Sh**ged Married Annoyed - Please Keep Me Anonymous With John Robins

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

This week Chris and Rosie are joined by comedian, podcaster and writer John Robins! As well as reading one of your gross stories John bring his own tales to share. Plus, the trio discuss comedy, John's podcast ‘How Do You Cope’ and his new book ‘Thirst’. You can find all episodes of How Do you Cope wherever you get your Podcasts.  Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Changed My Life is available for pre-order! Today, get Huel’s full Lite & Lean Starter Kit online with our code SMA30 for 30% off at https://huel.com/SMA30. New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Always read and follow the label. Hello, on this week's episode of Please Keep Me In On Us, we are chatting to comedian. John Robbins. Oh, we had a fantastic chat with John. Now, John came on to do, please keep me anonymous, which is obviously, as everyone knows, he reads a letter from your wonderful listener,

as a story about something normally horrific, but to be fair to John, he surprised us with a couple of his own horrific stories. I wasn't expecting it at all. I wasn't at all. And his story was a lot funnier than the one we'd given him, which was a bit of a letter. But that's what you expect from comedians,

to be fair. Absolutely. To be fair. Nice guy. I'd never met him before. I'd known John for years, worked on the circuit with John. Yeah, very, very funny comedian.

He won the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Him and Hannah Gadsby, shared it, shared it one year. He's on talking about his podcast, How Do You Cope? And he's book, Thirst, 12 drinks That Changed My Life, which is available for pre-order now, I do believe. Brilliant rest and chat. He's a very interesting guy. He's a very interesting guy.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did. So this is the jingle Jingle Jingle We hope you like the jingle Jingle Jingle Babado babadoo babadoo babadoo Jinngo I feel like I've stepped

into a very swish world You're both very tanned We've just been to Portugal Your skin is very clear I got up early to get our train into London I feel like I've been dug up You know when like You get somewhere

and everyone else is wearing makeup for filming and you're not and you think, I look normal but I'm now going to look ill. Right. I've got makeup in my bag. Do you want some makeup? I have decided I can't go down that road. Okay. Because that way madness will lie.

I'll end up getting like surgery on bags under my eyes and stuff. I've often said this. One of the reasons I absolutely hate wearing makeup for TV stuff. You've got makeup today. What an offensive question. Okay, sorry. Someone who's clearly been in the makeup chair for three hours. He just uses my makeup artist.

Yeah. I've always said, taking it off. It's like getting really ill, really quick. When you're taking off. Do you know what I mean? You just, and not to let everyone behind the curtain here, John, but the first thing you did say when you walked in was,

I'm really sweaty off the tube. I am very sweaty off the tube. And I said, you're keeping it real. I am keeping it real. But it's so strange how, like, I mean, this is a great setup. This is very cool. It's going to look fantastic.

But it's mad how quickly podcasts have become TV shows. Yeah. She's fuming about it. I'm seething. And like all of the podcast creators are thinking, right, how do we, how do we put out full-length video episodes? And you're like, hang on. Yeah. This is good.

So it's almost like a TV person going, how do we just put out the audio of mock the week? 100%. And they're probably thinking of that. No way. So eventually they're going to like swap over. Yeah. And everything on telly is just going to be audio and everything that was audio is going to be on telly. But it's so much better than when we started.

on BBC and on XFM, me and Ellis, it was like voice-activated CCTV cameras. Wow. So it always looked like you were being interrogated in episode of 24 hours in police custody. And they'd put these out and you think, this looks like we're in prison. This is terrible.

These faces are really small. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to have like a GoPro on the mic there. And it was the worst angle of anything I've ever seen in my life. It's like a GoPro is like a footage from a mic. Mars rover. Yeah, yeah. Like a little robot

trying to find water. Well, you're a few men, aren't you? Because you normally would be in pajamas, you'd put your fake tan on. Now, we've got to get ready for the pot. It's really starting to feel like work. I'll be honest with you. It's really pissing me off.

Do you know what I heard someone say the other day? A young person said, what podcasts do you watch? Shut up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We used to take the Mick out of people who said that. But now it, yeah, it is a thing. So older people used to say,

no offence here to anyone, but older people used to say to me, yeah, watch your podcast. Oh, bless them. But now younger people are saying, what podcasts do you watch? Oh, God. Should I be delivering this straight down the gun? No, you've got to protect, apparently you've got to pretend like they're not there. I'm just going to answer every single question.

I've heard down the barrel. I've never heard down the gun. You made it sound even more dark. Someone once said to me, if you're ever doing filmed stand up, pretend the camera is the person in the audience you fancy. So you like look at them at all the best lines. Do you guys do that? Is that anything you do?

Right. Right. Do you pick some on you fancy? That's great. It's a great piece of advice. Yeah, back in the day before I was happily married. But yeah, you would. If you were, you know, I mean, come on.

We've all done the uny circuit. One more younger men, me and you back in the day. We certainly. And you would. You would. Yeah. But it worked. Oh my God.

I did do that. Yeah. All the lines that make you sound cool and sensitive or very witty. You just like just pop the old eyes over to the camera. Oh my gosh. Do you know what's sad about that? And then just hang around at the bar for an hour afterwards waiting for the camera to turn up

and then thinking, I think the camera's gone home and just, why don't bother? You have to stay over now, I'm going to get a travel lunch. Is this why you guys got into comedy? No, not at all. I do believe we've gone for attention? Oh man, there's one.

To Philip Gibbon Hall of Darkness. There's one story about a guy who used to do when he did jonglers, he would have, he would go to the, bar and he would say, look, after the show, if there's, if I meet someone, I'm going to come up to you and I'm going to say, can I get a bottle of your finest champagne? And you're going to, and you're going to say, I'm sorry, we've run out of champagne, but we've got Prosecco. Right. And then he would meet someone and say, would you like to come back to my hotel room for some champagne and then go to the bar and say, can I have.

bottle of your finest champagne, then they would say we've only got Prosecco. He'd save himself, you know, 100 quid or whatever. Anyway, he did it so many times this barman got so annoyed that he sourced a bottle of really expensive champagne. So he goes, I'll have a bottle of your finest champagne, please. And he goes, here, here you go, it'll be 500 quaint. I love that so much. Serves them right.

Serves them right. Anyway, let's not get too down about how tawdry the circuit used to be It used to be, but thankfully it's better days now It's better. Is it? But it is, it is. Not perfect.

Yeah. I don't know, my friends just started comedy. Wow. No, she's been doing for about a year. Maybe two years. Maybe two years. And she's like on the circuit now. But obviously she's a man with two kids.

And I'm going to see a show in a couple of weeks and I'll get all the gossip for them. Oh, yeah. It should be a lot better. I think people are a lot better now. I think they're very dear. Even them things, I think they happen before we even started them once. Yeah, but I think, you know, I think maybe there's still bad behaviour.

I mean, what we're talking about is sort of grim but not particularly awful. But I think there's more of a sense of support groups and networks and WhatsApp groups and, you know, people kind of watching each other's back and calling out bad behavior. Fingers crossed. Brilliant. Because obviously, Chris, you and I are the good guys. Well, and that's what good. At the minute, at the minute, guys, you're all the good guys.

But listen, times change. I was always driving home, me. I never even stayed for a drink. I was rubbish. Absolutely rubbish. But look, we're not here to talk about how Tori the circuit is. How do you cope? Yes.

Is the title of your podcast. Because obviously you do the podcast with you and Alice. Yeah. You're doing the podcast tour with you and Alice. It's nice going on tour with somebody else. It is, yes. You get a bigger car. You do get a bigger car.

The seats fall down as tables. and I'm so excited. We're going to take double? Uno? Well, I'm going to take lots of books about trauma to read as research for my other podcast. And we're back on track. So, your other podcast. Yes.

How do you cope? Yes. So, yeah, there's probably about 30 episodes of that out now. And I'm very grateful to be able to speak to people at length about different. things they've experienced how they got through them. Coping mechanisms, tools they use to cope with anything from addiction, eating disorders, mental illness, mental health problems, grief, injury. But actual health problems, you've had Matt Fordon who battled cancer, yeah.

That's one of the best things I've ever been involved with interviewing Matt because his, I mean, what he went through was so extreme. so painful he had his, well, he had cancer in his spine. Yeah. He had a sarcoma. So he had part of his spine removed. He lost function with his bladder. He had part of his intestine removed.

I mean, it was wild. And it was sorry. When I heard about it, he had a pain in his back at Edinburgh Fringe, just in case he was not aware of this. He had a pain on his back on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. And he thought he just pulled the muscle on his back. But then all this happened, obviously. for me it was so weird because 40 was 40.

He's invincible. Absolutely bulletproof. He would think, no, he was just life and soul of the party. I mean, he's still working. He's going from strength to strength, which I'm so happy about. But it was one of them things where you go, oh, shit, this can happen to anyone, because this has happened to 40. And he wasn't just the life and soul of the party. He was the life and soul of the Cancer Award.

We were joking. Well, it made him laugh. But like, he was cheating. hearing me up. When I came to visit him, because I was in the middle of a tour, I was absolutely like, I was flat, I was down, I was just exhausted. And there's a guy lying in a bed who's being turned twice a day so he doesn't get bed sores with a scar literally all around his ass. And he's going, cheer a rob. Snakes get me worse. But it was great. And I ate too much custard and got got like a sugar crash

because the canteen in the hospital was so good that I ate this big pudding with loads of custard and that's the worst and that but the interview with Matt is a lesson in mindset really yeah and like Matt was saying this is really useful for anyone going through any difficult situation doesn't have to be as extreme as that but the first thing to go wrong right is not in your control whether that's getting cancer, if someone dying, your partner leaving you, you know, work problems. But the second thing you do have control of is how you react to it. And that's not to say that everyone, you know, who gets diagnosed with cancer should feel pressure to suddenly be like skipping down the street or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. But it's like there's a phrase in that I heard in recovery is choose your hard, choose what's hard for you. Wow. And cancer is hard. Yeah. And it's going to put you in places. you never imagined you were going to be emotionally and physically. So don't do your best to like not add on extra stress.

And I think a lot of what Matt was saying is a lot of people who've experienced cancer in themselves find that they are the ones sort of geeing up their family. Yeah. Yeah. Because they need the sort of atmosphere around them to just be as kind of stress-free as possible. Yeah. So that's just an example of one episode. I also interviewed Amanda Knox, who you guys will remember very much like in the news when we were at uni, who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of a student in Italy.

Yeah. And she went to prison for, yeah, you might see the Netflix documentary. Yeah, I love true crime. I've listened to all the kind of true crime podcast. So, yeah, I know about that. So chatting to her was wild. I mean, you've got, yeah, I mean, yeah, Sophie Willing, Joel Wicks, Alist, Aster, Ramble, Rosie Jones, Matt Ford, Anton Ferdinand, Leslie Ash, Amanda Knox.

I mean, incredible list of names there. And yeah, I mean, Sophie Willans got an incredible past as well. Yes. We've all seen Alma's not normal. Oh, yeah. And it's based on her life. What a show that is. Such a good show, isn't it?

Amazing show. It's masterful. Yeah. And what it captures is the, how frustrating, exhausting and funny. mental illnesses. Like there are funny elements in that that you know have come from someone who has lived experience

of that situation. You can always tell that when something, when you're watching anything like that, you can always go, so that happened to someone. Just any situation in a sitcom or anything like that, you go, I know that's come from truth.

You just tell you and feel it. You almost taste it when you're laughing at it. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Because it's absurd. You go from the, like, just the most stressful, infuriating, painful moments to moments of complete absurdity and ridiculousness.

And that's what that captures and chatting to Sophie about her experience of growing up in the care system. Yeah. And getting her, which is in Alma's not normal, is getting her file from the authorities and just suddenly finding out all this stuff. And about her sort of therapy journey and how she's managed to cope with that through getting therapy. So, yeah, I mean, it's heavy at times. But it sort of has to be because the stuff is serious. Life is heavy. But there's also much more laughter than you would expect.

Yeah. Because there are moments where you're like, you have to laugh. You absolutely do. Yeah. And it's really great to be able to speak to people at length because I think, even though, you know, we film it and we release clips on social media, there's such a pressure now to have everything in 90 seconds. Yeah.

And when you're... Sometimes less, me. Yeah. And when you're talking about wellness or therapy or trauma, if you put something in like a 60 second clip, it ends up sounding really glib because you're just chucking in loads of jargon. So you're just saying, you've got to be the real you. Yeah.

And it's like, what does that mean? What's the process of that? Who am I? That's not something you can really get into a 60 second clip. So to be able to talk to someone for an hour, an hour and 20, I think Amanda Knox was, I feel very lucky to be able to do that. Has it been a good process for you personally? I don't know whether I am slightly anal about this,

but if someone's got like a book or two books or three books, or three books. I have to have read them all before I interview them because I don't want, I'm sort of like they're, they're being so generous with their time and how candid they're talking that I feel I owe it to that process to read all the stuff. And what that means is I feel very well prepared. So I've got lots of good questions and people, you know, the feedback has been that I'm like well-informed interviewer and I ask the right stuff. But that does. Is that a dig? No, no.

No, that's a very good question that you've asked. No, I just think sometimes... How do you read three books quickly? You can't. So it takes long time. But not just that. I'm a kind of person where if I take on a lot of people's things, you are not that person, no disrespect.

You're a lovely man. People tell her stuff. But people tell, I don't know why. But then I take it all on and then sometimes it can be really heavy. It can weigh heavy on you. So I'm all. always sort of in the world of something quite full on, whether it's reading or interviewing or writing the questions. However, I am lucky in that at time of going to press. I don't

have kids. I'm not in a relationship. This is a positive spin. So I have time to decompress. And I think, you know, even if it's getting back from a recording at 8 in the evening, I come home, I put on some ambient music, I do like word games or crosswords, I just have like an hour to like go on standby. Whereas I think if I was coming back and I was making dinner for my kids and I was or like caring for someone or whatever the stresses and strains of life are, I would find it difficult. But it, I get out of it as much as I put in and I have learned a lot. and there are things people have talked about that really, really helped me.

That's good. So that's good, yeah. That's good. I will listen. I'm going to listen. 100%. Because you won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for a show. My blushes.

Yes. I'll fix that. Sorry, you shared winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award. Anna Gadsby, you and Hannah Gadsby won the same year. And that was for a show all about your mental health. That was a show about, well, I was writing a book at the minute. Which I can talk about. Yeah.

Which is a book about alcohol, a book about my life sort of through alcohol because I've been sober before two and a half years. Well done. Well done. And that show was ostensibly like how low can you go and still laugh at it. That was sort of the theme of that show. And I really enjoyed the writing process because it was like, okay, here's 10 of the worst. maddest things that have happened to and you've done what's funny about them and that's a really nice challenge

as a comedian and as a writer and someone who likes you know getting involved in getting your fingers dirty in the stuff of life and I was very you know so many shows in a number of fantastic and I don't think mine is any better than anyone else's but to have that show recognized I got nominated thank you John Norse see he's read my three books that I've released about being nominated and not winning. I'll call it the bitterness trilogy.

But yeah, that book is available for pre-order now. It's called Thirst. It's all going on. Nice. Thirst. I like it. They talk of my drinking, but never my thirst. Nice.

It's an old proverb. And it's sort of 12 drinks that changed my life, a chapter on each one. Nice. So that'll be available to reorder now. That's available to pre-order now. Amazing. All right. Talking of reading.

would you like to do the job you have come here to do? Absolutely. So if you've heard our podcast, I mean, you're very busy reading and doing different things. We have got incredible listeners who send us their, I mean, some are deepest, darkest confessions.

Some of them might not be, but they send us their most embarrassing moments. And they always say, please keep me anonymous and we always do. We always do. So you are here to read something out. We've never heard these. No.

No. This is nice for me because this is normally my job. So I'm enjoying not having to do this and B, you always get to do the reaction. Yeah. I like to call it judging. I like to do the judging. I judge these people quite strongly. So let's dance.

Okay, here we go. Dear Chris and Rosie, I'm a dental nurse and have had to deal with a fair number of unpleasant encounters. Not long ago, we had a patient who explained that he had recently bought some halver. Am I saying that right? What is Halver? I don't know what Halver is. It's a nutty eastern European dessert, not unlike Nuga. Okay.

The patient explained that while eating, he had bitten into something hard and a piece of his tooth came loose. Christ. Not good. He bought the piece of tooth in with him as proof. After a lengthy inspection of the reported damage, the dentist turned to the patient and said, well, what do you think they said? I think I know what this is. What do you think? I have no idea.

I think I've got it and it's made us really upset. That's not a piece of your tooth. Bullseye. Yes. Oh my God. It was someone else's tooth. This is a piece of tooth, sir, but it doesn't belong to you. As you can imagine, the colour drained from the patient's face. The jolly dentist ended on a positive note.

Look on the bright side. Your teeth are a picture of health. So his tooth hadn't broke. He just ate some... There was some tooth in whatever that mixture was. I wouldn't recover from that. Well, this has actually happened to me. No way!

Yeah. So I don't eat meat. Okay. I haven't eaten meat for, I don't know, 10 years, 12 years or something. Wow. One of the experiences that led to me not eating meat. And I tell you the second one, but it's gross. But the first one...

I want to know the gross. We want both. The first one, I was making some mints. I was making bolognese and, you know, you empty the big slab of mints into the pan. Steve put the onions in. Get a wet wipe off. Yeah. All the other bits and bobs.

So I'm eating my bolognais and I get that horrible, like, grinding crunch of something that shouldn't be in there. Yeah. Yeah. And it's half a cow's tooth. Gore and shit off. Oh, God. And a cow's tooth is. big, right? It's like three times the size of a human tooth. And it'd just been obviously

inside this mince and I'd taken it for like a lump of onion or a garlic or whatever. What a delicious looking garlic cloth. And it just suddenly, when you have a moment that makes you see the product as, oh, this is a living thing that's been blasted with some high pressure gun and just like crushed into a... You wouldn't recover from that. I would, that would be, me, I would be Exactly. I would never eat meat again if that happened to me. I would never eat it again. When I cook with chicken, this very little chicken goes into the actual dish because I have to cut most of it off for Chris.

See, I'm not that squeamish me. I probably would have went, oh. Sorry, sorry. I probably would have sucked round it. Rosie, that's not the disgusting story. That's what I'm freaking out here. Let's go. Do you mind sharing the disgusting one?

No. As long as you don't mind never eat meat again. No, no, come on. I'll delete it. She loves a bit of gristle. I suck a bit of pristle. I suck a bit of prawn head and all that. I quite like it.

I don't mind it me. I don't mind it. I suck a bit of prawn head. The autobiography by Rosie Ramsey. That'll be my book. So it bit of a porn head. Rosie Ramsey, you suck up a prawn head. That's one of the worst things you've ever said.

You know what I do? It makes you feel sick. John is an author, a broadcaster. An Edinburgh comedy winner. I am a joke. I think if you're going to eat meat, it's the kindest act to that animal is to eat all of it. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

You know, suck on that prawn. I do. I do. Because if the prawn dies, prawn gets killed, and I do eat prawns actually. But if the prawn dies and you go, oh, by the way, we're just going to chuck your head in the bin. You're like, come on. Exactly. Respect. It's a really good fight. Okay, then what's the disgusting one?

Right. Is it pork? Because pork's my favourite meat. It's not pork. Okay, good. So this was in, this was 10 years, no, this would have been 12 years ago. This is the last time I ever ate meat. Okay.

Sorry, so you went back after the mince? Went back after the mints. Wow. That must have been a fucking good, bollineers. The mints put a bit of doubt in the old mind. So, any, I'd been staying with my girlfriend at the time who was vegan and hadn't eaten meat for a week. So I come back from hers on the train to my stop. I've been thinking about this all week.

I will live your vegan lifestyle if I can have my entire chicken. Come out of the station, give me my card. And I say, I would like one entire chicken, please. scared. I sit down at table on my own and they bring it over and it's like, you know, it's it's not like... No, it's in quarters so it's like two halves

of the... It's a thing of beauty at first. So I'm jumping away through my chicken, I'm eating my sides, so uncomfortable. And then I turn the chicken over and the quarter that's of the body is like the rip cage,

right? So I turn it over in the ribcage is a tumour oh this chicken obviously when it died had an enormous tumour in its ribcage and I something clicked in my head

and I went you're never ever doing this again and it was not just the sort of disgusting element of like discovering a tumour in a chicken's rib cage in a restaurant. But it was a sudden realization, this is a living thing.

Yeah. This thing suffers and pecks at the dust and feels the breeze on its feathers and feels the... It was all this stuff just came flooding to me at once. It was like, this isn't meat. This is a corpse. Right. I was like, oh, wow.

I'm not going to do that again and that was it that was it yeah oh my god sorry it's quite gross did it have sauce on it or was it just dry he's just told this story

it's really quite deep story and you want to know whether it was medium or lemon and her no just the tumour itself was it definitely was it not just awful no it was like attached to the it was like a brown sausage attached to

the interior of the rib cage. That is sad. Babadoo, babadoo, babadu, babadu, ba. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health, from the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment offers a physician-led, full-body checkup

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slash moments to get started. Babadoo, babadoo, babadoo, ba. That's why I go chicken breast. I'm not pulling stuff apart off a thing. I'm really squeamish. You tell me all the time to go vegetarian. You're like, if you're not ready for the bits of stuff, more vegetarian.

I think you're disrespectful to the animal. I think John would agree. Chris is. Chris is like, I'll not eat this unless it's totally perfect. I'm like, if you're not going to eat it in its natural form, how it's meant to be ate, like off the bone, you know. People who are like, I can't eat off. I'm like, you're eating an animal.

You are eating an animal. Like, you need to respect the animal. Also, like, people often talk about, you know, what do you miss meat? And they're always imagining the best meat ever. Yeah. But the great thing is you avoid crap meat, of course. Yeah. Which is most of the meat.

Yeah. So, like, you know, I've never, I haven't for years had to have, you know, in like, hotel breakfast buffets, that silvery greenish bacon. I hate it so much. And undercooked sausages. Horrible. No. And the bit of sausages full stop, I'm against sausages.

Just that's a burger for your breakfast. That ham that's like hard sort of plastic water. Yeah. When they've put, we, we go to the butchers now, you know. Oh, lovely. Yeah, we started, about three years ago, we started going the butchers. A chicken breast from the butcher. You've got, you know what?

It's like, it's like, it's, I've never known anything like it. It's so nice. I was totally wasting this on you, John. But it's, well, no, I totally agree because like that. That chicken breast has not been pumped full of water. It's not been injected with anything. The person who made it has been paid properly. The chicken has probably had a really decent life.

Like if your life as a chicken is decent, then the moment of death is stressful however it happens. You know, so if it's just bosh, you're out, you've had a good life done. I don't have a problem with that. Seeing the sunshine. Seeing the sunshine, yeah. And we don't eat as much actually,

now that we go to the butcher is. We don't eat it. We do not eat as much meat. I don't think you'd get me here, John, but you the phrase that chicken has felt the breeze on his feathers is really going to fucking hold me I know I joke

I know I doked saying I fancy an annals after this that was just a cheap joke I think the next time I think I might cry I think you could I think you could be a bit too I'm nearly well and I'm crying as you tuck into your delicious chicken it's so tasty

it felt the breeze on its feathers is going to kill me Listen, John, it's been an absolute pleasure taunt you. New episodes of How Do You Corp are available every Monday and you're going to access episodes one week early on, what does that say? On Wondery Plus. On Wondry Plus, indeed. Oh, is it with Wondry, Wondry, Wondry, Wondry.

Yes, we have the hour-long episode where that's the main discussion and then there's a bonus episode each week where I ask my guests for five things they're grateful for, like do a gratitude list. It's called The Gratitude List because I've found that gratitude has really got me out of some pretty low moods and some difficult times because it's sort of impossible to feel sorry for yourself at the same time as feeling grateful for things. Yeah, yeah. And it just puts stuff into context a bit. I know it doesn't seem like you, but I do that as well. Like I know like obviously in this podcast we're talking about rude things. We're talking about deaf things.

But we do talk about Chris is dying inside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm screaming inside most of the time. But we talk about my anxiety. We've talked about loads of stuff. But do you do a cold plunge. I used to slag it off. I used to slag it off, but I do a cold plunge.

But the main thing I like about doing it, it's not any of that. I sit and do, not a prayer, but like I just list things I'm thankful for every morning. I say thank you for like my wife, thank you for my wife, thank you for everything I'm happy about. To the point of where I think the last one is, and thank you for this water that I'm sitting in now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, I don't know who I'm saying it to, but I'm just saying it and it just makes us feel. brilliant? Well, sometimes I mean, where it was most helpful to me was when I had arse surgery. I'm so glad I waited a millisecond to take that drink of water and I'm telling you, in an alternate universe, I took that sip

a second earlier and I just covered you both in water. Why did you have arse surgery? Why do you refer to it as arse surgery? Because that's what it was. Was it external or internal? It was not external. Ah, what I would have given for external last. surgery.

I'm putting this water down. It's not the time. Do you about telling us what was it matter? No. I mean, cracky, so many people have been at my ass. It's just telling it to another group won't matter.

So I had, oh, fucking out. I had some pretty, slightly troublesome haemorrhoids inside. Okay, right? 60% of people have, in fact, we all have them.

Oh yeah. I went on in Hindu recently and all we talked about was hemorrho. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, they're fine. They're a bit of a pain. Not that bad. But exercising is difficult and I'm sort of trying to keep fit and I'm sober.

So I thought, right, get this sorted. Went to my GP. That was looking like 18 months to get anything. So I was like, okay, I'll just pay for it. I've never used private healthcare before. So I do be Googling. Went for the cheapest. Learned the very valuable lesson by cheap by twice.

Especially with our surgery. Oh man. It was medieval. It was absolutely horrible. Dawn could corners on your ass surgery. Also, you get there, you think it's going to be like stepping into a spaceship. This was like some shabby office in a back street in London. I was like, are you even a doctor?

Next thing you know, he's ramming stuff up your ass and you're like, I need this to end now. Oh my God. That didn't work. So I thought, okay, I've now got to like spend some money. So I went on the all singing, all dancing, Lasers, Nespresso machine. Private

surgery I found out is regular surgery with the Nespresso machine. Yeah, it's the same doctors. It's the same doctors that you do any days.

It's a couple of copies of town and country on the coffee book. Anyway, I get it done 24 to 48 hours discomfort according to the website and something

something didn't go right. So it was six weeks. of the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. Did you be like? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not, but it was more like, it was more like, I don't know how to describe it.

It's pain on a level that it's hard to describe. Right. Like, imagine every time you're going for a shit, it's broken glass. Oh. For six weeks. Oof. And also, on top of that, you know, we were talking about the, you know, trying not to add the second suffering of stress,

you're thinking something's gone terribly wrong, going to be like this forever. This wasn't what was written in the thing. I'm calling the, the surgeon's only available once every two weeks. Christ, what kind of working hours are they? So, private working hours. Unbelievable.

So I'm speaking to the, like, nurse, I'm going, something's really wrong here. They're like, just take the paracetamol. Like, paracetamol, you have your mind. Great. Next, we get the tramadol, then we get the lydicane. But they admit you've locked up as well.

Well, yeah. You're in a world of fucking pain, basically, with like, because every time you go to the loo, it's 10 out of 10 of the pain scale. But you can't stop yourself going to the loo because then it's 10 out of 10 of the pains. Oh my God. It was just hell, hell, hell, hell, hell. However, in that situation, and it's all fine now, by the way. Good.

That was going to be the next question. Yeah, his prophecy that it would all be fine within a year came true. Oh, yeah. But in terms of like the extreme pain, and I should have checked the small print because it was like 2% of people suffer excruciating pain. Yeah, yeah. But that's not in the sort of main blur. Anyway, in that time, which was winter, I was like, okay, this is the worst pain you've experienced. First off, it's not the worst pain anyone's experienced.

There are people who have been in worse pain than this. There are people in worse pain than this now. Yeah. Nice. You know, it's humiliating having to stick an ice pack up your butt crack, right? But I've got a freezer and I've got an ice pack. So that's good. Wow.

It took me a couple of days to get the Tramadol because you have to sign a thousand forms to get two Tramadol pills. Yeah. You've got it now and it is making it a little bit better. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the bath. I'm grateful for my central heating. I'm grateful for the fact I live alone. Right?

I'm grateful for the fact I ain't anyone around to have to witness this or to put up with it because my house is very small. So all of these things... I've told everyone about it in details since then on gigantic podcast mediums, but yes.

And like, I'm grateful for Zoom because I was able to record with Ellis. There's nowhere I could get into London. Yeah. So I'm still able to earn a living. Some people might not be able to earn a living in this sort of situation. So if you keep that mindset of what's good about this, what could be worse, suddenly, you know, this thing could spiral, really spiral.

Because being in pain, you become obsessed with not being in pain. Yeah. It's all you can think about. And I, and I'm like, okay, so let's, what are the 10 things today that have made this easier than it could be? I love that. What are the 10 things you have access to that people 50 years ago wouldn't have accessed? So suddenly, you start to. to be grateful in the period of your life where you have most reason to be ungrateful.

And that means that I'm speaking to the nurse in a calmer way. It means I'm speaking to the doctor in a nicer way. It means I'm speaking to other people in a night. So it's all, it all makes things better. Yeah. I see that all the time, don't know? It's all relative to court, it could always be worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm quite glass half full. Chris is quite like that. So now, all I'm thinking now, not to be negative on the whole situation, because I do love the gratitude thing. I know exactly going to see you. All I'm thinking now. the next time Chris has a slight pain in his backside, he's now going to think that he's that 2%

and that he's got amoroids and he's going to need surgery. That's why I don't get stuff done because I read and I go, I'll be that 2%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's worth anyone thinking about getting surgery and we do live in an age where people just Google the part of their body they don't like and think, right, I'll just have it whacked off. Yeah.

Whatever, whipped off. But like, if your flesh is being cut, there is a risk that something will go wrong. Regardless of what it is. I don't care how many people you know have had it done, how many Instagram channels have shown you how good it is. If someone is putting a knife or a laser in your skin, that's serious. I've had two C-sections.

Each time, the most terrifying thing was having to literally sign the paper word before both of them saying, you could die. Like, yes, it's, yeah, terrifying. But I was grateful for having to have. Having a baby and grateful. Tell the truth the thing you are most grateful for between both pregnancies, the thing you were most grateful for

and I was most grateful for. We know what it was. First pregnancy, the toast they made here in the hospital. Oh, yeah. Did you not get toast after the operation? Cheapest bread, cheapest butter, unbelievable. Tea and toast.

I wasn't allowed to go home on my own so Matthew Crosby had to walk me to the cheap. Oh, no way. Thank you so much for joining this. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, me.