Memory Lane with Kerry Godliman and Jen Brister - S01 E11: Josh Widdicombe (Kerry only)

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

"I think the last two years of primary school were my imperial phase of my childhood" Josh takes Kerry on a walk through his childhood and later using the medium of photos. Photo 01 - Josh's HAIR! Photo 02 - Josh In Some Fantastic Knitwear Photo 03 - Josh (Sweating) After a Gig in Edinburgh Photo 04 - Josh After an Appendectomy in Hospital 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

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. Was it easy for you to find these pictures?

It wasn't, it wasn't. I haven't got them into hard copies, but do you know what? To find the child's one, I've realized that the thing I've been asked for most on any TV shows always, can we, they're always like, do you know what it'd be good? Would be a picture of you as a child?

Right. So now my agent has got the photos, young photos of me. So I just said, find those young photos on me for that one. And then another one is the symbol on a WhatsApp group. You know the photo on a WhatsApp group, so you had that. Yeah.

And then another one was in the press, so there's that one. So they're easy to find. So where do you keep photos? Are you a keeper of photos? I've got a phone. I know. I don't forget what I mean. I suppose you're a lot younger than me.

You don't have a box or an album or anything like that. No, I don't, I haven't like, I've always thought I need to go through and like print out. We all do, I know. Because I used to obviously not to get too kind of, you know, what it used to be like, but you used to, you know, the thrill of going to... You know, where you go, you're about to get some, man. The thrill of going to Jessups or whatever,

and you get the 27 photos and the last two, obviously, the two that you've taken on the way there. And then when I was at uni, obviously, we'd do... We'd get the disposable camera for a night out. Yes. And then you take the disposable camera on the night out,

and you take all the photos, get them developed. And then we had, like, in our living room, we had, like, the collage wall. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it was amazing. Oh, I love that. And so somewhere I've got all those photos. Where?

Where are they? I've got various boxes. Right. And I've got a draw now at this desk where I'm sat, which is just a draw of memories. So it's like, which one day you go, one day I'm going to sit down and I'm going to go through my memory box. Well, we're in a lockdown, mate.

You can do it. I know. I'm not doing it now, so I'm never doing it, right? No. And so I've got boxes of stuff, which is photos. or tickets or like land yards or like little things old letters or postcards

yeah old letters or postcards and it's all in like a and I don't know lots of stuff in there you're like I can look at it now and you're like when am I going to enjoy a last leg cue card do you know what I mean but it's in there

we just enjoyed it we just had that moment but there's a lot of stuff in there like photos obviously you go I get that right That makes total sense. But, like, I've got objects and you're like, I remember working on the last, like, I'm not going to need to look at a cue cart to kind of remember that.

Or just keep one. People say keep one and then being the rest. Well, I'm kept one, yeah, yeah. Well, one's all right. But, yeah, and all the best photos, like, the, just the, I've never, like, I've got, like, lots and lots of photos of my daughter and stuff on my phone, but I haven't put them in an album. And I've, what I have.

Do you do a baby book? You are? Didn't you do a baby book? I don't know what that is, Kerry. Josh! What kind of a father are you? A bad one. You know this.

A baby book? Like when you have a baby and you fill it with all like a lock of their hair and how much they weighed and their first photo and your scan picture and all that. Yeah, we've got all that stuff but it's just in a box. It's not been booked. Okay. But I tell you what I have done, which I quite like, is so I've set her up an email address. Right.

Okay. And so what I do is I just, every few months or so, I'll send her an email. You're burdening her with admin and she's how old. She's two and a half, but she's got to learn somehow. Oh, she's got loads of emails to answer by the time she's fine. Yeah, exactly. But she's just not answered once either, which is rude in my... But I'll send her like what we've been up to and stuff.

And then I'll also forward all the photos. And then when she's 18, I'll give her the email address and she'll have thousands of. of photos that way. Oh, that is lovely. And all the live descriptions of what our life was like growing up. I actually haven't done one in lockdown because I thought it would be a bit bleak. I want to at least feel like we're on the way out of it before I commit to an email. And also what bugs me is now you've got it among your photos of people you love and memories you're fond of.

It's all these like WhatsApp memes and all kinds of other. Yeah. Oh yeah. You'll be like, photo of my daughter, photo of a daughter, screen grab of a tweet by a comedian I don't like. It's like a weed in your memory bank. Yeah, exactly. It shouldn't be in there. Yeah.

But do you know, I suppose it's a more honest view of what your obsessions are? Well, I think because of smartphones now, photos have become something completely different. To treasure a picture is quite a rare thing. Totally. And I reckon there's probably a maximum of 100 photos of me before I was 18. Do you know what I mean? Whereas there's probably thousands of photos of my daughter and she, she's got a camera now as well.

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, they're lovely, those kind of little kiddie ones. Does she enjoy taking pictures? Yeah, she does. And she does take photos with it. And I don't, you know, you never know what they understand or whether she understands what she's doing with it. But earlier on she was just like, I just want to take a photo.

And it's quite, it's really nice that. But there is part of you that's going, is this just a gateway drug to the telephone, to the telephone. phone. I'm showing my age to the phone. So tell me about this photo your first one when you're little. It's a brilliant photo. So let me get it up on my phone. So is you wearing shades? You look about two or three. Yeah, I look like Elton John, I think. Yeah, you really look like Elton John. You look like Andy Moorhole, Elton John and Boris Johnson.

And my hair was like jet white, is that a phrase? No. Ice white. Just that. It's not a phrase. My hair was so blonde when I was a kid that did you... When we went to Laser Quest and they used that UV light thing in Laser Quest. I'd glow. So they'd give away my position because my hair was so white. So that's our back garden in Totterdown in Bristol.

So I lived there from six months and three and a half. Okay, so you moved to Devon later. Yeah, I moved to Devon at three and a half. Right. So lived in Totterdown, which... I don't think it isn't a particularly suburb. I'm just reading at the moment. Tricky's autobiography.

Tricky is the rap. Oh, is he from Bristol? Yeah, he's from Bristol. Yeah. And he's talking about living in squats. He was living in squats in Totterdown in the same years that I was living there. So you could have walked past him? Yeah, I could have walked past him.

But I was reading this going, bloody hell, he's talking about it like it's, you know, some kind of... The ghetto. The ghetto. I'm just there, you know. Being three. Being three. So, yeah, we lived in Totterdown in Bristol. There was a graveyard behind it, which my sister fell in one of the graves.

Oh, what? Yeah. Amazing. She fell in a grave? She fell in a grave. Oh, my God. Like, stepped on it and went in. I mean, that's the stuff of nightmares, isn't it?

Absolutely. But all of my memories, I think, of this time are constructed from anecdotes rather than experience. Well, that's how our memories work, isn't it? Yeah. So I don't actually think I remember any of this. Right. Bristol. I think it's all come from what people have said, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't remember being that little either. It's quite a hard. Not many people remember being. But what's reassuring about that is when you've got a two and a half year old and you think, however badly this goes, she's not going to remember today. Well, not literally, but sort of energetically in some capacity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

So when you moved to Devon, was it more, was it, proper rural? Yeah, so I grew up on Dart, literally on Dartmouth, a small hamlet, even, not a village, because a village has got a church, so it didn't even have that. It was, so there was a post office, which has since closed down,

and two pubs. Wow. And one of the pubs kind of didn't like locals. It was like a kind of holiday as, like a posh kind of place, which holiday people would come down to. And it must have been, what, 100 people in the village? And they went to the school in the next,

village and there was like 40 people at the school and there was four in my year and it was properly like postman patch you know what I mean I just can't get my head around that and now you're living in Hackney and you're obviously bringing your daughter up in East London and was there any bit of you that thought I want her to have the rural upbringing I had yeah well maybe there's a middle ground like yeah because you don't fall like urban I'm living in the city and it is weird to think about how your child grows up in the city and you know the people we bought this off, their kids were like 8 and 10 or something like that and they were moving out to the country.

Right. And you see a lot of people do that. But I don't think I could ever move out to the country and to the extent that I moved out to Devon. But I could imagine, you know, living a slightly further out of London. But do you have all memories of being a kid in the country? Yeah, but you don't appreciate what you've got. Do you know what I mean?

You don't, I think wherever you grow up, it just feels normal to you. Yeah. It just feels totally normal. But do you think it shaped you a bit being a rural kid? I don't know if it did because I left. And I went to university in Manchester in 2001 when I was 18. And I really wanted to move to Manchester. I didn't care what the course was.

Like I just, I loved the Smiths. Right, okay. And I loved the idea of Manchester. And I just chose a course that I thought I'd be alright at. It's a great city to be a student. It's amazing. And I remember the first day getting dropped off and walking out onto the road and there was like all the cab shops and they were like lit up neon.

Yeah. And I just thought, fucking hell. Yeah, it felt like Times Square. But you were from a hamlet. Yeah, but it was just like, but it was at the time what I really needed, if you know what I mean. And I loved where I grew up. But I think, you know, I don't, I think you can grow up anywhere and that just feels normal. I didn't think this is a weirdly small school.

But did you feel really safe? and there must be a sense of safety. Yeah, I didn't think that people didn't feel safe, if that makes sense. Yeah. Like, and also in the 90s, I know this sounds mad, but it felt like a safer time, because in the 80s, like my older siblings, they were, like, worried about the Cold War.

And I think the 90s is this weird period between the end of the Cold War and 9-11 when there was, like, all this terrorism worries, where there wasn't, it felt like a safer time. I remember my mum going to, this show's like, like how cut off I was, but I remember my mum going to work, like she had to go up to London for some meetings for work.

Yeah. I was so scared that she was going to get blown up by the IRA. Because that felt like something that was happening. I was so, this London felt like such a different kind of thing to my life. Yeah. I thought that was like what it was. Do you know what I mean? So I can totally imagine that,

that if you lived out in the country in this lovely bucolic sort of idyll, and that London is the big city where bad stuff happens, if that's, you know. And now you're raising your child in London. And you could have given her that deal. She's going to be much more streetwise than me. I couldn't. I was talking to someone who lives an hour out of London.

He was working on TV show I was doing and I said, what's it like? And he just said, there's a lot of fleeces. And I thought, I couldn't really. I'm not sure I could deal with it yet. I haven't made my peace with being middle-aged. No. And there are, yeah, it's a different,

but the only reason I'm asking you specifically is because you did grow up and not just in a suburb or a market town, you grew up in the countryside. You know, it's like proper. I don't know anyone that grew up more in the countryside than me, in comedy. No, I don't know anyone that grew up in a village as small as that you just described. But I think, you know, I do think genuinely... What was being a teenager like there? You watched a lot of TV, you lived your life through the television in a way.

Do you know what I mean? Well, that wasn't what I mean. thought you were going to say, I thought you were going to talk about, like, writing poetry and going on walks and connecting with nature. I've never connected with nature. I think the problem is, like, I was never like a kind of country-style person in that sense. Do you know what I mean? I wasn't into BMXing or bikes or climbing trees or any, I was never into that kind of country pursuits. My nightmare would be a day at Go Ape. Do you know what I mean? So,

It just wasn't for me. It's such a London thing to say about the country. It's like, go away. He's just like, go away. Do you have an adolescence? I didn't really have an adolescence, if I'm honest. I think we're going to go into therapy mode. Because there's a theory, isn't there?

That people are trapped in a certain chapter of development. And I've been told that I'm a bit like a teenager. Like my nature is teeny. Yeah, you are a bit agy. I am a bit agy. I'm a bit chippy. I'm a bit like, fuck you. And...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that. I need to get. over it and I was a bit like that when I was 10 and I'm still like it looking down the barrel of 50. But like yeah but maybe that's not being a teenager that's just what your personality

is that you're... Yeah but it's got teenage traits you're just unhappy. I'm not unhappy I'm just quite like I'm just a bit stuck in that like mean girls sort of teenage high school Rizzo. Do you like do you constantly have you got friendship groups

and you're constantly throwing one of your friends out of me even though you're in your 40s? No, no, I just think I have got quite a teeny motivating drive. And now I live with a teenager, so I can really see it. Can you see that? Yeah, yeah. So what I'm asking you is, were you like a, was you like a little adult child? No, not really. No, I was just, I just kind of disappeared.

I just thought I made this decision to be a non-event. Well, not, I don't even know if I consciously made that decision. That's quite an adult decision for a child to me. I suppose it is. I'm going to be a non-event. Yeah, I think I might be back engineering that. But you know the kind of comedians that, I mean, let's be honest, wankers. You would say, actually I started making people laugh to avoid the bullies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you think of, no, the way to avoid bullies I found was to disappear. Like to be average and in the middle of everything. I found the best way was to be the bully. was always... Well, of course. Yeah, you're still operating that, 46 years and counting.

But I found that you could disappear and you'd be fine. Like, and that was my kind of coping mechanism with secondary school, was to... So if... Well, not now, Kerry, for obvious reasons, but were you to have done a round about my school year on Pointless, during my school, I would have been a pointless answer.

Like I would have been someone no one would have thought of. And you were conscious of that whilst you were there? I don't know if I was conscious like, but I think, I think my actions were all bait. I don't think I was consciously thinking this was an overall tactic. But I think a lot of my actions were based on the fact that I would do what I was needed to fit in. Right. Okay.

And this is from about, yeah, totally. And from about secondary school. At primary school, there was so few people that I didn't need to fit in. Yeah. You couldn't, because there was only four people in my year. So I was a big deal, if I'm honest with you. Yeah. And then at secondary school, I think my way of dealing from being a big fish

was to go to a non-existent fish, if that makes sense. It really sounds tragic. I mean, now. I mean, it's like, I had quite enjoyed secondary school. I quite enjoyed secondary school. And I didn't need the, I don't know. I just, I don't have.

You hibernated your personality for a decade. No, five years. You do what you've got to do, haven't you, to survive secondary school? Yeah, so I hibernated my personality for a decade. No, I, I don't think I hibernated it. I just, so it's not like, I wasn't, I had friends, because obviously if I hadn't had friends, that would have made me, that makes you a target in itself, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the weird loner. So are you aware of Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, Kerry? I'm aware of him. Yeah, so he kind of coined the phrase, your imperial phase to describe, like, the moment when an artist is at their absolute peak. Yeah.

And every artist has an imperial phase. But I think, like, the last two years of primary school, with the imperial phase of my childhood. Why? Because I was leading the school play. I was... What was the play? Robin Hood.

Did you wear tight? So, yeah, but... I'll tell you this, actually. Have I told you? So one of the plays we did when I was a kid at school was... I wasn't the lead in this, thank God, was the Emperor's new clothes. What so someone got their ass out?

Well, no, it involved a small child in a pair of pink underpants. Oh, God, absolutely not. Was it the 80s? Yeah, it was the 80s. A lot of that went on. Yeah, but I'm not saying there was any kind of, I'm not in any, I think it's lesser reflection of some kind of, well, pedophilic intent. No, absolutely not.

Than a reflection of just people totally, total, total naivity. And we didn't have a dark web. We didn't have a dark web, Kerry. It was different times. Yeah. So we didn't have a dark web. So you were glad you didn't get that lead. But you played Robin Hood.

Played Robin Hood. I was like, I was, I was the big deal at primary school. Well, we have established for four kids. So like a big deal. Yeah, yeah. I'm not making this. I'm not making this. Like, I'm not bragging.

You were the Danny Zuko of four kids. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there was two boys. and two girls in my year. So I was, and I'm going to say, I was the coolest boy. Well, okay, mate.

I mean, who was your mate Marion, one of the other two girls? I don't know who played Maid Marion, actually. There were only two girls and you can't remember. No, no, no, no, no, no, mate. It might have been someone from a year below, actually, because there was six kids in the year below.

Typical female casting, they go young. They do. But she had a playing age of 11. So my CV says I do too. Yes. So I was quite a big deal. Yes. I used to, me and my friend ran a kind of after-school club on Fridays where all the kids would come.

And then I'd play a tape that my brother had made that had rhythm as a dancer on it and stuff like that. Oh. What? And you just played it? Or did you dance? And we danced. We had disco lights. We got some disco lights.

We got some disco lights from some friends. So it was like a disco club on a Friday? It was like a kind of cool arrival to the youth club. Oh, this sounds great. And that was all you. Me and my friend Thomas, who was the other kid in my year. But we were the big guys around town. So why couldn't you take that vibe into secondary?

Because, well, in the same way that, you know, well, it's literally big fish. syndrome, isn't it? In the same way that, you know, Robbie Williams never really broke America, I suppose. I like that analogy. It's just a totally different environment. And while your strengths in the UK, as Robbie Williams may be huge. In America, no one's buying it. You've got some fantastic knitwear going on. Yeah, my mum would have knitted that. Really?

Yeah. Like with needles or a machine? Oh, wait, whoa, wait. Are you talking about the snow? You've got an Aaron jumper in the snow? Yeah, she's a knitted that. That's spectacular. Yeah, it is, isn't it, actually?

Yeah. I mean, that's really impressive. I mean, it looks like she's really done well that. I might be giving her more credit than she deserves there. I mean, if that was a sharper piece of photography, because it's a bit blurry because it's done with a... you know, like a basic camera. But that is like what would now be used as a Bowden Christmas catalogue.

Yes, yes. Is it a hand-me-down or is it all yours? Well, I would have got hand-me-downs. I don't think that would have been a hand-me-down, but I would have got hammy-downs because I had my siblings who were kind of half-siblings. Yeah. My brother was three and a half years older than me, so I got a lot of half. I got his shell suit.

I got... Well, that's a whole different sartorial situation to an Aaron jumper, isn't it? a shell suit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But my main memory is, I was delighted when I got his shell suit and I got a Air Jordan T-shirt off when I was about seven or eight that then I saw Michael Jordan wearing in the last dance himself. Not the same, I mean, not the same, not the exact same one. No, but, but the same design. And it was an amazing, like, nostalgic hit to suddenly see that T-shirt for the first time in 20 years. Have you got any pictures of you in that t-shirt? Not now, but I mean generally.

Maybe, because I did live in it from the age of 9 to 10 probably. But this jumper would have only been wheeled out for hardcore snow weather. Yeah, I actually, I tend not to, for instance, there'd be no weather in the world where I could wear a jump like that now because I've got a very, very low or high, whatever you call it. I can't deal with heat, so I could never wear a willy jumper in real life now. No, and also it's a different climate now. I mean, we've got climate change. Those sort of jumpers don't have much. Exactly, exactly, Carrie.

There's no call for them. There's no call for them. That and the, you know, that and the polar ice caps are the big victims, really, aren't they? Aaron jumper. Was there a lot of snow in your memories? So there was loads of snow growing up, because obviously I grew up on Dartmoor. Uh-huh. Were you, I reckon I got a week a year off school?

Oh, really? Yeah, like, like Charlie Brown. Yes, quite possibly. I don't know. I haven't really read peanuts. But yeah, so I'd get snow days off. Because we'd live down a hill and we had like an old rickety bus that would come to collect us for school. And he just couldn't do, it couldn't go up or down hills if there was a sniff of snow. Did you live in a different century?

Yeah. Do you know what I remembered the other day? I was telling someone this. I'd completely forgotten this. This will blow your mind. So we didn't have a key for our house. We just never locked our house. Wow. So we just go out and we just wouldn't need to lock it. What, even if you went on holiday? Yeah, just leave it unlocked.

What for like over a week? Yeah. Yeah, that's really unusual. Isn't that mad? Yeah, that is quite mad. But lovely. That sense of safety must have just been lovely. Yeah, totally.

Well, I didn't even consider. Well, you didn't even consider. when you're a kid you consider crime because obviously you'd do something like you'd watch crime watch UK and then everything feels terrifying but didn't that all just feel like that was going on in another world and not your world i remember when my mum would go occasionally to london for work and i'd be terrified that she was going to get blown up by the IRA because that's that felt like the thing that happened in london on the news all the time like yeah and you lived in another world a parallel universe so but in london

and felt like the place where that kind of thing is happens. But that would be how a child... Of course. Yeah, processes that. But presumably you grew up in London and it wasn't even a thing that you even thought about really, right? No, I was terrified most of them. Oh, right.

Okay. I mean, I did think that things like that scent felt close. And we did lock our house and it still got broken into. So, yeah, it was quite an urban... So it's quite as a sort of kid that... grew up in the city, what you're describing sounds wonderful. It sounds very, very, that sense of safety and security must have been really lovely. I should say now, if anyone knows what my parents do now lock their house just in case anyone knows what they're living. You know what's better than

the one big thing? Two big things. Exactly. The new iPhone 17 Pro on Tullis's five-year rate plan price lock. Yep, it's the most powerful iPhone ever. Plus more peace of mind with your bill over five This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. So in this photograph here, now you're 28, what's going on in this picture?

So that is taken directly after my first ever solo show performance in Edinburgh. And that is sweat. What? I thought someone just chucked a pint over you. No, that's sweat. So you might not remember this. We shared the venue. Yeah, so that was the year where you were on before me in the venue. Yes, we used to pass, yeah, pass each other every day.

God. What year was that? 2011. Oh, wow. We were in the porter cabin. What was it called? Yeah, it was called the hut. The hut.

It was a 50 seat in it. So that was obviously a combination, that sweat of fear and heat. Yeah, that room was, it was hot. It was hot. It was hot. It was hot. Exactly, yeah. But without obviously the...

Hot pants. Obviously, yeah, the hot pants. Without the groping. Yeah, without the groping. I didn't know what to use. Yeah. But he, yeah, so that was after my first ever performance of my first show in Edinburgh. That says a lot, does it?

I mean, about the, you know, the sweat and the graft of an hour of stand up. You know, first time is terrifying. Yeah, and we say it out of 48 minutes. Well, okay, with a wind behind you in a few pauses. and a bit of a bit of a bounce. But like, do you think of it as like hard work? No. What now?

Well, then. Then. I think that was basically really, I was really, really scared about that Edinburgh. Were you? And I put a lot of pressure on myself. And it felt like I really, I kind of psyched my, this is how stressed I was at the time. I got a spot on the end of it.

of my nose on the second day of Edinburgh. And I had it until 24 hours after the Edinburgh Festival finished. So I had the stress part for the whole of Edinburgh. Verity who was working for my agent at the time, and she was kind of in charge of Edinburgh, she used to put makeup on the end of my nose before every performance, which I'd obviously sweat off within five minutes. But it was like, yeah, it was mad.

Like, I was terrified. I did you remember. And it went very well, if I remember. History's been kinder to it than it was. Not that it's got a place in history. The annals of time. I think Simon Sharma said it best. But, no, it didn't go particularly well.

Right. If I'm honest with you, what happened was, I'd sold well, but it didn't get very well reviewed. Right. But then at the end, I got nominated for the newcomer. Right. Basically, I've since been told by people on the panel that it was basically I was argued on by a couple of people. Oh, that's nice, isn't it?

It's nice for them to let you know. And I was told this by the people that argued me on. That's really nice of them. Yeah, not so much for the show, just for kind of the potential that I possibly had I got argued on. So it was all right, you know. But do you know, I'm sure. you remember this, but obviously this is just a thing that comics, but you feel like Edinburgh's the most important thing in the world.

Yeah. I thought that that month was basically the different, could end up with me being on Nevermind the Budscocks or having to go back to do a normal job. Right. Do you know what I mean? It felt like, and that first performance, I felt like I was kind of, and it's not true,

and I know it's not true, but it felt like I was like, trying to perform to save or make my career. I do know what you mean. And it's so annoying that now with hindsight, we know that's not true. But it feels so true at the time. It really feels like it feels so important.

But I still get that in the sense of like, like whenever there's something that I, like I remember the first night at Edinburgh that year going for a drink with. Acaster and possibly niche. I can't remember. Anyway, there were some other people there, right? And I just remember being, feeling really down.

Yeah. And what I think is a thing I've realized since that I get, which is just before anything where I feel like you're putting yourself out there. Yeah. Or you're like exposing yourself. I always just go, oh, God, I just feel so depressed about this. I just wish I, why don't know I just say? disappear and just...

I'd love to go back to Devon and get a job in local radio. That's what I want to do. I don't want to put myself out that. I don't want to... And I'd like... Even that parenting podcast, I've just started doing with Rob Beckett. The night before it came out, I felt so low because I just feel...

It's like a defence mechanism I have. Yeah. I don't know. And it still feels like anything like that. It feels like... I just putting yourself out there, feels so... I find it desperately scary.

That's the bit I find scary. Far more than stand-up. Well, I always think... When people ask you now, you get asked a lot, what advice would you give to new or acts or blah, blah, blah. And I always now feel compelled to say you have to just be comfortable with being vulnerable. You've got to allow yourself just to be vulnerable, because otherwise there won't be any prizes for no risks being taken, and those risks mean showing your belly, and that's just tough.

Yeah, it's so, but like, I just find that's the thing I really find about that photo. Yeah, you do look really vulnerable in here. who is terrified. You do look scared. And has just been through like kind of... And it's a self-made stress. You know what I mean? Yeah, because you haven't been down a mine, have you?

No. You've just talked... You've wazzed on in a hut for 45 minutes. Yeah, but I've spent the whole year telling myself that this is everything to me when it isn't. I know. But it is to that 28-year-old person in that photograph. It's amazing.

But you do look really sort of like you've been through the mill. Well, to give you an idea of how much I sweated in that, shirt, it became one of those shirts where, you know when you have an item of clothing where it's just got the smell caught in it and you just have ever many times you wash it? Yeah. And then even you put it on and even if you heat up a little bit, it will smell of sweat from previous times. And you have like, Proustian flashbacks to that hut that year and just start having

like Jacob's Ladder flashbacks to it. So in this other photograph in hospital, this is last, last year? Last year I had my appendix out. Oh. So that is me. You look over the moon about it. I just morphine. I was off my face on morphine. Have you ever had morphine? No, I haven't. I've done Gassanair for childbirth. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. It was genuinely, fucking brilliant.

Did it give you an appetite for, to try, you know, for non-medical reasons? Um, well, not one that I, not one that I followed up. up. No. But, um, but, but, did you watch that documentary the other day

about psychedelics on Netflix? No. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, you do sort of occasionally, you know some people just make being high look really,

really reasonable. There are a few people that make it just seem like a perfectly normal thing to do. It's like having a PIMS. And you think, fuck it, I might try mushrooms.

So what was weird was so I was going under, right, and the, um, an eesthetist, yeah. They like talk to you. as they're kind of sending you under.

And he was like, so this is, this is what we're going to use. And he was like, and then he started talking about, he was like, the thing is, it's perfectly safe. And really, I think heroin should be legal in the UK. And you put your thumbs up and got a photograph. But it was just so weird that that was the last thing I heard before I was going under.

So that was his kind of chat. I don't know if that's like his go-to chat, Or if he just thought I was like... Do you think he's dealing as well as an ephasizing? Yeah. Whether he was trying to sell to me. You do look so happy, Josh. I came back into the ward and I was like dancing in my bed.

I was like, hot, like, and I shouted ooioi as I was wheeled back in. Like, I was just so high. People must go into surgery just shouting o'oy because they are high half the time. Yeah. I was just, so I came up. I woke up and I was wheeled back in just, oh, I,

back into the theatre. Where did you get this done? Where, Homerton Hospital. And so, and then I couldn't get to sleep because obviously, but. You're tripping.

Because I was tripping. And then I'd had a sugary tea because they give you a sugary tea. Yeah. And I said to the nurse, I was like, I can't get to sleep because of the morphine. And she was like,

I think it's probably the sugary tea. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me, mate? I've had a sugary tea before. She's in gold with the dealer. She's like, oh, it's tea, I'll do some smack. I really loved your pictures. They're very...

Thank you. You've got some lovely stories. My favourite is definitely the Elton John years. Yeah. I mean, that picture, when would that have been taken? Is that like an 80s picture? That would have been taken about 1986, something like that. Yeah.

You see, I do like... And what I've enjoyed about this podcast and seeing everyone's photographs, I do love a retro photo. And I can see why people use the retro filters on modern photos to make them look like they're set further back in time. There's something about, and you're not a football fan, are you? But there's something about old, so if you watch an Old World Cup, right, because of the quality of the film that was done to broadcast it,

they've got up till about 1990, they've got this different magical quality about the footage that feels like, and each one feels different because each is like a different four years apart, so it's like this different moment in time technologically. So they all look different to the one before. And they all feel so much more romantic.

Yeah. But you can anchor, that's me being an old person. That's what I mean about your photo, because actually a lot of photographs anchor, because not just the quality of the... actual photography, but also the fashion and the haircuts and all these things anchor photographs to time. And yours, I couldn't put them in any chronological order of time because they're all

like you're of a similar age. I don't think I've changed look really in the last 15 years in the way. Well, you've definitely changed this show on John times. 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, What Did You Do Yesterday? It's a show that asks guests the big question, quite literally, what did you do yesterday?

That's it. That is it. Max, I'm still not sure. Where do we put the stress? Is it what did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? You know what I mean? What did you do yesterday? I'm really down playing it. Like, what did you do yesterday?

Like, I'm just a guy just asking a question. But do you think I should go bigger? What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? Every single word this time I'm going to try and make it like it is the killer word. What did you do yesterday? Like that's too much, isn't it? That is over the top.

What did you do yesterday? Available wherever you get your podcasts every Sunday.