That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Show n Tell with Alistair Petrie

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Alistair Petrie tells Gaby Roslin about the object that brings him joy... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So here's our Friday extra, our little nugget of joy. Our show and tell moment here on Reasons to Be Joy, where we ask our guests to bring something that brings them joy. Alistair, you are looking carefully in your bag. I don't know what it is you're going to bring out of your bag. What have you brought us that brings you joy? Okay, so you're getting some rustling because it's carefully wrapped up in a plastic bag. This is a

It's a wooden I suppose it looks like a little wooden T-cup Okay so I'm just living your Not I mean teacup I mean an egg cup Thank you May I have a look?

Yeah of course you can Okay So it's a wooden egg cup With a crack down one side You just just Just sound too weird Just put your finger in it And just just sort of like

Yeah and then there should be Yeah Some dust in that Okay good Okay good Oh okay Sand is it sand Very good

so this this sums up a lot of things for me when I was thinking about what I was going to bring in this was given to me by one of my colleagues on a show I did

for Fox called Deep State we did two seasons of it and the second season we did in southern a lot of it in southern Morocco southern southern Morocco where there is nothing there

and it's sort of just I think it's something like 20, 34, 50 miles away from the Algerian border and basically it's the northern Sahara and there's this incredible It's almost as though it's been built, but it hasn't It's literally Lawrence of the Arabia sand dunes But it's it's and it looks amazing, but you can film 360 degrees around so you don't have to point in one direction It's an amazing place. They have shot other films there

I think they did SES rogue heroes recently But as we on our last day of shooting or very close to our last day of shooting One of my colleagues gave this to me and in fact three of us have one of these one of them is the writer-director of the show Matthew Parkhill and the other one is Walton Goggins who was

the rather beautiful American human being that came over to sort of lead our second season and the three of us have got one of these and the reason that you can sort of a little bit of dust it is in fact sand from the northern Sahara now I very carefully decanted this and didn't bring the sand in because it's at home in another

You've got the sand. I have a small handful of northern Sahara sand. So this sits in our sort of dining area in our kitchen. And I look at it every single day. And I wanted to bring it because it says so many things about sort of life, the universe and everything. It reminds me every day of the kind of the absolute sort of joy that I get from the work that I do. And also the relationships that you form and the people that you meet and who influence you. Matthew has become one of my closest friends and I he's he's a supremely wonderful human being so I know he's got one of these and Walton who I didn't know before who's who's truly a generational talent as an act he can do anything and he's a he's a man of great kind of I'll say sort of spiritual but he's such an open kind of soul and you know you can talk long into the night about life the universe and everything and we share that

something really extraordinary and I thought at the time and I look at that every day and I go God I don't know any other job in the world that has the sort of a backstory to to what this sort of little wooden I don't even know what it would be for. Egg cup. Yeah let's call it a little wooden Moroccan egg cup. Maybe it's a for drink. It looks like you could be drinking. Could be. But I sort of see it and it just represents so many things about the relationships you forge in an industry that can be very tough but can also you make you and allow you to meet people that can change your life and your outlook and your perspective on things

and I would say both Matthew and Walton have absolutely done that in my life amongst many many other people but I think that's what it that's what it kind of sort of represents really because our job is weird in that you go on set and you form very fast and very intimate relationships quite quickly and a lot of those kind of just naturally and perfectly healthily just slightly sort of dissipate. But then others you sort of hold on to and take with you

and the lessons that they give you and each other. And we had some amazing adventures together. And yeah, we sort of hang out in the middle of the desert and sort of in front of an open fire and talk stuff. And Walton's one of these extraordinary human beings that just kind of goes, what's over there? And then just walks towards it when a lot of us be quite frightened to do that.

And so he's a remarkable human being, as is Matthew. So the three of us have this. It's normally filled with northern Sahara sand. I see it every day. but it says so much about many things, not least friendship, generosity, I suppose, intimacy in many ways. And I love it to bits. Thank you so much. Thank you.