Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 98: Anne Fish

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Anne Fish is a mum of two sons... and a pro gamer.  When her younger son Benjy won a Fortnite tournament aged 14, he also won thousands of dollars and it became clear it was a serious sport that he wanted to pursue. Anne made the decision to homeschool him fromt he age of 15, to make room for the late-night tournaments and the long hours of practice that Benjy had to put into gaming. She also got more involved in Fortnite herself. As a self-confessed workaholic she put hours of practice in, became a pro herself in 2019, and now makes a living from it.  It's a far cry from her situation when Benjy had just been born and her older son was just 7, when her husband died, and she'd lost their business and their home. At one point she was doing car boot sales to buy food for the following week.Anne advises getting more involved in whatever your kids are interested in - whether that's playing piano, playing a conventional sport or in this case gaming. She's the living emboiment of that - and it's brought her great and unexpected personal success. She now owns the house they'd once rented, on an island in the River Thames, where we met to chat. And if you listen out, Benjy can occasionally be heard gaming in the next room, during our conversation!Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Yo, hello. It's me and it's you. And this is Spinning Plates. And well well I've really been living the life today the plates have been spinning I brought an album out a week ago Hannah album number seven and I've been spending the time either promoting the record which has actually been a lot of fun um or home here with the kids

doing kid things and organizing parent teacher meetings and doctor's appointments and all sorts of stuff like that excuse me sorry I just I've got a bit of a cough because I just I'm trying to sorry this is really middle-aged I got some shoes the other day and I love them but they're a little bit tight and I tried the next size up too big so I'm going to, I'm trying to stretch them. So I bought like these sort of wooden shoe stretcher things and some spray. And the spray is really caught in my throat. So it's sort of, well, basically it's made my throat feel smaller.

So I hope it doesn't make my shoes feel smaller. Maybe the spray is to bring them in, not stretch them out. Anyway, yeah, richard's been away this week so it's been very much kind of one end of the spectrum to the other so for example yesterday richard and i did some djing we went to bed finished at half midnight was home about quarter past one couldn't sleep so i fell asleep at half two and then was up at seven to get the kids up for school and I just feel a bit like come on and then today the album charted and it's gone in at number eight which is absolutely flipping amazing actually so I'm super chuffed to have you know

this album I've done so well and everybody who's been working on the project's been working really hard and had some lovely feedback and how am I going to celebrate this momentous occasion? You know, this is my fourth Top 10 album. Amazing. Well, I'm going on a school camping trip. Yes, I am currently looking at all their little clothes. I'm getting things together. I've just done one kid's clothes. I've got to do another kid's clothes. Downstairs, I've got an ice box I found in the attic I'm putting in bits and bobs for the trip it's a complete mess I feel like I've only got an hour left before I was going to pick him up from school I am going to forget something and that's how I'm spending my weekend well almost but not quite it's a two-night camping trip tonight Richard and I going with the kids and

tomorrow someone is going to come Jessica our au pair is going to come take over from me and Richard so that we can go to Cambridge for a festival tomorrow night because the kids wanted to stay on at the campsite that's the weekend but it is beautiful weather here in London town today and I'm feeling good and boy oh boy have I got a wonderful guest for you today so I'm sure I'm repeating myself here, but right from the beginning of doing this podcast, my intention was always to speak to some women who you might know already, and then speak to some women that I can introduce you to. And I was always looking for exciting, interesting, crazy tales, you know, and not everybody is out there living. it's not all about people

living charmed lives it's not all about high achievers even though we do feature lots of women who've like outdone themselves they are incredible human beings but some people I've spoken to they're just doing something really interesting I don't know for example by the way I'm not diminishing that they're not achieving things I just mean it's the stories that I hope that I can entice you towards um the people behind it so when I say um that I'm thinking about um Sylvia who I spoke to who had been burnt very badly when she was a child and that really transformed her entire life and she ended up showing extraordinary strength by completely embracing her body that for so long had been something that she felt held back by I'm thinking of Amelia who's the circus performer who

finds herself now being a horse acrobat I want incredible life and today well Anne Fish has got an amazing story and I really enjoyed speaking to her and And like so many of my guests, she's got this incredible inner strength because actually she has, she's had to walk through the odd fire. She's got two boys who are now 18 and 22. I think I'm right. Very sadly, when her younger boy was only small, under a year old, actually, her husband died. He had a very short experience with cancer and sadly that meant that he lost his life when Anne had only the second baby boy and very small baby. So that left her with an immense weight on her shoulders, you know, the responsibility of raising her boys,

even though she was grieving and also found herself unable to provide for them at times. Anyway, the reason I got in touch with her is because I was talking to my kids and I said, what job would it be interesting for a mum to be doing that I speak to? Like, what occupation would you be intrigued by? And one of them, I think it might have been Jesse, actually, he's seven, he said gamer. And I thought, oh, actually, yeah. So I started doing a little bit of light research. And I stumbled across Anne's story. And I absolutely loved it. So Anne's second son is known on YouTube as Benji Fish he became a very successful Fortnite player bear with me I will explain whatever these things are if you don't not

familiar with them so through Fortnite he and his success at the challenges and competitions he was entering you know winning serious money here and decided to manage him he ended up stopping conventional school and being homeschooled so that he could continue his gaming because it's crazy hours but he was being very successful at it anyway present day benji who's still living at home with his mum he now has moved out of fortnight he doesn't do fortnight more he does other games however anne has become something of a gamer herself and she now plays Fortnite and in fact has been signed by a Dubai-based esports company as one of their content providers.

So this is a crazy story. Even more crazy when I meet Anne and, you know, no disrespect to gamers or non-gamers, but she does not strike you as somebody that you think is going to know her way around Fortnite. We went to find her on this beautiful little house on one of the little islands you get just off the Thames. And we're wandering around, like, trying to find the house. See through the window, this lady, she sat there with a blanket on her lap,

a hot water bottle on her lap, and a game controller in her hand playing Fortnite. Just flipping brilliant. I love it. And she's really good at it by the way does live streams all that kind of thing so what do you need to know for this i think most of the stuff even if you don't know the reference in terms of the gaming or the gamer sorry about the drilling outside by the way you'll pick up what she's talking about the only thing i think you might want to know about is what fortnight is i know what fortnight is because my not my eldest actually my second one down kit who's now 14 he got really into fortnight uh fortnight is it's actually really good fun i like it basically you are a character you can choose what your skin is you can choose how you present in the

game you have a series of weapons but they're done in a kind of cartoony way so you might have a bazooka or a laser gun or things like this or i don't know an axe or whatever and you basically you are battling other people who are also in this game on this landscape so you get dropped onto what is like a map you run around you try and eliminate your competitors and the last person standing is the winner of that fortnight battle and my kids played it richard plays it with them sometimes i actually like it it also has elements of dance in there because the characters you can buy little dances for them to do lots of musicians give their music to fortnight marshmallow's done a gig in fortnight ariana grande's done a gig in fortnight Ariana Grande's done a gig in fortnight um you know it's it's a whole world out there anyway sorry I feel like I've kind of probably whipped around the head

with a lot of information but I wanted to set up a little bit because I think it you know it's interesting to me that I like how I find some of my guests basically and I'm so thrilled that I found Anne and that she then said yes to talking to me because I always love it when people can surprise you and it reminds you doesn't it that you could be sat next to someone on the bus in a cafe or whatever and you can have a glance over and you think you know who that person is and you just never flipping no and the fact that anne has not only embraced her love of gaming it's not only good at it but she's also it's actually given her more confidence and given her more friends and sort of i just think if anne can do it anybody can find access to that thing that just empowers them like that's that's really special for an it's

fortnight what's your thing anyway i will leave you with um with ann and i i'm going to get back to finding the stuff for the camping trip wish me luck well thank you so much i'm so excited to be meeting you. Thank you for coming all the way down here. Well, it's a beautiful part of the world you live in. But also, I think your story and what you're up to is absolutely amazing. I don't know if you realise quite how inspiring I find the fact that you've become a gamer yourself, but also you've obviously got this incredible bond with your boys. So why don't we start with the here and now?

What are you up to at the moment? At the moment, I am just busy playing Fortnite. So very exciting. I've actually, Epic Games has given me my own Creator Cup, which is actually tomorrow, on Friday the 17th. So I'm actually going to be playing with Benji and Mr. Savage. So I'm so excited because Benji has quit Fortnite. So he's retired and he's now playing Valorant.

He's trying to become a pro in Valorant. So he literally hasn't played Fortnite for months. And so he's actually coming out of retirement to play with me and his old duo mr savage so that gives some context to retirement how old is benji uh 18 18 but no retired from fortnite yes i understand as a professional esports player so his goal is to become a professional in um in valorant but no so i I am basically playing Fortnite most of the time as a content creator for Galaxy Racer. So I'm signed with GXR.

And also trying to become a professional myself. Amazing. But it is, it's a bit like, it's still going to take like another 18 months to two years to achieve that i reckon from a skill level okay so literally coming from someone that has never played a game before in my life it's not like you know most of the children nowadays you know you give them a phone at the age of two or three you know they're on there sort of like playing they know exactly what to do yeah they pick up a game they can instantly play it yeah no yeah I'm coming from a complete standing start so although I've been playing from two years

it is like learning from scratch so it's a slow process so um yeah so I'm putting in the same amount of hours that most pro esports players are doing so I'm practicing for like six to eight hours a day wow on all the different like mechanics aiming all that sort of thing as well as then doing my streaming and content creation sort of thing so and then managing benji traveling we've just uh booked to go to to san diego dream hacks just announced um a land event in san diego so um so we're going there in april and things so yeah so what motivates you to want to take it to that level rather than just be someone that plays for fun what's this what's the shift i think we've discovered that i am very competitive i am you say we you mean as a family um no probably the people that i play with generally like my duo my mods and everything i'm probably benji and so so it's not

benji's being a pro gamer that's necessarily inspired me to do this. I want to be the best. Yeah, I can see that. That I can. So, yeah, I really want to prove that I can be up there and play at that level. At the moment, there's no way. I mean, people just, like, walk all over, run all over me. So what I have to do is use strategy.

So everyone thinks of Fortnite as very much, you know, obviously going there, frag out, sort of eliminate players, you know, sort of box. But there's actually a lot more strategy to it as well. So you've got to, like, plan rotations where you're going to land, you know, sort of. So I can do all of that sort of thing. Yeah.

So it's, and then I've just got to get the mechanics and the aim and the everything up to the same level as that and yeah because I mean I actually understand a lot of what you're talking about I don't know to what extent um everybody listening would so I have um five children and there's a lot of gaming that goes on in my house and i think for for me it's absolutely no surprise because richard and i are both quite techie i i've always i like games as well i i haven't really moved with the times as in i have an actual game boy i don't mean like a nintendo switch i mean the original yeah battery powered no backlight game Boy that I travel with I'm still on the sort of Tetris

side of things but my kids play Fortnite and other games as well on Sunday night I couldn't find Richard my husband and he was playing Fortnite on his own all the other kids were with me so you know the sound of the Fortnite game

going off in that room is very familiar to me. I know what the map looks like. I know what the characters look like. I have got one connection to Fortnite, actually. It's my own. A while back they did a boogie down challenge where everybody could enter a dance routine that would hopefully, if they won won be turned into an emote all right so the little dance routines you know that you can see on screen

and um so i did a little dance that i filmed and entered and i think they took slight pity on me because of the people that entered i think being a sort of uh I think at the time I was probably in my late 30s uh wearing a sequin jumpsuit um I don't think there were many people in my category so I came 14th um in the uh fortnight boogie down challenge and I won 6 000 vbucks and really disco oh my god yeah oh my god that's amazing it's great fun it's amazing. It's quite fun, isn't it? It's amazing, yeah. But you have taken, and I mean, I think it's really interesting what you're saying,

that this isn't really, obviously you're introduced to the world of gaming in that professional way through one of your son's passions. Yeah. But now it's become something that's very personal to you about,

when you say you're trying to prove it, prove it to... Myself, I think. Prove it to myself, yeah. Not to anyone else. I personally want to be up there at the same... I mean, I'm never going to quite be that tier one pro, but sort of maybe tier two, tier three.

You know, up there being able to compete with all the others. Amazing. And not look completely stupid. No, no, hold your own. And you're right, because the thing you can bring to the table that is completely unique will be your ability to strategize. Because when it comes to being pro and being in that top tier, I don't think everybody understands that that's really,

sort of late teens through to early 20s, is when you're at your peak with your ability to, what is it, just simple reflexes? It is, but you say that I was at um an event recently uh dream hack was it dream hack yes over in Sweden and another pro player Nikoff was doing asked me to do a challenge where you've got like the lights you've got like little bells oh no you have like four balls and then you have to as the light comes up you've got to press the light um to see how fast you are and I thought I'd be terrible at it but he actually said that my results weren't that far off

quite like some of the other pro players and some of the pro players was actually worse than me so some of the other pro players and some of the pro players was actually worse than me so reaction I don't think it is but I think it's just your brain works slower as you get older doesn't it sort of thing so actually just being able to react quickly to something is is a lot harder for me even doing things like admin paperwork that sort of thing is it takes me longer now yeah it is slower i i i notice it you know sort of even though i'm still multitasking doing like about four or five different things and whatever just being able to do things uh as quick as i used to do like i do all the accounts work and everything it just takes takes a little bit more time yeah and i suppose what we're really i mean obviously the fact that it's gaming is quite a quirky thing for you know for your generation but when you're what you're

talking about in terms of keeping your brain feeling young keeping challenged oiling all the all the stuff in there keeping keep on top of stuff is actually something that could manifest in lots of ways couldn't it yeah i mean, they, you know, for just keeping you young and sort of being able to keep that brain from deteriorating and things, and taking on new activities, whether it doesn't have to be fortnights or whatever, sort of taking on a new activity just keeps that brain working and keeps you young, really.

And I love being around all the youngsters yeah they sort of like when I talk to my peers like like my girlfriends and sort of they haven't got a clue what I'm talking about because and I someone said to me the other day I've missed that generation gap because I still yeah still can chat to like 17. Most of my friends online are only 15 to 20s or something. Yeah. 19, 20s. So it's a completely different world.

It's quite interesting. I love it. I think it's incredible. I mean, it's brilliant. And as I said at the beginning, I think it's really inspiring because I think it's an interesting one because with a lot of gaming I mean certainly from my experience a lot of it is is fairly introverted in terms of the way you set it up

and you're spending time on your own but then through it the confidence you can gain and finding your tribe and all that kind of thing is really powerful and for a lot of people that is happening at that time in their life when they're younger and maybe they're at home there's family life happening in one space and you know you've got a kid i mean this is very typical with dynamic and i house my eldest boy would always just take himself off and that would be his sort of safe space to go and game to communicate with his peers to chat with his mates and it sort of runs along a fairly sort of typical arc of that that's time in your life but actually all those things in the kernel of who we are and what resonates with us is is there for the whole time isn't it so being able to recognize that and actually still give

yourself that space and be able to chat to people who are feeling the same as you even if you're bridging that divide yeah it's incredible yeah because what it is that resonates with you and those yeah 17 18 years will be something yeah very similar actually at the heart of it yeah um so what do your girlfriends think about it all i mean they're very pleased obviously of what i've achieved and everything but they just don't understand it at all so like they see me like whizzing around the world like last year I was went to Saudi and um you know I've been to Tokyo and sort of America and Sweden and all these different places so and all thanks to fortnight and gaming etc which is amazing to be able to travel and play is just insane really um but yeah they're just

pleased for me yeah but very pleased but don't quite understand it well also that's your consultancy with the esports that's you're actually the are you the first gamer mum to ever have that position I can't think there have there are other parents that do game but I don't I can't really think of any in quite the same way that have become content creators and signed with an organ organization and things like that so what does content creation involve what's the actual how does that that's basically just streaming um and creating content which people then watch so most people most uh most teenagers or tend to not watch tv much these days everything is online yeah definitely um and so there are different platforms that they can do it so for example on gaming the platform tends to be twitch there are now others

that have started up etc so most people uh would they would just watch you on twitch and then you'd get the viewers and you know etc you so that's what is meant by content creator. But then you might want to do like IRL content creation. So for example, people like there's someone called Archie, or there's someone called your fellow Arab, and they go out and actually they travel and create content that way. So they're actually live streaming, and I've done it as well. So when I'm at Dreamhackack and places I will actually go around and do IRL streaming sort of thing so you're actually going around talking to the players watching what they're filming so people actually enjoy that so yeah and so with with the the challenge when you're saying you know you've got the goals of being part of the pro and how

is everything you get up to totally self-motivated do you have to keep be the one to set all those plans in action it's it's self-motivated by me yes yeah and how does that come with it there's a bit of pressure I mean anyone that's like sort of entrepreneurial I guess there's a pressure there is I mean I um as my friends, my online friends, and my duo, I've got a duo, Jay, who has helped me a lot, is I get very upset very quickly if I'm not achieving everything as fast as I want to achieve. and when you're playing at the high level um like i played a tournament the other day and we did i did badly in my books um i i could very easily just give up almost but it's it's keeping going like you know just keep his keeping yourself motivated and they help me as well very much so sort of like you know it's just going to take time those other players have got four or five years ahead of you whereas I've only got two years yeah I just want to achieve it quicker and it's just I can't wave

magic wands and all of a sudden I'm gonna improve overnight it is literally time yeah but yeah I suppose as well that that that frustration and patience is part of the passion isn't it because otherwise it matters yeah you've you've made space for it in your life and and also you know this is another thing people might not realize is that you know it's it's a bona fide job all of this stuff you know is it actually and I think I think certainly with um you know what you've been doing with with Benji and his career do you feel like people still don't quite understand like it's almost like this whole other world yeah so that is one of the the reasons I created um the book build it with Benji Fisher and Mrs Savage so that's co-authored with Johnny, who's Miss Savage's dad. And it's basically to explain to parents,

or try to explain a little bit to parents, that there is a career out there for people. So gaming has got a very bad reputation. But to understand that there are now transferable skills that they're learning while of while they're gaming. So that leadership skills, communication, you know, there's a whole load of skills that they're learning that they can use in other careers. Yeah. So it could be that they just play for entertainment, mixing with their friends, etc.

But then they go on and do other careers. mixing with their friends etc but then they go on and do other careers but the esports world also you know you might want to do social media or go into marketing or go into videoing there's a whole area lots of different areas that they can work in yeah and now the certainly in the UK the British Esports Association has teamed up with BTEC. So there's now esports courses at colleges for like 14 to 16-year-olds and 16 to 18-year-olds. So... I didn't know that.

That's amazing. Yeah, they've been doing that for the last few years. So that's recognised. So now you can do sort of design like game design yeah courses i think that's been around for this is yes so that this is so then they could go from there to maybe um doing something like game design at university or whatever and what you tend to find is that when teenagers find something that they're very passionate about, so if it's gaming or something,

so if they're actually doing a course that they enjoy, then they're going to learn more. Absolutely. Or else they're not. So, you know, there's no point, you know, them trying to do a business course when they're not or are not. Do you know? And then they cover a whole load of different topics in that.

And also in America, so I'm working with COPE, which is the Coalition of Parents in Esports. And so in America, you can actually get scholarships for esports out there. So all their college fees would be paid and they just represent their equivalent to university or whatever. Amazing. I mean, I guess this is a really very fast-moving landscape. I can remember going on a school camping trip probably about five or six years ago

and a lot of the parents, you know, my age and younger actually, had quite a knee-jerk negative reaction when it comes to gaming and i think i mean i get where it comes from because the internet um so much of it is like the wild west you know and it's finding its feet and i think we've we've been taught as parents to be fearful of the idea that anybody could be talking to your kid and having their ear in a way that's private to you. That's obviously scary. And I remember when, so my eldest, I think, is the same age as Benji, maybe.

He was born in April 2004. Oh, the same as Benji then, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So yeah, going to be 19 in a little bit. And so when Sonny was really gaming, and it's something he's always loved um I remember saying to him I've I've been told that these are the reasons why I should be worried about this yeah so now I want you to tell me why I don't need to worry about those things I want to

hear it from you and actually for me that was the way that we kind of found our feet with it so I thought well it's he doesn't need me just it's a bit like the equivalent of um parents in the 60s. You're not listening to that rock and roll music. You've got to try and hope that you've instilled in your kids ways to navigate all of these things. And your instincts will see you right. There's always going to be the peripheral stuff. But at the heart of it, as you say, there's a lot of really important skills.

But also, I suppose, it's a different thing as well when your child gets very it's not just serious about it but there's this breaking point where it's like actually we have to now make a decision about how we make this professional so yeah can you tell me a little bit about your experience with managing Benji what was happening with him I mean going back to what you were saying about um being concerned about them being online I was when Benji was younger that was a big thing so I always used to have him playing in like the main living room and he I could hear him talking and sort of thing and because I've got an older son who's seven years old, Charles, who's seven years older, I used to have him playing with Benji so he could hear what the other,

sort of like, almost like monitoring sort of thing. That's handy. So that worked quite well for us. And has Charles, did he stay in that role for quite a while, being sort of the very big brother? Yes, the big brother. And he taught Benji a lot from that aspect and things. So I always knew that Benji could look after himself online

and he wasn't going to do it. So from a parent perspective, I trusted him. And then, obviously, then went gaming himself. But what people don't understand about being a professional e-sports player is it's the equivalent to being, in terms that other parents would understand, being signed as a, say, Premier League footballer for Arsenal or Liverpool. It's at that sort of level. Yeah. Right. That's a very good analogy.

It's the, to start start with it was the whole balancing thing so it's what I say to it is it's like whenever your child is interested in a particular topic so Benji used to do ten pin bowling he was actually really good at it and wanted to play for England so you go along don't you sort of like to the various various, you know, learning how to do on Saturday morning or whatever. And then maybe you get coaches or whatever out and then, you know, start going to the tournaments and things like that. So it doesn't matter whether you're in that, whether you're in music or something like that. If your child starts showing an interest in playing the piano and then starts getting really good at it you're going to get lessons on you and yeah like performing things so it's no different from um the esports

world of gaming so you're starting to play and when benji first started doing tournaments the age limit was actually 16 okay well as in that's the age you had to be the minimum to to play fortnight to to take part in fortnight tournaments it was always 16 okay and then and so he wasn't able to compete or anything i knew he was always quite he was quite good um he always told me from a very young age that he wanted to be a professional esports player so I knew that already and so I was sort of like okay that's fine but I didn't actually realize how good he was and then what happened was um in 2019 the world cup got announced fortnight world cup and they then lowered the age limit to 13. Okay.

Is that what it still is now? So it's still 13 in order to be able to compete. And then there was a series of qualifiers and at that point Benji had just won. It all happened within literally a week, two weeks basically. So Benji played a tournament. He was duoing with Mr Savage. Soji played a tournament he was duoing with mr savage um so he played a tournament and they won first prize so i was literally sunday morning sunday evening laying

in bed uh comes in to be about midnight because i knew he you know i was having to get up at like five in the morning but so i knew he was sort of like playing the tournament but didn't really pay too much attention to it and he comes in and goes I've won first prize and I've won ten thousand dollars and it was like and he was 14 at the time 14 at the time it's February wow so it's like okay all right all right. I was like, I was texting Charles at like midnight saying, he's just come first and won 10,000 and, you know, it's all. Yeah. And then it started becoming a little bit real. Yes.

Do you know what I mean? So that happened. Mr. Savage was already signed with Energy Esports in America. So they had approached us. So we were already talking to them about potentially joining here them as an org um they then went on to win a second tournament and then literally within the week world cup got announced and benji got approached by about seven different orgs to and so then we were in negotiations uh with the different orgs to be fair benji did a lot of that negotiation himself

yeah i'm sensing it's like i like the way when he was ten pin bowling he's like i want to play for england and then it's like yeah no it's fortnight and i'm going to be one of the world yes thank you very much um so we then we then settled on we went with energy uh who have been an amazing so is this you sort of taking on the mantle of being a manager without really realising that's what was happening you're just trying to help your son and thinking here's some stuff that gets a bit adult now

let's have a look over it and then having to find an accountant find a lawyer that specialised in eSports and things then World Cup got announced it was 10 weeks of qualifying um and only the top 100 from around the world then went to new york with with first prize being

three million to the winner and if you qualified through to the finals you were guaranteed 50 000 so so solos was 50 000 duos were 50 000 so if you qualify for both you were guaranteed 100 000 so fortunately benji qualified in week one and two for both solos and duos it was like oh my god i was sitting in here i didn't really know much about fortnight i didn't know how to watch fortnight in those days all i knew that was benji was playing and at one point he was um i know something like 1000 or whatever and it's only like the top three i think three that went through I think it was and I was like oh no it's gonna have to be another week or something you know yeah whatever um and then all of a sudden I was watching someone's stream Mr Savage's stream and someone comes in chat and goes Benji's first

and it's like oh my god okay and I'm texting my my son Charles saying he's first now you know and then he kept I didn't know what was happening the leaderboards weren't really updated I yeah everything was delayed and all I a lot of these tournaments always go down to the last game the very last game which would be the 10th game you never know what things can change dramatically as to how they do in that last 10th game and so i didn't know whether he was winning losing whatever really yes and all i remember is going outside his door and i could hear him tapping on his keyboard and the key that meant that he was still alive wow there was silence like because he was when he when being in his constraint you're not even allowed to cough you sort of thing so i'm going outside he's still alive okay so the nearer it gets i'm not stressed for you in this

the nearer it gets like 20 minutes or whatever into 25 minutes which is the game length you know that he's going to be into end games so therefore he's sort of thing and then he um then he came out and told me that he qualified and it was like oh my god it was like just gave him a big hug I didn't even want to believe I don't know my brain didn't want to believe it it was just like that's insane they qualified in week one and then they went on and qualified in week two for so at that point he was guaranteed a hundred thousand um I had always a hundred percent prioritized education that was my number one he um yeah they went to fairly good schools so if you're in this area they went to like private schools prep school and then he'd got into reeds in Cobham, which is no mean feat. That is actually quite a hard school to get into.

Yeah, class exams and, yeah. The whole get exams, common entrance. It was like, this is, you know, you need to be keeping up the group. But at the time when he qualified for World Cup, I wanted to be able to give him the opportunity to make the most of that. Yeah. Because he was signed with an org so he was getting a salary it felt like an opportunity yeah taking that opportunity and so I went to the

school to see whether there was any way we could reduce his he could be given time off to be able to still do some sort of education but to you know still practice etc because they used to have games on the saturday you meant to be their rugby on a saturday or cricket or wednesday evenings they wouldn't get back to quite late because they're doing all their sport yeah and i wanted him to be able to compete so having chatted to them they do have like tennis camps so some of their players play you know do the tennis tours etc so what they tend to do is give them like a week off or two weeks to be able to uh practice and do the camps and then they come back to school but the issue with Benji the issue with that is it's just like a two weeks with every term

yeah so what's the frequency was fortnight was constant so is there a tournament happening all the time somewhere there's tournaments coming right yeah there's there was tournaments all the time um and he needed to practice and a lot of them if he was playing sort of like na he's not finished two three in the morning and therefore, I was going to say the hours. He's tired, can't get up for school the next day. So I then made the decision, which was really, really hard, given the fact that I'd gone to so much effort to get him into the good schools, to homeschool him. And how old was he then?

15, 15, yeah. So it was the first year of GCSEs. mean that's pretty huge isn't it because that's a big that's like a defining point in his life that'll always be a bit like a yeah a crossroad and you went on one path rather than the other you know so I wanted to be able to give him the opportunity because in my books you can always go back to education yeah you know at a later stage i went to do a b-tech course at nescot um doing i wanted to go into av um the world of av and so i did sort of my cisco and networking things i went back actually with lots of 17 18 i was doing this b-tech course um so i know you can do education as they say it's not i know normally

it's like 14 to 16 you do cses 16 to 18 you do a levels yeah but in actual fact you can do them whenever you want yeah that's very true and i think also you know at the age he was then and also with charles it sounds like the three of you are very much thinking together and it's what happened with your family and this is where he found himself and I'm just sort of thinking to myself about all, you know, the other parents and when they actually

understand, no, no, the stakes are really high and he's competing on a global platform and he's really good and I bet they really uh stopped in their tracks and they found out as well that you know it's all financially very solid it's not yeah it's not just um playing fortnight till two and then oh you know I got myself you know so I think you know it's sort of like you know like Benji did rugby as a as a child and cricket and things like that

so what you know or you you go to stage school or something yeah there comes a point where you know your child's interested in something but there's a realization that maybe they're not going to make that you know they're not going to be on that western stage if they're doing singing and you know it's going to be a hobby maybe they can do sort of like amateur sort of type dramatics and things and whatever but maybe they're never quite going to make it or you're playing rugby or cricket but you're not going to make counters and you're not going to necessarily be good enough to play for England yeah so as parents you have to judge that I think that's tricky isn't it and you know support them as much as you can but also they've got to have a plan b but i think benji

always said you've always got to have a plan b if that doesn't work you know you've still got to i would have probably ideally have kept his education up and done this but i knew that there was no way that would happen yeah but also i mean we did buy home education and things but yeah also he could have done it for a year and then it doesn't it's not what it's not the right shape for you and then you go back and he goes down a year but things happen you know there's lots of unexpected things that can happen and then there's other things where you think we're taking a bit of a risk but yeah I mean I saw my son my older son and I think actually if I hadn't have seen this that maybe I wouldn't have been so resilient so Charles dropped out of school

when he was like 17 18 and went through a little bit of a difficult stage uh but then subsequently he went back and did BTEC then went on to uni. And his passion is music. Yeah, I heard that. Jazz guitar. Jazz guitar and things. And so then he got his degree. First, he got a first at uni in jazz. And so if I hadn't have seen him sort of like miss out on education,

maybe for a couple of years, sort of like didn't do his GCSEs to much later or whatever but then went on and achieved it sort of you know much later then maybe I wouldn't have been so open to it but yeah sort of paved the way a little bit from that perspective well I think that's what happens isn't it sometimes something happens with your kids and it kind of slightly reshapes part of you as a parent and how you react to things and and ultimately you don't really win many prizes for sort of not really listening to what your kids are telling you you know you can feel like you're doing the right thing in terms of the expectation of that age and what's going on with their peers and it's always a bit scary

when there's you know a trajectory that all they're they're all on and up until that age most kids do sort of follow the same suit yeah i think that teenage bit is where different strands start emerging it can be you know they go through a tricky time it can be that as you say there's a skill set that's emerging i mean i was actually thinking a lot of ways with benji you really lucked out because it could have been sports I'm sure there are a lot of um parents that would identify a lot with what you're talking about if the kids chose a real aptitude for sport but then you'd have to take them somewhere you've got to be up early you'd with this you could be asleep while yeah

I'm like that is great I know I used to um know sort of like swimmer people that get some of his. Yeah, he has like six or something. Literally, they're in the pool at like five, six in the morning, aren't they, sort of thing. And then you're taking them to all these. And the same happened with actually bowling, ten pin bowling. So I used to take him up to Dunstable. So he used to get coached by Andy Penny and John Zedel,

who are like England coaches. So I used to take him up every andy penny who's and john zedel who are like england coaches amazing so used to take him up every couple of weeks or every month to be coached by them um and then he would do the tournaments so you'd be traveling around the country doing the tournaments i even took them to belgium to to play and things wow so and we were looking at uh scholarships in america because uh tempe bowling is in uh tim mack and some of those other players in america is much bigger and you can actually get scholarships over there just like you can for esports so we were i was already looking at all that sort of side of things but then uh what happened was that Benji got Osgood-Schlatter's, which is like you get pain in the knees.

Yes. And he also got Sever's disease, which is where you get pain, like growing pains also in your ankles and things. So Benji, even though he was mad on cricket, he was really, really good at cricket. And like he would play rugby but after he comes off the rugby pitch or after he came up and he sat down you would actually think he was a 70 year old he could hardly walk oh that must have been so hard to see that and then also

like with temping bowling his back started hurting as. So because he's a double-handed bowler, you've got to bend down low to get the... And so, therefore, he had to stop sports for, like, literally a year. So that also, you know, from not doing... So that competitive world that he would do, maybe gone on and done temping bowling or cricket or whatever got refocused into so it wasn't his choice that that stopped it was actually just because physically it was causing physically he couldn't do it he could not do sports how is that for you

how's that for you seeing him having to let go of something he's put so much into and yeah that was hard because i knew he was good especially with temping bowling etc that was his passion and so therefore to see him not being able to do that I mean I know you know but just okay it's just temping bowling or something but at the time it was actually very real he was practicing a lot and as I say we were putting in a lot of effort to or as a parent I was putting in a lot of effort to try and give him the coaching and everything that he needed to be able to succeed and then all of a sudden that gets taken away you know it's a bit like maybe if you're a singer as a boy like my brother used to be really good at singing so he was like head chorister he played he sang in you know he was soloist in

Noah's Flood at the Ashcroft Theatre and things all of a sudden his voice broke oh yes that's it yeah so it's it's a you know all of a sudden then your career is taken away from you isn't it yeah because your voice isn't as good as it used to be um not so much with the girls because it doesn't really maybe affect it quite you know the voice breaking for boys can be yeah that's that's that's sadly very common thing they go from having these beautiful falsettos and then it's just simply not there anymore because your voice box has actually changed so yeah so it's the same sort of like from uh or you're like one of his big friends uh good friends reese um does rugby um but he keeps getting you know get an injury or something and then all of a sudden that's it yeah you can't you've got six months out or or even a professional footballer

i know yeah and it's it changes the course of your life if you've put hours and hours and hours into that thing and you know you can see the arc of where you're headed and there's an injury or something like that but the same with esports i mean you get repetitive strain injury and things like that so there are quite a lot of the top players that do do get repetitive so benji's constantly so one of the things he is now he's got a personal trainer so he's doing his exercising he's got um a mental coach that sort of works with him etc so he's got a team of people around him that are helping him to um and is that easier in terms of what it's like to to raise someone who's basically doing something professional like that

when they're still young? Is there much more like a clear guideline and how to support them with all that stuff now, do you think? I don't think there is for parents, no. Parents, yes, it's, and that's one of the things I'm trying, and COPE is trying to help with, is to explain to parents how to how to help them and sort of like create that longevity sort of thing for their career etc um but also I get lots

of like maybe their parents don't understand how to do the business side of things yeah and then quite intimidating as well and then sometimes as 15 year olds they're trying to do it themselves they don't understand what they're doing because their parents don't support them in in in esports or they don't support them in in the career and therefore um they're trying to muddle through themselves etc so trying to trying to sort of like help them as well yeah and may I ask has it always been quite straightforward with what the family have decided to do with winnings because coming into you know five and six figure sums when you're a teenager is not that's not so I've always been business orientated I used to have my own company uh

West Point Training which was a computer training and management company so I've sort of like come from the world of business so therefore as soon as as soon as Benji um started earning it was like okay we've got to start a limited company we've got to you know get everything in place um and so we haven't really known quite what to do with it um so it's sort of like being sitting there I mean one of the things was that we wanted to be able to buy the house rather than stay renting the whole time um but that in itself is a challenge because when you've got a company you can only take so much out as dividends etc so it's not really your money it's yeah in the business thing and then so there was lots of restrictions and that has taken us three or four

years to be able to achieve to the point where we've actually now purchased the house which is just amazing well it is amazing before we started recording you were telling me that you know there's your family have been through a lot already and had to show extreme resilience and it sounds like I mean even before I knew very much about you and I was thinking about the dynamic of you with your two boys and it sounds like a lot of your relationship was forged in a bit of a fire really because you really sadly lost your boy's dad your husband when you were saying benji was only not even a year old yeah so he uh david sadly got esophagus

cancer and literally it's very quick within a year basically um and so Charles was seven and I was pregnant with Benji at the time and so we also um had been through so rerun it a little bit so we had a business which was successful, a training company, and then we sold that. And we were meant to be able to get the money from it, but we didn't get the full money for it, for the sale of the business. And then we were locked out of training for sort of as part of that contract for sort of like a year or something. So we didn't get the money for it. that contract for sort of like a year or something so um we didn't get the money for it um we went into like recruitment so david's background was always sort of like it telecommunications he used to be a salesman within that world of telecommunications so we were placing like pre and pre and pre-sales and salespeople, basically.

But that had a big crash, sort of like crashed the market. So we then went into recruiting lawyers, which was okay, but sort of like starting a whole new career. But the fact that we didn't get the money from the business, we were trying to start a new business, etc. Literally everything went wrong and we were at the point of pretty much going bankrupt um so we lost the house that we really loved um and ended up renting for a year and the whole concept was during that year we would then try and start up another business um but David became ill so David was

very much the salesperson and I was like behind the scenes sort of doing the other you know admin paperwork but obviously he lost his motivation for selling to a certain extent and then he became ill and couldn't do that and so at the end of the day um sadly he passed away um so benji was about eight months old then i was in november and charles was seven and literally we were at the point of literally being on the streets homeless with nothing so i remember going to the council and saying you know could you house us and know, they've got this point system. I didn't even have enough points to get housed. But then they only put you into B&Bs, don't they, sort of thing. And I just, like, sort of thing.

So what happened was my parents helped support us. And then they said, you know, try and claim housing benefit and find somewhere to live private. So we actually found this house because we wanted to live by the river again. So we came here, managed to get housing benefit. I then managed to find a job. I've got a very close circle of friends so Joyce is like the equivalent to their godmother but she's now family so she was looking after them helping so that I could go out to work and things and literally then sort of started building up from literally

scratch again from nowhere that's extraordinary I'm so sorry you had to go through all that that sounds like you're just having to just think about surviving really just one thing for the other it is very much i mean fortunately um the school were very supportive so they they were supportive to charles so let him finish that you know gave him a bursary let him finish his education um and then when he went to his senior school um david was a freemason so the masonic trust actually masonic trust for girls and boys came in and actually um paid their tuition fees oh wow which for both Charles and Benji um but then they also helped me with like whatever activities like for example Benji doing say piano and saxophone and tempi and bowling they would actually pay for his lessons and things and so yeah they and they used

to give me like a termly allowance for them and things so without them we they probably wouldn't have been able to do the things that you know yeah those extra lessons and things I'm thinking that it's almost insurmountable to imagine having a seven-year-old and a little baby and dealing with grief but also just the actual struggle of just the the side of it that's to do with how do you keep a roof over your heads and keep yeah so it was literally without my parents I mean at one point we were I was doing car boot sales to try and earn enough money to then buy food and things that week and things and whatever so it was a big struggle and if you've had that experience does it are there things about it that kind of forever

influence the way you see the world after it it I mean yes I guess so I mean you you value more what you, you don't realise what you've got until you've lost it to a certain extent. You take things more for granted. And so I think you just value what you've got and sort of actually now building it back up to a point where, you know, okay, we're okay now. Yeah, purchasing your own house is actually huge, isn't it? I know, not having to worry about, you know, having're okay now yeah purchasing we're okay i know not having to worry about

you know having to move again yeah because moving actually onto an island is so difficult we move by boat literally move by boat yeah literally um our friends chris and jules have got a dutch bar or sort of like a barge sort of thing yeah and literally we because we moved from one island to another literally all the furniture was on the back of the boat and literally it came down here and literally there's a lot of wooden furniture in here as well it's like literally it was so and and then you if you saw it you've just got this enormous barge with so instead of going on in a removal van the removal van is the barge and then and then the rest of it had to be walked across the island that we couldn't get on there it's it's moving on to islands is not the easiest easiest of things to do maybe you're here

now yeah i don't need to yeah the thought the thought of having to move, I mean, we've had to move like four times like that. It's just so stressful to me. Yeah, and I should imagine being able to have a very solid base is actually worth more than words can say, really, isn't it? It is. It is for me, yeah. It's really significant. Also, I think, you know, it sounds like you've had to also, when you were saying that David was the more extrovert and the salesperson and you were more in the background. So that means you also have to work on your own confidence. When the other person is gone, you've got to then step forward.

I mean, I had the training business was my business. So I started that. So I was out there training people. But David then came on board as the sales and took it. And it was quite interesting, actually, because that female male sort of thing, when we went into business meetings, I was obviously 15 years younger than David but went into business because David was more the sales even though it was my business they would always talk to David and the Mercer do you know you get sidetracked even though it's your business and everything you got yeah yeah you're not of any interest sort of thing it's

yeah so having to sort of, yes. So I used to let him do it. That's fine. He was very much worth the sales time. And I did all these sort of like training, sorting out the computers because he wasn't so technical, et cetera, from setting up that.

And it worked well. I mean, being with someone, your husband 24 seven can be challenging, but we split it separately. So we weren't in each other's pockets and things like that. But I've always been a workaholic. Absolutely. I always work, like, have always worked since I was 17.

Sort of like seven days a week, 12-hour days, et cetera. Yeah, I've always and like I was listening to some of your other podcasts but like um like I came out of hospital having had Charles and literally he came into the office and was there behind my desk sort of like I was i'm working like literally the same days that he came out of hospital and things oh wow so yeah so that and then it wasn't until so he's there and obviously training and then he starts crying you know it's a delicate for there and so then we got a few complaints that he was crying you know so they couldn't concentrate on their training courses and that's how joyce came along um so joyce uh we we brought on board as um or she was there sort of working in the offices but she was also a child minder so she then took charles and um and that's been you know she's been helping being part of the family she now comes on holiday she used to come on holiday with us um to help look after charles and benji you know sort of no she sounds amazing

she's like family now yeah very much so yeah it's amazing isn't it when those people become like so integral to how everything functions and you can't really imagine life without those people and they're part of your world and i was think as well when you say about the meetings where people will be talking to David and you'd be thinking they should really be talking to me but I'm just going to let it slide yeah but I think there's actually a bit of a superpower in being underestimated sometimes and people not knowing what you're capable of as I was listening to an interview you did where you said you've walked, literally walked across hot coals, not once, not twice, but four times. Yeah.

And I love the fact that people might not know that when they meet you. That's an amazing thing to have that in your armory. Yes. Yes. No, I, I, Tony Robbins actually helped a lot. So both from a confidence perspective. Yeah. And also from a, like a like for example when David passed

away I was lost I didn't really know what to do sort of thing you keep going because the children but I found myself like crying all the time and things and whatever so I actually um went on a Tony Robbins course to get my head right, sort of because I felt the people were expecting me to be sad all the time and everything. And so it was like, get my head around the fact that it's okay to be happy. David would want me to continue and sort of like...

And also if you're grieving, no one has the right to dictate what that grief looks like. I know, but it's sort of, yeah, people's perspectives and sort of like and also if you're grieving no one has the right to dictate what that grief looks like i know but it's it's sort of yeah people's perspectives and some things but yes walking on the hot crawls that the whole concept is that if you can do that and you didn't think it was possible just think what else is possible that you can actually achieve um but yes i it's still hard though it's still hard but yes yeah that's the whole point is it something you don't yeah i did i did another course of his recently yeah um about within a year was it something about a year where because obviously you're doing in-house and he's got these

you know setups uh you can't walk across hot coals but he gets um you get wood and you do the karate chop of the wood oh wow so i've done i did that and i remember doing i was literally had the two chairs sort of like sitting here and sort of a piece of wood in front and got the video sort of it and i honestly didn't think i was going to be able to do it sort of thing but yeah it worked first time and and it was like, oh, my God. Wow. I've actually achieved it. There's an inner strength. Yeah. But I like the courses take you out of your comfort zone. Yes.

So I actually like pushing myself. Yes, I'm getting a sense of that. Yeah. I think it's brilliant. I'm always excited by talking to people where they've sort of just quietly getting on with shifting the landscape of what's expected. And the fact that you've got this goal of, you know, working for another 18 months, two years

to get to a goal in Fortnite, I think is brilliant. And along the way, I mean, have you had some sort of funny conversations with, I don't know, other parents at the school gate kind of thing about the path that your family have gone on? Because it must be quite satisfying when in the end it actually is all working towards something. I think because, no, because the children are older now.

I mean, Charles is going to be 26 soon. Yes, no, no, not now. Charles is 19. I know they were young. no no not 19 that i know they were young i think the people that knew us it wasn't so much of an issue but yes it made sense for what we were doing and i'm not in that circle of parents as such but um i do try a lot of a lot of the players maybe do come to me and say can you talk to my parents because they don't understand about esports so I have had conversations with parents about that sort of like online as opposed to at the school gate so to speak but hopefully I am sort of like

a role model to them as well to to them as well so that you know they can sort of like come and see what i've achieved and it's not just all about gaming and the fact that there are other careers that they can do and as i've said before like the transferable skills and what's their main worry do you find the parents just it's just because gaming has got such a bad reputation so they're just online the whole time and they're not mixing with their friends they're not seeing you know typical they're not touching grass so to speak you know seeing much daylight yeah yeah but i actually think covid helped with that a little bit because uh parents weren, you saw lots of online classes coming up.

Yeah. And so also things like the, they were meeting pubs. You know, you'd have like pub, they would all be drinking and they would go on via Zoom or whatever other different app, you know, and they would all be socialising but online. Yeah. Now that is what the children do all the time. Yes, exactly.

But they weren't aware of that. Yeah, and it kept them in touch with people as well. So they were keen. So I think from that it helped the perspective that they are actually socialising and meeting with their friends and everything. But it's just online as opposed to... And then you've got, LAN events and things and you know where

they can actually then meet up in in person and things whatever so no I think um as well when I know that with uh with Sonny um he for him I think going online and gaming has given him access to a much broader social group. He wasn't finding as many like-minded souls at school. Yeah, at school, yeah. But that gave him a much bigger friendship group. And then sometimes he'd say, oh, I've got so-and-so coming over. They're actually from Sweden, but they're coming to London and they're going to meet up. And at first you'd be thinking, well, I hope they're really from sweden but they're coming to london and they're going to we're going to meet up yeah and at first you'd be thinking well i hope they're really who they say

they are yeah um i think you have to learn to to trust your trust your kids as well most of them yes i mean there's like there's a program called discord so all the kids tend to use discord and things so you can do face cam and sort of like i mean as parents you could i would suggest you try and get more involved in what what your children are interested in so i mean the people that they're are quite often streaming and they've got face cams on or you could ask to meet them in a group and chat to them and they can actually do uh video yeah that's a good idea i think being involved is a good idea playing the game with them sitting down with them um it's funny it's reminded me of this time where he's not there anymore but there was a deputy head um because obviously having older kids and

younger kids i my little ones they all know all about particularly fortnight actually that's the one thing that they even my four-year-old will have a ghost. I know it's not the age guideline. But there was a time when I think my nine-year-old and my six-year-old were playing a bit because of my elder boy. And at school, my nine-year-old got told, no more Fortnite at the junior school. No talking about it, no playing it.

Really? And so my boy said to the head, this guy, oh, but my mum says it's okay. And the head said, if your mum said that we're going to rob a bank on Saturday, would you do that? So Kit came home from school and told me this. And I said, firstly, I'm your mum.

If I've decided as a family we're robbing a bank on Saturday, absolutely, that's what we're doing. Secondly, that's illegal. You can't compare one with the other yeah it's like what a ridiculous thing but but ultimately yes if we're robbing a bank we're robbing a bank yeah if i'm that if i'm that woman yeah yeah off we go absolutely yeah it was brilliant compared to playing enough playing a bit of fortnight to robbing a bank i know fair enough mr connell if you're listening

sometimes you've got a question authority that's okay um but um i think you're absolutely right about if you're worried about what your kids are doing i think involving yourself and that counts for loads of things actually because it's so vital about the communication and do you feel like yeah how how do your kids feel about you now being so engrossed in fortnight particularly as your fortnighting son is not yeah anymore i know he's really happy for me but he actually did um he was online the other day when my cup got announced and it was like it's really weird my mom's all like okay you can go in game and you can see like the mama benji fishy creator cup it's like it's really weird i hope he tells you sometimes can you please just get out of this room and see some daylight go and get some vitamin d we need to we need to reverse it because i'm

still having to like i might be playing a game yeah or in a tournament yeah and ben you'll come in can i have food now well i can't i'm in the middle of a game you know um or i'm streaming and sort of like stream is not too bad i can sort of like maybe put something else on so they could see something and then i can go and quickly put something in the oven and then sort of like 20 minutes later I've got to put the timer on and I've got to get it out. So it's quite difficult sort of like balancing it sort of with that. But we make it work.

I'm sure you do. And do you get good broadband on your island? How's your Wi-Fi? We had to have a special line put in. Oh, wow, cool. They originally quoted 17,000, but we got it for about 10,000. We had to enter our pen.

They had to dig up the whole road. So we've got like a dedicated line. Wow. Yeah, the internet that was here would not have been good enough, no. But that's an investment in the future you've made there. Yeah, so that you can sort of stream and things. How long did you do that?

A few years back now? When he qualified for World Cup. But it took over six months, six to eight months, and a lot of things to actually go. Because they actually had to, like, put the line all the way across the river. Amazing. Yeah. But it works.

Is it really good now? It's not bad. Well. Not bad. It's 100 up and down. But my older son, who lived in Hendon actually through Virgin got better internet than we've got here. Well, it's funny.

You can go for the A grade and it's never completely perfect with the blooming Wi-Fi. I've just only got two more questions for you. One of them is, as I was leaving my 10-year-old, he's off school today, and only got two more questions for you and one of them is as i was leaving uh my 10 year old he's off school today and i said what questions have you got and he said how would you recommend that he improves his view account for things that he uploads online oh what for interesting really isn't it yeah he he does things like youtube and things yeah yeah that that can be a difficult one um i mean having the right tags on there oh yes um so i would say maybe what i used to do was you can you can put different add-ins into your browsers, but it allows you to then look at the keywords

from, say, a YouTube video or something. Okay. So maybe take a video that's doing really well and look and see what tags that they're using and maybe try copying some of those tags. He'd be too young for TikTok or anything like that or whatever. Yeah, he's not on that. So he can't do that.

No, this is YouTube and he has to wear a mask because I told him he can't have his face because he's 10. And most of his videos... That makes it quite hard, actually. He's hoping for a million subscribers so then he can do an unmasking. Oh, right, OK. We're a little way off.

OK, that might be that might be a little bit it's really cute his videos are mostly him doing things like trying the other one he tried some prime do you know about prime yes of course you do and uh my kit sold ray a bottle of prime he bought for two pounds for 20 quid and then they did a video trying this prime underneath his mask i mean there are videos benji and charles used to do videos like of them doing like playing snooker and things when they're younger and sort of thing they are sort of like yeah out there sort of yes um that's a good idea about the tags though i'm gonna i'm gonna relay that because that sounds practical and achievable yeah no i that. That'll work for me.

And the other question, can you do all the Fortnite dances? No. No, no, no, no, no. What? We're not doing it. We're not doing it. We're not going to do them. No, no, no, no, no. Just in privacy.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Actually, even Benji got asked to do those when he was at World Cup. Or when they go for like media day, they wanted them to do a dance and things for like, so they could show on screen or something. But he doesn't do that either. No, I can't. I wouldn't mind learning a couple so that I could actually,

I'd need to learn them and practice them first before I do. But then they'd actually be really simple ones. Yeah. I think the only one we can do, I don't know how to, but mainly that loser one where you kick your legs around that's about it yeah yeah maybe a couple of disco ones yeah oh actually I know I did want to ask you how when Benji's competing and he and he doesn't go the way he wants how do you parent through seeing your kid very disappointed if he's a very competitive person um actually funny enough the parents certainly when i talk to johnny miss savage's dad um martin will act in the same way i mean you've just got to leave them yeah you just cannot talk to

them there is no point going there giving them a hug oh, I'm really sorry you didn't do well. And it's just go away. Just go away. Literally, he will probably go to bed, switch off everything, especially if it's a big tournament like FNCS. You know, they haven't done really well or something, whatever. And, yeah, just literally leave them. Don't mention it at all no um and then eventually they'll come out of it and sort of like and then just don't mention it it's just as if it hasn't happened and he he sort of like reframes him it's quite you know they do he reframes himself and sort of like

finds that inner motivation to be able to then okay we'll we'll go again sort of thing i guess anybody that's involved in something competitive's got to develop that haven't they they've got to find a mindset of how to deal with that because it's part of it one of my um one of my favorite moments is um so benji's had lots of disappointments they got through to grand finals fncs you know especially in season x they were they were meant to win but they they got griefed and mechs came in and they never won it sort of thing um so they've they've got to like finals and they've they've been contested hasn't gone their way but they did dream hack benji and martin miss savage did dream hack and they won it

and literally the last like when they're trying to find out whether they won and benji's reaction was like i think we've won it i think we've won it sort of no we've won it and literally he was almost crying because he was so happy that he's actually won a tournament and then that was like oh my god you've you've achieved you know okay you haven't won FNCS but you know you've actually it meant so much to him to to win it sort of thing um and actually like tomorrow getting to actually play with Benji and Mrs Savage Savage is so special to me. It's like all my Christmases and birthdays come at once. Oh, that's lovely.

Yeah. That's lovely. And is it okay if he beats you? Oh, we're playing as a team together. Oh, fine. That's fine. I'm relying on them to win. I see.

No, no, no, no, I'm getting carried by those two. Harnessing the power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. They're going to do the carry. harnessing the power yeah yeah yeah no no no they're going to do the carry that's the way to do it yeah

well I wish you all the best with the tournament tomorrow the cup tomorrow and I think what you're doing is awesome and I'm sure you'll be there where you

want to be in the time frame you've set it's going to be good yeah thank you thank you appreciate it it's gonna be good yeah thank you thank you appreciate see isn't that an amazing story so cool but also thank you hugely to ann for being so

open and just for sharing her life with me her life story i thought it was an incredible story and i've thought about her subsequently and as i I said in my intro, I just love the fact that, you know, she's embraced something that's, she's sort of surprised herself, but then it's become a big part of her life and it means something to her. And she's got ambition within the gaming world. There's things she wants to achieve and she's pushing herself and I think that's I think it's wonderful I really really love that um meanwhile oh I'm procrastinating I've got to go back to the um go back to the packing and I'm just gonna forget something and it's just whether or not it's something really big or something really small let's hope it's something really small the kids

have given me a list of what they want me to bring, and it's quite extensive. Oh, I just hope I sleep okay. The thing is, it's absolutely boiling this weekend. The forecast for tomorrow is ridiculous. It's supposed to be like 27 or 28 degrees or something daft, but the nights always get cold, don't they? But you know what? No matter what happens tomorrow during the day on the campsite,

by the time I get to the Cambridge Festival in the evening, after I sing Lionel Richie, that is going to make everything a-okay all night long oh yeah um and in the meantime thank you very much i'm trying to think who is coming up next week oh yes i know who i'm hoping is next week oh i can't tell you though because it's got to go through a couple more processes before it's done but let me tell you you, in the last week, I've had not one, not two, but about four more people that I've asked, I've approached, names you all know, I think, who've all said yes to doing the podcast. You know, it's just a complete joy. We're nearly at episode flipping 100. I mean, mind blown, really. In fact, I'm pretty sure in a couple of weeks it's the third birthday of the podcast wowzers thank you so much for um for being here with me and honestly I know

I always say this but I really do read every single comment if you leave it I don't know under the Facebook post or the Instagram post or on Twitter or if you do it on the you know wherever you find your podcast if you do it on on Apple where they have the ability to put posts of you know comments I read them all if there's people you suggest if there's feedback from from episodes I've done before if there's people you really liked it's really nice it's really nice to hear it it's nice for me it's nice for my producer Claire but I think it's also really nice for the guests because really they're the ones that are so generous with their time and their knowledge and their

their wit and their wisdom and all of that stuff so yes basically thank you if you feedback I do actually notice and it does matter so thank you very much and wish me luck for camping that's all I can say and I will see you on the other side all right lots of love be good Thank you.