The Netmums Podcast - S14 Ep6: Bryony Gordon - Embracing Imperfection in Parenting

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry chat to journalist, marathon runner, podcaster, and author Bryony Gordon. Known for her no nonsense discussions on mental health, Bryony shares her insights on parenting, sobriety, and the importance of embracing life's ups and downs. Bryony opens up about her journey as a mum, reflecting on the challenges of raising a child while managing her own mental health. She discusses the significance of teaching children resilience, her views on 'wine o'clock' culture, and the importance of creating a safe environment for her daughter. The conversation also delves into Bryony's new podcast, "The Life of Bryony," where she explores taboo topics and encourages listeners to shed the weight of shame, and why she wants to ‘talk loudly about the things most of us whisper’.  Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Netmums socials: @netmums / Facebook / TikTok / X  Series 14 of the Netmums Podcast is produced by Buckers at Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

You're listening to The Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich, and me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show... I think what we do as parents sometimes is we want to stop our children. We want to stop our children. Obviously, we want to stop them from feeling pain. We want to stop them from experiencing awful things. And then when they are feeling pain and when they are experiencing those awful things, we naturally beat ourselves up about it. What could I have done differently? How could I change this? How can I make this better? And often,

the way we can make it better is by sitting and listening to them and not, in their eyes, making it all about us. But before all of that, this episode of the Netmoms podcast is brought to you by Johnson's Baby. Now, Alison, do you have a calming bedtime routine? Well, I usually fall asleep in front of whatever teleprogram we're watching, and then I drag myself to bed where I scroll for half an hour. It doesn't sound very calming, does it? It really doesn't. Now, maybe while you have a think about what you might do to wind down better from the day, let me tell you that for little ones, Johnson's calming bedtime routine, in other words, a bath, a massage and some quiet time,

is clinically proven to help your baby sleep better. Wow, that's impressive. But I'm not that surprised, you know. My children have always slept so much better after a bath and some quiet bedtime stories. Johnson's range of trusted products are soft on baby skin and smell amazing. From Johnson's Baby Bedtime Wash to Johnson's Baby Bedtime Lotion, which is designed with purposeful and gentle ingredients to protect for healthy feeling baby skin from day one. The product that I love is Johnson's Baby Bedtime Bath. The scent of it just takes me back to when my twins were babies and I was wrapping them up in fluffy white towels. Oh my goodness,

stop me Wendy, I'm feeling broody. No, no, no, I get it. Now you can pick up Johnson's Baby Bedtime range in supermarkets and pharmacies nationwide right now. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode. Now, our guest today talked on her Instagram a couple of weeks ago about getting the Sunday Scaries, and I really liked her name for it. It's the Sunday Doomies in our house, and I get them big time, especially in autumn. I am fully that person who basically you shouldn't talk to between October and February because I'm just miserable. And my husband is completely and utterly immune. He's like an elf. So the minute it's, the clocks go back, he's like, it's Christmas. And then he starts getting all excited and I just get more and more peeved. So Alison,

do you get the doomies, scaries? And if so, what do you get the doomies scaries and if so what do you call them oh what do I call them I mean it's just like the inevitability of you know being an adult and the reality of grown up life right and that's what I call them it's snappy that's a cheery start to this podcast right there

I kind of like sit somewhere between oh the clocks are turning back and it's cozy and we can cozy up and we don't have to go out and socialize in the evenings. And it's quite nice versus, oh, I just want a bit more sunlight and I just need, I don't know, I'm somewhere in between the two. I don't know. I know that our guest is going to have an opinion on this. Let's have her official showbiz intro, please. Absolutely. We're joined today by journalist, podcaster and author Bryony Gordon.

Bryony is a huge advocate for talking openly about all things mental health. She started up Support Community Mental Health Mates, and she's written loads of books including Mad Girl and Mad Woman. Carrying on the theme of honest conversations, her new podcast The Life of Bryony sees her covering all subjects and taboos with a range of guests. Bryony, a warm welcome to the Netmums podcast. Oh wow, thanks for having me. What a lovely intro. Welcome back. Well I know. Now this is the second time brian he has joined us before many moons ago many many lunar eclipses ago it's a lunar eclipse one we're recording folks so if this is just three mad women talking just bear with us okay i think it's relatable people

will be like how many mercury retrogrades ago was this conversation we're all just clinging on to life by the fingernails yeah trying trying to blame the the the the the stars and the planets for the patriarchy basically that's what i'm like i'm so sick of blaming everything on the patriarchy that I'm now gonna just blame it on the moon the moon's like what did I do I love it now I want to talk to you about secondary school because you've been settling your daughter into year seven haven't you yes and we had all the fun of the fair last year for that so tell me how has that gone well I mean I don't want to like I don't want to um I don't want to jinx it

but so far so good but we're only like a month in so far it's gone well great she's gone from we're very lucky she's gone from the local primary school to the local state school. And I think that there's that thing, isn't there, where the, I think what happens is like the seriously bright kids go off, don't they? To like the very, you know, highfalutin schools. And it's funny because suddenly she's then moved up from being sort of in the middle just like you know and she's now like really enjoying it and she's like wow I'm I can really see her self-belief and her confidence growing in a way that it so it's really interesting um she's like I'm in the top set at maths which was not as you know I don't want to like reveal too much about her you know math scores or whatever but anyway so uh she seems fine who knows I'm I'm very aware that you know I I like to take things as they come on any given day and not look

too far into the future because who knows what will happen indeed yeah yes um my tracking apps for kids have been in the news recently with mike and zara tindall spotted using them um where do you stand on them because having a child who's just started secondary school usually that's when parents often start finding it quite a useful tool i am fully in the track my kids camp and i think wendy you're not are you no i'm in the she should have been home best finger camp what about you briny well i mean i am so again i'm very lucky in that her school is on the same road as us so she doesn't ever go so so there's not too far to so i okay so but i did have i did do a complete u-turn on phones as soon as um so i was very much like she will not have a phone until she's 46

you know she will not have a smartphone until she can darn well afford to get one herself. And I'm going to and she's going to have a brick phone and all of that stuff. So she communicate. I was really on board with that. And then we went to try and buy a brick phone and it was like so unwieldy. And I saw her thinking it was more I thought, oh, my God, she'll she'll be able to get she'll be able to run rings around me with that i'm not i suddenly realized that actually i kind of needed us to be on the same software so i could take control of her phone in a way that with a nokia i just couldn't because i'm my you know i'm because the rest of us haven't used Nokia since we were 22 yeah and I don't and I don't and I and it sounds like a cop-out and you

know whatever like it's my choice so f**k it sorry I don't mean to you know but like so but she is what's really interesting is that so she has this phone and she doesn't really because it is um essentially just a sort of like cellular walkie-talkie there's no social media on it there's no you know there's she can't access anything without asking our permission first through like a you know so i just unless she's got a secret burner phone i don't know know, like, that she's hiding somewhere. Oh, God, I'd love it if she did. That would be so good. So I'm all for tracking my child.

But I don't, I'm not so worried about, the tracking isn't the thing about phones that worries me. It's more things like social media and the ready availability of stuff that is that she shouldn't really be seeing at 11 so that's the kind of area I'm more concerned with and that I focus on more than I'm quite allow her freedom and like a certain amount of freedom and independence even though we live in like central london but because we live we're lucky to live in an area that's quite sort of it feels quite there's quite a community so um i'm less worried about her whereabouts when she's physically distanced from me as as i'm more concerned about where she might be in front of me on her phone. Yeah.

That kind of leads on to our next question, actually, because we were going to ask what kind of mum you are. We know what kind of writer you are. We know what kind of podcaster you are. We know that you're an Indian Knickers marathon runner. But what sort of mum is Bryony Gordon? I think I'm a very embarrassing one because i run around in my pants i like i obviously would like to think that i'm a cool mum you know like and that all her friends are like oh my god your mum's so cool i think anyone who

thinks they're a cool mum by default probably isn't also having a having a cool mom is not like i i have friends who had really cool moms and they were like yeah but in reality they were raging narcissists to me so like there's always that thing of like what we put on to other people but it's more important what we are like in the home 100 i guess i'm i'm just uh i don't know i'm not i'm not that different as a mom as i am as a as a as a friend oh no i'm obviously not a friend like i don't want it i'm not like oh anything's going on s-f-ing and jeffing maybe what i mean is is that like i am oh i don't know if there is less effort good je jeffing, but I am very open and honest when it is within reason. But I'm also, I can't be quite, I'm quite strict.

I don't take any shit. Good. Always the way. So there's like firm boundaries. I'm quite like, you know, like I it's what my what was I like as a mum for the first four years of her life not great because I was in active alcoholism what am I like now she's 11 and I am incredibly lucky to have a recovery program behind me like everything I know about parenting has been taught to me in sobriety, basically. And I am so grateful for that.

So if you could go back and tell new mum Bryony something, what would it be? Like, what do you think back then she needed to hear? I don't know. I'm always like those kind of if you could go back questions like I'm of the opinion that like we all need to go through what we need to go through to get to the place we need to be if that makes any sense yeah and so I don't think anything I it's a bit like you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink or you could in my case make me drink you couldn't make me stop drinking but like the you know you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter what anyone would have said to me. Like I had to learn it myself, you know? And so I guess it's,

I guess if I, if there was one thing I could have said to, you know, is that you're okay. You are not the worst person in the world. You're okay. You know, like you don't, you don't need to worry that you're the worst person in the world you're okay you know like you don't you don't need to worry that you're the worst person in the world like you're an ill person that does stupid things sometimes because of that illness but there is kind of like there is and it's going to be okay it's going to be okay and as a recovering alcoholic what do you think about the kind of the wine o'clock culture that we see on instagram and social media it's become a quite a big thing in parenting yeah i don't i mean i'm not okay so i'm really interesting in that i am a recovering alcoholic i'm not anti

alcohol and i don't you know i am i'm anti anti people ignoring the kind of uh the fact that for some people it's it's a terrible idea i think i i'm not i but i'm not at the same time vehemently like i don't i don't break out into hives when i see someone joking about like gin o'clock because it's like everyone is different and everyone has their own ways of coping and I think we're all going to be much better off if we're less judgmental about other ways of coping and more interested in our own kind of like you know why does that person need to cope like what's what's going on you know and I don't and that's not to say that everyone that

has a gin at six o'clock is an alcoholic because they're just not you know uh so I don't I don't I get it you know I get it like we live in a culture that you know until relatively recently the only thing that we the only way we knew most of us in Britain knew how to cope was to go and have a glass of wine after work or at the end of the day. So it's like, well, and it's hard, you know, it's hard the amount of pressure that mums today, you know, we are not, it's just hard, isn isn't it like you're juggling lots and lots of different things and i and i and i think that we used to live in communities that really supported

parenting and supported mothers much more than we do now um you know it takes a village to raise a child and stuff and you know we're expected like this fucking awful, sorry, I keep swearing, this awful patriarchal notion of like, we can have it all. I'm like, I do. I don't want it all. Like, that is just too much pressure. Like, I don't want it all. We talk about it all the time on this podcast that mums feel like they have to be the perfect mum, the perfect wife, partner, the perfect employee, friend. And there aren't enough hours in any day no like any of it no like just take your all take all of it and f**k off like I I'm just not you know I uh you know one or t'other basically one or t'other you know at any given time I can do this I can do that and I can you know I've been that person trying to do it all and jet and fear you know I remember when my

daughter was um you know you know when I was on maternity leave like I I basically sat on a birthing when I was in labor I basically sat on a birthing ball writing columns you know I was like oh I need to I need to get you know it's just it's it is kind of ridiculous so my eldest has just turned 14 and we're at that stage where some of her friends are allowed to drink alcohol yes well I mean actually 15 and 16 year old friends so yeah at barbecues and what have you And when it happened a few weeks ago and my 14-year-old was like, oh, can I have a cocktail? It really shocked me because I was like, I'm not ready for this part of parenting. And, you know, at the moment, it is absolutely a hard no from me. I'm like, no.

And she was 13 when this happened. She's only just turned 14. I was like, no, you're 13. You're not drinking alcohol. But then when I speak to other, you know, are parents they're like well you know we just feel like it normalizes it and it means that you know we can keep an eye on what they're doing and it's a real debate I think of parents of teens and you are obviously coming up to that stage at some point soon so as as you know, an alcoholic in recovery, what plans do you have? What conversations do you think you will be having with your daughter

about alcohol? I mean, to be honest, we already have them because I, I have explained to her that mommy, you know, is allergic to alcohol and can't have it. And, um, you know, and if she does, she does stupid things like run around in her pants and she's like but you do that now anyway but yeah so like okay so here's here's what i feel okay is that you there is nothing you can do in your power to like we we like to think we have control over our children the place i have come to this is that we like to think oh if I introduce my child to alcohol early then they will normalize it and that you know and the thing is if someone's going to be an alcoholic they're going to be an alcoholic you know and the

way that you are around alcohol isn't probably going to influence that it's going to be more influenced by you know childhood trauma like and I and I don't mean that and you know people have there's so many factors to alcoholism that have nothing to do with alcohol itself if you see what I mean so like you can't teach someone to drink responsibly they're either going to do it or they're not you know so I have no control over that okay and I and I think it's it's sort of like stupid of me to believe I have any control over it because I can't influence it in that in those terms. So what I think is a much better way of dealing with it is to say alcohol is a thing that some people like and it's for some people it's a nice thing but for others it can really quickly get out of control and if you feel like you fall into that latter camp i

want you to know you can talk to me about it because i think what we do as parents sometimes is we want to stop our children we want to stop our children obviously we want to stop them from feeling pain we want to stop them from experiencing awful things and then when they are feeling pain and when they are experiencing those awful things we we naturally beat ourselves up about it yeah and we think what could i have done differently what kind of how can i change this how could i make this better and often the way we can make it better is by sitting and listening to them and not, in their eyes, making it all about us. Do you know what I mean?

And we can't prevent pain in children, but what we can do is teach them that they can get through it and it won't kill them and they're okay and that we love them regardless. Do you know what I mean? And we love them unconditionally. So that's sort of where I am. I don't think that really answers your question per se no it really does because actually it does the same kind of thing apply to you with mental health you speak so much so brilliantly about mental health and your own mental health

journey has been a roller coaster how do you talk to Edie about that and how will you apply those same kind of principles when it comes to talking to her about because that's something that's completely out of your control as well i also think you know like there is no we we were obsessed with our children being happy you know and obviously that is you know we are only as happy as our unhappiest child and all of that stuff and you know it's natural happy is happy as our unhappiest child and all of that stuff. And, you know, it's natural. Happy is good. Let's not be around the bush. But like it is not our job to deliver our children idyllic, 100 percent happy childhood. What our job is, is to as much as possible do that, but then also equip them so that they can deal with life on life's terms which is not happy all the time

and you know we're obsessed with this notion of teaching people to be happy but actually i think the thing we need to be focusing on is teaching people how to be sad because that's where the resilience is built you know it's we we are naturally a sort of like uh a culture that wants to fix things and that's a beautiful and lovely thing, but some things cannot be fixed. You know, some things cannot be fixed. And like, you know, you see this in life where awful things happen and horrible things happen and people are bullies.

And, you know, there is no way of making that better or making those bullies go away sometimes, you know, that you want to, or you want to, you know, and you, you know, your job is to say, this is not about you. This is, you know, this is not about you. This is about that other person and darling, and I'm here for you. And, you know, like, I think it's teaching resilience and like, this will not kill you. You know, this will not kill you. I'm here to look after you. You safe you know that's it's about I think my job as a parent is to make my child feel safe you know I think that's what it is and

to teach them the skills to how they can feel safe and um how they can feel safe by themselves yeah I like learn that they're a place of safety so I I also think that like, you know, we see mental illness often as like a failure and a failing. And I often, I've come to a place where I think actually sometimes, you know, most of the time mental illness is just like a very appropriate response to stuff going on in people's lives. And, you know, that doesn't have to be abuse or, you know, something terrible. It could be that they're struggling at school, that, you know,

that they, you know, they're struggling with puberty. There's all sorts of things, you know, and our brain kind of goes into these, you know, these quite sophisticated in a way things to try and help them with that. And obviously it can feel like a faulty coping mechanism. I don't know if I'm making any sense, but like, you know, the job isn't, you you know obviously you want them to be able to cope with life and you want them to be happy but it's not making them feel like they're failing because they're experiencing this thing as well you know like because anxiety isn't a sign that you're failing as a human you know it's just a sign that you're a human just a reminder that this episode of the netmoms podcast is brought

to you by johnson's baby you can have a calming bedtime routine for a restful night's sleep with johnson's baby in fact johnson's calming bedtime routine which is a bath a massage and some quiet time is clinically proven to help your baby sleep better. Does it work on us parents too? I quite fancy a massage before bed. Well, you can give it a try. You can pick up Johnson's Baby Bedtime Range in supermarkets and pharmacies nationwide. I'd be interested to know, we talked a little bit about the Sunday doomies at the start,

and I'd be interested to know how you kind of pick yourself up when you're feeling flat because the onslaught of the darker nights is often a real trigger for people and I'd be interested to know what you do on a daily basis to kind of other than running in your pants obviously well you know uh I mean there's god there's so many things that I've built up over time that I do to try and keep myself as resilient as possible. And I mean, the knowledge that, you know, the most important thing is the knowledge that everything passes. Everything, good stuff, the bad stuff, everything, you know, and it's like, hold on, babes. If you're lucky, everything passes, you know, like, and I think that it's obviously exercise is really important exercising for the way it makes me feel rather than the way

it makes me look, you know, it's not about kind of like, having a sort of support network, listening to myself, not dismissing myselfing myself you know there's lots of oh that's a good one we're all really good at that well the dismissing or the listening wendy the dismissing not the listening i know right uh so i yeah i think you know, I don't, yeah, sort of connection, but, oh, I don't know. Like it's, it's, you know, it's multifaceted, but. And some days it works and some days it doesn't, I guess, as well. I think the difference now is that I know it'll pass and it doesn't make it nice. You know, it doesn't make it nice you know it doesn't make it um better necessarily it doesn't

it doesn't make the feeling any less horrible but it sort of gives me a sort of context within which I can hold myself you know um and I think just knowing that life is it's all of that you know it's it's it's and the highs come from the lows you know yeah um so your new podcast is all about speaking about things without shame and it has struck me how conditioned we are to feel shame around so many things I mean there's that famous Brene Brown TED talk which just nails it so magnificently um have you found that these conversations on your podcast have helped with that personally so I always remember when I went to rehab I remember there was a counsellor who said to me shame dies when you expose it to the light and it is true you know shame shame keeps

us sick it really does so for me uh shame is like I really it's such a horrible feeling you know it's a really horrible feeling and I I think the the best the best uh the best sort of riposte to it is like calling it out and going I'm feeling and people go oh my god me too or you know or I feel it about this thing or that thing you know because often when I call out my feeling of shame people are like that's ridiculous you know like why you know and I and I I definitely I love having conversations I love I'm not very good at like surface conversations do you know what I mean like I i find myself like glazing over when people are like nifty gritty or nothing is what you're saying in there at the jugular i'm very one thing on oh

yeah i'm like all or nothing i'm like do you want do you want to have a conversation with me about childhood trauma or do you want me to have a conversation with me about Strictly if it's the latter I'm not interested I love that I love that unless it's about a Strictly contestants childhood trauma there I I just you know like I I I don't know I just find that's where I I find myself really um the magic happens you know just kind of in knowing that there is something a bit deeper there um yeah so I I wanted to have with this podcast I mean like listen I just wanted to have conversations that um that I'm like I you know with anything with my books as well it's like I've gone through this thing and I if I've thought this thing probably the chances are someone else has too because I'm not special or different do you know what I mean and then it's like but uh it's like have you thought this thing too and if so do you want to come and hang out around this podcast and we

can kind of think this thing together and chat it out and not feel less like weirdos those are the best podcasts though aren't they like when you're listening to it that's what that's what i think works in the podcast world who would your dream guest be though i mean you've got you've had some pretty brilliant ones on already but you know who do you really want to have on what would you ask them about so i purposely like okay so the first podcast i ever did mad world which is which had like prince har Prince Harry Hunter Biden and stuff you know like I think no one big then I think we can get like quite I think sometimes I bet you didn't talk to them about it strictly you'd be surprised you'd be surprised off camera that's where the uh um but the but the but for me I'm trying to get less bogged down and like celebrity guests um

because i think it's for me it's about the conversations uh not the celebrity if that makes sense like i want i i'm interested in people more generally so i i don't have like a dream you know like obviously i'd love to sit like michelle obama or something but like i think the likelihood of her coming and sitting in a little studio in west london and uh talking to someone on a show called the life of brian e is it's very unlikely but look let me that that is i am i am not allowing that to manifest so let me put that out there yeah don't crush your future dreams by michelle if you're listening you're listening i mean she she's she's a regular listener to the next podcast or michelle so she might she might get in touch um yeah so i i don't have i guess

i don't really have like a dream guest i just have like sub thought like conversations i want to have i want to have you know i'm really working right now on episodes about uh hormones and mental health and you know from from the sort of cradle to the grave how that affects women and is dismissed and you know I want to talk about people pleasing and I want to talk so I have like conversations I want to get out more you know I want to talk more about alcoholism I want to talk more about binge eating disorder I want to talk more about those things that uh I sort of normally I want to talk loudly about things that are normally whispered if said yes when you were last on the pod we were talking about your experience with Prince Harry on your podcast and I just wondered what's it like being mates with a couple who every single person has an opinion on?

Because you must get sick of people asking you and then everyone's got their opinion about those particular people. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. Like it doesn't people don't people like it doesn't really matter what I say because people are like, well, the thing that makes me laugh is when people are like oh what are they like and then you tell them and they're like yeah but you would say that because you know them as if as if knowing people like disqualifies you from having an opinion about them and i you know at that point i i sort of switch off so i don't you know, like, they are kind of like normal people to me who I,

it's a weird kind of one. They're not like, Briony, please bow down to me. Or, you know. Please curtsy. Yeah, no. Like, if I curtsy to them, they'd be like, are you all right?

She's having a moment. They'd be like, Briony right she's having a moment they'd be like uh briny do you need some help it's off the floor i'm like i'm i'm not i'm like i'm not cursing to anyone like i don't know like i treat listen i treat everyone the same whether they're up there down there somewhere in the middle like we're just humans with like you know we and we giggle and you know and hopefully we do more of the giggling than the shitting that's a great that's a great bit of life advice there brianie although actually actually you want to be shitting regularly that's a good that's a good thing. And the takeaway from this podcast, folks, is poo regularly by Bryony Gordon. From all of these gems, tune into The Life of Bryony.

And check your poo regularly. Yes. And your boobs and all the other things. Oh, dear. Well, I'm going to end in the same crazy way that we've carried on really um last time you were on our podcast Bryony we ended the podcast with a question now this was about three years ago so you had a eight year old ish I had a seven year old Anna anyway we used to ask our guests to sing us their lullaby. Yeah, okay. And you gave Annie and I, my previous co-host, a rendition of Cuddles with Edie.

And sadly, it finished Annie off and she had to leave. That's it, that was it. She left after Cuddles with Edie. R.I.P. Annie. And now I'm going to sing Cuddles with Alison, Cuddles with Alison. There's no better way to start the day. There we go.

Do you still sing it to your nearly 13 year old? Please say yes. I do. I do. And she's like. To cries of mum. Mum. No, she quite likes it.

We have a thing. And then she's like, no, I'm not going to say this because it's going to embarrass her. But she'd rather, she would rather I just didn't sing at all. like I would like to say she'd rather I sang Taylor Swift to her but she would absolutely rather I did not sing I'd rather sing Taylor Swift to me actually I'm a big Swiftie me well I know but like the thing is is that where would I even begin because we've got a lot of back catalogue we've got a back catalogue to work with and you know uh nobody wants to hear me sing taylor well i you know i i'm uh i'm a big swifty too allison i i enjoyed your content from the from the error store the error store thank you bryony I spent a significant amount of my summer, like, basically just wanting to live on the Eros tour, which is very teenage.

And feeling like we went to the opening night in Edinburgh. And then feeling like her people gave me tickets. I couldn't believe it. I love it. I couldn't believe it i love it i couldn't believe that um i was like what the the email came in that's because she makes for prince howie that is we would like to invite you to to the any night of the era's tour and then we obviously assumed i would say webley and i was like i want night one i want to be there they were like all right kino they were like maybe we don't want to invite her but then did you spend the rest of the summer feeling like your era's experience had ended and everyone else was living their best life it was it was basically

the woman who went twice it was the closest i felt to a come down since i've got clean and sober. And, sorry. And I did, I felt very, like, jealous. I was like, when she pulled Travis out on Wembley night three, I was like, oh. Big moment. I was like, that's her favourite child. She's forgotten about Edinburgh. She's forgotten about us at Edinburgh night one. Wembley got all the tweets.

Sorry, Wendy. Can you two hear yourselves? Also, hear yourselves also also I was like I felt I was like oh she has this amazing ability to make it feel like really intimate even though she's speaking to like 80,000 people all of our listeners have turned off folks all of them you know oh she's like checking on everyone in the crowd and then we like watched it on disney plus and i was like she did that in los angeles as well she made you feel special though that's their special skill they make you feel special in each one she didn't have a clue where she was she just picked out of a hat we'll have travis the amount she did we'll have florence oh london's doing well and that you know we'll have so and so for

there and i feel like you're dissing taylor and i'm brian i'm not okay with this i'm not okay like actually in truth my ultimate podcast guest on life of briny would be taylor swift but there is a danger i would never let her leave the studio i would kidnap her i sometimes have fantasies like i actually had this fantasy yesterday i was like tootling along and i was like where are we going with this just imagining that me and taylor were like in the back of a car like chatting like friends like i imagine what i just think we'd be really good friends i think she'd love i just think she we would get on really well. I'm with you.

I have that fantasy personally. I'm lost for words. Doesn't happen often. Should we wrap this up, Wendy? Just quickly. No, just quickly. One more thing on the Taylor thing. I was doing this shoot on Monday

with a fairly large brand with some very cool people. They were like just very cool young people. I don't know how I've ended up as one of the people on this campaign anyway and they all had their individual shots and they were like playing like Tupac and like just really cool rap hip-hop and then I came in and I was like the last person to have my individual shot and they were like what would you like to listen to Briony and I was like Taylor Swift and they were like oh and then they all came in for the group shots

that taylor swift was still on and it was like we are never ever ever getting back together and there's just like these like young guns like very cool people who were like uh can we change the music i was like no no! No! Swifties forever. I love it. I love it. Oh, it's been such a joy to talk to you today, Bryony. Thank you so much

for coming on the Netmoms podcast to share all of that with us. Thanks. Do you know what? It's really made me feel, it's given me a little lift for today. So for that, I'm very grateful. We are thrilled to have chatted to you.

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