The Life Of Bryony - The Life of You – Ruth Corden on Trash TV, Tough Workouts and Two Awesome Siblings

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Ruth Corden is back and after our main conversation about bodies, food and self-worth, it felt only right to ask Ruth about the three things she leans on to stay vaguely sane in this ridiculous world. We get into the TV show she’s obsessively loyal to, the thing that leaves her with DOMS but also a much clearer head, and the lifelong relationships that hold her together when everything else feels wobbly. If you’ve ever wondered what really keeps someone going behind the big conversations, this one is for you.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xxCREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Ruth CordenProducer: Laura Elwood-CraigAssistant Producer: Sam RhodesStudio Manager: Sam ChisholmEditor: Luke ShelleyExec Producer: Jamie East  A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, lovely humans and welcome to the bonus edition of The Life of Briney, the Life of You. Today, Ruth Corden is talking about the things she leans on to stay sane in the unpredictable roller coaster that is life. I feel incredibly fortunate to have Ange and James as those two people that grew up around me. And our upbringing was by no means perfect, nobody's ears. But I don't laugh with anyone else in my life like I laugh with those two. My chat with Ruth coming up right after this. Chris Corden, welcome to the life of you.

So I want to know the things that are crucial to your well-being. What's the first thing? This is going to sound really weird, but I'm obsessed with the apprentice. Oh, wow. Yeah, you weren't expecting that way. No, I wasn't. I was expecting that. I usually people come on and they're just like supplements.

meditation, whatever, and you're like... I love the apprentice. Like all versions of it across the globe? No. Just the British one. Just Lord Alan Sugar. I'm Baroness Brady. I love Baroness Brady.

Okay. I just love her, like, personality. I love the fact that she really doesn't give a shit. Like, I just am like, yeah, you just, and you've been an incredible, woman in a very male dominated space. Beautiful. Yeah. And you've owned your own stuff and you've just gone, yeah, I'm going to break this space

and I'm going to do it really well. And I just, so the Apprentice series 20 is on at the moment. And I know lots of people are like, oh, it's outdated now. I just love the chaos of the apprentice. And I love that there are people on there that are like, no, I don't think we should do it in red because red symbolises X, Y, and Z. And then they get into the border room and it's like, you should have done it in red.

And everybody goes. Oh yeah, we should have done it in red and we might have won this stuff. So has the Apprentice always been your like thing? That and Dragon's Den. I also love Dragonsden's Den. Oh, you've got a real like business mind on you. Yeah.

See. I absolutely love those two shows. And I just, I don't know, I watch The Apprentice at night and it's on at the moment. I put it on and I get into bed and I'm like, oh yeah, this just feels so different to the world that I live in. Yeah, because you're a social worker. I am a social worker.

I don't have to really concentrate on the apprentice. you know, it's just a bit of fun. And yeah, I just, I, I love it. That is probably one of the things that I love the most on TV. Wow. That's saying something. That is saying something, isn't it? I can tell I've gone down on your estimate.

No, you haven't at all. You haven't at all. I was like, I was hoping you'd go for more of a kind of like, I'm trying to think what I'm obsessed with at the moment. Emily and Paris. Never got into it. Don't like it. No, never got into Emily and Paris.

Don't like it. I really got into, I've really got into, I really like Stranger Things. Haven't watched it, but would like to. Yeah, I'd go for that. Yeah, I'd really like to watch Stranger Things. But yeah, The Apprentice Dragon's Den, those kind of things, I just love them so much.

Okay. What's number two? Number two would definitely be my weights classes. I now could not live without that. I just, like moving my body, as I said in the podcast, moving my body has just changed the game for me. and especially doing weights. And, you know, you get to a certain age as a woman

and they say that weightlifting is all of the best things that you can do. And I just, I absolutely love it. It makes me feel strong. It's really reconnected me to my body. And in terms of my mental health, it is like transformed the game for me. Really? Oh, it is the very thing. If I say to friends or family,

oh, I've had such a bad day or I feel like shit, like the best thing I can do is go to the gym and just forget it. and refocus and I always come out going, oh, that's sort of my head out. It is the very thing now for me that just makes me feel better. So do you use like the barbells? I put the, I put the barbells. I put the bar on my shoulders and I do squats and lunges and I do clean and presses and I do deadlift. So like a full like Olympic weightlifting. Oh, I am up there. And this is the thing. People think that you're going to bulk if you do weights. The amount you have to do weights to bulk is outrageous. Like you don't get a body like Arnie by just going to four pump classes a week, you know. And I think lots of women for

a long time have thought, well, I don't want to do weights because I don't want to bulk. The strength that you feel when you do weights, you know, it's brilliant. And it's so good for perimenopause and menopause and osteoporosis is massive in women. And there's loads of research now that, you know, heavier weights can help that and can work that. And if you do want to these weight, I'm not saying that anybody should want to. But if you do, what they've proven now, is that your body keeps burning after you finish lifting. And that's why it's so good for weight loss. And cardio is obviously great for your heart health.

But the moment you stop cardio, your body stops working. When you stop weights, your body will continue to burn because of the kind of muscles that it engages in the way that your body is used when you lift weight. So that's a big one for me. Wow. You see, I have tried to do weight. Like, I've done a lot of, like, I've done a lot of weights for my life. I just don't get a buzz out of it.

I also every time I try to do a squat, every time I do squats, and I am probably just doing them wrong, and I have to get everything lined up properly on my heel, because I do this wrong, and then I can't walk for six days. And so I just find it all a bit of a fath. And then when I go to a gym by myself,

you know, you get the machines, like the leg press, and I think, oh, I'll do that. I always just think I'm doing it wrong, and everyone's staring and laughing. Are you what? Look, you know, squats and weight is about form more than anything. And any good PT would tell you it's about finding your form. But I love the feeling of doms.

I love delayed onset muscle soreness. Because I go, God, I've really worked the muscles there. Yeah. I love that. This literally, no, you were the first person I've ever heard say, I love the feeling of doms. Delayed onset muscle soreness. I love it.

I can't fucking bear it. Walking up the stairs and being like, oh, thinking, oh my God, what parts of my body did I engage last night? That I've never engaged before is like the best feeling in the world. I love it. I love it. Do you? Yeah, I do. I'm really like, oh yeah, I must have worked really hard. What about like when you can't sit on the loo?

Oh, that's the best, isn't it? No. It's not. When you get to the point where you're like halfway from, like, halfway sitting down and you go, I don't think I can make this last little bit and you have to really with every. single thing in your body go, just sit down. That is, I can't bear it. Love it. I didn't even get, like, I didn't get Dom's.

I got Dom's the first time I ran a marathon. Like, and I couldn't, like, go downstairs and things and sit down. But the, by the third time I ran a marathon, I stopped getting Dom's and it was just like the next day I felt fine. But, um, but still, I can do like 15 minutes of squats and I'm out for two weeks. I mean, 50 minutes of squats is a lot. Don't do 15 minutes of squats. I mean like I can be there for like 15 minutes and then I'm like I can't walk.

I'm done. Yeah. I love, weightlifting will be my thing now forever, I think. I don't see myself getting highly into cardio ever again. It will be weights for me. Kettlebells is slightly more cardio heavy because it's swinging and, you know, you do sort of get your heart rate up a bit more. But yeah, weights for me is definitely the second thing on my list. Okay.

What is the third? The third is my brother and sister. sister without question. And I am incredibly fortunate that the three of us have never really had moments in our lives where we just haven't been there for each other, I suppose. And not in a sickly, sycophantic way, but in like we're the only people that know what it's like to have been grown up in our family. And that is the very thing that bonds us and holds us together. and that lifelong testament of siblings for me is something that I feel incredibly fortunate to have Ange and James as those two people that grew up around me.

And our upbringing was by no means perfect, nobody's ears, but it was just, I don't laugh with anyone else in my life like I laugh with those two. And there's just this sense of we're from the same pod where we get each other, we're never going to not be there for each other. And I always feel desperately sad when I hear that siblings have fallen out. They're your biggest connection and your most enduring relationship. And I'm so fortunate that I had two people in my life that show up for me in ways that I couldn't imagine if they didn't, you know. And both of them are brilliant human beings with big hearts.

And I'm so fortunate that I was blessed with And James. They are without question my favourite people. How often do you speak to them? We have a sibling chat, which goes off a lot. Oh, like a WhatsApp chat. Yeah, the three of us will often just put in funny things and send voice notes. We did a whole thing the other week where we were just sending voice notes in Australian accents and all three of us were just cracking up and just like the most stupid stuff that everybody else would go,

what, you find that funny? But to us, there's just this like, we can just make each other laugh. You know, growing up with someone like James, you have to be able to laugh, right? Was he always a joker? Yeah, my dad is, I mean, my dad was in the RAF for 25 years. He was a musician in the raft. Like, if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined, right? Like, we are the family that will call you out and take the piss out of you.

And that is, you know, and it's all done from a point of view of like, I can do this because I love you so much. And if anybody else dared say this to you, I'd be really cross with them. But laughter in our household was something that was just intrinsically there, We just laughed a lot. And our parents just encouraged us to think about what we thought about the world. Sunday lunchtimes would often be a, you know, a conversation about stuff that was going on in the world and what we thought about it. And we were always encouraged to have an opinion and share it and talk about that and be respectful of other people's opinions.

And, you know, I was very fortunate. I had parents that wanted to listen and want to hear what other people have got to say. But my brother and sister, I mean, we just have. the best time when we're together. And we went on holiday last year with my family and James's family and my sister's family. And we just had, it's just the best time. And of all the siblings I could have been blessed with, I definitely hit the jackpot with those two. So sweet. It's a relationship that I am so grateful for every day of my life. And I know that there are two people out there that no matter what happens, they'll be in my corner, I think, forever.

That makes me feel a bit jealous if I'm, if I'm, like, I have a sister and a brother and they're really lovely, but they don't sound half as good as yours. Oh, they're, they're pretty, and it's hard. It is hard, you know, because when you, when you grow up with somebody who, you know, Gavin and Stacey exploded when my brother was in his early 20s and James and I was spending a lot of time together at that point. And, you know, when you read stuff about somebody who you love, you love, dearly, like love the actual bones of. It's so hard because, you know, there's a sense of if only you knew him, right? If only you really knew him in the way that people really know him, you would know that this stuff about him a lot of the time isn't true. And I'm so lucky, I'm so lucky to have a brother and a sister that just, we just, yeah, we just spend our time laughing together and having fun and yeah they would absolutely be the third

and most precious thing to me obviously with my parents as well don't get me wrong we were so blessed with our parents but there's something about my siblings that is for life I suppose and I and I know that everybody doesn't get that and so I feel very lucky thanks for you that's such a lovely way to end I feel all warm I'm going to message my brother and my sister I'm going to kick open our WhatsApp group. Yes, do it. We usually just use it to tell each other how annoyed we are by our parents. Oh, there's some of that in ours too.

But a lot of the time, it is just us trying to make each other laugh. I mean, these voice notes, they just went back and forth for ages, just us trying to say the most stupid thing we could in Australian. I mean, we were just all cracking up. Like, just stupid stuff like that that just is so life-giving. Flaming Glar. You're fame and glar, mate, that's right. And the best thing to say in an Australian accent is paracetamol.

Would you like some paracetamol? So I'm not going to do the disservice to Australians by trying to say that. Whereas I am more than happy to do the disservice to Australians. You have a good Australian accent. Thank you so much. That means loads to me. I just sound like Jim Robinson after he's had a stroke. That's the place to end, mate.

On that note. Good day. A massive thank you to Ruth. If any of those resonated with you or brought up stories of your own experiences with siblings, message me on Instagram at at Life of Briny Pod. Or you could just leave us a review and give us a follow. It really does make a difference and helps more people who need these conversations to find the show. Most importantly though, please look after yourself. Be as kind to yourself as you are to everyone else and I'll see you on Monday.