met each other at young socialists. Right. And my mum was like really unusual for her time. She was an extremely gobby feminist who was quite left wing. And she ruffled a lot of feathers in the village, as you can imagine, because she wasn't baking.

Right. She wasn't wearing an apron 24-7. And, you know, she used to speak up about things. So I get it from her. Were they closed your mum and dad? They got on well. They were a united front. Well, obviously, they were when they got married.

But I think things just got worse as they kind of got old. as we got older because my mum wanted to be independent and go out to work. And really my dad came from a kind of very traditional sort of working class background in South London. Right. And despite his socialist views, he wanted, I think he wanted my mum to kind of not go to work and to do the cooking and to, you know, do that apron wearing thing and knitting and all that. And that just wasn't happening. And she just didn't want to. No way. Right. And so you're one of three or you've got two brothers?

Yeah, one of three. My little brother Matt died in 2015, so for cancer. But yeah, pretty recent. And were you all close growing up? We were very close. We were close in the sense that we were at loggerheads. I mean, I was always the, you know, the butt of their bullying to some extent. Right. And so there was a lot of hitting and, you know, a lot of pinching under the table at meal time. All that sort of. And, you know, a lot of April falls. But actually we were kind of, we were very close. And my greatest victory was when we were playing in the woods one day. And I trod in a wasp's nest and out they all came.

And I ran one way and my brothers ran the other way. And they chased my brothers and stung them really badly. Well, hey! Oh, one of my greatest victories, yeah. That's a great story. So you had very, that sounds like a rural upbringing if you've got, you know, memories of wasps nests in woods and stuff like that. Oh, it really was.

There was lots of like, you know, hanging ropes on branches, swinging across a stream and the branch breaking, all that kind of thing. And also one thing was hilarious when I was a kid. Well, I must have been about nine. Yeah. My dad had rented a field because he wanted to sort of grow some Christmas trees in the woods at the side.

And a local woman said, could she put her three donkeys in the field? So they were in there for about a year. And that's like heaven for us. Yeah, don't go and lassoe them and ride them, you know. Calamity Jane, the donkey's all. We found out that if you touch the top of a donkey's tail, it goes absolutely bonkers. Oh, really? So we would get kids down from school, put them on a donkey, then touch the top of its tail and see what happens.

I know. I know. Absolutely. Real live donkey buckaroo. It was marvelous. And then what went wrong? What went wrong with the donkeys? My dad planted all his baby Christmas trees

and the donkeys broke into the woods and ate the lot. Oh, God. So the donkeys had to go. Your next photograph is it, is it a card? Have we got both sides of a card that you've sent us? Oh, you have. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, I decided to use this because it's actually a card that was sent to my granddad on his birthday in, I think it was in 1924, if I'm right, right, 26, there we go. Right. And I just kind of, I think your, you know, your background going back a long way really defines you in many ways because some years ago they asked me to do who do you think you are. Yeah. And my mum didn't want to do it because my mum's background is kind of quite sort of mysterious in some ways. And there was kind of a lot that went on that she didn't really want me to talk about on telly.

So I said, OK, fine. And they said, well, we could just do it with your dad. And he was quite keen. So they investigated my dad and basically came back and said, I'm sorry, he's too boring. There's nothing there. Had they had a sniff that there was some good stuff on your mum? mom's side. Well, I don't know. They never actually said that, but they may well have done. And actually basically what it was to do with was that my mum was split. My mum's parents split up with each other

when she was about three and her brother was four. And they, the, the mum and the brother stayed in Ireland and my mum and her dad stayed over here, came over here. Oh, that's quite unusual for the time. I didn't see each other again until they were in their 60s. So I know. And this is what your mum didn't want to on earth? I think it was she didn't want to go through all that really. And I think she was kind of a bit worried they would track relatives down that she might not want, you know, to hook up with again. I don't know anyway.

And why did you choose it? What does it bring up for you that picture? Well, it just bring, sometimes I kind of look at the date of that card and think, oh my, God, that is such a long time ago, 1926. And actually, the way that society was conducted in 1926 compared to now is so unrecognizable from our lives today. Yeah. And as we progress, it speeds up faster and faster and faster, you know. And I kind of think it's sort of quite nice to sort of hang on to those bits of your, of your past. to kind of remind you, for example, what women's lives were like in the 1920s. You know, it was all kind of flappers and do as you told, wasn't it?

Yeah. And, I mean, I know I went a bit far the other way when I started doing stand-up and I got so much kind of a man-hater, la-la, all that sort of thing. Yeah. But actually for me, when I started doing comedy, I felt it was the time to sort of do that, really, and to not care because for so long men had been able to say what they're bloody well liked, you know. And I wasn't quite expecting, am I allowed to say this, the shitstorm that happened when I started doing stand-up?

But anyway, there you go, it did. But that's interesting that you, because of this card and this, your awareness of time and a kind of timeline, a trajectory of human experience, that you could weather some of that shitstorm because you go, well, actually in the context of history, I'll weather it because I know there's a value in it. I always think that sort of pioneers of any type, you know, I'm not just talking sort of feminists or women, but just consciousness. Yeah, they have to be that little bit, well, my daughter would call it extra. Does your daughter use that? She's always saying to me, oh, God, one is so extra.

I don't know what the words are at all that my daughter uses. They don't make any sense. And it means you've gone, you've gone a bit too far. Do you know what I mean? But it's the implication you've gone too far that you should rein it in or that you should be celebrated for going a bit extra? That you should, well, in my book, that you should be celebrated in their book that you should rein it in. Okay.

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No, well, there was like an Andram society at our hospital. And so we did... I did a hospital Panto and I also did this. This was a play called The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. And we did it at the best of... Bethlehem Royal Hospital down in Kent, which is like our sister hospital. And I remember like the stage directions at the time saying, you know, I was Mrs. Drudge, the cleaner, which is why I've got curlers right onto my scarf because obviously we needed a few pointers to the obvious. And it's,

it kind of said, you know, Mrs. Drudge is kind of quite old and ugly. And I'm looking at that photo thinking, I look quite nice there. You look really glamorous and beautiful. It's so funny how you look back on chapters of your life when you don't feel attractive and go, I was attractive. Yeah. So how come, so, because we've jumped a bit from you being a kid in, and now you're a nurse, you're a nurse, you're a student nurse. A student nurse.

So what, so what happened between the kid in the headmaster's office and becoming a student nurse? So are you still in the countryside? Still in the countryside. I actually, my parents didn't want me to travel, our nearest grammar school, which they wanted me to go to was 25 miles away and was a two and a half hour bus journey each way. So I used to leave for school at 6.30 in the morning and get home about half six at night. And were you happy doing that because you got to go to the grammar?

I did because I got to smoke at the bus window. So this is kind of contradiction between this extremely bright kid, but a very rebellious nature already. Yeah, I did. I started dating because I had a Saturday. job in boots. And this really lovely guy used to keep coming in. And he looks a bit like Mark Bolan. And in rural Kent. Oh no, this is when we moved to Hastings. Oh, so yeah. And actually, it was weird because Hastings Pier had gigs every, you know, every week at music gigs. So I saw T-Rex. I saw Oh, great. So you're getting into music and culture. Yeah. And so I started going out with him, obviously, behind my parents back because he was a drug dealer.

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, you can imagine it. It's hard to explain that career choice to your mum and dad, isn't it? Yeah, it's quite hard. Also, I was a terrible liar. You could just say he was an entrepreneur? Well, I used to set up alibis and then completely trashed them by mistake. You're a shit liar.

A terrible liar. And this led to me coming out of a film called Emmanuel. I don't know whether you know what that is, but it's like a filthy French film. Right. which is just porn really. Anyway, with six guys that I was doing hot picking with, stoned out of our heads with my parents outside in the car waiting for me because my alibi had failed again.

And that was like when they took me home and my dad put all my clothes, everything I owned on a bonfire in the garden, and poured my old bloody lot. Oh, Joe. I know. That's a man. That's great. really big deal.

I know, I know. And also he knocked out this boyfriend of mine. What? Once as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, knocked him out, cold? Yeah. And how old were you when this all happened? 17, maybe. Oh, my God. I know.

But basically, this boyfriend, who looked like Mark Bowling, he was quite posh. And he came, he brought me home late once. And that's the first time my parents had ever met him. And my dad said to him, you know, that cliche, what the hell are you don't bringing my daughter home at this time. And he said to him, oh, my dear chap, right? My dad's like, I died in the wall, working class socialist. And he goes, if you call me that again, I'm going to hit you.

And I can't think why he did this, but he went, but my dear chap. Oh God, oh God, oh God. And my dad lamped him and knocked him out, yeah. Wow. So, yeah. I mean, did you, how long were you going out with this bloke for? Well, it lasted six years, actually. I know.

Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, and was that at the expense of your relationship with your dad? Totally. And my mum. Oh, really? And I kind of left home. And ironically, rather sadly, the day that I moved in to bed sit, this guy I was going out with, started a job in London. So we only saw each other at the weekends for a bit.

And after about six months, he would kind of live with me during the week. after about six months he used to come home on a Friday night and we would meet in the pub in the old town in Hastings and uh because he'd come in on the train and I went to meet him at the pub and I was like half an hour early and I walked into the pub and he was snogging someone else in the course oh my god I know so and you broke up then we broke up then and in fact what happened was he was kind of a very sort of you know tempting and kind of mysterious character it was like really half from me. me to break up with him and I thought I can't stay where I am yeah so I waited for him to go back to

work in London and then I moved right in two days and I moved to Tumbridge Wells where I went to school and I had some friends okay um there so I kind of you know and through all this you weren't you weren't you were you in touch with your mom and dad or you were just it was kind of not good not really I would occasionally um yeah I would call my mom but I wouldn't really tell her what was going on Because you were just ashamed of how it had panned out or you just didn't feel that you could talk about it with them? Well, because it was like a kind of several very told you so moments. Right, yeah, yeah.

And I wouldn't have blamed them because they were absolutely right. But I moved to Tumbidge Wells and I worked full time in a pub for a year so I could get a job. And in fact, after about a year and a half, because I didn't tell him where I'd gone. He tracked me down and walked into this pub and we got back together again. Oh, wow. Yeah.

One of those sort of operas. Indeed. And that went on for like three years maybe. So, yeah. Did you make back, you made up with your parents later though? You sorted it all that. Oh, I did. Yeah.

Yeah, probably like as soon as I got rid of him, to be honest. Right. And in fact, the day that I'd split up with him, we were actually, where were we in Torquay? That's right. And I just, basically, I'd been to stay with him for the weekend to see if we could salvage it. And he just, he was had a bit of a drinking problem. And he just fed me so much drink all weekend that I was in a pub and I fell backwards off a bar store because I was so pissed. Then he took me to a nightclub and I threw up sort of out of the window, except the window was closed.

So I threw up down the window. And then I was like just really ill all night. And the next morning we went to the beach and he went off to an off license to get a bottle of wine. This is like 10.30 in the morning. and I thought I cannot deal with this anymore. So I just got in my car and drove to my mum's and moved in with her for a bit. She was really pleased.

Yeah. Thank God that you got out of it. Absolutely. So then nursing, so then you went to college after these jobs and you broke up with him and you kind of what? Do you feel that you got your life together or you were getting your life on track or? Yeah, I feel that I did.

I did get my life together. Yeah, very much. And that's where I kind of met my life. really, really close group of friends who I'm still with today. Yeah, yeah. Right. So this picture, you're performing already. So even though you're nursing and all the rest of it, you've already discovered the love for acting and performing. So you knew what stand-up was at this stage. You knew of it. I did because actually I left university in 1982, which is just about when the kind of alternative comedy scene got going. And you were going to, and when was the light bulb moment where you

were like, I want to do that. So what actually happened in the end was a friend of mine. His girlfriend was organising a benefit. And so she said, stop going on about it, do this benefit and just see how it goes. And then if you want to keep doing it, fine. If you don't stop talking to us about it, you know. I love mates like that. Just shut the fuck up, mates. That's funny. So did the gig go well? The benefit went well. I take it. No. Oh. I was on at the end of the night, which was midnight. Everyone else had gone on, including, do you know a comic called Johnny a Material? I don't know if you remember him. No. He was so brilliant. And I thought he was hilarious. Well, he went on and died on his ass. Oh, right. So that's the measure of night. I was kind of thinking, I wasn't thinking, well, what chance have I got? I was thinking, oh, it'll be all right. There's my rather too erudite five minutes on the works of Sigmund Freud. we'll really storm it and went on and it just so happened there were two comedians in the audience who i didn't know at all right from the alternative circuit and as soon as i came on uh one of them

was called tony green he was the main protagonist um as soon as i came on he just started chanting immediately fuck off you fat cow over and over again And I had had seven pints of lager because I was so nervous waiting to go on. So I was off my head and he was doing that to me. And so I soldiered on ridiculously, to be honest. I should have just walked off. And I just, in the end, they were all shouting abuse at me. So I just went off.

But that's amazing that you, that was your first gig and you didn't pack it in. I mean, there must have been something in you that was like, right, I am going. going to come back and do this again and again and again. Yeah, I think what helped was being so drunk because I used to use that technique in Edinburgh at that show late and live, you know, it starts at 1 o'clock in the morning. And I used to try and get as drunk as the audience, then I didn't care so much what they did. And I would just get like very kind of arsey with them and quite aggressive. And that seemed to work.

They seem to like that. I mean, what's amazing as well about that story is, as you were telling me that there were other comics in the audience. And I thought you were going to say, and they said to me, we can see that you've got potential. But actually, they shouted abuse. No, well, that pair, Tony Green and Ian Hinchcliff, they were called. They were more kind of sort of performance anarchists. So what they would do is like they would throw like a glass bottle on the floor and then

they would lie on it and roll in it. So their backs were bleeding. You know, it wasn't really, it wasn't really comedy. It wasn't a supportive environment. It was quite funny. It's so interesting because you've come through at a time, a different time. Because I talk to other comics and they talk about courses and safe spaces where you've given room to play. And you talk about this kind of shit where you have these anarchists rolling about in glass.

And that's how you develop as an act. So this picture, this other photograph of you with loads of comics on stage, is this. So you're a comic now, a professional comic. Or? Yeah, I would say so. It's quite early on in my career. I can tell by what I'm wearing and my shoes because I've got red, red DMs on. And that was kind of for the first sort of two or three years, maybe three years into me starting.

And that was a, that was kind of a theatre. And first of all, it's a really good example of how shit photography was in those days. Yeah. Because that was taken, you know, not by a professional photographer, but it's such a bad photo. because the whole top of the photo is dark and nothing doing. The figures are kind of quite small in it, but actually there's kind of quite a few characters in there. Yeah, I can recognise a few.

I see Edel Zard and Sean Locke's in there. Yeah, that's right. And then Bill Bailey's wife, Chris, is kind of behind Nigel who plays the guitar for John Hegley. So it's just to me, like I've never had got a picture with a greater line-up of comics in it. And it just, I look back on that, And I think, oh, look at that.

And Kev Day is standing next to me. Yeah. So, yeah, it was an exciting time. Really exciting time. And I have to say, you know, I never, as a woman, felt excluded or in any way, kind of sidelines, you know. It's interesting, especially, like, with women in comedy. Often people project a narrative onto you that you don't necessarily experience. I mean, you know, I've had some kind of very interesting things because, like, a lot of right-wing journalists have always.

always just assumed that all men hate me with the exception of my father and he was probably the only one who did hate me for a while. But, no, I'm joking. But, you know, I remember once reading like a diary piece because someone mentioned it to me. I don't know if you've got those kind of friends in inverted commas that say, oh, wasn't that all for that piece about in the papers? And then you're, you wouldn't have read it, but you were absolutely then, you know, obligated to read it now they've told you. And anyway, I was doing a gig at the Hackney end. empire and it was a kind of I think it was a green piece gig possibly and the actress Julie Christie who's obviously way out of my orbit came on and gave a speech at the end and

this diary piece said Julie Christie probably didn't bump into Joe Brand because Joe Brand was on much earlier thank thank God for her because I bet she really hates Joe Brand and thinks she's a pain or something like that you know it was really not nice Yeah. And kind of a week later, I actually got a letter from Julie Christie saying that she loved my work and the piece was wrong and she'd written to them to tell them that. Oh, there we are. Yeah. They want the cat fight, don't they?

They don't want the female solidarity story. That's absolutely right. I know. And they couldn't imagine how someone who was kind of blonde and gorgeous and had been in that iconic kind of far from the madding crowd film could possibly want to even talk to someone like. me, you know, it was all, there's a lot of that. There was only you and a few more that went before me when I started. And, but all the men, I don't remember really that much misogyny coming from other male comics. It was often from journalists and...

I totally agree. Yeah, I don't think there ever really was much coming from male comics either. You know, even into sort of all the generations are after mine. I always think it was sort of kind of invented, you know, by these sort of journalists that, that sort of represent that section of society that think women aren't funny. Yeah. Where is that picture taken? Is that an Edinburgh shop? I think it was at the Wimbledon Theatre, but don't quote me on that,

because I can see two guys at the back who are virtually hidden. They used to run a comedy gig at a pub called the Leather Bottle in Wimbledon where Eddie Azard started. Yeah. Yeah. This photograph you've sent, because we've jumped again out of chronological order, because there's another photo that's an old shot. Is that your mum and dad's wedding?

Yeah, basically my dad was about to go on National Service. Ah, that's why he's in uniform. Yeah, and because in those days, everyone had to do it, you know. So he was about to go on. And they're young? Yeah, he's 22, my mum's 18. Sorry, I caught you off there. Where did he go for National Service? Benghazi in Libya.

Oh, wow. I know. Totally different to kettle of fish today, obviously, politically. But what happened was my mum wanted to go out with him. Right. And this is so typical of my mum. And they said no. So she went up to Whitehall to the general's office that was in charge of sending people. and she went in there for 10 minutes.

I'm not in, I don't know what she did in there, but it was just talking, but she persuaded him. And he let her go out to Libya and live with the officer's wives. How long was she out there for? I think sort of a yearish, maybe a little bit less. Yeah. Did you have a big wedding? No, I did a very small wedding, actually.

It was in a church and it was in Ludlow. where my mum lives. Right. And I had about 20 people there maybe. I was kind of slightly obsessed with the press not finding out. Right, okay. Because I didn't want them to come and bugger it all up. No, fair enough.

They can do that, can't they, the press? Oh, they, yeah, big time. Absolutely. No, they rather charmingly, well, the sun rather charmingly, when they did find out 10 days later, gave me a, a nice front page of the sun headline, which said, here comes the bride all fat and wide. So, yeah, you know, what can you do?

Oh, Joe, man, the sun. You and the sun. You and the sun. It's like a saga. I know, I know. Well, it was Gary Bushell originally. Yeah, of course. And, yeah, it just went on. You're very sanguine about all that.

I always sort of admire that. I'm not really, Kerry. I was at the time. I wasn't at the time. But I think, you know, the end you have to learn to live with it you have to understand that there's a lot of people i mean i think with my comedy it's not exactly middle of the road and i know there's a lot of people that can't stand what i do and um and i'm fair enough you know and so that is going to be

reflected uh politically in in the more right wing tabloids you know but you're really good at articulating that like you don't ever become you're not bitter about it or you know i admire the way that you're able to kind of articulate that and understand it culturally and politically? Well, yeah, but that's all with the benefit of hindsight, if you like, you know. No, I bet. But, yeah, so there we go. Nobody did find out.

So it was quite good fun keeping it secret. And have you got pictures of it? Yes, I have. And I'll show them to you, but I just feel... No, they're private, yeah. You know, yeah. No, I get it. Did you know that we've had a picture sent that you haven't done?

scene from your brother? Well, I did get a, yes, I did know he was sending something, but I didn't know what it was. So, can you see this picture? I can. There's a lovely, very smart caravan there, yeah. Oh man, I love a caravan. And me and the brothers. Yeah, me too. So do you know where you are in this picture? We did sort of go abroad quite a bit, but I think that's kind of somewhere like Cornwall or Devon actually. Right. So how old do you think you are? I think I'm probably eight or nine maybe. Is that your mum? That's my mum. Yeah, obviously taken by my dad. You know and I think you can tell that we're probably quite a way into the holiday by then and no one's got any clean clothes. You're holding an egg. I love it that you're holding an egg.

no idea why I'm holding an egg. It's so great that you are. I mean, it just captures that kind of rural country. Of course you're holding an egg. You just found an egg. Absolutely. Maybe we just, yeah, absolutely. We've been to see some chickens.

Maybe I think we're on a farm actually, now I think of it. Oh, was that a family caravan? Yes, it was, yeah. And did you have it for a long time? Yeah, I think we had it for quite a few years. My dad used to like to think that, you know, He was a bit of a connoisseur of caravan holidays.

So, you know, if you look at the size of it, can you imagine that we actually all got in there and slept? Well, yes, I can because I love camping and we've got a camper van. And it's the fact that it's tiny and that you can fit a whole family in it that appeals to me. Yeah. I mean, do your kids like camping? Do they still like it? Not now. They've grown out of it now.

No, no. I think when kids are little, there's just nothing better. I just think it's the best holidays. Yeah. As you can see, my big brother Bill has got a fishing rod. Oh, yes. He's still obsessed with fishing. He goes fishing five times a year to a lake in France.

And my little brother Matt, for years, that is how he thought you smiled to the camera. And why not? We could go, Matt, do your smiley face. Let me do that. That is a great smile. But when you have a childhood where you camp and you've got like this picture, it just captures the ideal of a camping family holiday. I think as an adult, you're always trying to get it back.

You're always trying to recapture that. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You are. But I mean, I have to say that with our family, because of my dad's depression, the cracks were kind of starting to show a bit. Not terrible at this point, really, but he did sort of have a terrible temper.

Right. He could ruin a holiday in 10 minutes flat. Could he do a night? nuts in May. Do you remember the blocress? Oh God, I love nuts in May. Keith. Keith and Candice Marie. Keith and Candice Marie. That's why I was thinking, having a breakdown on a campsite is a very specifically British thing. Oh, absolutely. Well, my dad, there are quite a few incidences of him, you know, losing it a bit. Do you think that's why your brother sent that is because it captures a time before your dad's depression. Yeah, I think it probably is. You know, I mean, my mom, let's look at her.

doesn't look that happy, does she? And in fact, the only person that's making a nice face is my little brother. But, yeah, I don't know. It's hard to tell. I think these things are kind of, if it's towards the end of the holiday, sometimes you're a bit stressed out, aren't you? You can do a sort of, you can do a kind of limited time and then it starts to get a bit stressful.

Yeah. And, you know, maybe that's what was going on. I don't know. Listen, thank you so much. much for doing this. Your pictures have been great. Absolute pleasure. Absolutely pleasure. That's it for this week. The rest of Series 1 is available with all the photos on our Instagram page and Jen and I will be doing new episodes every week. Thanks for listening. Bye. I'm Max Rushden. I'm David O'Darney. And we'd like to invite you to listen to our new podcast,

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