The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep79: Is parenting really all hell? Josh Widdicombe tells all

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Josh Widdicombe talks to Annie and Wendy about why you have to laugh about parenting, or else you'd cry! Series 4 of 'Hypothetical' is now showing on Dave, with all episodes available to stream on UKTV Play. Podcast credit: Hypothetical the Podcast is available on all listening platforms now.

This episode is sponsored by Fry's Family Foods to celebrate the launch of their new tea time saviour, the totally delicious and 100% vegan Stars and Moons. The breaded shapes are a great source of fibre and protein, ideal if you want more meat-free meals for the kids. They cook from the freezer in just 10 minutes, which means I already love them. A fuss-free kids tea time that you know they'll polish off, yes please. Now, on with the show. You're listening to sweat snot and

tears brought to you by netmums i'm annie o'leary and i'm wendy college 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 on this week's show oh it's all the little things isn't it because i don't think the big moments are christ Christmas morning or the birthday or all these kind of things that you think are going to be iconic but it's just a little thing it's the little moments I think is when you you're caught off guard as they would say kind of cliched I think that's the best bits talking to your four-year-old and then saying something that surprises you welcome to another episode of sweat snot and tears i don't know why

i'm doing this kind of whispering weird voice today uh right one little known fact about me and i think you don't even know wendy oh sorry excuse the puppy in the background everyone um is i'm obsessed with ancestry and today's guest is someone who's who do you think you are is in my top five there i've said it do I sound enough like I'm a retired school teacher now, Wendell? I despair. Like Antiques Roadshow and all of that stuff as well. Anything kind of oldie worldie, anything looking back gives me the eebie-jeebies. No. Oh my god, I'm there. Right, my clue as to who's today's guest in then has probably helped no one. So let's just welcome him welcome josh widdicombe hello how are you i'm disappointed i need to be top five obviously but uh we'll move on from that there's some big names in there there are some big names in there yes um everyone said my mum

loved your who do you think you are that that was the compliment everyone gave. Oh, you're kidding. No one claimed themselves. That makes me feel like I'm 112. I have to say, I'm going to sound a bit fangirly, and I hate that, but your podcast pretty much stopped me killing my children in lockdown. Oh, that's good. That was the aim, actually, to save some kind of child-based parent homicides was our main aim how did it come about

like was it just you two sat in a pub no it was lockdown you couldn't sit in a pub you're trying to catch me out um no no no sorry a work event um no we um i think we were just complaining to each other via text a lot and maybe even even that voice. You sound like me and Wendy actually. Yeah. Maybe even that voice memo thing you do on WhatsApp when you can't even, because it's your kids around. Try to type it because you're so angry. Yeah.

And you can't, you haven't even got the time to type a message. So we were just liaising, kind of complaining to each other about stuff like that and then um i suppose we just didn't have any work and those two combination of things came together in a podcast that we thought would just be an outlet or a way to get upstairs away from the kids under the proviso of work that's the truth yeah, yeah. A bit like this one, actually. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's a way to talk to people you want to talk to,

but not have to claim it's a social occasion. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And did you enjoy it? Was it fun? Was it cathartic? Yeah, hugely cathartic, hugely fun. Tell you what it gives you, and I'm sure you guys will kind of agree on this.

When something bad happens, not bad, bad, but something like stressful happens, it's no longer just a stress, but it's a positive because it's something you can talk about. So every negative becomes a positive. So it really is a real good way of kind of getting positives from negatives in your life I think it also just made me feel better because you I was listening to the utter shit that some of the other parents you spoke to were going through and thinking okay okay I'm not as terrible as I think I am other people are having like hell with home with home maths and all the other stuff I agree and I think also during lockdown near the start it was the peak of people lying about their um lives do you know what I mean it was the peak of Instagram

lying so right but baking bread or doing joe wicks or all these things it was the peak of feeling like guilt that you weren't making this time pay in the way that other people were making it pay because normally you go about your day-to-day life and it kind of but here suddenly we're given all this time to do something with and some people seem to be writing a novel or achieving or whatever and we seem to be treading water trying to keep our head above the surface and so I think um I think maybe it tapped into that I think obviously lockdown was a real key um it really hammered home the difference between having children not having children didn't it lockdown more than anything it really did people with kids

had a completely different lockdown experience to people without yeah ours was far more precious that's what you mean right much much more there was certainly no boredom let's yeah let's put it that way and so I think that's kind of it came about because of that and that was maybe why people liked it and responded to it uh because it was quite honest and I also think you don't get people in the public eye being as honest about their lives maybe as we were being not in tech we didn't I think people are more honest on podcasts aren't they way more it's like they forget that they're going to get listened to in fact and this totally this celebrity shall remain nameless we had an episode once for someone very well known who spilt some beans they wish they hadn't spilt and then had frantic like kind of like like recall of said episode oh what had gone out no the in the end they they said you

in fact can you can the whole episode i don't want it to go and we like the whole episode come on how long was the story yeah well it was uh we won't go there basically this person decided that something had been said and it had soured the whole thing and it couldn't possibly be aired but it's basically because we were just sat there having a chat and that person had forgotten that they were actually being recorded and it was going to go live and it is quite hard to remember when you sat in your pants drinking a cup of tea I hope he's not are you in your pants no I'm not well I am in pants but also trousers yeah okay good glad to hear it Annie you in your pants well I would hate to uh yeah no i am i'm actually in uh running leggings and i haven't been running oh it's a classic look

that's that's school it's a classic parent look isn't it um so right come on tell us what you're like as a dad then good cop bad cop uh i'm uh no i'm not bad cop enough probably but uh we're probably neither of us are bad cop enough i think but maybe together we get enough bad copping done but um i'd say i'm maybe too too desperate to be liked if i'm honest with myself oh interesting interesting needy Interesting. Interesting. Needy parent. Yeah. And I think stiflingly so, probably. Love me, love me, children. Love me. Yeah, exactly. Telling them I love them probably more than I need to, more they want me to, and probably setting them up for some kind of terrible dependency later in life,

that kind of thing. Oh, but you've got a one-year-old. You can be as needy as you like with a one-year-old. They still you can that you can be a needy as you like with a one-year-old they're just small and cute yeah well they're not more than just small and cute aren't they they're just going everywhere it's a really tough age one actually you know when people say that's a good age i don't believe one is a good age actually i'm starting to think one is just when they're starting to move it's it's too much well they can move but they have no sense of what might kill them so they can move and they just bounce off of things and it's a nightmare

i'm with you i hated toddlerhood in general though see i quite like the fun of that the living flying by the suit your pants are they gonna live do you i much prefer four out of the two options i've got age-wise because you could have conversations and i enjoy talking to people and and i've realized like you know people that go it it's just as difficult as it goes on but it's just difficult in a different way absolute absolute bullshit it's not it's it's just difficult in a different way. Absolute, absolute bullshit. It's not, it's not just as difficult. Four is not as difficult as one because four,

there's some kind of element of independence or some kind of element of, yeah, she could fly off the handle like any four year old would, because they kind of trying to control their emotions. But equally you can reason with a four-year-old you know you can understand what's going on if your four-year-old is as difficult as they were at one you've either got a very easy one-year-old or a very difficult four-year-old I think yeah see one-year-olds I just remember the face down on the hall floor

screaming because something you know the cheese was the wrong color or but guys guys i've got an eight-year-old and we're not far from that right now to be quite honest with you though she still has the flip outs we still have a bit of a lot of unreasonable behavior oh yeah we still have the flip outs but there's flip outs and then there's 6 3030am till midday, a baby trying to go upstairs constantly for five and a half hours. Yes. Give me three flip outs in a morning over that any day of the week. I'm so with you. So who, when you've had one of those mornings where you've spent five hours on the stairs, who do you, is it Rob?

Do you go and moan at Rob or who's the support network? The kind of Josh. Like I can no longer moan to Rob because we have to kind of keep our powder dry for the podcast. That doesn't happen with me and Annie. I can tell you that that they're still moaning so you'll go on holiday and he'll go how's your holiday and you'll have to go well it's probably better at best i don't tell you how my holiday was because then you can hear it live so it's a kind of weird situation where you've kind of uh you've lost your dad's support network yeah because it's

a live pod all of a sudden i I've got a dad's WhatsApp group. Well, there's a double-edged sword to a WhatsApp group. Do you like it or is it a pain in the ass? It's quite inactive, actually. I was going to say, what do you actually talk about in it? Well, it was a lot of complaining, but there's one person on it who's one of those people that doesn't really complain and acts like it's

quite easy and I think that's killed the whole whatsapp group dead yeah mums don't like one of them either I had one of them I had one of them in my NCT who one day when one of the mums was crying because her baby hadn't slept basically since it was born said to me I really just think we should stop the moaning we're so blessed oh absolutely yeah and i basically from then me and her couldn't really be very good friends that killed that one did you make a lot of nct friends no mine were all mad apart from one lovely sarah the others were mad well hilariously one of my the one of mine who i've stayed good buddies with is the person who books this podcast for us. She's a sled booker.

Oh, well, that's good. See, because we did, our NCT was over a weekend. You know, like those people that do all their driving lessons in one week and then they never really got much confidence on roundabouts. That kind of person so we we did rather than like eight Tuesdays for two hours or whatever that most people do which allows an element of bonding we did a Saturday and a Sunday where you don't really have any chance to bond because it's all just get in watch someone first aid a doll learn the breathing learn about contractions and get kicked out again exactly it was basically that so there was no element of there was no opportunity to bond

and I was kind of led to believe that NCT class would be like the it'd be like university halls or something do you know I mean those places where you go i've just but didn't quite work out like that no mine didn't or maybe it maybe it worked out for everyone else in the class and we didn't realize well two days of intense is quite hard work you know the eight week thing all all for me all those eight weeks did was confirm that i didn't like the people i'd just spent the last eight weeks yeah but did you not then so then what we did was the mums all met up once a week then on mat leave and did like a day out no no see I went I had Chloe super early so they were all still massively pregnant and I was like it at the coalface of right yeah I I was there was no

going out I was just weeping somewhere So I think maybe I missed that boat, but maybe you just didn't get invited, Josh. Every chance, every chance. There'd be, there was a WhatsApp group where occasionally you'd get like, just a picture of a baby that had been born and you wouldn't know whose parents it was. You wouldn't know who to match it to.

Do you know what I mean? All that kind of thing. And so that was, that was it really, but it never really kicked on. Can the NCT sue us for this conversation? We weren't actually official NCT. We were a different type of thing. Fake NCT. NCP.

The best NCT story I've heard is some friends of mine joined one in a really posh area where they were kind of like accidentally living and so then they had twins and at the first post-birth NCT meetup which in which they found quite curious happened to be in an evening they showed up with said twins in matching car seats and when they got there everyone looked at them and was like why did you bring your babies like ours are all at home with the maternity nurses this is just a this is a this is a grown-up sony junk and they were like oh shit okay and then they moved so that they did they weren't living in the in the accidentally posh place anymore oh Oh, wow. Can you imagine that?

That's quite weird, right? That is quite weird. Yeah. Because what are you going to talk about to the people? Exactly. So then they were like, right, so we were all just meeting up, but we've left all our babies. Then it's just too weird.

Stick with just telling Rob if I were you. It's much easier. Exactly. It's much easier. Life's easier that way. And you can never never the thing I love about your friend Rob is after the England football debacle on Instagram basically no one can ever feel bad about their drunken behavior ever again after that I love him for it he's just made me feel that whatever I do drunk it can never be worse than that particular Instagram video I know he's the face of booze briefing isn't he I actually fell in love with his wife because her

responses were the things that I loved most about his football drunk she was just so like when he was saying is there any chance when he was getting home and she was like what do you think and it's honestly she's the woman deserves a medal let's give her one god it feels like a lifetime ago doesn't it what a great summer tell you what not the time to have a one month old that was tough yeah one month old during the euros not a laugh not get you certainly were not getting out no you timed that really badly didn't you were the newborn weeks hard did you have tricky newborns yeah colic we have the first one which is crap um yeah we definitely got off to bad start they're both are so both our babies, I would say, have been relatively sleep-wise after the first three months pretty easy compared to some people's experience.

But our first three months both times have been absolute shockers. So it's like we've consolidated all of the sleep hell into one. All the shit into one one into one easy to use package at the top yeah but at the top that's when you're most you're at your weakest then it's so hard and people will say things like you just need to get to six weeks you're like are you effing kids six weeks that's that's a summer that's a school summer holiday that is i've never thought of it like that that's such i remember what six weeks felt like when you're a kid and then try telling someone all you've got to get to is the end of six weeks it's when they say it's three

months the first three months 12 weeks when you're in that situation yeah and it's bullshit anyway because my daughter didn't sleep she was two and and a half. It's utter bollocks. That's the thing. These nominal six weeks, three months, they're not even real things. Now, back to Fry's Family Foods totally tasty stars and moons. Now, I don't know about you,

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Stars and Moons iceland or the food warehouse now back to the guest so listen we've heard what you don't like about parenting give us your top three do likes oh it's all the little things isn't it because i don't think the big moments are you know when you're like oh it's all about i don't know christmas morning or the birthday or all these kind of things that you think are going to be iconic but it's just a little thing it's the little moments i think is when you you're caught off guard as they would say kind of cliched i think that's the best bits talking to your four-year-old and then saying something that surprises you or just watching them being excited about a song or

something like my daughter's listening to um i just can't wait to be king is it called whatever it's called from the lion king like on repeat and loving it and you're like i'd never think that was going to be the best bit there's something magical about that i think all those small details of life are the things that really stand out for you far more than um like the first moment you hold them in your arms or any of that I think it's actually these moments of connection or the moment of seeing them excited about the world or interested or excited about life I think that is what it is really for me yeah I'm with you I'm glad you're saying it's not about the iconic moments because I was one of the I still am one of those parents who seems to miss really like I remember reading this thing recently where this dad was like so um obviously I really

selected the first piece of music each of my children listened to really carefully and made sure my wife videoed it when I played them the Beatles for the first time I was like I didn't do any of that I don't know what the first song was that they heard but that's just you're just trying to create memories and it's like you know like all the best nights out are the ones that just happen by coincidence they're not the ones I think that's the same with parenting all the best bits of the bits that happen by coincidence rather than the bits you plan as this is go this at 6 p.m tonight is going to be a great memory get the camera ready that's not how it works no you're right it's the sit and the things that stay with you are when they say silly things like i remember my littlest coming in saying mummy my arm bows really hurt and i was like it took me a good she meant her elbows but she was

calling them her arm bows and forevermore in this house now your elbows are your arm bows and it's cute stuff like that that you I'll always remember that much more than I couldn't tell you where she was when she took her first steps no well we've just had first steps in the last week or two and now you're just like for fuck's sake stop running away yeah yeah exactly so I think um yeah it's it's all of those little things I think is what makes it magical right and makes it worth it it's just a collage of those things is that is the great thing about parenting I think I think you've smashed it that's exactly right now tell us about this book Mr Widdicombe what is going on with this book that's coming out right so Parenting Hell the book the spiel is that we're um basically there's lots of stuff

that obviously isn't in the podcast because we'd like to react week on week. So this will be the stories, all the stuff before all of our. What I would like this to be very clear of is there will be no tips. There will be no help. There will be no guide. Please write that on the front of it. There are no tips or help in here at all. You're on your own. If you want help being a

parent this isn't for you however if you want that feeling that maybe you got from the podcast of someone else being in it with you it is for you and so we're writing um all the the book and then also we're going to have our parents are going to do chapters about what we were like as children oh my god really that's hilarious because one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, are you like your parents or are you deliberately trying to parent the opposite of the way they raised you? Because people tend to go one or the other. Well,

I suppose the cliche that people is that like it just readjusts each generation, doesn't it? People parent the opposite of their parents. I'd like to think I'm, you know, I suppose the answer is you like to think that you take the best bits, don't you? Right. But that's obviously what you'd like to think.

I think I'm less laid back, but my parents were very laid back. So I'd like to bring some laid back, but I think I'm less laid back. Also, I think the key difference is bring up a child in London versus bring up a child on Dartmoor. That's a slight difference. Our wives are also going to do chapters as well. Oh, brave. We've asked for questions from our listeners, what they've always wanted to know from our wives,

so they'll be doing chapters as well. Oh, God, I could do about 52 for Rob's wife. Yeah. What do you take? What volume are you on? So when's it coming out? Oh, that's a great question. Come on.

October? I've got a calendar here in front of me, haven't I? Just in time for Christmas, Joshua. Yeah. Do you know what? Just in time for all other books. 13th of October. There you go.

And what's next after the book? What's, you know, how do you follow? Who do you think you are? Where do you go next? I don't know. I'm ready to retire. God, you and me both.

Yeah. Yeah. Would you like to retire or would you hate it? I would love it. I think I've got retiree written all over me. Look at me.

I love ancestry already. Yeah. I think I've got retiree written all over me. Look at me, I love ancestry already. Yeah, I think I'm going to really relax well into old age. I think it suits me. I think I would like to retire. I think I'd suit retirement, definitely. But I'd want to be a rich retiree, that's the problem, and I'm definitely not in that position. Yeah, I don't want to be in a position where you're going I can probably afford to live about six

more years but no more than that that'd be a nightmare situation trying to weigh up your health versus your bank balance I don't I watch this thing on Netflix have you seen it there's a documentary on Netflix at the moment about this weird place in america right where people um retire to and in it there's this one and basically when you're there you then take up all the hobbies you basically live like you're a teenager again you take up all the hobbies that you wish you'd done so there's all these retirees floating around as cheerleaders and like as in marching bands and loads of them are dating there's a lot of dating opportunities anyway there's this poor guy who's basically homeless he spent all his money kind of went large too soon and he can't

and he can't afford to live there but wants to so basically he sneaks in under the fence and tries tries to make all the old dears who've got cash fall in love with him so that he can marry them and then end up living there. It's one of the strangest, darkest... What's it called? ...panic-laden shows I've ever seen. All it made me do was panic that my pension wasn't going to be big enough

and I really needed to sort my shit out. What's it called, this show? I can't remember. I'll find it. It's quite a specific description. I'm sure it's Googleable. Netflix retiree documentary should bring it up i don't think there's many of them but imagine having to try to like imagine having

to try to make someone fall in love with you so you can basically stay alive for the next 20 years but yeah that's like a channel 4 game show isn't it channel 5 surely channel 5 now is uh it's just documentaries about yorkshire isn't it it's constantly if you like um if you're into antiques roadshow and uh who do you think you are channel five's another channel for you so is that what's next to channel five documentaries this is what we could expect give it 10 years like much easier question for you j. What's for tea and who's cooking? Oh, God, I don't know. So I was going to be going to Dubai tomorrow to do a gig,

and it's been cancelled because they booked me to do a tour show there. I didn't make the decision myself. So my whole week is now up in the air because I don't know what's happening. So previously I didn't really – now I'll probably be cooking dinner yeah we're not at the stage where we eat with our children I'll tell you that for free oh we're not either mine are 10 and 6 so I wouldn't worry see I'm really strict about that I we do and always have what you're gonna cook for them and then what you're gonna cook for you uh well my son who's the baby he'll eat anything um which is mad because my daughter's really picky so she she eats from a palette of about four different things i'd say beige foods beige food yorkshire pudding potato

waffles yeah pasta with butter um uh she's into eggs so egg of some form honestly beige food has been the staple of my life since my 10 year old arrived on this planet so i'm totally with you it's mad isn't it it's a really strange thing and um and so that is um that's what she'll eat and he'll eat whatever. But we'll try and get that done by six because his bedtime's half six. And then we eat afterwards, which I think's too late. But what can you do? You're doing bedtime at the exact... I prefer to eat about seven, but that's mid-bedtime.

The main reason we all do one meal and always have done isn't because I'm necessarily an amazing parent or trying to be. It's because I'm too lazy to cook two meals, man. I'm not doing that. Bugger that. Bugger that. Yeah.

Well, that's exactly where you end up just getting, if I'm honest with you, you get more deliveroos than you'd hope, don't you? See, we don't get deliveroo here out in the sticks. Where do you live? Oh, I live in a little village in Surrey. So we've got a really great Thai takeaway over the road. But I'm a bit bored of Thai, if I'm honest. And that's it.

We don't have Deliveroo. Two sticks still. But when are you going to get it? They're going to have to give it to you. It's not like a government service. It bloody should be. It should be. Every parent needs Deliveroo.

How would you... I wouldn't have got through the toddler years without it, I don't think. Just to apologise, Josh, she's obsessed with the food. She always is. Yeah, I really want to know. She grills our guests about their food every single episode. We would get something, if we're delivering during the week, it wouldn't be like, let's get an Indian takeaway.

It would be like on the more boring healthy end of the spectrum right we're going a bit lighter midweek yeah yeah of course yeah just and not just because guilt really more than anything isn't it so basically you're doing something indulgent but making yourself feel a bit bad about it in the process exactly that's what my life is yeah it's the worst of both worlds, isn't it? You have a deliverer. You don't really enjoy it. Right, Annie, you get to ask the last question.

Please, Joshua, when you sing us your family lullaby, when the kids won't sleep, what is it that you warble at them? Oh, well, we've got, we do the... Look at him, he's come alive. Yeah, well, I did lean forward, yeah, because I was going to go to my phone to say that we do the lull at him, he's come alive. Yeah, well, I did lean forward, yeah, because I was going to go to my phone to say that we do the lullabies on Spotify. But I've had to get my son, who's one,

his own Spotify account, because if he was asleep, I couldn't use my Spotify, because they're all linked up. So he would be playing lullabies. So I've had to put him in Spotify as an 18-year-old because he's too young to have his own Spotify account. YouTube's the same.

So my kids love, they've for ages been making videos, utterly inane videos where they're like, hi, so come on a house tour. Come and see my toys. All in an American accent for absolutely no reason. But they love doing it, right? And they had a channel which had like four subscribers and they thought they were going to have a future as bloody youtube stars and but youtube have just and they bless their hearts put

their real ages in when they signed up and youtube have just clamped down on ages and deleted their channel and they are absolutely heartbroken years and years of what they call work went into making these inane videos. And now they're devastated that some arse YouTube's deleted all their stuff. They haven't got any hard copies of these videos on a hard drive or something. Well, you can apply to YouTube for them

before they delete them on their side, off the backend, to download them for you. So we've applied, but they haven't told us whether they're going to do it for us or not. They just don't care. I know. It's terrible. So all of you horrible people who run all these things,

can you please think about the life of parents? Because it is hard managing this stuff. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks, Josh. You've been fab. Thank you, Josh. What a lovely chat.

Absolute pleasure. Cheers, guys. Take care. Bye-bye.