Should I Delete That? - Boomers vs Millennials vs Gen Z? Ann Russell proves we’re not so different

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

JOIN US FOR OUR LIVE SHOW IN EDINBURGH ON 3RD SEPTEMBER! Head to SIDTLive.com for more information and to purchase tickets.How do you get a stain out of your favourite top? Why should you add a bayleaf to your pasta sauce? And why should you learn to darn a sock? One woman knows all the answers - and she’s made it her mission to share her knowledge with the world. Ann Russell is a self-described ‘middle class English old bag’… she’s a self-employed cleaner who has 2.8 million followers on TikTok, where she regularly shares cleaning and general life advice. She spoke to us about her incredible, accidental journey to TikTok fame, how she feels about the generational divide, and why she’s not afraid to speak her mind on the internet. Ann’s new book How To Be An Adult: everything you need to know about being a grown up, from bills to break-ups is out on 28th August. You can buy your copy here!Follow @annrussell03 on TikTokIf you'd like to get in touch, email us on [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceStudio Manager: Dex RoyVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Sarah EnglishMusic: Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Older people have been telling younger people their shit since the beginning of written records. This is nothing new. Hello, and welcome back to Should I Delete That? I'm Em Clarkson. And I'm Alex Light. And today, I'm asking, how do you get a stain out your favourite top? Why should you add a bay leaf to your pasta sauce? And why should you learn to darn a sock? One woman has all the answers and she's made it her mission to share them with the world.

Now, I have followed her on TikTok for years and years now. Anne Russell is a self-described middle-class English old back. She's self-employed cleaner who's built a following of 2.8 million on TikTok by sharing her practical cleaning tips and no nonsense life advice. We chatted to Anne about her unexpected rise to TikTok fame, her thoughts on the generational divide and why she's never been afraid to speak her mind online. Her new book, How to Be an Adult, is out on the 28th of August. We loved our chat with Anne and we hope you do too. Hello, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me. I already freaked out before we got onto the mics, but I have followed you on TikTok for a very long time and I will not be alone in being very excited that you're here. I hope it's not too bold to say that I always think of you as having kind of fostered the mum of TikTok role. How does that feel for you? I don't know. I don't really grieve it a great deal of thought. The thing is I do have,

as I'm sure a lot of people know, four adult children. Yeah. So it's automatic. It's why I answer questions. Yeah. I think you've probably got more than four by TikTok standards. I think a lot of them would be... As long as they don't all try and get into bed with me in the middle of the night, I don't mind. They'll show up on Christmas morning, expecting present. Oh, God, that would be so expensive. I think that might do you in. Okay, I need to ask, how did this start?

How did you start making me? Completely accidentally. I went on TikTok. It was during COVID, at the end of COVID. One of my teenage nieces had downloaded it because it was new, and I think previously she'd had Facebook where you have to ask to be a friend to see all somebody's content. Obviously, with TikTok you just follow.

I don't think Instagram ever counted because it was, I mean, I don't really get Instagram. I've got one, but I don't really understand it. So my sister said, look, can you have TikTok? And then you can just keep an eye. And if you think there's anything I should worry about, let me know, which I did. And because obviously, you know, I just made a few little TikToks because, you know, why wouldn't I? Be a bit weird if I didn't. And one of them caught.

and I think it's actually, I'm a bit of a fraud really because one of them caught and people were asking me questions and it takes time to type. And obviously it was in the day and I was working. I had my phone on me. And so it was easier to make videos in response to questions than it was to type them out. You had a very short character limit. So of course, I was making a lot of videos Because obviously if somebody asked me a question, I'll answer them, make a video, give them. And I kind of think I might have spam the algorithm into thinking I was more popular than I actually was. But, and then it just kind of grew from there.

Oh, I don't know. I think that's like the point. Yeah. There was obviously a market for it. Yeah. I think spamming the algorithm is the goal. I'm not quite sure how the algorithm works. Well, it gave you, it gave you to me or your videos to me.

So for that, I am endlessly grateful. Because it did at the beginning. You were helping people. I mean, well, yeah. And the thing is, I was making it while I was working. And, of course, I am a cleaner. I mean, I don't work as much as I did because I wasn't terribly well for a couple of years. So I'm not working anywhere like what I was, but I was working from half-past eight to half-past five every single day.

So that's what I was doing. And I think, therefore, I could show people what to do because I was doing it. Yeah. So, yeah. And we don't really, it becomes abundantly clear watching what people are asking. It's like, oh, God, none of us have a clue. Like the questions that people are asking you. And I'm like, oh, God, I feel seen and quite comforted to know that like none of us,

that particularly the beginning when I was watching your videos during that time in COVID, and it was so much like cleaning advice. I was like, none of us, none of us know what we're doing. We're all just pretending. Yeah, but I mean, A, nobody, you don't, you're not born knowing how to clean a bath for head and It's not an essential skill. And firstly, obviously when mothers tended to stay at home, children watched what their mothers did. But then life was, I'm not going to say life was more simple because it wasn't.

But cleaning was much more based on having a vacuum cleaner and a mop and a duster and a can of VIM and that was your lot. So, you know, which is largely what I still do now. But you watched what adults did because you were at home with an adult. But life isn't like that and hasn't been like that for a very long time. You know, I have always worked. I have never or very rarely been a stay-at-home mother. I've always been out at work. So, you know, and how are you supposed to know it?

It's not some divine knowledge that comes from above. So those first few videos that you posted, were they about cleaning? Do you know what? I can't know. I think the very first video I ever posted was I was, the bath and Holly was next to me on Guy Fawkes Night. Holly is your dog. Holly is my dog.

Yes, Holly is my dog. And she's not, our previous dog was terrified by fireworks and thunder. And Holly isn't terrified, but she was reacting to them. And I was just comfortable. And I thought, oh God, that's really cute. So I put it up on TikTok. And then they were just random bits of nonsense, I think, walking to work. I know I had to walk to work one morning because I couldn't cycle.

You know, there was a bit of flooding and I had to go a back route up a lane. And then somebody asked me what a bay leaf did in cooking. And among other things I have done, I have, so I answered them. What does a bay leaf do in cooking? Right. If you crack a bay leaf and smell it, it's got that very soft, smoky, like it's not a flavor that's at the front of your mouth. It's more of a smell at the back of your mouth.

And it works really well to balance out kind of sharper flavors. So you put it in like, I've actually seen this video, I think. Do you put it in tomato, would you put it in tomato sauces? Yeah, that's why you put it in tomato sauces. I am exposing myself. It's really, it really works to mellow out that kind of sharp. It gives it a wider flavor. I mean, they're lovely in things like rice puddings as well.

Oh. You start very surprised up. Yeah, because I just wouldn't have thought about. I thought it was a very savory. No. You put a bay leaf. You can put a bay leaf in a rice pudding. Oh, wow.

Okay. But it's that kind of, but it's not a. Some herbs and flavours are very kind of forward. They're right at the front of your mouth. And others are much more subtle and aromatic and they're right up at the back. And when you eat anything, you don't just want a flat. You know, sometimes you'll pick up, well, a cheap spaghetti or something and it's got one of those really cheap jarred.

And all it tastes is slightly acidic. It's not got the sweetness and the depth and the smell. of a really good tomato sauce, so you want a whole range of flavours so that they, you know, they come in at the back of your mouth and into your nose to really make them. And Bayleaf is one of those. How do you know all of this? I don't know. I mean, I have cooked professionally and I was brought up by three elderly ladies and one of them

had been a professional cook all her life. And although she didn't really teach me to cook. but obviously I watched her and did it. So my cooking when I cook, it's very old-fashioned. It's very basic, but I still maintain, you know, that some of the classic, more basic dishes, when they're done really well, are really good and worth eating. Oh, yeah, I'm a fun of a basic dish.

And my mum's like that, though. Like, I look at my mum and she's got like a, like, and I don't understand, and I hope maybe that my kids all look at me, like this, but I genuinely think with the internet and the way it's ruining us or they won't. But like I look at my mum and I think she has like a skill set that's just very hardy and like very good. Like you just know she could get things done. Like she could make a perfect bolognese and she could get a stain out of anything and she's just acquired that knowledge and I don't know if we're acquiring it. No. Do you think we're acquiring it? Yeah, but it might

not be the same knowledge. Because the things that my grandmother and my, my grandmother was born in 1904. So the things that she needed to know how to do, I did not need to know how to do. You know, she could write letters and get a lot of information in beautiful handwriting on a very small sheet of paper, you know, because she wrote, I mean, I still wrote letters, but not as much. And obviously, the telephone existed. You know, technology. changes, society changes. So things that I have learned to do are not useful now. But some things that I have learned to do may be useful in future. Learning to darn a sock is always a good skill to have. How do you darn a sock? I've heard it in the Eleanor Rigby Beatles song

and that's about the extent of it. Bear in mind that it's not just darning socks. There's all sorts of darling and mending, but, you know, sewing on a button. But basically, all you do is you've got a hole and you support it. So that hole stays still. So you can use something like a speed weave as a little mini loom that look it up rather me explaining it or a mushroom. So it stays still while you work. And you just, you lay threads, you loop them through. And then you do threads one way, you know, loop them at the end on the fabric and they go across the hole and then you do it at right angles to it. So you're like weaving a little bit of material into the hole. Is it not like a game of like whack-a-mole? You know where you like you fix one

hole and then another one will just pop up because all the pressure? If you do it well and you know what you're doing. I mean my mother, I mean, she can mend clothes that you literally cannot see the join. She's really, really good. I am less good because. a lot of fashion today is not designed to last. I don't often buy new clothing. I usually buy secondhand. And I do try to make it last. Because, I mean, fast fashion is a horrible, horrible problem.

But I think now people are relearning, knitting. I love knitting. Right. It's coming back into fashion, isn't it? It wasn't when I was a young adult, nobody knitted. Yeah. You know, we'd all spent childhoods in horribly itchy jumpers, I had anyway. You know, they even tried to knit me knickers once.

They would knit my vest and my socks, which were itchy. And then they came up this wonderful idea that they could knit a pair of... I never wore. They were horrible. Just thinking about it. My God, per knitted knickers. My granny taught me how to knit. And then, I think I said this before, she died before, I learned how to cast off.

So I had, like, finished this a really long scarf. And I was like, I don't know how to make this end. And I had to go to the, there was a knitting shop in my mom's local town and I had to go in. And I just said to the, there were like two older women there and I was like, take pity on me. She's dead now and I don't know what she's taking her skills with her and I don't know what to do. And they taught me, they helped me cast off the scarf and now I can cast off because I had to borrow two other grannies because my granny left. She checked out before I finished. So funny.

And now's it, you're right. It's so much more of a market for it. And it just feels nice. It's coming back. My grandmother's generation, they had to make their own clothes. She was making her own, when they went to school, they wore white muslin, like, cotton pinafores over their dresses to keep them clean. And she was making hers from about seven or eight.

It was really important. But then obviously, when I was growing up, every stitch I wore to school was usually, you know, my jumpers were handmade, my clothes were handmade, my grandma would make all my uniform. I looked, you look at school photographs. I mean, I practically had a sign on my head saying, please beat me up because I'm weird. You know, everyone else had lovely trendy nylon clothes from Tammy Girl and all the rest of it. And there was me. Why were you raised by three older women?

My mother and my father broke up when I was very, very young. And my grandmother insisted that I stayed with her. So I stayed with my grandmother in London. That's amazing. But she was a lot. She was 60 years older than me. So I had a very Edwardian childhood. Well, interestingly, my mother-in-law had that. And it's really, sometimes I find it like our generational differences because it's like she is, it's like she's a different generation

because she was raised by a different generation. And it's amazing how, when you see the difference between her and my mom and they're the same age, but they just raise really differently. It's kind of amazing how quickly we're changing generationally, isn't it? Oh, very much. But I mean, I don't think that's anything particularly unusual. the technology that we have certainly has changed a lot and it speeds up exponentially.

But apart from that, I think people have always changed an awful lot. My grandmother, for example, did not like my grandfather one little bit, but divorce wasn't even an option. I mean, she could have got a divorce. I mean, it wasn't that there was any legal barrier to it. But, you know, from a societal point, of you, of course she couldn't get a divorce. She was married.

That was the end of it, you know. Whereas by the time my mother was born, I mean, people just got divorced. By the time I came along, people didn't even feel the need to get married. And that's a really, we don't think of it now as being a big shift, but it was. It was a huge shift. So between probably the end of the war, in what, 45, and about 1960, it's 20 years. people's attitudes towards how they were going to live their life changed hugely. We, with all our technology, kind of tend to think,

oh, well, you know, this happened and that happened. But actually, some of the biggest shifts have happened really quickly, plenty of generations before us. That's quite nice to think that. Yeah. I keep thinking we're doomed because we're the ones that are changing everything. But it's quite nice to think, actually, loads of stuff changed already. Yeah.

And we've all been fine. Definitely. And I think like going back to like there's so much stuff that we don't know like how to darn a sock or like make our own clothes or cook. But we know we there's so much that we have now on like child psychology and parenting and we are really tuned into like children's mental health needs. And I think so I do think it's, you know. And there was things around about us. But there was a time when all women had to know how to spin wool. You know, and they would walk spinning wool because the clothes that they wore required them to spin the wall themselves. You know, you couldn't go to the shops and buy clothing. We don't need that, even if, you know, everything goes pear-shaped, there is enough clothing on this planet to keep us dressed for probably everybody dressed for the next 4,000. Even if we have to go digging in rubbish heaps for it, you know, some of that's never going to rot away. It's still there. But learning how to bring up a child without all the crap that previous, you know, has been piled on them is a good thing. It's probably more important. Can I ask how, because I feel like generationally and

we are living at a very divisive time and it does feel like it's, maybe it's because everybody's labeled, but it does feel like boomers and gen Zs and Gen X's and it feels like everyone's put against each other. And like politically it feels very different and they just feels like more division than ever. In a way, well, in a very real way, you're bridging a gap on social media because you are representing a different demographic but you're speaking to a different you're not we'll mostly speak to our own demographics online I guess that's how the echo chambers exist and how those bubbles exist but you're you kind of throw the rulebook out there because you are of a certain generation but then you speak to different generations well yes

I mean one of the problems that we've got that where this real division feels is that for For example, take this perception that children are massively at risk. And that's a real political divide at the moment. You've got people on the right, say, oh my God, you know, children at risk. Children at the turn of last century would roam as far as six miles in London. They would go a long, long way. Now, a lot of children never go more than a few hundred yards from their parents. Statistically, the biggest danger to a child now is the car. We live in a much, much, much, much, much safer society than we did even 50 years ago. Anyone who's seen the terrifying public information films about don't play with farm machinery

or don't go near large bodies of water that were aimed at scaring the pants off of children were there for a reason because children went off and roamed and they got into trouble. But you didn't hear about it. My grandmother came from an age where if a child in Yorkshire was stolen, she wouldn't know about it. It might make the London papers, maybe, but probably it wouldn't. Then people got more aware with mass media as in newspapers coming out every day. But there was a limit. But now we've got the internet.

And there is no limit to the information that you can find out. You know, the social media apps mean that if somebody looks at a child sideways in County Durham, somebody in Essex will find out 30 seconds later. because of that, it's really important that you kind of put a little bit of balance in there because you do get people saying, I've heard it's, oh, it was wonderful then. They were the good old days. We were safe. You could play in the street.

Actually, they weren't as good as you think. I know I was there. You could play in the street because there weren't that many cars there, but actually, no, it wasn't this wonderful iddle and it's really important to kind of communicate that stuff. It feels nice though, it feels like you're... And I don't like that it's on like sides, but it does feel like when I watch your videos,

you are like a voice of reason, but it does feel like you're on our, use that term loosely, side, because, you know, we say this a lot, like very often if we're asked to go and have a conversation on a TV show or whatever, It's always angled as a debate and it feels like so much of it has to be a fight. So it does feel very nice in a very passive way.

You speak or you just exist in a way that sort of supports people from a different generation without feeling like it's a fight with them or like you're always disagree. I mean, we all know, gladiators are very exciting to watch, but you don't get a lot from it, really, other than a dead gladiator. And, you know, that's not actually terribly beneficial. like it or not, the tribe, the pool of humanity just gets bigger when you add in social media. And the whole point of that is to support and communicate with each other and learn from each other. I mean, I am hopeless with technology. I'm really, really bad at this stuff.

and it's not that I don't have the capacity to learn but I don't learn I don't think because it doesn't matter that much to me I know I know some of the creators are really good at editing they've got these massive editing suites and all this stuff I can't do it for Toffee and I keep thinking and I just get cross halfway through and think oh this is ridiculous why am I doing it and the answer is because I don't really want to edit

anything particularly. I don't, I'm not, I'm not really interested in that. I'm much more interested in just communicating quite clearly. And that's what your audience wants, right? They're not after fancy editing or like slick videos. Well, I really hope not because they're a completely they want your voice and your opinion. That's what, that's what's interesting about your account. I mean, I do, I try to be fairly reasonable. I try to, bear in mind, I don't think of it as being an audience. It's only ever me and one other person. There's a little gremlin that lives in my phone. And that's the person I'm talking to. And other than that, I don't really think of it in any other way. Which is good. But then does it not sometimes alarm you when you see how many,

I mean, your followers are in the millions. Is that not a bit like, ah, no, it's not. There was a point when they got to about 50,000, and I thought, it's quite a lot of people. But then after that, I thought, well, this is stupid because actually, it's not. It's just a number on a screen. It just means that many people have clicked the follow button. It doesn't mean that any one video that many people are looking at me because the video numbers, you can see who've watched it. And most of those won't have watched the whole video.

You only have to go into the comment section to realize that most people who comment have only probably watched, you know, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Bane of our lives. Constantly saying to people. The news is watching the whole video. That's the whole video. Yeah. And then there are the people who go in just for arguments, you know, they're not really

interested in what you've got to say. They go in there for a jolly good argument. Go ahead, you know, let them. But it's not a real thing, you know. It's not. It feels abstract to you. It's very abstract. Like I said, there's only ever me and maybe one or two people on the other end of the

phone. Other than that, it's just a meaningless number. That's a perspective. I think we could do that every now and then. TikTok is particularly bad for, I'm ever going to say debate, just like straight up arguments, right, isn't it? And often that can lead in, that can sort of end up in nastiness because I think, I think TikTok is the most anonymous platform in terms of people just having anonymous accounts and not having a face or name connected to their account. Do you come across that a lot? Do you find there's a lot?

I do, oddly enough, Facebook I find is the worst for people just being. downright rude. I mean, I'm rude on Facebook, but not unless somebody else is rude, if you know what I mean. But I get really annoyed on Facebook when you've got, for example, there was the thing about somebody put up something about CMAT. And all it was was a lot of middle-aged women being rude about the way she looked. And that's like, why are you being rude? You know, have you seen yourself? You are literally criticizing somebody. for looking like you do. Why are you doing this?

What is the point of you doing it? Does it make you feel better? Do they reply when you ask them that? Sometimes they get really offended when I'm really rude. So I'm not being rude because I don't know you. I'm sure you're a lovely person. But you have just been rude about somebody you don't know. And I'm giving you back exactly what you dished out and you don't like it.

Maybe you'd like to think about that. TikTok is more most, you know when it's a troll account. Mostly the really nasty ones are either young people, I will say. I recognise them. And it's just like, you know what? If you're 13, 14, you think you're edgy, knock yourself out, kid. You'll grow out of it. It's fine.

I love that. And sometimes it's just obvious troll account. You just think, really, whatever. If they're particularly vicious, I will delete them. But I don't really care. If they're personal or does it ever get to you? Never. No.

Why would it? Permit. No, never met them. They've never met me. No. Why should I care what some anonymous person thinks about me from little minute clips they've seen on social media? Yeah.

To go to the ones that you're saying about on Facebook, who are going for women's appearances because I saw your video on obviously I did because I'm a creep but Lola Young and CMAT there like you were saying about the commentary about their appearances I have noticed a trend in this

we talked about it recently where people who quite frankly are old enough to be my mom keep sending me really quite nasty messages about how I look and I just think what an odd thing but I wonder if you've seen it

and if you have what you think about it I don't understand where that's coming from because it does seem to be quite a specific It really is, isn't it? And it's a really specific. It does come from men as well. They are just feel, and I'm not sure where it. Number one, I think they feel it's that tall poppy syndrome, isn't it? That if you have allowed yourself to exist in the public eye, you are open to criticism. It's not criticism. It's ridiculous.

perhaps they feel that you are being given a chance that they didn't have or wouldn't have dared. I'm really not quite sure where, but they really are. I want to be careful that I'm not like generalising, but it does feel like, you know, you sometimes see these videos online on TikTok or whatever of people sort of taking the piss out of their moms. And it's like their mom's generation how they can't help but just say the mean thing. But I do feel increasingly, like, people are just saying the mean thing to me. And I'm like, do you, hey, are you proud of this? Like, when it's just like something just, it feels really unnecessary.

And I just think, are you hurting? Like, or do we just not know how, have we just not got the etiquette of using I think maybe they just get some little kick out of it. Do you think? Yeah, I think maybe it's just slightly exciting in very sad and boring lives, perhaps. Maybe, yeah. But, you know, you can sit on your computer and just be really rude about people. and it doesn't occur to a lot of them that we can see them.

Yeah. Because, you know, you go on to an obvious trial, use a 973, 34, 621 and there's nothing. It's just a number. There's no, so there's nothing. But a lot of these people, they've got, you know, they've got open public profiles. You can see their grandchildren and their dogs and their husband and their car. You can see their whole lives right out there in public. I don't think they are aware of that.

I think that because they are in the space of their living room when they're doing it, they don't realize that they're so public. So they sit there getting a little thrill out of being really vicious to people, completely unaware that actually, you know, people can go and look at them, you know, what the rest of it. And yeah. And then when you do throw it back at them, you know, I can't remember what it was, One of the women says something about C-MAT who's come out.

And it's a stage costume. She's on stage. You know, what do you want her to wear? A nice knee-length frock from Matalan and comfy sandals and sit on a chair. I mean, if she wants to do that, good luck to her. But they'd have something to say about that as well. Yeah, of course they would. But, you know, they did to Sarah Milliken years ago.

She picked up an award in a dress and she said, I've got an award for doing me job. I thought it was a lovely dress. Yeah. But then you come back and you say, well, why are you saying that? you know, your fashion sense is awful. You look like wearing a pair of curtains. And then they get really, really funny about it. It's like I said.

You started it. You started it. Yeah. Let me finish it for you. Yeah. Again, when we talk about like the sort of generation divide, it does feel quite often that younger people are vilified and kind of invalidated. And it's like we're all cities and snowflakes.

and we all get anarches in a twist for everything. We've all got rubbish mental health and we're all just need to put man up or whatever. That's the sort of general rhetoric. Doesn't feel like you feel like that. Just obviously to stress, how do you feel about these, our generations, millennials, Gen Z, like how do you feel objectively looking at it?

Are you proud of us? Are you worried about us? You are the same as every other generation. This has been an argument between older people and younger people. Older people have been telling younger people their shit since the beginning of written records. This is nothing new. You trawl back through history, and it is a thing.

It has always been thus. There is nothing new whatsoever. And actually, when you look at younger people, when you're older, if you can't see them doing the same things that you did, I mean, it is sometimes frustrating when you see young people making the mistakes that you did, but then you don't learn from other people's mistakes. You only ever learn from your own. and who would believe old people because obviously, you know, but it's nothing new, you know.

And you can't generalise as well. That's the other thing that it seems to be that somehow older people have a tendency and always have had a tendency. This is nothing new to view all people as these little things that come out of a cookie cutter and they, that young people all think this and all do that. and they just, I'm not sure quite well, I think maybe people's curiosity atrophies after a certain age and then they just don't spot that their own life hasn't changed a lot so they don't understand the world has changed. I'm not quite sure. I think you're probably right though

there. Yeah, it's also probably psychologically quite challenging as well if you've lived your whole life decades and decades one type of way and that's being challenged by a young generations who are living a different way. It's probably some cognitive dissonance there, right? It's got to be very, very difficult. I take the smacking children debate, which hopefully is far enough on now that you, but, you know, if you think about it, if you were brought up and your parents smacked you hard for things, but you knew your parents loved you and you still loved your parents,

it's got to be very difficult when somebody suddenly tells you that that was wrong and that was abuse because you love your parents and you don't think they abused you because you still loved them and you knew they loved you. And so you don't understand it. Therefore, rather than say, I'm glad we've moved on and yes, I know they loved me, but they only did that because they thought it was right. It's a shame they didn't know better.

but now I know better, I will do better. But rather than that, it's much easier for them just to deny that there was any problem. Yeah. And then their childhood goes back into focus. Yeah, I think also I noticed this, it's becoming a mum. And I don't want to put words into people's mouths, but I quite often assume or think that maybe some of it comes from parents doing something that they thought was best. Research comes out to show maybe there is a better option and they feel guilty that they didn't do the better thing. I mean, I wish I hit.

If I could bring up my children again, which I absolutely wouldn't because I'm 60 and they're exhausting, I would of course do it completely differently. Would you? Because, yeah, because the way that I was brought up by a generation who believed that sparing the rod, spoiled the child, I was never hit as a child. But, you know, you had to be quiet. You had to sit down. Children should be seen and not heard. And you sit down quietly with your hands in your lap and you did what. you were told. I came from that. So I let my children probably run riot more than was good for

them because the word boundary to me just meant something you put round a field to stop sheep getting out. You know, I didn't know because it wasn't a thing. Most of my family, in fact, is quite neurodivergent. That wasn't a thing when mine were children. You know, ADHD was something that was really only discussed, oh, I don't know when the very youngest of mine was a teenager, when I was a child, autistic children were all nonverbal and they were all looked after in hospitals. That was the limit of it. None of this stuff was known and understood. I understand it now.

So, of course, I would do it differently because I have more knowledge than I have then. I know better, so I would do better. But I didn't know. So, you know. You're very level on that. I know, and it's nice to hear you say that because I don't think there are many people of your generation who would admit to that. Because it's easier, it is easier, isn't it, to avoid that cognitive dissonance and just to say, no, no, no, it was all fine. It was all fine. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not opening that lid.

Like, I was fine. I was good. Like, it's harder to make ease of the fact that you. Number one, I can't change it. And number two, I didn't know. How could I have done? differently because I didn't know. If I had known then, I would have done differently. But I did not know. So you can't, I know there's always this big row. And I mean, it's one of those ones that you get sometimes when they talk about people marrying and having children very young in previous generations. And obviously that was not good. But if then they did not know, they did not understand, you know, what's the, you know, you can't, you can't act with knowledge that you don't have. Do you think you've always been this like sort of, like willing to learn or willing to be

wrong or like, you know, they say like people get sort of more, I guess conservative in every sense as they get older. But following you, it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like you've got a very open-minded approach to everything, yourself, everyone around you. is always fun. Yeah, but have you always been like that? Or do you think being online's making you more like that? Or is it? I don't. I know. I think I've always been fairly open to learning. Yeah. And I don't think that all, yeah, there's always that thing, isn't it? Older people get more conservative. Well, some of them do, for sure. But a lot of them don't. Well, I actually wish we heard from more of those. Because when you look at people like the marches and the

protests and the just ophoil and the pro-Palestin, you keep seeing all these older people the rest of them. I'm like, why aren't they on the news? The only are all the people we ever hear from are the one saying, you'll get right wing one day when you get old. And it's like, there are plenty of people. Sorry, just to jump in. No, there are. You look at it. There's loads and loads because they're pensioners. They know what they believe in. They've got the time. You know, they're not going to get fired. They gave up work 20 years ago. They care about what's being handed down. And they know that they need to stand up to the mark. But so it's not universal, and it never has been universal.

A lot of the people that I know have simply the older they've got, the more left wing they've got because that's, and there was a thing that came up, oh, a few years ago about JK Rowling. And it's like, well, yeah, sure, probably in the, you know, the early 2000, I would have agreed with her with trans people. I would have absolutely said, oh, that's, that's weird. but I listened. I read. I listened. I thought about it. I sat with it. I listened to people. And therefore, my position changed. I don't understand how people can become so wedded to a position. It almost seems like the more proof they're given that their position is wrong, the more deeply connected, they're frightened to let go of it. I'm not quite sure. what they get from that, surely it's much easier just to say, oh God, that's really interesting.

I haven't thought of it like that. Humans are very good at that. I know you're busy, but would you ever run for politics? I'll be so bad at it. I'm so scatty and dishorganized. I don't think you would. I think you would. I think this is a perspective that's just so unheard. And I know, I know. you know, you've got a huge take-talk audience. So obviously there's a market for it. Obviously people want to hear from you. But I just think it's really refreshing and it's frustrating that it's that we don't have these conversations more. I mean, I think they are out there. That's the thing. They are out there. And the other problem is that people don't want, everybody wants easy answers. You know, everybody wants, and they all want it their way. And especially in

things like politics, which relies on compromise. Absolutely. It has. to compromise. This is something, and I do cover this in the book, and it was, especially because I was writing it around the time of the election, and I did know that a few people, quite a lot of people didn't know how the political process worked. And then, of course, it was that Labour were coming up and they were offering a manifesto that was more right wing than a lot of people wanted. And I kept trying to point out, yes, it's not as left wingers. personally would like. But they have to, in order to enact any change, they have to be elected to power. There is nothing the opposition can do. They can't change anything at all.

They can maybe hold the government to account, but they can't change it. They can argue their position, but they have no power. They are. And in order to get voted in, it's all very well somebody coming and saying, well, you can have everything that you want, but they have to offer something that Mr. Bloggs across the road also wants. And I might want every mouse to have free cheese. But Mr. Bloggs might own a cheese factory. He doesn't want every mouse to have free cheese. He wants every mouse to pay five pence to their cheese. So at some point, and if half the country is Mr. Bloggs and half is me, then at some point we've got to come to an agreement in the middle, which means that any political party is going to have to offer policies that appeal

to a broad selection of people. So everybody gets something that they want, but doesn't get everything that they want. So we're all a bit happy, but nobody's ecstatic. And of course, the arguments come across what we think matters here, there and everywhere and how we go better, and they can get quite heated, and they often involve people, you know, pulling back into their positions. How do you feel the reception is when you, when you sort of communicate that online? Because we see it increasingly that it's incredibly binary. Absolutely.

And I'm sure you do as well. It is an incredibly frustrating position to be in. If you want to work in any kind of activism, because, you know, you're speaking with complete rationale there, which makes perfect sense. and there's a reason why politicians have to do what politicians do. And a lot of them suck and a lot of them are trying their best and somewhere in between we get the rules. But how do you feel?

First of all, are you met with a lot of resistance? When you try and explain things like that and try and educate people and have that conversation, do you find that you just come up against binaries and binaries or do you think you're given a bit more free reign to explain these things? I think you do come up against the binary a lot. But I figure there's no point. not doing it because it would be very easy either says, shut up, retreat to either position or just

carry on. Because ultimately, I am very, very, very privileged. It doesn't actually affect me in my day-to-day life. I get up, I walk the dog, I go to work, I do my stuff, I go home, I have dinner, I go to bed, that's my life. It doesn't really affect me. So I can preach that at no cost myself. Now, I am very, very aware that there are people who cannot do that because they are doing it at a massive cost to themselves, that their very existence is caught up in this and it matters. So I do understand that for a lot of people, this is not abstract, this is really, really personal. And that very often in this, we forget that people's lives, their existence, is caught up in it. But it doesn't make it any the less truthful that despite people's lives

being caught up in it, with trans people, for example, they are a tiny minority of people. They absolutely deserve to have all of their human rights. But I can't, and I preach for trans rights all the time, because I literally cannot understand why anybody cares it. To me, it's the most uncontrovert. There are things that are so uncontroversial. I do not understand why people are even arguing about them, but argue they do. But I also know that if you are not careful, because it has been made a hot button issue, that if, for example, There is a large portion of, you know, let's, I'm pulling these figures out of nowhere.

But for example, if 50% of the women develop this gender critical idea and will not vote for a party that is going to say, be trans, it's fine. We accept all your preferred gender. There's no problems that. Then you won't get that party in power. You will get the ones that say, oh, no, no, no, no. Nobody can do that and make people's existence even harder. So sometimes, you know, you have to make those really difficult choices.

And sometimes the words that come out of people's mouths do not quite line up with the things that they are actually doing. And you have to be very careful about that. It's very, very easy to listen to people who have no skin in the game and will never get a policy enacted. And it's something else. So, you know, small parties who know, fine well, they will never be in power, can offer manifestos offering anything. It's very, very easy

to stand there and say, we would stop the boats, we would stop illegal immigration, we would do that. They know that they could not do that, but it doesn't matter because they're never going to because they're never going to be asked to do it. Yeah. Of course, there are bad people coming in from abroad. We know that. Why? Do we suddenly, I'm not naive enough to think that everybody who lives on foreign shores is wonderful and lovely. I know full well that any population anywhere in the world has people who, quite frankly, are not very nice. And it would be very nice if none of them turned up on our shores seeking sanctuary. But of course they will. Along with all the people who be a wonderful asset to our country, of which the large majority will be. They just want to

come here, come to a place of safety, work hard, look after their families, pay their taxes. There will be among them bad people. But you can't tell who those bad people are by just eyeballing them. You don't get in a little rubber dinghy and come across the channel unless that's really dangerous and people know it. And women and children do come across that way. They're not doing that for fun. So, you know, you can't make these ridiculous statements. You can acknowledge, yes, of course, we have people coming here from abroad who are not very nice.

We don't really want them here. But we're not going to help anybody by trying to say that the only way is to lock ourselves down. That's not going to work. all we can do is do the best that we can do. And as climate change happens, and I've been saying this for 20 years, more and more people are going to be coming from areas of the planet that are becoming less and less habitable. And they are coming now because of walls and because of pressures such as that.

But if it continues, and if the planet continues heating, they will be coming by the million and the million. and the million, and they won't be coming in small boats, they'll be coming in gunships, and they will really mean business because there won't be much of the planet that we can live on. So either we now understand that the livable world is changing, and we need to adapt to that, and we need to look at how that will work going forwards, or what? Because we can't survive on our own. If we put a, you know, a wall around Britain, we can't survive on our own. We have to communicate with the rest of the world, and the world is changing.

When you share these political thoughts and, like, have these conversations online, what's the reaction? Some people agree with me. There's always people on either side who think that I am somehow betraying them. Interestingly, most of the vicious trolling comes from people who think I'm some left woke. Yeah, I am. But also seem to think that I don't understand. One of the biggest criticisms I get is, oh, you live in a lovely, quiet little rural town.

Well, yes, I do, but that doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I do spend a lot of time in London. I, you know, I am fully away. I have eyes. Yeah. Yeah. I can read. Yes, that's it. I'm not, you know, like I said, I am not naive.

But you're being naive by just thinking that, sure. there are places where immigration does cause a problem. There is no doubt about that. But the answer to that isn't to try and stop immigration. It's trying to deal with a flaming problem. And the problem is not the immigrants. It's the fact that we are not learning to deal with them. We need to deal with it. So you should be in politics. I think you should be in politics. 100%. Have you got a second wind? Just career change now. Pivot. I'll be 62 in a few ways. You'd be really good, though.

And I think you'd have a lot of people voting for you. Before we let you go, can I ask you a question about your first career? Yeah. Which is cleaning, right? Yes. Yeah. This is a big pivot. Sorry, did you have anything else to ask?

Probably, but you go ahead. If you're going to ask something specific about cleaning something specific, aren't you? Yeah. Okay, what is there to do it? Well, no, I'm just interested in, like, because I'm not very good at cleaning. Like, I do it, but I'm not good at it, you know? And it's not a passion. I really don't love doing it.

Right. But I get confused now because you go into the supermarket and there are shelves and shelves of products, right? There are like a million of products to do the same thing and I get very confused. Do you need to have a cupboard full of all of these cleaning products? What are the essentials? Can you just break it down? You can. Biggest pivot. No one's gone from immigration to the cleaning aisles of the supermarket. Is it too much? I'm sorry. In the quickest succession is that. There is a huge connection there. Of course there is. Because sometimes the answer is fairly simple. And it is. You can do, bear in mind that all of those products are formulations. They smell different. They look different. But a lot of them do the same job. And you can do a lot of cleaning with a bowl of

hot soapy water and a cloth and a pair of rubber gloves to keep your hands. Nice. There are some things that you will need, for example, cleaning your oven. You will probably need an oven cleaner unless you you wipe it out every time you use it. No. I'm prepared to bet all the money I ever earned. I don't wipe it out every time. I can't know. There's better things to do than worry about that.

Limescale, if you live in London and most of the country, you will have limestone. And the easiest way to get rid of that, and in fact, the most sensible thing, is to use a limestone removing spray. It is a acidic chemical spray that chemically dissolves it. And other than that, it depends on your life. and how clean you want to be. Not that clean. No, because, I mean, some picture,

I get that some people love to have an immaculate space, but it takes an awful lot of time. Just as Photoshop ruined the self-image of a whole generation of teenage girls who believed what they saw with all the... and are still believing that what they see online is real. It's happening with people's houses as well. You've got influencers who rent space,

you've got justice. I mean, this is, again, it's nothing new. You know, when you buy a copy of, say, homes and gardens or country livings and you open Mrs. X and Y and their wonderful Pottswold country home and they show you these beautiful pictures of the kitchen with the Arga and the flowers and the spaniel, you know, you know full well, the camera's here and over the photographer's shoulder is a mountain of crap that they've had to move out of shot to make the shot. So I'm accepting, as long as you are clean enough to be healthy, you know, try and keep the food, you know, food waste out the way because it will attract mice and cockroaches.

You know, if you don't smell, if you haven't got mice and cockroaches, if you're not, you know, untidy, it's quite nice if you've got a tidy home. If you can find your stuff, some people don't mind. Some people mind a lot. As long as in your own home, you feel comfortable and you feel safe and you are safe, that's a big thing, then fine. It's your home. It's nobody else's. You have it the way you like. Before we let you go, I'm not going to pull us straight back to politics and immigration because that would be a little bit. So sorry. I'm seasick, probably. But your new book, How to Be an Adult, is obviously helping young people. with pressing questions such as these.

But also, as you say, you're talking about politics and helping educate us politically and educate people politically because there are gaps in a lot of our knowledge. I think we'd all probably be aligned to say that we're missing huge chunks of our education when it comes to actually living. Do you feel overwhelmingly positive or pessimistic

about the future, young people, the internet, what we know, what we don't know, from where you're sitting, do you think we're going to be all right? With a couple of massive caveats, I do think that the need for climate action was 20 years ago. And I do think that unless something is done about that, we already know that the physical world is going to change beyond belief because of the rising temperature of the climate. That is a given. It is happening right now. there is it is and you can't just stop it you can't there's a good lag even if we'd stopped all

carbon emissions like that tomorrow it would still carry on for about 10 years so that's going to happen which means i'm hoping and i think it will be that young people will adapt because they're and i think young people are more willing to adapt if you look at this resistance to change it is all coming from older people who don't seem to understand it's unnecessary, like I said, with the immigration thing. It is going to happen one way or the other, not just for us across anywhere that is in a more habitable zone of the planet. Most people who are alive at that point will have to live there. So it's going to happen everywhere and a band around it. And we are going to have to get used to it. And I do think that young people,

people have got the ability to understand that and to start to plan and deal with it. And it's the older people who don't understand it and don't want to because they have so much capital, emotional and otherwise tied up in not changing it. It's like not accepting that probably you shouldn't have belted your children when they were five, you know. Yeah, it's a bit of a mirror. You don't want to admit that you were wrong. Yeah.

So basically young people will be fine. It's just the... Yeah, I think so. I mean, I do think that there is going to be a rough timer coming ahead for humanity as a whole. I really, really do. I think we have the technology to deal with it. I think that younger people have the will to deal with it. And I think that they have the energy to deal with it.

But I do think that it's going to be a problem because at the moment, power... is with those who don't want to change it, people who would rather fly to Mars and live there than deal with a problem right here. Please, run for all this fix, please. If we do anything away from it. Oh, I've just upset half the country by half of that. Yeah, but by the second half, we'll be ready to vote for you. So I think we'll have to just sign you up, just do a little mallet.

Thank you so much, Anne. Your book is out on the 28th of August. to be an adult. It is. Very exciting. We'll put the link in the show notes. Sorry for the cleaning whiplash, everyone. Honestly, I really don't mind. I never have minded. Thank you so much. Thanks, thank you. Should I delete that as part of the ACAST creator network?