The Life Of Bryony - A Very Gordon Christmas!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Life of Brighton, where we embrace life's messier moments. Today it's all about Christmas and it's a family affair. I'm joined by my mum Jane, my dad Jack and my brother Rufus as we dig into the highs and lows of our Gordon family Christmases. Christmas memories, festive mishaps and course, family drama right after this. With Uber Reserve, you can book your Uber ride in advance. 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. Uber Reserve. See Uber app for details. Welcome to the Christmas episode.

Starting point is 00:01:14 A very festive episode of the life of Briny, which the producer has called Keeping Up with the Gordashians. Because my special guests this week week I've interviewed royalty, I've interviewed Spice Girls but I've never interviewed my mum, my dad and my brother. The whole thing of an interview is you have to, I'll say something and then you say something in response. Well there's nothing I can say after that. I mean you completely stumped me. I mean I didn't expect that at all. I was expecting something completely different. Now I'm completely thrown and feel very very embarrassed. In fact not just embarrassed I feel quite marginalized. I suppose that's possible being an old person. You get used

Starting point is 00:01:59 to marginalization. I mean it was like on the bus when I was coming here I felt I got marginalised by the bus driver and the attitude. That's enough, the podcast is over. That's the thing I can't explain my feelings because I keep getting blocked off. That's the problem with old people, don't you think so? I do. That's my dad, his name is Jack and then there's my mother called Jane. Hello darling. And then there's Rufus, my brother. Hi mate.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Rufus is very, you're much younger than me. I am. I was 12 when you were born. Yeah. My sister Naomi, our sister Naomi, is not here because she claims that she had to work. Yeah, even though you gave her a couple of dates for it. I wanted to do an episode about the nightmare, not before Christmas, although this is a nightmare before Christmas, the nightmare that is family Christmases, because everyone always talks

Starting point is 00:02:51 about how it's the most wonderful time of the year. And on this podcast, we don't like to talk about the wonderful things we prefer to shed light on the dark. So I thought what a better way than to bring in the very people that fucked me up in the first place. Well, I think that's very, very fair. And as you say, the point is, recent research suggests that there are more heart attacks and deaths at Christmas time than at any other time of the year.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Have you actually done research for this podcast, Dad? I've not done research. I've just picked up on some research and people are falling over like nine pins at Christmas. Particularly 2015, should we talk about that one? Well when you look at 2015 it's hardly surprising. Let's not talk about 2015 just yet. I was brought in to talk about 2015, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't the fact that I was able to talk about 2015. My mother, your grandmother, who we all loved, she used to call Christmas the capital city of family. And in a way it is, but maybe we give it too much importance in our lives. I dread Christmas having to go to you and say that we're spending Christmas in any other fashion than with you, with you in full control. I know. Well, since 2015 I've been very hands-off. If you think that's bad,

Starting point is 00:04:15 what about my parents whose parents came over from Lithuania, Litvaks I think they call them, and they put their stockings out every Christmas. They were Jewish? Yeah, there was some great Hanukkah done. The sting is in the tail, and they still put out their stockings and they put coal in the stockings and orange peel. That's what you got? So that was the relationship between my family and Christmas, which is slightly different

Starting point is 00:04:47 from the ones that we experienced. Yes, but you, again, your family was Jewish. So they didn't celebrate Christmas. So you didn't celebrate Christmas. Well the plenty of Jewish people celebrate Christmas now, but obviously not in those days. I haven't planned any particular questions because I just thought this will just go off. We had different Christmases though. What do you mean? I had different childhoods you, Bryony. It's like we're like half siblings. I know it all comes out. Are

Starting point is 00:05:15 we half siblings? Half is childhood and a different vibe. So you kind of had your like mad 90s Christmases. No, I think we had quite traditional Christmases like before you came along. So mine were traditional. Certainly, because mum and dad got divorced when you were like, how old? 10, I think. Yeah, so me and Nermy definitely had the more sort of like,

Starting point is 00:05:40 I think Christmas was just very, very straightforward, probably until you turned 10 or, and it was, no, but it was very straightforward. We, you know, there were stockings in the morning, we'd spend it, spend it. The stocking's ridiculous by the way. What did you love about the stockings? Yeah, they were just mad, but this is another thing,

Starting point is 00:05:58 it's mum putting themselves, like they'd get better each year and they wouldn't be like stockings, right? So you imagine stockings just like that big sock. They were tights. They were tights double-legged tights all right and then they would have like and then they would always like an orange at the end but they would just be like Reese's cups pants from Urban Outfitters or something yeah it's basically it was full of all the expensive stuff on the way to the till the thing like no one's buying that mom was basically funding that economy. I tell you what, Christmas bankrupted me every year, every year.

Starting point is 00:06:26 I mean I just I used to spend a fortune and that was also part of it you know like if we were all together and everyone had all the presents they'd ever ever thought and dreamed of then all was well in my world. The sibling rivalry with Naomi saying don't buy Bryony that, she doesn't really want it. She told me she doesn't want it, don't buy it for her. But I like it, I like it very very much. Why didn't you buy it for me? In fact you buy it for me and then you can give me the one that you were going to give Bryony. Because she doesn't want it. She doesn't want it. I do have to say that even as an adult... We said in Woolworths... At 44, Christmas does bring out that kind of primal, childlike thing in me where I'm sitting there and I'm like, they've got Naomi a better present, they've got Naomi a bigger

Starting point is 00:07:14 present, they like her more and I'm like, you're fucking 44, Bryony. But there is something, but even just coming on the way here, just as we started to walk through the building, I sort of transformed into 15-year-old Briony. The closer we got to the door and the closer I got to the idea of being seen with my family outside of like the home, like in public, out of the context of family. Like you just hang out with us like you like us. Just like the mortification that I... Of owning up to your family. ...of having to like be like, oh, I just feel so embarrassed. And that's how I feel at Christmas.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Really? Well, really. Thank you for letting us know before we've gone out to buy you your presents. I think that's going to have a great impact on what we choose. If indeed we choose anything at all on that basis. No, but what I mean is Christmas does bring out sort of all of those really basic family dynamics.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Like, I always remember someone very wise saying to me, your family know how to push your buttons because they installed them. And I think it's, and it's true, right? I remember you arguing because you threw away my main present your main present one year you've always been so obsessive about cleaning up that you would be putting the wrapping away before anyone had finished actually unwrapping. The problem was that there were some children in that wrapping as well that was a real problem. But it was very kind of stockings and we'd spend one year with cousins and one year with

Starting point is 00:08:49 grandparents or whatever. But then as you get older, divorce happens which is a very normal thing for lots of families. Christmas can start to become more complicated. Can I just say before your sobriety, you were sort of grown up you and your sister remember you'd come home from the barley mo from the barley mo and then I'd be asleep up to his eight year old and mum would come out and be like Christmas is cancelled! I'd be like no I'd come downstairs crying, crying, going home, you're battered

Starting point is 00:09:17 Because we'd got so drunk. So drunk at the barley mo. On Christmas Eve. I didn't know what the barley mo was. I was like what is this barley mo? I can't wait to go to the barley mo. On Christmas Eve. I think when you and Naomi were younger, Christmas was much simpler and it wasn't quite so fractured when you get married and... You've got in-laws.

Starting point is 00:09:39 And you've got your in-laws and you've got Edie and... So it becomes slightly more complicated and it's not a simple unit. But also I feel like you, mum, the older we got the more pressure you put on yourself to continue producing a magical, perfect family Christmas. It was ridiculous. It was like I remember upsetting you once by saying it was OCD. It was an obsessive Christmas disorder. And that's that was by making light of the terrible mental illness I've suffered from for 12 years old. But that's how I was.

Starting point is 00:10:19 I was completely obsessive about Christmas until, can I dare say, 2015. Yes, you keep, you keep, listen, none of us have gone there but you obviously want to get out. Well I know I'm going to be punished for it. So 2015, you... I just moved. You'd moved out of London. To be fair, the two of you have always been quite good at, you know, since you got divorced, you always come together at Christmas, which I think is quite unusual.

Starting point is 00:10:45 Yeah, we do. More so as we've gone along, really. I don't know whether it is unusual, certainly wasn't unusual for us, but there was a genuine desire to come together at Christmas. And I, you know, I think there's sort of the residues of affection and... Residues of affection? That's my favourite phrase. And it's the capitalues of affection. That's my favorite phrase. And the capital city of family. Capital city of family. Yes, no, I think that's right. But I think it's the other way around. I think it's not that Christmas has the pull, it's just that you want to do it because the emphasis comes

Starting point is 00:11:19 from us wanting to do it and not from Christmas being a magnetic field that pulls you closer to it. I think we've taken the opportunity as we sometimes do at birthdays as well to do that and I think the reason for that is that we much prefer to be together than we would be apart. But you've been divorced now for almost as long as you were married. Is that fair to say? We were married for 25 years. Coming up to it. Yeah you seem to be. It's our 50th wedding anniversary. So yeah so you've almost been divorced for so but you do seem to get on better the longer you're divorced if that makes sense. Have you actually got back together? Do you want to use the

Starting point is 00:11:59 podcast? No. We got back together in some ways. Oh, oh! Excuse me. Christmas is like pretending it's like 1997 again. For the last like five years, dad and mum just together. Oh dear, the walls were coming in for a moment there. I think I was hallucinating. Because there might be people listening who are about to spend their first Christmas, they might have just got divorced might you know not be at the stage where they're even able to look at their ex-partner and you know I wanted if you had any words of advice for them to let them know that things change and things get better. You probably don't get divorced in the first place.

Starting point is 00:12:37 Absolutely don't get divorced in the first place and besides time heals all so I you know and I think that you you look back and you review things and and just do things in a different in a different way and and I think it's based on a certain amount of regret maybe we shouldn't have done that maybe we shouldn't got divorced maybe maybe we should have done that so what we're trying to do is we're trying to live out or live through that that period of not wanting to do it. So we are together and the interesting thing is, I find anyway, is that we can be together in silence, which is quite interesting. You mean you don't talk? We do talk and we don't talk in equal measure

Starting point is 00:13:18 and there isn't that overarching need to say something or to talk about something. You can still be relaxed in a degree of silence. That's the sign of a healthy relationship, I think. Yes, but divorce isn't the sign of a healthy relationship. Well, no, but you say that, but for some people it might be. Maybe you have to go through that process to get to the place where you're in a healthy relationship.

Starting point is 00:13:41 To learn and grow, Dad. Well, I mean... Are you learning and growing? Learn and shrink, I think, probably more than learn and grow dad? Well I mean... Are you learning and growing? Learn and shrink I think probably more than learn and grow but I think it's probably to a degree making up for lost time you know maybe it would have been better not to have divorced so and if we didn't divorce we'd be together so what if we're together a little bit more now and I I think that's a reaction from thinking twice about having been divorced.

Starting point is 00:14:10 Yes. Yes. Say, Kay, reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights. To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. See Uber app for details. Let's go to 2015, though. So I've moved to this little quaint cottage in the country. It's quite like the one out of the holiday that Kate Winslet lives in.

Starting point is 00:14:44 I've put a cabin at the bottom of the garden where you were staying in the Heidi house Bar I station zebra I station zebra I was just obsessed by having this perfect Christmas. So Edie was my daughter. He was two years old That's right. And we'd only just at that time if you remember set up the escape committee So you created an escape committee in the cabin so you would go to the pub wasn't it? We were thinking about getting away because things were starting to go to boiling point the mercury was rising So no tensions were appearing Christmas Day and the turkey is in the oven

Starting point is 00:15:22 They've gone to the pub. This was you they? All of us. All of you. And I'm cooking and then suddenly a power cut. The interesting thing was on our way back from the walk all the lights were out. I have no memory of that. That was the harbinger. You came in. No I remember coming in singing do you want to build a snowman. That was so perfect. It was like great oh my god it was a great place. I said to that no I don't want to build a snowman? That was so perfect. It was like great. Oh my god, it was a great 30 seconds that. No, we don't want to build a snowman. I think you said no fuck off and then the closed the door. Yes, something like that.

Starting point is 00:15:53 We all come back from the pub and I'm singing, do you want to build a snowman? And mum says no fuck off, which is always a really great way, I think, to welcome someone. It's certainly a shame. I knew there would be so much shame. Certainly a Christmas shame though. There's something about the intrinsic value of Christmas when you're told to fuck off. That you know exactly where you are. The moment you say that, everything seems to fall into place. Can I just say that I think at some point I said something terrible. I said worse than fuck off to you. What did you say?

Starting point is 00:16:30 Oh I think I used the C word. What do you mean Christmas? I got into the cupboard and I cried. Hang on, hang on, hang on. No, no, no. We're skipping ahead. What happened? You were in full flight, quote, full flight, lashing out at everybody swearing at everybody thank you it wasn't quite anything that saved

Starting point is 00:16:53 us from total annihilation was the fact that you slipped on the goose fat and banged your head on the floor. I don't remember that. Silence was golden on that. There was goose fat all over the floor. You dropped the turkey. You were bringing the turkey out of the oven and you slipped on something. So the lights were out and then you just told me to fuck off and you told called dad a wub that ends in you and see that is an aunt and you had we so we came in and got oh and then you slipped and dropped the turkey on the floor and fell over at the same time over I think you bumped your head on something that this that this had, that was, you know, that's kind of enough.

Starting point is 00:17:47 But then when finally, I think Harry, my husband, got the lights back on, did something, we kind of sorted it out. There was a table, a fucking tablescape, like the kind of thing you'd see on Instagram. So then we were all sitting around this tablescape and mum puts the turkey down and Rufus is down. This is so- And the whole table collapses. Yeah. It collapses and red wine goes everywhere.

Starting point is 00:18:18 Bearing in mind, mum has had this huge, I don't know what we call it, kind of, not a breakdown, but like a whatever. And then it was remembered as the time Rufus knocked the table over. No, I don't know what we call it, kind of, not a breakdown, but like a whatever. And then it was remembered as the time roof is not the table over. No, I don't think it is. I don't think it's over. Someone anecdoted that and that was the story title. I want to just say that listening back to this whole 2015 thing, I do think that, mama, I think you've been very unfairly characterized. And we would

Starting point is 00:18:49 like to start, yeah, the hashtag justice for Jane. Because actually, looking back, and I think this is something that will resonate with lots of female listeners, that so often the women get all the flack for anything that goes wrong. You know, actually, it's very normal that you would lose your shit when, you know, just as you're getting to the, you know, to the like pinnacle of this thing that you've been planning for months. Well, I think that's true because I always felt, you know, that you'd spent weeks, months shopping, hiding presents, getting all the food and all the rest of it. And who gets all the credit?

Starting point is 00:19:31 Father Christmas. Very good point, mum. Not Mother Christmas. And it is Mother Christmas, isn't it? Yes, god damn it. I think it is true. And I think that pressure, because it is, yeah, I saw there was like a post on Instagram I saw this morning,

Starting point is 00:19:44 and it was about how it's okay if you are uncomfortable with gift giving because you grew up in a house where the mother was always tense. And, and, and what actually, what was wonderful was that I read the comments and everyone was like, yeah, you're goddamn right, the mother was always fucking tense because the father never fucking did anything. And there was this kind of like spike back, you know. And I think that's true. And I think it's still like I definitely know. Harry doesn't he doesn't really get it like he's he's definitely like she's got

Starting point is 00:20:17 a tangerine and a walnut cracker in her stocking. I think that's enough. Don't you? And I'm like, absolutely not. It's never enough. No. It's never enough. And he just doesn't understand the pressure, I guess, that we put on ourselves to make Christmas magic. And Martha has responsibility for making it magic. 2015. That was one of my very last Christmases of drinking and I remember two years later I came out of rehab,

Starting point is 00:20:46 I graduated from rehab like a week before Christmas and I remember there were a couple of us leaving and I remember the counsellor Dougie, I remember him saying you know this is you know someone's saying how how are we going to cope being sober at Christmas with our families and he said smile and wave and then he said and his other piece of advice was do you want to be happy or do you want to be right and I said well I'd like to be both if it's all possible he said no you can only pick one and actually that's really good advice for all life situations where I decided I wanted to be right. No, I'm joking. I wanted to be happy. But obviously Christmas then became like a different thing for me because obviously a lot of the Christmas jollity is

Starting point is 00:21:42 around champagne and box spheres and drinking and whatever and that obviously was not something that is not, I mean I'm, this is, I think this is my eighth sober Christmas which is, you know, I'm kind of used to it now but definitely I started to create like different traditions. Like going to Thailand. We went to Thailand one year, me and Harry and Edie. And you went to your in-laws one year. I was very angry about that. I think that's quite normal. Actually, when was the last time we spent Christmas together?

Starting point is 00:22:12 Um, can we just, sorry. Last Christmas! We spent last Christmas together. When was the last time? But I also think, like Christmas to me, it's about Edie and it's about presents for her. And you know, I think because I've seen how much pressure you've put on yourself to get you how stressed you got out about it. I'm like, that isn't kind of how I want to do it. This year, I'm going away.

Starting point is 00:22:38 I'm not even going to spend Christmas with my husband because he's got to work. So we're going to somewhere hot to me and Edie with my best friend and her kids. Like Christmas is what you make of it, isn't it? And I feel quite kind of comfortable about that. But I know other people get, there are some people that said to me, oh, you're not going to be spending Christmas with your family. And I'm like, oh, isn't that sad? And I'm like, no, I don't find it particularly. I find it a bit sad, Brian, but then then you know. We're spending time together now though. We're spending time together and isn't this fun? Yes. But at the same time I think after 2015 I kind

Starting point is 00:23:14 of abdicated Christmas. It was no longer, it doesn't bother me. I used to have dreams you know like in the middle of summer about it being the night before Christmas and I hadn't got any Christmas presents and I'd be running around trying and I literally did. I think there's this pull that Christmas has for you Craig and that's why you were saying it would be nice for us as much as possible to be together in Henley with you so Christmas is a catalyst for family. That's what it is. And for family to be together. Can I just please, can I just make the point that I have attempted to create a family event, a date, a couple of days before Christmas before, and...

Starting point is 00:23:54 The suit's briny down to the teeth, but not many other people. But we will make it happen. And I'll try. Because Christmas is not about, it's about Edie now. It's true. It is. And Edie's gone outie now. It's true. It is. And Edie's gone out with her pocket money and brought us all presents, so. She has and I think she's, like for me as well, presents, like I'm not really actually,

Starting point is 00:24:12 despite that thing of like, oh, my sister gets a better present, I have to be honest, if I want something I just go out and buy it for myself. But you do like presents. No, but I like giving, but I like giving presents. I know, so do I. And I think Edie's really inherited that. Yeah, she's sort of taken all her pocket money that she saved up and she's gone and bought very specific presents for everyone that she is really excited to give to you all.

Starting point is 00:24:35 So you better be there. You better be there. Thank you, family, for coming in to be my very special festive guest on this very special festive episode of The Life of Briony. We only seem to hang out when you're getting paid to do so. That is so unfair. You literally have lived in my spare room for eight months. Oh, we can cut this now.

Starting point is 00:24:55 For free. For free. A huge thank you to my mum and dad, Jane and Jack, sounds very formal, and my brother Rufus for sharing their memories and, quote unquote, wisdom. Whether you're navigating family tensions, trying to manage holiday chaos or just hoping to get through Christmas without setting something on fire, I hope this episode has brought you a little bit of joy. See you on Friday. Stay safe on roads this winter. Michelin driving expert and former professional race car driver Carl Nadu shares his tips

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The Life Of Bryony - A Very Gordon Christmas!

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