Perfect Day with Jessica Knappett - EP 38: Kate Barron

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Fantastically funny Canadian comedian Kate Barron joins Jess this week to share her ultra indulgent, super relaxing perfect day. Sell-professed “mall rat”, Kate also confesses her obsession with L...abubus, GAIL’s, and talks her past life as an art dealer and the differences between the Canadian and UK comedy scenes. Like and subscribe for brand-new episodes every Thursday. Follow us on Instagram @perfectdaycast. And, why not get in touch? Email us at everydayaperfectday@gmail.com A Keep It Light Media Production Sales and general enquiries: hello@keepitlightmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:01:12 to breathtaking nudes. Shine on with YSL Lushine Plumping Lip Oil Gloss. Visit YSLBeauty.ca to elevate your lip game now. All right then. And then all of a sudden Idris Elba walks in my room and he goes, what a fuck. Hello Perfect Dayers. I'm Jessica Knappett and you are my Roman Empire. Welcome to Perfect Day. It's been sunny. I hope you've been having some perfect days this week or at least some moments of perfect dayness in otherwise imperfect days because, you know, the world is quite hard at the moment,
Starting point is 00:02:08 isn't it? It's hard. But there are always lovely things like trees and Britpop and Canadian Canadian comedians like my guest today, segue the brilliantly bold and brutally funny Kate Barron. She is a Canadian comedian who's living in the UK and has taken the UK comedy scene frankly by storm and we have a delightful chat about, among other things, her former life as an art dealer. Love that. We all contain multitudes. We talk the politics, the pretensions and everything in between. In the art world, she talks about making the leap into stand-up in the UK and her spiritual devotion to Gale's bakery. I get it. Also her formative years as a self-confessed mall rat and her current hyperfixation with the deeply weird, deeply adorable but sort of also quite appalling world of Labooboo figures.
Starting point is 00:03:18 I hope I'm saying that right. If I'm not, I don't care. Shall we crack on? This is the lovely Kate Barron's perfect day. Like you're a psychopath, you go to therapy. E-O-F-E-C-T. Hey! Hey! All right then.
Starting point is 00:03:47 So you're in London? I am in London, yes. You are a Canadian comedian based in London? Yes. I've been here for, I just hit six years actually on March 6th. Six years of living in London. So I have my indefinite leave to remain. So I am here for the foreseeable future.
Starting point is 00:04:05 Why did you pick the UK? It was less of a dumpster fire than America. And just the like, I don't know how much you know about Canada or like Canadian entertainment industry, but the entertainment industry there is not really that big and there's not a lot of opportunity for progression. We don't have panel shows. We don't have stuff like that. And because of the size of the country, it's just, it's so big that even traveling
Starting point is 00:04:30 and being a comedian that tours, it's nearly impossible, right? To get from here, you would go from, you know, London, maybe to Glasgow or Edinburgh and gigging and I gig all over the country here. There, if you're flying from Toronto to Vancouver, it's a five and a half hour flight over three time zones and it's a thousand dollars. Oh my God.
Starting point is 00:04:47 I really love, by the way, when Canadians come along and put us in our place, completely inadvertently, because I think British people think that we just have an amazing comedy scene because we're so funny, but actually it's just geography. No, I think it's a combination of both. I will say, I think it's a combination of both. I will say, I think it's a combination of both. So definitely geography plays a part, but I do love the audiences here. I think they don't take themselves as seriously.
Starting point is 00:05:13 I think they love comedy. There's just a culture of like, you take the piss out of each other. You take the piss out of yourself. You don't take yourself too seriously. And the humor of like, have you seen this new TikTok thing about the tea time alarm?
Starting point is 00:05:26 Do you know what I'm talking about? No. So there's this thing going around, it's going viral basically, where British people are confusing Americans that there is an official tea time alarm that goes off every day. Like Heathrow Airport did one where they're like,
Starting point is 00:05:39 okay everyone, boarding flights. And then it's like, tea time alarm. And everyone goes, oh, we gotta stop. And people are like, the Americans in the comments are like, tell me if this is a joke. This can't be real. They can't shut down the country every day for a tea time or whatever.
Starting point is 00:05:52 And people are like, no, it's dead serious. And so all of these British companies are creating the tea time alarm videos and stuff. And people are like, no, it's so crazy. And the worst is if you don't obey it and you get the fines and you don't get your tea time license and all that stuff. And it's so funny and it's such a perfect example of why why I love it here because it's just so unserious and
Starting point is 00:06:13 you know Mark Rothman at Top Secret one of my favorite clubs to play he put out like a thing just to get some PR of like no Botox allowed you need facial movements to sit at this club and then all these Americans are going well that's not fair because what if somebody has an injury and what if they have the, and what, and it's so funny. And I just love because over here, people are like, shut up, like get out of here. Like they just know it's a joke. It really reminds me of the Greg thing that went viral when Americans
Starting point is 00:06:40 were referring to it as GRX. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. Yes. I do remember this. Yeah. It is so great. It's so good, and so when I was looking,
Starting point is 00:06:48 I was like, I just kind of felt like I was outgrowing the Canadian scene and there's a lot of opportunities. There's some opportunities there, but not as much as you would hope, and it is challenging. And so a lot of people that I knew they were either moving to the States or to the UK,
Starting point is 00:07:01 and they were kind of like, if you want to be a writer for someone else, go to the States, although it's prohibitively expensive, or you could go to the States or to the UK and they were kind of like if you want to be a writer for someone else go to the States although it's like prohibitively expensive or you could go to the UK and I'd come over here before I'd done a few shows it had gone really really well my grandfather was born in Manchester so I had the ancestry visa and then so it just made sense because I could get a job here and work and survive and do all that while I sort of got my name out there and did all that and yeah I love it it's been great. And what's the because my husband's American as well and and survive and do all of that while I sort of got my name up there and did all that. And yeah, I love it. It's been great.
Starting point is 00:07:27 And what's the... Because my husband's American as well, and he's just like absolutely... Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, no, not American or Canadian, but you know, similarities. He's sort of a bit of an Anglophile and kind of when we came over here and we moved up to the north of England, he just was so obsessed with the quaint details of like, we have a milkman and we have like an open fire in our house. So we had to get a chimney sweep. And I could hear him on the phone telling his friend, for you, what's the most sort of British thing that you've adopted? Meal deals? I don't know. I love a meal deal. We don't have them in Canada. I remember meeting some Spanish people We don't have them in Canada.
Starting point is 00:08:05 Do you eat, like I remember meeting some Spanish people once and they just found it hilarious that you would even eat crisps with a sandwich. Oh that's funny. And I was like, oh yes, sometimes we put crisps in the sandwich. Yeah. I mean, there's like a lot of things I guess that I really like adapt to do over here and I do love it. I will say growing growing up like my I grew up I lived with my grandma She lived with us and she was like she was a royalist like my family are like royalist like When Diana happened there was tears in the house there was it was a whole thing
Starting point is 00:08:38 My brother he knows every little bit of like we'll go on like a tour and a castle or something while he's here And he goes and then this cousin fucked this cousin. And then they made this person who did this. But the scandal was she was from this family. He knows all of that stuff. So like you just grew up with that. And I think because of having maybe some British influence with grandparents, you sort of have a bit of the best
Starting point is 00:09:00 of both worlds being Canadian. Cause you have some of those British sensibilities, but you also are raised in Canada on American TV, American humor and all that kind of stuff. So you have those more of like the bluntness, the directness, the observational of American stuff, but then the silliness, I think, and the quirkiness that comes in the UK. And so I do think, and I might be biased, that Canadians are this perfect blend of kind of both worlds. And I think that's why Canadian comics like Catherine Ryan or like Michelle Shaughnessy
Starting point is 00:09:30 is a really funny comic who's over here as well. Like there's great comics that are doing really well over here who are Canadian because they understand both of them. They're a little bit different, but they're not American and people love that over here. Yes. So should we crack on? Yeah. Okay, Kate Barron, let's have your perfect day. Okay, so because so this is where I struggle because I'm like, okay, if I was going in like
Starting point is 00:09:59 dream crazy fantasy land, like wake up on a yacht, have butler serving me, sleep in, all that, but then I think of like what my perfect day would be in like my regular life and what the real perfect day is. So I'm like, should I do that one? Should I do, I think I should maybe do like the more realistic, regular life, perfect day rather than like- It's whatever you want. We have both. Because like, yes, would I love to wake up and somebody like a butler to run into me and be like, you won the lottery, you have even more money, you haven't aged a bit,
Starting point is 00:10:26 you look like a youthful 15 year old for the rest of your life. And like people are throwing money at me and then all of a sudden Idris Elba walks in my room and he goes, wanna fuck? Like, you know, that is like, but is that crazy? Yes, and is that actually ever gonna happen? Is it actually what you want?
Starting point is 00:10:44 But is it actually what I want? So, okay. So I was thinking of this. So I think my perfect morning, because I'm not a morning person at all. So when I say not a morning person, I mean like when people are like, I get up and like throw my face in an ice bucket bath at five o'clock. Like you're a psychopath, go to therapy, get a friend, like stop, stop it.
Starting point is 00:11:02 Obviously it's a man I'm talking about. And like, like people who are so crazy, if you're not up at five in the morning and cracking on with your goals and setting your, shut up, stop. And I think with comedians as well, there's this whole thing of like, our time is adjusted later. Because you know how there's the old thing of like, oh, you should need after seven or you shouldn't do all these things. I'm like, well, I don't even go on stage sometimes till nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night. And like, I don't, my day doesn't sometimes finish
Starting point is 00:11:27 until two o'clock in the morning. So that's, so it's like our whole time has shifted, right? So not generally in a morning person. However, I have noticed that when I happen to more naturally wake up in the morning, like if I'm jet lagged coming back from Canada, from coming back from visiting my family in Vancouver and I'm jet-lagged coming back from Canada, if I'm coming back from visiting my family in Vancouver and I'm jet-lagged and all of a sudden it's like four o'clock in the morning,
Starting point is 00:11:49 five o'clock in the morning, I'm waking up here. One of my favorite things to do is to wake up before like, I mean, not really like five o'clock in the morning, I'm not going up, but like say like 6.37 a.m. before kind of everything's gotten crazy. I go out, I'll jump on my bike I'll go meet a friend to go play tennis in the park when there's like no one there So it's just like quiet. It's like dewy grass. I'm riding my bike through there's no one on the streets I'm not a very good bike rider in London when it's like a million people around and I don't wear a helmet and I'm like
Starting point is 00:12:23 Very in my own world and my ADHD takes over and I'm listening to a podcast and I'm like, la la la. So I'm just going to get hit by a car one day I know. But in the morning when there's like no one out, you can kind of just go. Save daydream. You know, and just like go off. The highway code, you can tear the highway code up. Throw caution to the wind. Not wear a helmet. Cy cycle around, you're free. So I love this. So it's like the beginning of, is it 28 days later, it's empty London streets and you're
Starting point is 00:12:51 like, you can be smug because you're the first person awake. Maybe you're the only person alive. I don't know. But you're free and roaming the streets of London on your bicycle. I love this. I love it. And then me, like a friend of mine, I'm very competitive though. So it gets me really amped up in the morning. I did a couple of years ago, I broke my foot going for a shot that I shouldn't have even gone for, but I was like, you're not winning this. And we used to bet on matches and stuff and like, just be insane.
Starting point is 00:13:17 Do you have courts near you where you live now? Yeah. So I like to play. I love playing at Victoria Park. Beautiful courts. So I'm in East London. I've always been, since I moved here, I've always been East London. People were like, you got to go, you got to find the vibe. I think East London is like a bit of me. West London is a bit too like... Hipster.
Starting point is 00:13:35 Yeah, well, I'm not, I'm definitely not a hipster. Like I'm too old to be a hipster, I think. But there are really specific points of London that are, they are so different to one another. They are, I think London is like four different cities and East London is its own vibe. And the reality is I'm just like a white trash girl from Canada and I grew up like super working class, which no one knows over here because my accent. We can't tell. Yeah, there's no signifier. How are we supposed to know if you're upstair?
Starting point is 00:14:04 I need to wear a label that says sad and poor. I think that's what I need to do. Angry and poor is actually the label I need to be wearing. What does Canadian working class look like? It doesn't really have a label. That's the thing. When I came here, the labels and the classes I'm in here, which are so crazy, we just don't have anything like it.
Starting point is 00:14:23 You wouldn't refer to somebody. People wouldn't have a whole identity built around being middle class or working class. And that's the truth of like people have wear it both as a badge of honor and some people wear it as a thing of shame, right? There's people, kids here who grew up super rich were like, no, we didn't have that much. Like, shut up. Like there's, and they try to kind of pretend they're cosplayers, like they were working class or poor growing up because it's embarrassing to be such like a posh little twat. Or sometimes it's imposed upon you if like me you have an accent, the assumption is that you must have grown up incredibly poor and uneducated. Wait, your accent is a working class accent?
Starting point is 00:14:59 Well, I've got a northern accent. Oh, I thought you had a really lovely accent. If you have any accent at all in the UK, the assumption is that you are. You're working. Working class, lower class, yeah, yeah. See, I'm so bad at this. When I first moved here, I can tell,
Starting point is 00:15:16 if somebody has a very strong, obviously, Scottish, Irish accent, whatever, a Liverpool accent, that kind of thing, but regionally, I don't know. And in this country, everyone is like, ah, I know what school you went to. I know what grocery store you shop at just because of your accent. Like it is so wild in this country. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:34 And I'm just like, you guys, most of you all sound the same. Sorry. We're obsessed with it. I know. I, it's a uniquely British thing, isn't it? So sorry. Where were we? We're in East London, we're in Victoria Park, we're playing tennis.
Starting point is 00:15:48 Yes. So I'm either doing Victoria Park or Bethnal Green Park or there's King Edward Memorial Park down kind of in East London, but all these East London parks. Easy to ride your bike to, beautiful. The Bethnal Green one is kind of the least nice one, but there are nice tennis courts there and it's just like chill, dewy grass, sun is just coming up, riding your bike. The only people that are out are like a few people walking their dogs. It's all chill.
Starting point is 00:16:13 Go meet my friend for a coffee. My friend, Kelby actually, who she got deported back to Canada, she was allowed to stay. But what did you do? I know. I smuggled so many drugs up her ass. It was crazy. No, she just couldn't get her working visa renewed. So they said I hit the road.
Starting point is 00:16:30 But she's all good and happy back in Canada and stuff. But she's who I used to always play tennis with. It was so fun just to meet her in the morning. And our tennis was sometimes we would get competitive with each other, but for the first little bit, we would just like gossip and chit chat. And we would be talking about like, Oh, she went on a date last night. Like how was the date? What was he like? And we're just talking, we're talking the whole time and then we'd play like one really competitively and be like fuck
Starting point is 00:16:54 And she'd be like you stupid slut and like be smashing it at me Like we were like such the hot messes of the court and like there'd be like men being very serious in the morning And we they were like, what are these two fucking women doing and we're like should we take a selfie we're like hell yeah girl let's take a selfie and just like living it and I love there's nothing better in the morning being on a tennis court you just hear that sound of the balls hitting the court and like the crack of a new fresh can of balls getting open and like oh I just love I love everything about that so so chill and then I think like you play the tennis and then we'd usually like walk or ride
Starting point is 00:17:30 our bikes over to like, there's a Gales, which I love right by Victoria Park. What's your Gales go to Breckley? Oh my God. Well, it's shoving all of it in my mouth like a big pig because I love it so much. Because they're all, they're like just like little bite size. For the listeners that don't know, Gales is a London based bakery chain. I think they have a few around the home counties. Yeah, and they just put like crack in all their food or I think just actually loads of butter because everything like the cheese twist. I would kill you for a good cheese twist. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:18:03 Like it is their breakfast sandwich is delicious a good cheese twist. You know what I mean? Like it is their breakfast sandwich is delicious the cheese twist They have like these little rosemary like bites like they have the stuff they have is amazing Like it's fresh and yeah, it's so fresh and they make just like a really good like after tennis, right? Go there get like a really nice ice-cold Oat milk latte and grab like a breakfast bun and then we'd go sit outside on the patio and just have it and just chill. I love that. More goss. More goss like doing that just like hanging out with each other or whatever and then then things sort of start to open and I do love that if it's like a
Starting point is 00:18:38 Saturday morning you could run down where like Columbia Road flower market is or head over to one of the other markets or something like that like well it's all just opening up. With the Fizz loyalty program you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know for texting and stuff and if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at phys.ca. You know what? Actually, my secret thing that I actually love to do, and I know this is disgusting, and I know people are going to be like, what a hillbilly. But I grew up as like a mall rat. Do you know what a mall rat is?
Starting point is 00:19:17 I'm guessing a girl that hangs around in the shopping mall. Yeah, basically. It's like, that's like the thing to do. So like mall rat would be like, you just like love, like I think if I'm like, oh, it's raining out. I just want to like get out of the house and like, you know, putter around or do whatever. I would literally just go to like Stratford Westfield and like walk around. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:37 And just like, look, I could go there a million times over. And like all my friends are always like to go get stabbed. Like, why are you going over to Stratford Westfield? Like that is my idea of hell because when I walk into those Westfield type shopping centers, I just get completely overwhelmed by like the size of it, the crowds, the lights, the sound, like I just, it completely overwhelms me. I hate being in those places. I mean, those are not ideal, but that's why I like going first thing in the morning. So
Starting point is 00:20:06 if you go right when they open up, like, you know, if you have to go to like a Primark and you get there like 8am when they open. Yeah. It's zombie apocalypse. Zombie apocalypse. That's what I love. When it is like a Saturday busy, that is no, kill me. Like I can't, I cannot. So that's kind of a side note. But I think it's just like, yeah, go to little things, go in and out. I love parking the bike, going for a big long walk, walk through the Columbia Road Fire Market, walk down Red Church, walk around Shoreditch,
Starting point is 00:20:34 go down Brick Lane, just go in and out and pop around and just go to all these little random stores and just buy a bunch of crap I don't need and just sip my coffee and love it. What's the thing you've bought recently that you absolutely didn't need? I will show you. What I didn't need is this.
Starting point is 00:20:52 Oh my God, it's a, it's a trot, it's, what is it? It's a bird, it's a plane. Okay, so this is called a Labubu. So these were made by this Japanese designer and have you ever have you seen people hanging stuff off their purses lately they're called Purse Pals? Oh no. I know I'm one of these. I secretly want to be like- I've seen my seven-year-old hang school bag. Do you know who has one hanging off their brand new Louis Vuitton? I don't know Kendall Jenner. Rihanna. Right got it. So this Japanese designer did them and then all the like K-pop girl groups started getting
Starting point is 00:21:28 into these. So these ones are called the Boo Boo's and what they come in is these blind boxes. And so you actually you buy it meaning there's like six different colors but you don't know which one you're getting. So it's an unboxing as well. Exactly. So it's a whole unboxing. So it's a whole thing about it.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Wow. So you could get this one or this one or this one. Oh my God. You've collected the whole set. I don't have all of them, but I love them so much. And those are so, they're like so unnecessary, but I am obsessed. And they're like selling out everywhere. They look like little, they're like little monster teddy bear type things. And they're on the e-wrap. La Boo Boo's sold at Pop Mart. Absolutely love them.
Starting point is 00:22:05 And I've gotten my sister obsessed with them and they're all big. If you go to Pop Mart in Westfield in Stratford or you go to Pop Mart in Oxford, you see a line up out the door for La Boo Boo's. And whenever I have one hanging off my bag, people are like, I love Boo Boo. This is, I'm guessing like textbook solid mall rat behavior. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think maybe a little bit mental illness. But yeah. Okay. So we've bought something unnecessary. Yeah, 100%. I think maybe a little bit mental illness. Okay, so we've bought something unnecessary.
Starting point is 00:22:28 Yeah. Love that. And are we still in the morning? Are we moving into lunchtime? Where are we going? What I would love to do after that is I would go, go home, have like a nice long shower. And then what I would love to do late morning before I do anything else is go for a massage. Ah, let's get into it.
Starting point is 00:22:49 What kind of massage are we talking? I do not want a little woman to hurt me and make me cry, which they do sometimes. They do, yeah. It's really wild how many women with such tiny hands can be so powerful. Tight massages particularly. Oh my gosh. Elbows.
Starting point is 00:23:04 I don't mind it. I get a massage sometimes She she mounts me she mount. Yeah, but that's okay But does she hurt you or is it more like I like force but not I don't want to be like I want to enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Some people go to like clinics Yeah, and get massages and it's just like an you know, it's really for like their muscles and it's just clinical and it's for knots. Oh no. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I need her to take the oils and rub them in her hands and go.
Starting point is 00:23:30 But not too soft. For me, not too soft or it's pointless. You can't be too soft. You need to feel it. So I would say like I'm just really enjoying it, but I want it to be more like a spa. So it would be like doing the massage and then after that going in the pools, going in the sauna, having like another shower. Because like the first one was just like a rinse off from Tennessee You can be clean for your massage therapist, right?
Starting point is 00:23:50 Yeah To be not like a gross person for that So but then this one is like then you have your proper shower and do all of that and then it would be like I would Just use all of the spa's stuff like use their Dyson hair dryers put makeup on get dressed there like use their dyes and hair dryers, put makeup on, get dressed there, like really, really just like lush out there. A friend of mine I went was in Dubai and we went to a spa. We, one of their husbands got so mad at us because he was like, you told me you were going to be back and we were going to hang out. And we were like, we were just went to go get massages and hang out at the spa for a bit. He said, you have been gone for 11 hours. And we were like, that went by really fast.
Starting point is 00:24:26 I don't know. We were there all day. Really? 11 hours? Because it was Zabil Surae Spa in Dubai. It was on the Palm. And it was because you buy the spa package and you get access to the beach, all their pools outside, then the spa inside.
Starting point is 00:24:43 And then after you get your massage, people are coming up with tea and dates and biscuits. And then there's like quiet meditation rooms. And then there's the sauna room. And then you go in the hot tub and then you go in the warm pool. So it's going back and forth. And then they go, oh, you need more tea.
Starting point is 00:24:57 You need more dates. Why don't you guys, why don't we put these robes on you and you sit by the fireplace and like. I've never been to Dubai and I've never actually wanted to until now yeah you know what they also apparently do which I've never done is a full Turkish body scrub I've heard those are amazing and they just like basically exfoliate your entire body and you feel like you're brand new after which would be a dream like that I think that would be amazing
Starting point is 00:25:21 although I heard they could maybe hurt a little bit, but it's supposed to be amazing. Is this like a recent-ish thing? Have you just taken up sparring? Or is this being like how, tell me about the transition from mall rat to spa living to bi. You know, we are women, we can be many things. I'm a complicated woman. We contain multitudes, sure. But when did this specific multitude appear? Definitely not when I was younger, like at all. Like we would never have that kind of stuff or the ability to have that kind of stuff when I was younger or enjoy it. I'm trying to think of when my first massage was ever and I can't, I can't even remember it, you know, like I can't exactly remember when it was,
Starting point is 00:26:01 but it was like this thing where I know that if I could save up for it, like on my birthday, which I'm sort of describing like my perfect birthday day, I usually like to take the day off, tennis in the morning, get a massage, do and do kind of the day that I'm like describing because it's like all the things that make me happy and make me relax and make me feel good. I also love which I've discovered is self deprivation tanks. Oh no. Have you done one? No, it's my worst nightmare. It is amazing. I understand why people would think it's their worst nightmare and it would be claustrophobic. It's not really called a self deprivation tank, is it? No, that was definitely, it was like self deprecation tank.
Starting point is 00:26:37 I feel like that was a Freudian. It was a Freudian. What is it called? It's called the... Sensory deprivation tank. Sensory. Yeah. Self degradation.
Starting point is 00:26:48 Yeah, exactly. The self hate tank. You just go in and there's a mirror and you tell yourself how much you hate yourself. Yes. Sensory deprivation tank. I love it. I did that for the first time on my birthday a few years ago because I had never been into like, I've always been a bit like, you can probably tell, crazy,
Starting point is 00:27:06 and a bit like ADHD, a bit all over the place, a bit like go, go, go, and I've always sort of just had that. And I, one time, like I don't know how many years ago, I went to the gym I was going to, they had a guided meditation class. And I was like, well, why don't I try? I'm like, I probably won't be able to do it. So I sat by the door and I was like, if I have to get up in the middle of this class, it was like, well, why don't I try? I'm like, I probably won't be able to do it. So I sat by the door and I was like,
Starting point is 00:27:26 if I have to get up in the middle of this class, it was a 90 minute class. And I was like, what? And then I, cause I'm the person who goes in there and they're like, look at that person and their gross feet, like wash your hooves, you pig. Like, and I'm sitting there and they're like, what is wrong with you?
Starting point is 00:27:39 Look at this. I'm like my side fat sticking out of my boob and this shirt doesn't fit in me and fuck. And I'm so uncomfortable and whatever. And like, that's how I am all the time. I'm always so hyper aware of everything. And I guess, I think as comedians, we're also like, we train ourselves to be so vigilant
Starting point is 00:27:52 about what's kind of around us and like be always observing and watching for like eccentricities and odd things that are happening. But I went to this meditation and it was a guided meditation and she's like, okay, like just doing the thing. So we're just going through it I'm like sure I'll just lean into it and do it started doing it and then all of a sudden she was like ding
Starting point is 00:28:10 and that's our class and I was like what and I felt so relaxed and it's like of this whole going oh this is what I need this is the only time I can actually like just chill out is when I do this so I think of like when I go to spas and do stuff like that like it like I sort of almost like meditate when I go There and I get into that and then when I do the sensory deprivation tag It's just like getting into that space and it's like my only time really ever that I like chill out and I just like allow Myself to just like be still for a little bit and kind of like rest So I I don't do it all the time because obviously it's expensive and all that kind of stuff But I when I love I when I have it like I love it so much and I appreciate it so much and I always
Starting point is 00:28:55 I'm trying to get like I feel like when I go to spas and stuff I'm always I grew up like right on the beach basically, and so I grew up like swimming all the time I grew up in the water. That's one thing I really miss about London because swimming with all the dead bodies and the pollution and the Thames just doesn't hit like the Pacific Ocean. So like I don't tell me to go to Brighton. Like get out with Brighton. It's a beautiful seaside. It's full of carnies, rocks, and drunk handoos. Like get out of my face. It's nice, Brighton's cute. It's not some gorgeous seaside that I'm sitting there being like, ah, peace. Yeah. No, you're going to get your fish and chips robbed by the seagulls. It's quite, it is, you know, I love Brighton, but no,
Starting point is 00:29:38 it's no Pacific. It's no Malibu. Well, I mean, I definitely wasn't Malibu, but just like, I just love that. So I think also part of this is like just getting near water or getting in a pool or swimming. I feel like I feel my happiest when I can be like, if you do a massage and then you can go for a swim and just kind of float and be in the water for a little while. Also, it doesn't hurt that I like love being weightless or the idea of being weightless. So this, yeah, this sensory deprivation tank then for those that don't, because I've never actually done it. But so you get into like a pod or something.
Starting point is 00:30:09 What is it? Yeah. So it's like a human sized pod. And then so you go into a room, you shower beforehand. So basically there's like, I don't know, don't quote me on this, a bajillion tons of salt in there. So there's something like there's like loads and loads of salt in there. Be very careful ladies.
Starting point is 00:30:24 If you are someone who's like, you shave your legs or you wax yourself or whatever, if you have any little... Yeah. Yeah. And then there's basically like, think of like a big clam shell almost. So it's all full of water and the water is exactly body temperature. So it's your body temperature, it makes tons and tons of salt and it has a big lid on it. So you go in and you're laying down and it's like the whole length of like a tall person
Starting point is 00:30:46 could be in there. And there's a couple of buttons in there. There is a help button in case you get nervous. There's like a couple of little like on the one I did, like was like little starry lights on it, like little blue twinkly starry lights on the lid. So they said, look, you can keep the lid open the whole time. You can close it if you want.
Starting point is 00:31:02 I keep the starry lights on. You can turn the starry lights off and close the lid and be totally cocooned in there. And then basically you just go in there and you float. And the whole idea is the temperature is the exact same as your body temperature. You go completely weightless because of the amount of salt in there.
Starting point is 00:31:16 So you actually, and because when you close the lid it goes pitch black and there's no scent. So you lose all of your senses, right? And you float and you can't really tell where your body ends and the salt water begins. So you just lay in there, you meditate. Some people do panic, some people freak out, some people can't handle it. Some people have real emotional reactions. I really enjoyed it and I just sort of like meditated and stuff in there and I like really loved it.
Starting point is 00:31:42 God, it's fascinating. You sort of don't feel like you have a body then. Yeah the whole yeah you're supposed to just sort of be yeah just kind of be still. You're a floating brain in a tub of water. You're just which that is really interesting because I heard someone talking about I think I've been like, flee from the red hot chilli pepper. I think, don't quote me on this, but I think he was saying about the reason he likes meditating is because he forgets he has a body when he really deeply meditates. And then that reminds him, okay, so what am I if I'm not in my body? If I'm not a body, then I'm basically you've sort of become the soul. This is very deep, but I am sort of on my way to becoming a spiritual cult leader. People do know that if they listen to this podcast. I love that. I've always said I would love to lead a cult so much. I think I can get,
Starting point is 00:32:34 I think I could get a cult following. I think I could do it. We need one. But mine would be obviously like we'd put men in a hole in the ground and like just live, not to kill them, they would live in the pit. We don't have to let them go. No, they would live in the pit and then that would solve their male loneliness epidemic because they'd all be together and they could all play down there. You know, just like 1980s Britain.
Starting point is 00:32:52 Yeah, that's what I want to do. I sometimes, it's my favourite when I do a show that has like tons of women and I was like, and they're like, yeah. I'm like, I feel like if I told you guys to kill a man, you would and they're like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, okay. Don't let this power get to my head because girls, girls, girls, girls. Oh my God. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:10 Comedians and cults. There's not too much of a leap actually, is there? No. That's so interesting. I also, I think, I believe that Greg Davies, the comedian and the host who presents Taskmaster and an amazing actor, hilarious man, I believe he was in a flotation tank when he had his epiphany that he needed to do to quit being a teacher and start doing standup comedy.
Starting point is 00:33:32 Well, there you go. I'm almost sure that's correct. Kate, God, this is so brilliant. Is it time to move on to lunchtime? Are we in the afternoon? I think we're at like midday lunchtime. Or like around, like maybe a little, like a like, yeah, early afternoon, midday lunchtime or like around like maybe a little like a like yeah early afternoon midday Fantastic. What's for lunch? My favorite thing in the world and I think partly because I'm a comedian because so being a comedian
Starting point is 00:33:53 I don't have any nights free dinner going out for a nice dinner is pretty well off the table at all times for us brunch is my Favorite meal ever. I love brunch. I love all the brunch food, I love brunch drinks, I love, I love, love, love, love everything about brunch. Like a really delicious like Benedict, like Florentine Benedict with like some turkey sausages on the side, maybe a little extra Hollandaise sauce, and I don't want like big potatoes, like really crispy little potato-y bites.
Starting point is 00:34:26 Have another iced oat latte. If I'm there with a bunch of girlfriends or something like that, maybe we get some like, you know, mimosas or something like that. Just like, just really like a nice, long, leisurely, gossipy, girly brunch where we talk about- Heaven. Heaven, just all of that.
Starting point is 00:34:44 Just like the girliest stuff. So indulgent. Shall we move on to the afternoon? I would say in the afternoon, yeah, like meet my friends for brunch, for lunch, like kind of do a brunchy lunch thing, boozy, hang out with them. And then what I love in the afternoons, especially on like a summer day if it's hot out, my favourite thing to do is go see a matinee in the cinema. Oh yes.
Starting point is 00:35:18 Right? Okay, alone or with friends, this is a great shout. I mean, I do love going alone, but I also love friends, but they need to be interested because if you're a friend who's fallen asleep in the movie theater or you're not as engaged as I am, I'm going to get angry. Because you need to be able to talk about it afterwards. You need to be able to talk about it. So I would love to go with a few friends.
Starting point is 00:35:36 We go to the cinema. We go in the big reclining seat cinema, right? The really nice ones that there's like air conditioning, but also blankets because you need the weight of the blanket on you and cozy up or whatever. And the film, yeah, just the film is whatever it could be. I mean, I love seeing Wicked. I just saw Bridget Jones was my last one, the brand new Bridget Jones in the theater. I went to the cinema by myself on a matinee on a Sunday and saw that. It's so nice. And just cause then you just get to chill out for the day a little bit. Do you mind what the film is? Are you the sort of person that could just go and see anything?
Starting point is 00:36:07 Is it about the event or is it are you a cinephile? No, I'm not. You know, my thing that I despise the most is when like I said this once to a woman, I was like, oh yeah, like I was talking to this girl and I was like, oh yeah, I love seeing movies. Like I love one of the movies that she goes, well, I don't really watch movies. I prefer films. Oh, no. And I was like, shut the fuck up. Like it's like, yes, I don't really watch movies. I prefer films. Oh, no. And I was like, shut the fuck up. Like it's like, yes, I love all that high brow bullshit too. Trust me, I've gone to TIFF.
Starting point is 00:36:32 I've gone to film festivals. I've seen that. I've also seen a lot of films that are like touted as these like amazing works of art that are absolute dog shit. And I think some people just rate them so high because they're so fucking self-indulgent. Okay, give me an example of one of those. I will happily. Just do it.
Starting point is 00:36:48 Just go, just lay into it. I want to hear it. It won the Cannes-Palme d'Or Film Prize and it was like lined up around the corner at the Vancouver Film Festival to get in to see this movie. We went in there, a bunch of us, my friend Moreta and I and her husband Tyler. And now her husband Tyler is so funny because he's like, he's just like a guy. He just wants beer. He wants to watch golf.
Starting point is 00:37:07 He wants to watch football. He just like, he's just like that. But she's the focus group. Yeah, he's a focus group. But she's so like artsy and she loves that. She loves like experimental theatre and all that shit. So sometimes he will indulge and he will attend with us doing all these crazy things. And when Mairead and I always lived in the same city prior to me moving to London, we would go together.
Starting point is 00:37:26 We would be our plus ones for like going to like, we went to a weird, crazy artsy party where the only way to get champagne, there would be like a human hand coming out of the wall to hand it to you. God, that sounds incredible actually. When you, didn't you used to, do you still work in the art world?
Starting point is 00:37:40 I don't do it anymore, but I used to be an art dealer. That was my old, old thing back in the day. I used to work for galleries and stuff, and I used to work for auction houses and sell artwork and yeah, I used to do that. That was my old, former life. Wow. So do you have a background in, did you study art? Not at all.
Starting point is 00:37:56 So I did a little bit of art history in college, but like college was, I did, I went to three different colleges over five years and got zero degrees. So, but I got like just student debt. I'm such an idiot. How did you get into art dealership? So my friend who I was saying, Mareida, her father was a very well-known Canadian art dealer and she grew up with him. Her mother was an art historian or is an art historian and her father was a very well-known art dealer with an art gallery in Vancouver. Her and I started hanging out to get like we hung out together we grew up together
Starting point is 00:38:23 and I started learning about it and it this, I think there's a big disconnect in the art world where people who are not sort of like in the inn, like inner of the art world, think it's like so inaccessible. They can't do it. They can't buy original or whatever. And so it's like, I just started seeing like, like my brother, he's a professional.
Starting point is 00:38:39 He has enough disposable income where he and his husband can afford to buy original works of art for their home, but then they are too intimidated to go to a gallery or actually do that because they think it's like $100,000 for a piece of art. When there's really all of these artists sitting there going, I would sell this piece for 20, 50 bucks, a hundred bucks. I just want my pieces in collections. I want people to start collecting them. I want people to see my art.
Starting point is 00:39:02 You have to build your way up and you can buy affordable original art and all that. And I just saw this disconnect between this world and the people who wanted it. And they're saying, we need more buyers for the art. And the buyers are going, we're too intimidated. And then, so I was like, this is crazy. So I started learning about it and doing all that. Her and I actually started this website called The Art Market, which is long since defunct. But the whole idea was to show up-and-coming artists and the work they were doing and how affordable it was and go and like we would go and kind of do like blogging and like reporting at art events and talk about like the affordability of it, the accessibility of the art world. We used to go and do, I would be on the jury a couple
Starting point is 00:39:39 times for the affordable art fair in Toronto where we would help you help do the selection of different things that were coming in and just talking about them on the panels and stuff, talking about why we need to break down these kind of barriers and just show normal people you can afford to buy art, you can invest in it. It's such a beautiful thing to do for your home and to be walking by something you truly fell in love with and these artists, the privilege of being in someone's home
Starting point is 00:40:03 and being a part of their everyday life, it's such a thing. Like I absolutely adore art. I love it so much and I do miss it because you can probably tell how much I love it. But yeah, that's what I miss to do. Yeah. I mean, maybe we haven't got there yet, but is it anywhere in your perfect day? Have we had a sneak preview? I haven't thought about it in my perfect day. I mean, art comes in various forms, right? Like I, and like, but visual art, yes. I mean, it would just be like, as I wake up, I have pieces that are in my home that I absolutely love.
Starting point is 00:40:31 My most cherished pieces, actually, my friend, Marita, that same one, she's in Toronto. I left a bunch of them with her, so she's holding, cause she knows how to keep them and I hadn't brought them over here. So some of my most cherished ones, ones that I've worked with artists and they've gifted me pieces from their collection to thank me for helping
Starting point is 00:40:47 them with their sales or getting them into galleries or whatever the case is. So I have some pieces that I really, really love. I'm just waking up surrounded by them. Can you talk us through a couple of your favorites? What can you describe the style that you like? I really like, I'm a big fan of contemporary. I love color. I think in a home, like this room doesn't show it, but normally. No artsy. Nothing. But this room isn't it. But normally what I do is I think the color in your home should be like accessories and all your art. Your art should be the standout and should
Starting point is 00:41:21 be the color and everything. Like there's so much art that I love. I love older, like beautiful historical pieces because they used to sell those as well. There was a woman named Maude Lewis who was severely disabled. She was around in the like 30s, 40s, 50s, and she used to be very, very poor. And she would just paint. Her name was Maude Lewis, M-A-U-D. Yeah, I'm looking at it now. It's like folk, it's kind of like folk art. It's like folk art. Very childlike. It's very fun. She used to sell those on the side of
Starting point is 00:41:51 the road for a dollar in back East. Some of them now are worth, you know, 20, $25,000 for like their little small boards. And she would paint on a dust pan. She'd paint on shells. She'd paint on cars. Literally because she didn't have money. She'd paint on a dustpan, she'd paint on shells, she'd paint on literally because she didn't have money, she'd paint on the lid of a shoe box, anything she could paint on and create on. And it was the story that she would just kind of do it, sell it on the side of the road and paint it despite her crippling arthritis that she suffered from. Grishan Iskowitz is another one who he got into a very, very well-known art school right at the start of World War II and his stuff, but he was put into a concentration camp.
Starting point is 00:42:32 So he got into an art school and basically he was denied because of his heritage, because of being Jewish. So he got put into a concentration camp. All of his stuff that he created during the concentration camp he survived was all very hyper realistic horrific you can imagine documentary style pieces of art that came out of it so people were he was crazy making art in the concentration camp yeah with graphite pencils so he was from poland originally oh my gosh he put in so some of the stuff you'll see the current stuff I bet that pops up when you Google him is very bright and colourful, right?
Starting point is 00:43:08 Yeah. Very bright colourful things. There's like a completely, yeah, huge contrast of styles. Like then he goes modern. His story is amazing. So he was in concentration camps. He managed to produce the art. When he came out of it, obviously, completely traumatized, tortured. He applied to be a Canadian citizen,
Starting point is 00:43:26 and there was, he got denied the first time. And then he basically told Canada his story of what had happened to him, everything they had gone through, submitted artwork, everything. And then they said, yeah, his artwork evolved over time. It became much more pop and colorful and light and bright, but it's all about like,
Starting point is 00:43:44 kind of like people and the movement together and like, how we aren't just these bodies, right? Like it is more spirits and like, we're all much more connected and it's all more colorful and a reflection of like someone who's been through the horrors on earth, still being able to see the brightness and the connection of humanity and all of that.
Starting point is 00:43:59 And that's what all of his bright colorful works were about. So if you just looked at it, you go, there's a bunch of polka dots on a paper. They mean nothing. And when you learn his whole story in his background, you go, that's amazing. And that's why I love art. I love art so much because people get connected
Starting point is 00:44:14 through the stories of it and the backgrounds. And that's why a piece of art, people go, well, I could do that. But like what it means to create that in a moment that it was created, it means so much more, right? To create that piece in the time it was created. It means so much more, right? To create that piece in the time it was created amongst all of the things.
Starting point is 00:44:29 That's why these, and now you look back and go, oh, well, that's like what everything else is. Well, it's because everyone has copied it afterwards because that person broke through the mold and became a revolutionary. And art is such a reflection of the society we're living in and the times we're living in and all that. That's why I love comedy.
Starting point is 00:44:44 I think comedy is the most beautiful art form ever because it's just like a reflection back on what's happening, right? It's speaking truth. And it's so simple because it's literally just someone's words and thoughts in front of an audience and just going, this is what I think. You don't even need a microphone.
Starting point is 00:44:56 You don't need it. It's just thoughts. It's magic. I mean, it's magic that someone can stand there with like the simplicity of just someone standing in the microphone, making people laugh, changing people's minds. Yes. I feel like I've gone off on my tangent. My God, we have massively gone off on a tangent, but I'm so fascinated by it because we contain
Starting point is 00:45:14 multitudes. What an, like so impressive that you have this background in art. Amazing that we have gone on a massive tangent. Let's bring it back to your afternoon. I wanted to hear the end of the story about the film because I cut you off and started asking you to cut. Oh my gosh. But just quickly tell us the end of the film story and then we'll go back to the afternoon. It's called Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives about a man whose son dies and is reborn as a gorilla.
Starting point is 00:45:39 The man meets the gorilla and it's like, huh? This is my son. There's also a scene where a catfish goes down on a woman in a pond and eats her out. That's amazing. There's a scene that lasts like 10 minutes of just the gorilla walking out of frame in a misty forest. Oh, come on, this is fantastic.
Starting point is 00:45:59 It is so bad. And my friend's husband, he in the middle of that, he's like, I'll be in the lobby drinking a beer. I got to go. And he had to get up in the middle. But people literally walked out going, what the fuck? And then some people were going, ah, wasn't that just, I'm like, shut, I like stories. You know what I love?
Starting point is 00:46:16 I will literally go on TikTok to be like, give me a movie that is going to make me scream, cry, throw up, like have such a visceral reaction. I want to barf because I'm sobbing so hard from it. Like I love stuff like that. That make me have like such a reaction. I love crying during movies. Like I absolutely love that. Oh my god, me too. What like to get like a massive emotional response from it. Yeah, I love it. I cried in Bridget Jones though, but I cry a lot. I'm a very sensitive soul. So I would do the movie, I think in the afternoon, do the cinema. What I also love, go for a walk along the water.
Starting point is 00:46:48 And one of my favorite things here, because this is not the same in Canada, so we have to pay for all of our museums and galleries and everything. You pay for every one you go into. So if you wanted to go into like the equivalent of a Tate Modern in Canada, which you don't really have, but like the AG or something, you're paying, you know,
Starting point is 00:47:01 15, $20 a person to go in there. But what I love here is because you can go into like the, 15, 20 dollars a person to go in there. But what I love here is because you can go into like the National Gallery, the Tate Britten, the Tate Modder, the Portrait Gallery, you can go in there and you don't have to feel like you need to see the entire gallery in one go. Because you couldn't all that much. Yeah, exactly. Right. You can go in there. So often, I do this all the time. I did this two weekends ago in the afternoon, come out while the sun is still up, you leave the cinema, go for a walk along the river, go over to the Tate Modern and just pop in
Starting point is 00:47:29 and go see like one or two rooms. Just chill out, go in there, go to the bathroom. There are good bathrooms in there as well. Oh, this is so great. I love this because I feel like we're, hey guys, we're laughing and we're learning. We're laughing and we're learning. Catfish can go down on women and we can learn about art.
Starting point is 00:47:45 It's a whole thing. Any more to add to your afternoon before we move on to your evening? I think the afternoon after that, if I needed it, I would go for like a manicure or a pedicure. Oh my god. Do that. Really self-indulgent stuff. I love that. You know?
Starting point is 00:47:59 Like just like spa, tennis, brunch, coffee, museum, manicure, do that. And then I would just like be so leisurely and then I would have enough time to just go home, take a nap, chill out for a little bit before I meet friends for dinner. Amazing. Right. Well, let's move on to the night. My favorite thing is to go to a restaurant that I don't even know and I people just I like when people just choose it for me. Yeah. This is where this is where we're going.
Starting point is 00:48:34 And then when you get there and someone goes, I've already ordered and we just got a whole bunch of everything on the menu and everyone just picking at everything. When that first happened to me, I once went out when I lived in Manchester, and I was a young lass, and I went out for a Chinese meal. And there was a guy with us who was a bit older than all of us. And he was like, I'm just going to get this guys. Yeah, just going to get this and the waiter came over. And he said, Can you just keep it coming? And I was like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And my ambition in life became to be able to do that. Yes, what I love is, so whenever my brother comes into town
Starting point is 00:49:10 with his work colleagues and they do whatever here, basically in exchange for going out to fancy dinners, getting tickets to West End musicals with them that are very good seats and all that, they pay for everything, but I have to be sort of like their dancing monkey. And like, you know, go over there and do that. And I don't really care.
Starting point is 00:49:24 I'm like, sure, I'll do it for all the free, cool stuff. But then they just choose restaurants that they've heard are cool. Or they want to try whatever it sometimes they're like, you know, I don't love them. And they're like very high-end restaurants. I'm like, but it's like pigeon brain and shit that we're eating and like weird, weird experimental shit, but we'll go there and we'll just, um, and then they just go, okay, we're just going to order a whole bunch of stuff for the table. And they just order loads and loads and loads for the table and I love it my favorite because I'm not
Starting point is 00:49:48 paying for any of it either and so we just load up the table with everything and they just go more of that more of that like we love that whatever like and it's just so chill and so fun and we just have a nice like I love a long dinner I love a long draw. I love a long drano. I like when people start with a cocktail. French 75 is my new favorite go-to cocktail. Do you know what that is? No. Tell me. New favorite cocktail. You're going to be the cool girl when you order this because everyone's like, what is that? So, it's served in a champagne flute. So, it's called the French 75. It's gin, lemon juice, champagne, and then a twist of lemon on the top.
Starting point is 00:50:25 It is so refreshing. Oh my god, that sounds so tart. The way the gin and the lemon and the champagne cut, it's perfect. It's so good. It's like a champagne martini. Yeah, basically. Champagne gin martini. I literally, if I haven't eaten very much and I have even one, I'm like, ooh, like it
Starting point is 00:50:43 is a fun little cocktail. Otherwise I'm more of like a gin and tonic kind of girl. But I like it when people like start with cocktails, we're just chilling and then you order just a whole bunch of food and people are sharing and then people are ordering, like you just get the people who love the wine to order some nice wine for the table and they're ordering the nice wine. You're just enjoying it and then some desserts to share. And it's just like a long drawn out dinner where it's like, I don't love it.
Starting point is 00:51:09 It doesn't need to be too fancy over the top. It just needs to be just good and like just good conversation, a good mix of people. I love that like a big, fun, loud table where everyone is just having... I had a friend of mine who loves hosting dinner parties. He's so lovely, his name is Richard, and he loves conversation starters. So whenever he hosts dinner parties, he'd put a big bowl in the middle
Starting point is 00:51:33 and everyone has to take turns pulling out conversation starters. Oh really? So especially if there's people you don't know. But some of them are really fun. They'd be like, are you more like your mom or your dad and why? And then they go on and other people kind of pitch
Starting point is 00:51:48 and then they'll answer or they'll need joke. And obviously the conversation goes on tangents. Then I go back to someone else or like one of his favorite ones is, I mean, it's not unlike this. It's if you had 24 hours left in your day and you have the exact, you know, and you said someone told you,
Starting point is 00:52:01 you were gonna die 24 hours from this moment right now. Knowing exactly what you know now. You don't have a million dollars, you don't have that. Your family is where they are, whatever. Because me, it's like, would I spend 10 hours of that day flying back home? You know, when I go back home to Canada to go see them, when I do that stuff, knowing how much money you have right now, the logistics. And then they're meeting you in arrivals and that's that. And then I drop dead. That's it. I bet you can't guess what my conversation starter is at dinner. What would, well, yeah.
Starting point is 00:52:27 What's your perfect day? Is that what you're got? Do you do that? I have done it, but I, well, no, cause I used to love doing it before I, before you started doing it, I don't want to hear anyone know. I'm really checking. But no, they're great. I mean, man, that's like, that is a good, that's a good podcast.
Starting point is 00:52:44 What we often do on this podcast is invent other podcasts. Yeah, I mean, do you know how many times I've invented apps that already exist? I'm like, this is genius. I've thought of this, I'm brilliant. And then I look it up, I'm like, oh, there's 16 other apps that do the same thing, nevermind. I think this accessible art thing still needs tapping into.
Starting point is 00:53:01 Well, there are things that do exist and there's like artsy and there are things that exist, but the thing is it does take a lot to find it. Yeah, because there's a lot of art. It is very much like, you know, insider kind of stuff. And you do feel, even me being on the outside for a bit now, since I've moved here, I feel even like I'm intimidated by some of the London galleries here. But it's so cool when you go into them.
Starting point is 00:53:24 A lot of times you go into the galleries and like, I'll be, yeah, if I'm in Brighton, I go in, there's a cool gallery down there. I forget what it's called. And if you just go in and you start talking to them, like most people are in there are really nice and they just want to tell you about the art and the artists and stuff.
Starting point is 00:53:35 And like, I used to, I loved doing that. I loved walking people around the gallery, telling them the story of who we had hanging up and what their deal was. And we'd have contemporary artists and historical. I get so into the art. Like one day I had this couple came in. They were really nice, beautiful couple.
Starting point is 00:53:48 Chatting with them, going around the whole gallery. I probably spent an hour with them, walking them around the gallery, talking to them about the art. They're just asking these questions, whatever. Really lovely. They didn't buy anything, but they were really nice. And then I was like, they were really nice.
Starting point is 00:53:58 And she was gorgeous. My colleague that I worked with, she goes, that was Jessica Chastain. Oh my God. And her model husband, her Italian model husband or whatever, and I was like, oh, oh, yeah. I think he was. But I'm so oblivious sometimes, like, that I don't,
Starting point is 00:54:16 but you just have like really fun interactions with people and seeing people have such reactions to art. Like I heard this thing once that you don't need to spend, people think they like owe it to every piece of art to like give it time and go, do I need to see what everyone else is seeing in this piece of art? But you don't. Someone said like just, you could literally fast walk through a museum, but if something makes you stop then really stop and really look at that one or
Starting point is 00:54:41 two or three pieces. It's just like music. And the thing with art that's very similar, visual art to music or anything is like, the more you listen to, the more your taste is refined, right? Because the more you know, the more you educate yourself, the more refined you have. Yeah, and it's a way to get to know yourself, I guess. 100%.
Starting point is 00:54:59 And then what you see in it might not be what I see in it and all that kind of stuff, but yeah. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. I don't wanna take up too much more of your time. No, this has been great. It's been so fantastic. I've really enjoyed going along the ride for you. This is like, this is very close to my perfect day. I love it when this happens.
Starting point is 00:55:16 Oh, I love. So Kate, we have one last little bonus question. What's your piece of perfection you can recommend this week? My perfect piece of perfection you can recommend this week? My perfect piece of perfection is the podcast This American Life. Yes. So do you listen to it? I know. I'm familiar with it. Yeah. It is just a perfect podcast because it has something for everyone. It's usually like
Starting point is 00:55:37 a theme. Every week is a theme. And then each week there's different sort of chapters on that theme. They're like hour long podcasts. One chapter could be like, you know, three minutes. It could be David Sedaris reading one of his stories that relates to it. And he's hilarious and amazing and kills me. And then it could be something really, really touching. Like they had this one, I forget what the episode was called. I feel like I need to look up what the episode was called.
Starting point is 00:56:03 But it was this beautiful episode where there's a phone that sits on this plot of land in Japan and it's called the wind phone. It's a phone box booth and it is record like they recorded it for this episode. It's not connected to anything. There was a lot of people who lost their lives in I think it's 2011 2012 in the tsunami. So people, family members go to the booth to make phone calls to their past relatives who have passed away because some of them were never found. So you'll hear kids go and be like, dad, I got into these university and you would be so proud of me and blah, blah, blah. Or like,
Starting point is 00:56:38 mom, we're doing really well now or whatever. And then, and then it'll cut to like, so it'll be that. And you're like, oh my God. And you're crying and you're listening to these and they're like, beautiful. And then it will cut to David Sedaris reading a seven minute story about these stupid, ignorant tourists ordering a coffee in a coffee shop. And they can't get the order right or find their money for it. But it's all centered around this theme of like,
Starting point is 00:57:01 kind of what's not there or whatever the case is. And it's just a beautiful podcast and I think they do it so well. Ira Glass is the host of it. And I think it's so beautifully done. And I think because it has different chapters and different tones and different vibes and all of these different contributors, like it's just, it's amazing. And so that is my perfect, my perfect thing. Oh my God.
Starting point is 00:57:22 This is fantastic. This American Life, I cannot recommend it enough. Yeah, yeah. It's an incredible podcast. I'm familiar with it. It's a great recommendation. Very on brand for the Perfect Day listener. Yes.
Starting point is 00:57:34 Oh my goodness, Kate, thank you so much for coming on Perfect Day. Thank you. Really enjoyed it. Oh, perfect day. Well, Perfect Dayers, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Thanks to Kate for sharing her Perfect Day. It was luscious, it was indulgent, it was everything it should be. And what a fascinating insight into the art world as well. Curveball, who knew? Well, I did know actually
Starting point is 00:58:07 because I had done a little bit of research into Kate, so me, I knew. And some of you might have already known that. Look, I've been absolutely loving all of your emails, so please keep them coming to everydayapurfectdayatgmail.com. It's the only way I know that you love me. As well as your reviews, which really do matter, as I've said before, to the algorithm. We are living in an algorithm dominated world and this stuff matters. The ratings follow us. You have to press the follow button, okay? And that also means that you don't miss things like bonus episodes. Sometimes that happens. But the normal episodes then, on Thursday, there'll be another one next Thursday. So like and subscribe and follow us at Perfect Daycast for all your Perfect Day news.
Starting point is 00:58:56 From Yorkshire with love, I'm Jessica Knappett, wishing you a perfect day.

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