The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep49: Rob Biddulph on the animal NO ONE can draw!

Episode Date: September 7, 2021

Listen as the artistic equivalent of PE with Joe, author and illustrator Rob Biddulph, chats to Annie and Wendy about keeping kids occupied in lockdown, and his new book, Peanut Jones and the Illustrated City, out now!

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears, brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary. And I'm Wendy Gollage. And together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments. With guests who are far more interesting than we are. Welcome to another glorious episode of Sweat, Snot and Tears. We're recording this in August, everyone. I know it's September now that you're listening to it.

But I need to take you on the journey that the Wendell and I are on. We're half really chilled because we've had a bit of time off and we might have a bit more coming up, but half having nervous breakdowns because everybody else is on holiday and we're having to do all their work. And we've had to do that thing

where you earn your holiday by working 97 hour days before you go and 97 hour days when you come back. But Wend, I want you to update us on what happened to you in cornish cornwall because you had a pretty epic life experience that doesn't happen very often go on we did have quite an epic life experience we well there was an unepic life experience that is 10 hours on the m5 to get there but then we were quietly stand up paddleboarding our way around a little beach called Towan on the Roseland Peninsula and there were seals and we thought oh aren't they lovely and then they kind of came up to the sup and they started playing with it and they started tapping

the fin and basically they followed us all the way back to the beach and it was quite mad to be so close to seals so it was lovely I think it's very magical would you call yourself a seal whisperer now do you think absolutely absolutely as anyone who knows me knows I don't ever whisper let alone to seals um you gave me an impression earlier of the noise the seals were making when they were communicating with you and i think the sweat's not dear listeners need to hear it please hold on hold on it was like a sound okay thank you very much for that so everyone if you don't get up close and personal with the seal that's what

you're missing out on now i think we should ask today's guest whether he's ever drawn a seal because today's guest is none other than children's illustrator extraordinaire and sanity saver in lockdown thanks to his kids drawing videos on youtube rob bid off welcome to the show oh thanks for having me guys i have drawn a seal actually i have a seal uh one of my very first book in fact blown away there's a seal character and his name's wilbur he wears a little a little bandana a little red bandana with white polka dots i don't know if any of the seals that you saw wendy were wearing bandanas but um the polka dots but none of the bandanas but my daughter called the seal Dave actually so our producer will be very thrilled.

After our producer, there you go. Are seals easy to draw Rob? Do you know what they're not they're pretty they're pretty easy yeah they're not too bad they're not like you know horses or something like that which are much much trickier. Why are horses hard? I don't know maybe that's just me I've always found horses hard I can do a horse standing still I'm not bad at that but as soon as it's the walking thing it's the opposing legs I don't know which one goes where and they always just look all over the shop can we just quantify you're not bad versus my not bad yeah you're not bad still looks like a horse. Yeah. Well, you know, my mantra is everybody can draw, Wendy. So, you know, I, you know, I think, you know, it's, you know, art is subjective, isn't it?

It's not it's not a binary thing. There is no right or wrong answer. So who's to say that your interpretation of a horse is any better or worse than mine? I like you. Rob, I've seen her drawings and they're not great the only thing i'm more shit at than drawing is singing it's that's coming at the end don't spoil it when okay sorry sorry right rob bob tell us about your girls how old are they you've got three girls three girls yeah they're um well they're frighteningly old now so the oldest the oldest one is 20 she's just turned 24 so she's gone she's out she's been away university she's been back now she's gone again gone done see you later um and then the middle one is 16 so it's uh yeah just done her GCSEs

did she get the results today she did she did she did, yeah, she got them today. Happy, sad, okay, where are we? We're happy, we're happy, there's one she's not particularly happy about, in fact, we're going to query it. But she's happy. I mean, do you know what, GCSEs, it's all about getting to the next stage, isn't it? As long as she can get

in to do her A-levels, which she has done easily, I mean, there was never any doubt about that. But she's happy. She's happy. She's done really well. We're very, very proud of her. So, yes. Is she doing A-level art, dare I ask? She's not, actually.

Oh, Rob. She's letting the side down, isn't she? She's letting the side down. The oldest one did. The oldest one is, in fact, she's a graphic designer now. Oh, there you go. She really went to art college and everything. She, like, you know, can you say you've got a favourite child?

I don't know. But no, she's not the middle one. They're not particularly into art. She is art. She's doing drama. So she's creative. She channels her creativity in another, down another route. She's a fess.

And then the youngest is, right. I'm going to say 12. I think she's 12. And she, Poppy, she's the youngest one so yeah they're all we've got quite a spread of ages i'll see we often talk to people at the toddler cold face but you're at the teenage cold face man bad time i'm at the teenage cold face yeah i am and have you become like a hormonal teenage girl whisperer if if Wendy's a seal whisperer are you a hormonal teenage whisperer I think I'm all I didn't you know you know what you know touch wood we um we've had it we've had a with the oldest two we've had a fairly easy um

easy ride of it so we'll see what happens what happens with the youngest as she hits her teenage years. What are your tips and tricks? Oh, my gosh. Don't breathe. Don't look at them. Don't talk to them. Is that the... Different rooms. Preferably different buildings.

I'm out here in my little studio at the end of the garden. And that seems to work really, really well. Listeners, you can't see, but the dog has come with him to get away from the teenager. It's a very well-behaved dog. Is the dog a girl as well? Are you just surrounded by women? No, the dog is the dog. Ringo is a boy. And that was kind of a deal breaker, I must admit, because I was so outnumbered. Our dog is a boy, too, for the same reason. We're a two girl family. And my husband said if the dog didn't have balls he wasn't getting one well yeah we didn't yeah it wasn't didn't quite put it like that but yeah now most of us survived lockdown because of you tell us about your lockdown yeah I had a very

strange lockdown it's been um I would say the busiest 18 months of my entire life because yeah so basically what happened was right at the beginning just before the schools closed I was sitting there as a Sunday evening I was sitting there watching the news with my wife and they were saying right I think we're going to close the schools in about a week's time and I being a father of three girls and having spent many you know summer school summer holidays trying to think of things for them to do when it's you know raining outside um uh i thought right i think i might be able to help i was mainly thinking of the parents really i thought i might be able to help parents out because what i do at my so the thing is when you sign a book contract lots of authors nobody told me this before i signed my book contract but about about a week later, you get called into your publisher's office and they say, right, you've got to develop an act.

You're going out on the road. You're going on stage. And I was like, what? Hang on. I'm the guy who sits in the shed at the end of the garden, drawing and not talking to anyone. I just do drawing. I wasn't in the, you know, I wasn't in the school plays. I did the posters for the school plays. And they said, right, now you've got to develop an act you're going out on the road and within about you know three months of my book coming out I found myself you know on stage at the Royal Festival Hall in front of like hundreds of kids talking about books it's quite scary it's quite scary and there's lots of authors I actually it turns out I really like it and I think I'm quite good at it because I must be some kind of massive show off or something. But I found out quite early on that if I stood on stage and drew for the kids, kids think drawing is a superpower.

They really do. So if they see that you can draw, you kind of got them in the palm of your hand. So that's what I used to do. I used to do these draw along things on stage and I still do. I've done them the whole way through my book career. Like Tony Hart for the next gen, basically. Much like Tony Hart. Well, at least you didn't say the other one, Annie. I thought you were going to say the other one. I was being careful not to mention the other person. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I've had, yes, that is a,

that is a tricky, that is a tricky one. So yeah, I thought, right, what I can do, I can just, what if I just film myself doing what I do on stage at all my book events? I've been doing it for, by that point, I've been doing it for years. I was pretty good at doing these step-by-step. So what I do, I do step-by-step drawings. I break a drawing down into little bite-sized pieces. I do a bit on the stage.

Usually the kids will draw a little bit, then I'll draw some more, they'll draw, and we end up, everyone ends up with the drawing. They're really thrilled. Do you provide the pens and paper or do you tell them to bring their own? I don't. Usually because it's the venue. It'll be the venue that does all that stuff. Sorry, I just need to know the details. Her attention to detail never fails to amaze me. This is good.

God, Annie. It is actually, whenever I turn up at a venue, it's the first question first question i ask it's like you have got the pens and pencils the reason i'm asking is if my son ever found himself in the same room as you which is like his dream and he didn't have his pen and paper with him i think he would have a nervous breakdown well i you know i do i do carry some spares i do carry some spares so your son would be trying i've got him covered i've got him covered yeah so so yeah so i do these little step-by-step drawings so i thought right yeah i'll film myself doing them and i'll stick them up online and then that way parents parents can you know stick the kids

in front of youtube with a pen and a pencil and it might keep them out of their hair for half an hour or so so i had the idea on the sunday recorded the first one on the Monday, put it up on YouTube on the Tuesday. And I'm not joking. I was on like news at 10 on the Wednesday night. It was crazy how many people were. I mean, unbelievable. You know, my phone just did not stop. It went stratospheric, didn't it? Yeah, it did. It was so popular so quickly. And and so, yeah. So then it's kind of it kind of carried on from there so i initially i was doing in the first lockdown when it was all um you know everywhere it was it was such a sort of

scary and in lots of ways kind of a bleak time wasn't it so i was doing two videos a week and i think what happened was my my social media feeds because what i would do the kids would send me pictures of them holding their drawings and i'd repost these pictures and i think my social media feeds because what I would do the kids would send me pictures of them holding their drawings and I'd repost these pictures and I think my social media feed became a little kind of oasis of sort of joyous pictures of happy kids with their pictures of dinosaurs in this sort of this sort of desert of bleakness and sort of you know anxiety and it sort of self it was a self-perpetuating thing because the more people that saw that the more people that joined in with the video so it just got more more and more popular so yeah i was doing two a week at the beginning and then um and then i sort of went down to one

a week once things started sort of to calm down a little bit but um yeah we've done i've done i've just in fact as at the time of recording i I'm about to post my 100th video. It's your centenary. It's my centenary. I think one of the things that was really magical about it, so my son loves drawing and he got really into the video straight away. And he and his best friend obviously couldn't see each other because we weren't supposed to mingle or anything.

So what they used to do was FaceTime each other and follow the video together. So I actually think it became quite a nice connector of people, not just a way for someone to entertain themselves on their own. Yeah, definitely. Lots of people, lots of people telling me that was happening. In fact, I was getting sent, I'd get sent pictures from, you know, pan-generational pictures, you know, little boy, his dad and his granddad all holding the same drawing that they'd done. And it was lovely to see. So, yeah, I think that happened a lot. And, you know, at a time when, as you say, you know, people couldn't connect physically, it was a really nice thing to bring them together across the internet.

Well, and I think any kind of creative outlet is so good for people's mental health as well. Like, is that one of the benefits for you do you feel very different when you're drawing I definitely do you sort of go into a different different place because yeah my job's a funny one because I write I write the stories and I illustrate them and that's not that's fairly unusual in the children's book world usually you have somebody who writes the text somebody else does the illustrations but i i'm just greedy i like to do everything and so um yeah when i go when i go into when i'm in drawing mode i thought you'd go into sort of like yeah a bit of like a it is like you go into a bit of a zen like state really and um i i don't really think about it when i'm doing it i just sort of

just draw draw and then at the end of it there's a picture in front of me so it definitely is quite calming i think drawing you know is is therapeutic it's great for mental health mindfulness well-being loads of benefits improve i think it improves your focus it can help lengthen your attention span it's really good for um problem solving drawing i think because you're kind of half concentrating on the drawing and half mulling over what else is going on in your head what to do what to kind of do next yeah and it is you know it's about it's about problem solving drawing you know and especially when you do my drawings as I said that's kind of step by step so I think the kids that have done them with me all the way through um they can see how you can build because if you if you initially if I showed you the

drawing I don't know of a steam train right you might look at it and think particularly you Wendy who you've said you don't think you're very good at drawing Wendy's become the textbook reference for someone it's bad at art sorry no no it's fine I accept that it's cool yeah yeah so Wendy might look at my steam train and think I've got absolutely no chance but once you know you break it down into kind of manageable as I said bite-sized pieces, and you build it up and you take your time doing it, you end up with this thing that you're really, really proud of. And I think lots of kids have kind of...

You can take that through to other aspects of life as well. And learning. So a story is essentially a sum of some parts, isn't it? And a maths problem, you just break down into parts that's a really good way of yeah you're just picking all the things i'm bad at i'm bad at maths i think you can write quite a good story when i can write a story i give me credit for that one yeah okay fine i want to know how old you were when you realized drawing was something you could do better than like your mates um I was quite young I was quite young I might but I I think I'd always my mum my mum's

my mum paints my mum's a really talented artist and so I think when we were kids there was lots of there was always paper and pens and paints and things around the house and back in those days you know we didn't have iPads and mobile phones and the internet and stuff. So, you know, I think I spent a lot of my time drawing. And I remember being in reception. So what are you in reception? You're about four, aren't you in reception?

And I remember I won a competition at my school, in the whole school, in the whole primary school. It was a drawing competition. I drew a picture of some kids dancing around a maple and I won the competition and I think from that moment on I was kind of pegged as the arty kid at school so pretty much my whole life I've always been um that's been the label that's been kind of applied to me so I always did you know the I always drew the posters for the school plays and you you know, all that sort of thing. Caricatures of my teachers and my friends. And so, yeah, I think I knew quite early on.

My mum, my mum says she could tell straight away as soon as almost as soon as I picked up a pencil that, you know, what was in my head would appear on the page. You know, I think that's what it is, isn't it? It's just translating what's here to your hand. Well, we wouldn't know because it doesn't really,'t really happen for us so if there are parents listening who've got a hunch their kids are great at drawing how do they encourage it is it a thing of like art classes is there special things they should buy how do you encourage them to get better at what you think they're good at? I just think just encouraging them to do it all the time. So yeah, make sure you've always got pencils and paper handy. I don't think you need any fancy art equipment, really. You might want a set of coloured pencils or something

like that. But I think being an example to your kids yourself is really good. I mean, we were talking earlier about drawing together with children. I think that's a really powerful thing to do. So if your child sees you drawing and you're not self-conscious about your drawing and you just draw, you know, with abandon and enthusiasm and just laugh at it, if you make a mistake, don't screw your piece of paper up and throw it away. Just keep on going and laugh about it. I think that's really, really important. And also display your children's artwork, stick it up on the fridge, put it in a frame, have some frames that you can kind of rotate on the wall,

you know, and put your children's artwork up on the wall because, you know, art is made to be seen. And I think for a child, the fact that a grownup sees their picture as something worthy of a place on the wall, you know, maybe even in a frame can be hugely important it can have a massive impact on um you know their feelings of self-worth and you know and uh their sense of place within the family unit too and it can really give their confidence a huge burst in

a booth sorry and that's what that's what drawing's all about it's all about confidence and positive reinforcement and that kind of thing and i and i think as I said you know once once you do that that can percolate down into other areas of um of their lives too and they can really you know thrive from a creative point of view that's a really good point now we previously have interviewed uh Jeff Kinney Mr Wimper Kidman and he told us he has a really set process for creating his books including uh doing them in churchyards because he finds them very quiet. It's the only place he can get away from his own kids. Do you have a similar set strategy or are you a bit more freewheeling, freestyling? I do. I am very I'm a I'm a very process driven person, you know, so I do tend to do things exactly the same way for every single book it's slightly different with me than it is for jeff because i as i said i also illustrate the books as well so when i'm the illustration part i have to be here out here in my studio you know with all my

equipment and all that kind of thing because that's the it's not it's not it's not mobile unfortunately but when i'm writing yeah i um i i i've always written at least a section of every book that I've written in the British Library, in the cafe at the British Library. How lovely. That's mainly because when I first started this, I was working at the Guardian, working at the Observer, actually. It's just around the corner. So in my lunch hour, I would go there and type away. And that has now become a bit of a kind of a lucky mascot for me. So I always have to write a bit of my book there but um apart from that um uh just sort of local cafes I go out and about when I'm writing I try and go out and about because it's less distracting

I've got too many children as we've already mentioned and they can be they can get in the way so does the writing always come first or yeah which is someone because i was going to ask you who's your favorite character but i'll come back to that because i want to know do you draw someone or something and think i need to write a book about this person or do you have the idea for the story and then illustrate well well the idea comes first usually but the idea is would can be just like you know a sentence you know so it might be a bear loses his growl or it might be a sausage dog doesn't fit in with all the other sausage dogs or it might be a penguin gets blown away when he's flying his car look she cries easily okay stop are they always

sad does it always have to be sad they usually start well you have to have you have to have a story arc don't you have to have something that goes wrong that you can then kind of put right so yeah they usually start off with a slightly sad premise um but then what happens with me is um i will i will draw the usually draw the protagonist so i'll draw the lead character quite early on so i've got a picture in my head of who's going to be you know taking us through the story um but then it's a kind of it's a bit it sort of happens a bit at the same time because i will plot out a very rough story arc or you know right in in words and then i will start sketching the pages quite early on and i'll get a kind of idea of the pacing from a visual point of view you know just drawing thumbnails

in my sketchbook um and at the same time sort of working up other character kind of um the look and feel of other characters and then i usually go away and spend a good deal of time with the writing because i write in rhyme and it's hard to write in rhyme and make the rhyme work there's nothing wrong with a rhyme that doesn't quite flow or you know you have to speed up a bit to make it kind of work so the rhyme is very very tough so these books can take me six months to write you know they take five minutes to read but they can often take me six months to get right because you find that if you write you get to a point in the story and you can't get a rhyme to work you have to go right back to the beginning to undo that in order to make a rhyme

work up here to try and think of something to rhyme with orange or something you know and um so it's a very it's a very it's a quite I find it a tricky process to get the rhyme right with my picture books at least you know um and so and then the last bit is the fun bit that's the draw the actual finished artwork and that's the bit I find the easiest bit and I'll spend you know a month two months just drawing pictures of penguins and it's great and I can listen to podcasts like yours while I'm drawing you know a month two months just drawing pictures of penguins and it's great and I can listen to podcasts like yours while I'm drawing you know because I don't really have you know when I'm writing I can't really have any external kind of um yeah I'm the same yeah but when I'm drawing it's great I can listen to music and listen to podcasts listen to audiobooks

whatever and it's um that's the really fun part for me so um so yeah do you have a favorite is is it like you've already told us you have a favorite child so do you have a favorite I don't know I will always be very so my first book was the one about the penguin and the kite which is called blown away so I really like penguin blue who's the lead character in that book I'll always be very fond of because he's the one who got my book career underway I guess and it took me a long time to get published you know it took me four years of trying very hard to get published you know sending emails from my observer email account using everything in my arsenal you know and I got very close very early on I got an agent straight away I got in the room with pretty much all of the publishers in London straight away but I just couldn't quite get a deal over the line because it's so competitive.

I had no idea how many people want to write and illustrate kids' books. And so when it finally happened, it was an amazing moment. So I think I'll always be very fond of Penguin Blue for that reason. But also my most popular book, I would say, my most popular picture book is Odd Dog Out, which is the one about a sausage dog who doesn't fit in with all the other sausage dogs that's the one that's got the biggest um response from readers so i'm very i'm very fond of her too i always think of you as mr sausage dog man oh that's nice i'm not gonna ask what she always thinks of me as. Seal whisperer.

The seal whisperer. Yes, exactly. Yes. At this point, we normally ask our guest, what's next? Can you tell us? Is there a new character on the horizon? Well, I can. Yeah, the next thing for me, or maybe even by the time this podcast airs,

this book might already be out. But I've written my first um novel so children's novel so you know Harry Potter Harry Potter age that's what I always say uh and it's called Peanut Jones and the Illustrated City and uh that's publishing with Macmillan right at the beginning of September and I am super excited about it and that's it feels like I'm I'm kind of I'm I'm in a new world you know because it's so different everything up until now has been a picture book an illustrated picture book for you know key key stage one kids and um this one yeah for slightly older kids and it's a whole new world for me but tell us it's going to have pictures in as well please

it is it is it's a it's different I would say it's different to the vast majority of books in this middle grade um bracket in that pretty much every single page has got an illustration on it I've done over there's over 200 illustrations in this book and it almost killed me I have to say it was like I seemed like at the beginning it seemed like a good idea and then I realized 50,000 words and uh yeah and it's um it was it's a labor of love and it's a first in the trilogy so i've got to do it i'm going to do it twice my son is going to be so excited yeah i'm really i am really i don't know if i've ever been more proud of anything i've made actually it's um it's it's been the people who've seen preview copies have given me such amazing

feedback there's all sorts of exciting stuff happening around the book as well um some of most of which i can't tell you about unfortunately but might it involve us coming to see you might there be some little appearances but we might oh there's there's definitely that's there's i can tell you about those yeah i'm doing lots of live events because that all that that's all kicking in again this autumn actually because obviously we haven't been doing those for 18 months or so but yeah i'm doing um yeah that's exciting so all the all the festivals are um I'm basically at all the festivals Cheltenham Bath um Henley I can't even think of them all but I'm at I'm at you name a literary festival I'm probably at it and um that would be that would be so nice to actually see my my readers in in the flesh I've been doing loads of zoom zoom bits

and pieces and that's that's great too it's been great that we can do that but it's it's not the same as meeting meeting uh meeting the kids in person and so um yeah I am super super excited that that's kicking off again great so at the end of our podcast we have three questions that we ask every guest and they're not the easiest of questions oh my gosh okay first up how do you want to be remembered by your kids oh by my kids um well hopefully as someone they they like that would be good some of them they quite like yeah someone that when they when i say you know i'm going to come over to yours That would be good. That would be nice. Quite a good little baseline there. Yeah. When I say, you know, I'm going to come over to yours this Christmas, they don't sort of roll their eyes and try and think of it, you know, suddenly book a holiday to, you know, St. Lucia or something.

That would be the best possible outcome for me. Or have that terrible phone call behind your back that goes, look, can you have him? Can you have him? It's your turn. It's your turn. I had him last year. Yeah, exactly.

No, I'm sorry. It's coming to us all, guys. That is coming to us all. Don't. It is. Stop. Oh, God, she's going to cry again. Carry on.

Oh, it's quite the end. Sorry, carry on. Oh, it's me, actually. Yeah, I am asking the next one. So, Rob, what's for tea tonight and who's cooking? What's for tea tonight? Well, oh, God, I don don't know my wife is cooking recently my wife has been doing pretty much all of the cooking in in in years gone by we've spread it pretty

evenly but because my uh schedule has just gone slightly crazy i have to every single i've got every single hour um i am trying to like you know knock off another chapter of the next book so she is doing all the cooking at the moment we started doing that gusto thing am i allowed to say that oh is it good yeah we like the bbc you can say what you like oh yeah is it good sorry other other food providing services are made um it's really good we've been doing it since pretty much since the beginning of lockdown actually in fact we signed up for it just before lockdown and we were so thankful because, you know, all that stuff started happening in the supermarkets

where you couldn't get hold of anything. And we were getting ours delivered to us every week. And so we've been doing it for over 18 months now. It was great. It's really great. And far less wastage. Do you have it like once a week or do you have it every day? Like, how does it work? We have, hang on, we have it four meals a week. Oh, have it every day like how does it work we have hang on we have it four

times four meals a week so oh wow pretty much nice and that but then what do you eat on the other night beans on toast we will um you know we'll actually go off piste and do something you know ourselves from scratch or we get a takeaway no yeah we do get takeaway sometimes or we'll go out but yeah we um yeah but it feels like it's proper cooking it's just that you know they don't they don't chop up the onions for you anything they just sort of you just have everything in one one place and it's um gathered and also the kids are eating the you know the kids are eating different things because you know that's always the battle so uh is it covered in batter and shaped like a fish finger or not?

They are the only things that matter. Well, exactly. Yes, that's true. Last question, Wend, over to you. She always does this, Rob. She always makes me do the last question. We would like you to imagine that you are tucking Annie and I into bed. In a nice way.

Not in a creepy way. Okay. bed in a nice way not in a creepy way okay and we would like you to cast your mind back to when your teenage girls were little girls and sing us your lullaby you want me to sing it to you now well this is i'm quite right okay my daughters i had to sing i had to sing them six songs and even now sometimes i still do the six songs so well we better hold on i need to adjust and so i need a coffee i'm not gonna sing i'm not gonna sing all six oh the first one was always the first one was always um i don't i don't really know why but it was always a morning town ride by the seekers do you know that no no, okay. You ready for this? Yep. Train whistle blowing.

Do you know it? Makes a sleepy noise. Underneath the blankets go all the girls and boys. Rocking, rolling, riding. Oh, I do. Out along the bay. Yeah. All bound for morning town many miles away.

There you go. God, you can sing as well as draw right i know could be sing with rob next time sing with rob yeah that's coming soon that's a lot of singing every night i'm impressed a lot of singing every single night and stories usually two or three stories as well so yeah bedtime it's a big deal in our house. Big deal. Can I just ask one thing? Can you not tell my kids ever that yours got six songs? Because then you're setting me up for a massive fall.

I'm going to put it on Twitter later. I'm going to say, parents, up your game. You need to do at least six songs every night. Come on. The Netmums forum would go ballistic. You're going to get sued for like mums and dads everywhere losing their voices. Or losing their shit. It's been an absolute delight talking to you.

Thank you. I think we've made mums, dads and kids jealous everywhere that we got to spend some time with you. Thank you for saving us all in lockdown. Joe Wicks and you you i think basically should get some kind of saint head me and joe me and joe oh well thank you for having me guys it's been a real pleasure um talking to you and you know wendy keep that pencil sharpened keep on drawing there's hope for you there's hope for you yeah i promise and good luck with peanut jones we can't

wait to meet Peanut. Thank you, Annie. Thank you so much. And I will. I'll be that one. I'll send you a picture of me smiling when I've finally done one that I think is worthy. Do it. Do it.

I'll nag her. I'll nag her. Right. Have a great day, Rob. Thanks, Rob. You too. Thanks, guys. Bye.

Bye.