The Phonebox Podcast With Emma Conway - Man vs. Baby: Mullets & School Playground Mayhem

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Who was in love with Carol Decker and got arrested at school for a clever scam involving cans of pop? Matt Coyne that's who! AKA the Sunday Times bestseller Man Vs. Baby. Who gives me an insight into the mind of a teenage boy in the 90's. We discuss Stefan Dennis and our mutual love for The Word and Eurotrash. All together "DON'T IT MAKE YOU FEEEEELLLL GOOD!".Check out Matt on Instagram here and grab his bestselling books Dummy here and Man Vs Toddler here.For more of me follow @brummymummyof2 on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.You can email me here with your guest suggestions or nostalgia chat [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello loves and welcome back to another episode of the Phone Box podcast with me Emma Conway and this episode is a cracking one firstly thanks so much for all your support on the previous episodes if you've not listened to them go back and listen they are great some real fun nostalgic chats this week is great because we are delving deep into the mind of a teenage boy not literally because this man is no longer a teenager. He is now 47. It is Matt, aka Man Vs Baby on social media. He's also a Sunday Times bestseller. And I was very excited for this podcast because as I had mentioned probably 50,000 times, I went to an

all-girls school. I didn't understand what was going on in boys' minds. I didn't know what was going on. What are they thinking? When they flick their floppy hair like that, what's going on in boys' minds. I didn't know what was going on. What are they thinking? When they flick their floppy hair like that, what's going on? What music do they like? What's going on behind closed doors? I had no clue. No clue.

So I really appreciate Matt for coming on and giving me a brief insight. I do need to make a small apology. I sing Stefan Dennis' Don't Make It Feel Good about six times in this podcast. If you don't hear it six times, it's because I've edited it out. So Matt, if you're listening, I do apologise. I don't know what was wrong with me. I know afterwards I actually went back and I think I might have just messaged you two words and those two words were Stefan Dennis. So much apologies.

Okay, let's listen to Matt and what he's got to say, and I'll come back for a chitchat at the end. Hello, Matt, and welcome to the Phone Box podcast. Right, what year were you 14, and what phone box would you be phoning from? Where in the country? I would have been 14 in 1988, and I would have been phoning from somewhere in Sheffield. Yeah, somewhere in Sheffield. Yeah, somewhere in Sheffield. Why do you look confused?

I can't remember where I was living in 1988. Oh, God, we're so old. We're the old ones. God, yeah. I mean, I saw a thing yesterday that said that Adele was born in 1988. Or it might have been 1989. So basically, I turned 14 the year that she was born and rihanna actually so rihanna's older than i thought she was actually well i saw a meme today that's like um in eight years the 1980s was 50 years ago oh my god

50 years ago and people go no it wasn't i was like well yeah it is just like do the maths it's simple the maths it is yeah 50 years ago and so do you remember so in 1988 50 years ago would have been when like 19 30s oh 38 and that would have been like

we'd have been learning about that in history oh my god so when people look back now, when kids look back now, they're looking back in the same way that we look back on, like, ration books and stuff like that. Yeah, and, like, women putting tea bags on their legs instead of tights. Did you not learn about that? In what?

In history? In history. Putting tea bags on their legs instead of tights. No, the juice from a tea bag, not like multi-layered tea bags. Sellotaping tea bags to their legs. No, they used to use the juice and the tea, didn't they, to put... Oh, God, maybe I made that up. I don't know. To make it look like they got tanned legs.

Tights on, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why did you put tights on? Oh, I see. They had no tights because it was the war and there were rations. Oh, right, OK. Yeah. i had bigger things to think about so we can use a tea bag well they still want their legs to look nice um what were you like when you were 14 what was the light on it but um i was it's 14 is a weird age isn't it really because if there's an age at which you are trying to

work out who you are 14's probably and that was me I was total I was a contradiction in all kinds of ways I was

a proper nerd aww but not bright enough to be one of the bright nerds see what I mean you know how you have

like factions at school and they've got kind of the bright nerds. You know how you have factions at school, and they've got the bright ones and the sporty ones and all that sort of stuff. So I wasn't sporty. I still had very little coordination. I wasn't bright enough to be what you call the boffs. You call them boffs, boffins. The podcast with Mumsy Mum, she said the word boffin,

and I was like, I have not heard that word since the 90s. Yeah. So, yeah, boffins. She was a boffin. Ah, right, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, and it was a bit of a tearaway as well. I found a school report of mine recently when we were clearing out a locker,

and it would have been from when I was about 14, 15, and it was completely empty. Every page of the report was empty apart from my form teacher. And it just said Matthew who? And a question mark after it because I used to wag it so much. You used to skive. All the time. My mum once phoned up because she used to call it wagging.

And my mum sort of got the wrong end of the stick. And she found out and she phoned up I remember she phoned up the school secretary and says I'm phoning because I've just found out that my son has been wanking it I was I was a bugger for skipping school like all the time and um yeah it was a bit of a wasn't so much a tear well it was a bit of a tearaway but it was it was a very small window where i was kind of trying to work out what i was doing i got arrested when i was 14 what for at school as well carted out that's the drug that is the drama yeah the walk of shame through the gates and everything it's like happy valley or something what did you what were you doing

two things people remember from that year is me and my mate getting marched out the school gates and uh and a dog coming the other way because a dog running around the playground is always oh it's the best the dog even when i was a teacher there's a dog on the playground yeah that's the best i remember a dog ran onto our playground and one of the teachers a woman called mrs stainrod went chasing after it in the mud and she after it in the mud. And she slipped over in the mud and she was so mad at the dog that she took off her coat and threw it at the dog. With all, like, every kid watching.

And the dog went up to it, sniffed it and pissed on her coat. But no, I've got to say, I'll tell you what I rested for. It was, it's very, very weird. But my mate discovered that if you bought this type of electrician's tape from whatever B&Q or some hardware store, probably Wilco or Wix, if you stuck one side of a 10-pence piece with this electrician's tape, vending machines thought the 10p was 50p. Okay. vending machines thought the tempi was 50p okay so we basically went all around town just with this let's just put them on tempi put it in then you get a can of coke yeah and then you'd pocket the change and then we'd go into school and then sell the cans of coke so we uh but then we got really lazy we were earning an awful lot of money and we got really lazy.

And what we figured we'd do is we'd sell the tape in little sections. Yeah. And you all do it now. Well, the problem is, is that the college across the road from our school, they, every single kid who bought this tape went to the same vending machine. So they emptied this vending machine at the end of the week. And it was just full of these dodgy 10 pence pieces and how did it how did it get back to you well they walked they walked straight over to to school straight into the master's office and said it was big where's this

and every single kid just said oh it's coiny and he's made a good basically would you just get did you get off with a warning yeah I think I think it was mainly to scare us straight I think did it not really you felt like heroes

you're like yeah we did walk back in thinking yeah sort of a hero as well of course

everything had been embellished at that point so by the time we got back we were basically Scarface you were Tommy Lee Royce.

Exactly. Yeah. And where were you in the hierarchy of school? Were you like in the cool bit or were you like not in the cool bit? What kind of, where did you settle? Yeah, I wasn't,

I think there's the sport at that age is the sporty kids who are the cool, cool kids. But maybe for boys, because obviously i went to a normal school um i don't know anything about teenage boys so sporty girls wouldn't necessarily be the cool kids yeah they would have been at my at my school at that age any kids who were good at football or anything like that they were they were probably the cool kids and um then you had you know, if you worked your way down,

I would say that the smart kids all kept to themselves as well. And I was kind of like, you know, in a group of just total misfits, really. We were all just really weird and not cool weird either. Did you think you were cool though? No. You sound like you're from a, what's his name? Who does the films, Hughes? Like Pretty in Pink, like The Breakfast Club.

It sounds like you're from. Yeah, John Hughes. Yeah. Sounds like you're from a John Hughes film. That's probably as close as you get. We were basically The Breakfast Club. We were kind of a bunch of weirdos, but we used to do Ouija boards at lunchtime and stuff like that.

And, you know, we were constantly trying to find somewhere to get inside and hide and hang out inside and stuff. It sounds like quite fun, to be honest. We had a great time, don't get me wrong. We had a real good laugh, but we didn't really fit in anywhere. And we were desperately trying to find somewhere to fit in, I think, at that age. So I sort of like had, in terms of like my style, you can call it style. I was, I think, between 14, 15, 16, within a three-year span,

I probably went from being like a townie, you know, someone who wears... What's a townie? Is that a chav? Is a townie a chav? Not really. It was like kind of somebody who was quite smart, quite preppy. Oh, OK. So you'd have your waistcoat and your blazer. Waistcoats were big. No, waistcoats weren't. They're on old men.

Waistcoats, 1989. Oh, maybe. I think Rick Astley, he probably wore one with a white shirt and some jeans. Yeah, I mean, we were wandering around looking like fucking snooker players. Thinking we looked pretty cool. But it was like blazers and chinos and okay waistcoat and paisley shirts were quite quite big at the time but then that was probably i kind of grew into like being into sort of like um you know hip-hop and and rap music and stuff like that so i'd like a like a year of wearing um like amateur trousers and stuff yeah yeah yeah real

the real baggy well like what was your bedroom like then if you're into that kind of music you have those posters up or do you have poster girls or what I didn't have any posters up on on my wall I was kind of um if you walked across the landing to my sister's room it was all like Stefan Dennis and Brother Beyond that's so neat, gonna make it feel good side note, my sister's going

by herself to watch Neighbours Live and hang on, she's paid extra to meet the cast so it's Carl all of them and she's paid extra to meet the cast. So it's Carl, all of them. And she's hoping Stefan Dennis makes an appearance. I'm going to make you feel good.

What was his character called? Paul? Is it Paul Kennedy? No, Paul. Oh, what's his name? His character's Kennedy. No, no, I'm thinking of Carl Kennedy or whatever. No, Paul.

It'll come. What, his character name? Yeah. It's a Lassiter, weren't they? Paul Lassiter, that doesn't sound right. Paul Lassiter,

maybe. It's always called Lassiter. Yeah, it was. You're talking, all that's going through my head is going to make you feel good. I honestly think that's what he does

when anybody meets him. I think he just dives. I'd be disappointed if he didn't. Claire, I don't know. Claire has already said, she's already said this to me, she's going to refer to them only by their character names.

Oh, they'll love that. I said, I was like, oh, she's like, I don't care. This is my one chance. He had like a hit single or whatever. It's more than just a one dimensional. Oh, yeah. Did you, I feel like you might, did you have like a red sports car and a

frame or do you remember the tennis player with a skirt up showing her ass yeah the athena posters i didn't have any poster on me i had um i thought it was quite artistic at the time so i was kind of like um i used to draw pictures on my own wall and draw pictures and stuff on my own wall. And one time when I was wagging it from school, I cut a, you remember the dance floor on The Word, which was basically a black and white spiral. I basically cut a huge circular hole in the carpet.

It went into that spiral, black and white. Did your mum go mad? My mum would have. Absolutely lost her shit. My dad would have. Well, I wouldn't have been alive. I wouldn't be doing this podcast. I did.

At the same day, I ran an extension, a phone extension, from the main extension, the main phone, to my bedroom side and my own phone in my room but uh but didn't tell anybody and uh the first thing they knew about it is i literally just hammered it to the floor of the landing across the stairs first thing they knew about it is my mom came in going absolutely apeshit about the about the call the car but it turned around and tripped over the new phone extension and funny thing she absolutely absolutely lost her shit. But you were like, what? No,

I didn't, I didn't, I thought he looked cool as fuck. You're just like, who was the man from The Word? What was his name? Terry Christie. Terry Christie,

oh, The Word. And Mark, Mark Lamar. Mark Lamar, yeah. He was so good, wasn't it? That and,

the, what was the one with the Jean-Paul gaultier afterwards yeah um that'll come to that was that was a great program both of those are absolute classics and you'd see some like big busty woman like on a bike in amsterdam let's go over to amsterdam it's a topless woman on a trampoline doing weather or something you don't get that kind Like in Amsterdam. Let's go over to Amsterdam. It's a topless woman on a trampoline doing weather or something.

You don't get that kind of TV. We miss that classic television. Okay, so first crush. Famous crush. Famous crush. Yeah. Probably Carol Decker. From Tupac. You don't need to say that. I know she's from Tupac. You don't need to say that.

I know she's from Tupac. Shining with your hand. With the big hair. That's the one, yeah. I used to carry a picture of Carol Decker in my wallet. Oh, did you? Was it from Smash Hits or something? I think it probably was.

I'm not taking a photograph myself. Tracked her down and hung around in Tapao's back garden because the only way in them days to get a picture of a celebrity would be to buy a magazine yeah yeah and used to yeah you could get this like a cheap laminate which was basically sellotape so I sort of like wrapped sellotape around it

and kept it in my wallet and it's weird because I did that kind of secretly and I was kind of like a closet to power fan. I used to play China in Your Hand like repeatedly in my bedroom on my own. And I kept it completely to myself. I was a big to power fan. And then there was a kid at my school called Lee Peckett who let slip

that he'd just bought Bridge of Spies, which was their album at the time with China in Your Hand on it so I didn't know you were a Tipper fan he says you're going to laugh at this but I keep a picture of Carol Decker in my wallet compared pictures of Carol Decker So if you saw Carol Decker

now would you still be like I don't know I'd have to have a look because I was on holiday with steven it was like our honeymoon we were in vegas and there was like sometimes they do like movie premieres and stuff and you just like stumble upon it and like there's will ferrell they're like all really really exciting and then um it was like a voice it was like god's voice. And now coming down the carpet is Matt Goss. I nearly, I nearly melt. I was started like, I was like hysterical.

Just got married. Husband's with me. Matt Goss, man of my dreams. Were you like a proper bros? I was, oh, I was the biggest. And he walked past. There's a lot of caps on there. And the woman next, the man next to me said Matt like

you know what Americans look great aren't they she loves you and he came over we had a photo he had more makeup on than me he was like and he smelt like heaven and I just said nine-year-old Emma would be so happy now and he just said oh And Stephen's in the back of the picture like that. I was a proper brossette. My mum did not let me have the bottle tops, but we had jumpers from the markets that had their faces on in, like, cartoon versions. It was a bit like, whoa, like, with Craig.

It's the two brothers or the other fella as well. Yeah, Matt, Luke, Craig I've met I think I've met Craig somewhere as well but I wasn't but Matt Goss so maybe if you saw Carol Decker

if you do a best of all Carol Decker's there I'm excited would that be yeah she'd be delighted for me to go to her and say my 15 year old self would have been

yeah it's a big yeah 9 year old and 15 year old my 15 year old self had a picture in my wallet she'd be like security can we score fandu casino daily jackpots guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m with your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling saying i do who wants this last parachute i do daily jackots. A chance to win with every spin and a guaranteed

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Talk to you about. Okay. We've heard about about your waistcoat what other fashion faux pas did you have um yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm actually calling the waistcoat okay sorry that that will go under fashion genius what what was something that you put on and you thought, I look phenomenal? With hindsight, you looked terrible. I'll tell you what I did. I was once walking around C&A. Oh, lovely. I saw this kind of like a long trench coat. It was kind of like a beige trench coat.

And I thought, that looks cool as fuck. No. Like a murderer that looks proper cool I thought so basically I begged my mum for like days and days and days to buy me this coat it's probably the most expensive piece of clothing I ever bought at that point in my life I just thought I started got to have this coat and uh I went into school wearing it, and people fucking loved it. They thought it was amazing. And to start with, it was like my group of mates, and they all got trench coats. Not as good trench coats.

Theirs looked like proper. Did you, like, inspect a gadget? It didn't have the belt on it. Oh, okay. It was kind of like a straight now you'd probably find it in a quite a nice uh you know like zara for men or something you'd find kind of like a like knee lengths but uh without a belt on it was like straight quite nicely fitted and stuff like but then um people started started copying the look at my school. Pretty much every lad in my year had a trench coat.

Trend setter, Matt. It's the only time it's ever happened to me, ever. And I was absolutely, I was made up. And then it kind of fell from fashion. But we didn't have a lot of money. So when everybody sort of shifted on from trench coats and moved back to ski jackets or whatever they were wearing, I was saddled still with the trench coat

and a man suddenly out of time. And it's only at that point that I realised I did look like a sex offender. I look like a flasher. Likeher like a flasher yeah with the jacket that's a shame i know so there's so there's a window two weeks where i was the tits i was absolutely amazing is that the only two weeks in your life you felt like that ever and the fact the fact that everybody was able to move on and i was still i was still stuck in it you know like you know like you still see people there's an advert at

the minute of a fellow who's still got curtain curtains for his hair you know i mean 30 40 after it looked cool or whatever did you have curtains curtains were cool though i did have curtains yeah but i had i had a shocking if you want you want a terrible fashion faux pas i had a terrible haircut once me and my sister well my sister got a really tight perm once uh she wanted to look like julia roberts i think it was kind of like um and it was really really she looked like uh leo sayer you know that you know that bob ross you know the yeah, yeah. That's what she looked like.

Oh, she looked like a microphone. It was proper tight, a tight perm. And at the same time, I was looking for a look. Yeah. And I'd grown my hair a little bit longer. And I don't know what the fuck

I was thinking, but I went into a barber's and basically said, I want to have short hair, but at the very front, I want to keep my curtains just at the very front, so they're really long. So I had a long sort of like parted fringe at the front and the rest of my hair.

So a party at the front, business at the back. Yeah. So the opposite of a mullet. You had a reverse mullet. You had reverse mullet you had a rullet i don't know what it is i've never seen anybody ever with his haircut ever but i was i think i was just flush with the success of my trench coat yeah you're like i'm always i'm trendsetting oh you know the back of his face he was like what are you talking about but i thought this is gonna look really really cool so I had it done.

I came out of there feeling like a million dollars. And I went to my granddad's afterwards. And I remember I walked through the door and he just said, what the fuck do you look like? I thought, well, you don't know anything. Yeah, oh, man, I look cool. He was already like 70 or whatever. So I thought, you don't know anything yeah oh man I look cool he was already like 70 or whatever though so I thought you don't know anything

and then my brother came in and honestly he laughed so hard just at the sight of me that I thought he was going to die he just couldn't breathe did you get it cut off or did you have to stick with it I fronted it out for quite a while

I kind of worked out that if I put oil on it and stuff like that? I fronted it out for quite a while. I kind of worked out that if I put oil on it and stuff like that, I could stop it from looking quite so good. But I looked... It's really, really difficult to imagine what it looks like because no one's ever had this. I can't picture it in my head because it doesn't exist. It's like a unicorn, but it's a hairdo. Actually, but then again, I know what a unicorn looks like.

It's like god but that's where but that's where i really don't know it's experiment with this sort of stuff there's there was other parts of my body that were that were lagging behind if you see what i mean so basically i would have like um i was thinking this this was quite indie to have this um thing so because like 1990 89 89, 90s when, you know, Happy Mondays came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my attention was grabbed by that a little bit.

But I was still sort of wearing like Miami Vice jackets and stuff like that. You were stuck in two time zones. Yeah, so I'm still carrying around Carol Decker in my wallet. Yeah. I didn't have the faintest idea what I was doing, really. It's a great age for that. 14 is, when I was a teacher, year nine, which is 14,

that's the year that is crazy. And the boys' arms grow long, but then their face is smaller than the voice. And everything just is all out of everything just looks a bit not quite right in a boy it takes a bit of where there's girls it doesn't really happen but boys they come back after the summer you're like oh my gosh what is going on but their noses get big like everything just goes like that it must be quite awkward well then and and the spread of the size and shape and attitude of boys at that age as well.

So you've got like, even at 14, 15, you had lads in our school which were just raging hormones. In fact, we had a lad at my school called Dollop, he used to call him, which is a different story about how he shit himself. But Dominic, he used he used to call him, which is a different story about how he shit himself. But Dominic, he used to sell pheromones. He used to be able to buy

pheromones online. They were probably complete bollocks. He was probably saltwater or something. The idea is that it would make you more attractive to the opposite side. You'd just sell those and you'd dab it behind your ear. Yeah. Yeah, 14 is a funny old, is is a funny old it is a funny I had a perm like your sister that just was terrible and I went into school one day and somebody had drawn

a woman on the girl's face on the board with big hair and like Emma's hair is just shit and I just walked into the classroom and I thought, I look great. I thought, this is it. I'm going to be part of the cool gang. I walked in and I was like, who would do that? What monsters? What monsters?

I mean, have you got an older brother? No, I am the eldest. So I'm two years older than my sister. So if you had older brothers, you would have the yardstick. You would have been informed well before going into class what your hair looked like. Oh, yes. Because older brothers do that.

I mean, I used to, because my sister's room was across from the landing from me, and she was constantly listening to, like I said, Don't Make You Feel Good. Don't Make You Feel Good. And Yaz and the Plastic Population. She was a big fan. Yeah. But she used to listen to it.

You'll not remember. This is probably before your time. Do you remember Atlantic 252? No, what's that? It was a radio station, I think. Yeah, it's a long wave radio station. Really bad quality. They used to play all the hits basically and the alternative chart shows and she used to have that on uh constantly and the good thing about it was is they didn't

is that you could tell where the adverts were going to be and the djs didn't used to crash so you could when you press play and record on your tape you'd get the full song you know so she used to listen to Atlantic 252 um all the time but they used to have a competition on where they'd say um they'd phone you you could submit your phone number and they'd phone you and if you picked up within five rings or something and said I'll listen to the best musical Atlantic 252 then you'd win like 500 quid or something and uh every time that used to used to come on me and brother used to go downstairs and make the phone ring oh no and your sister be like i listen to the radio it's you again but there used to be a button on the bottom of the tv that test the ringer so you just press that and she'd, honestly, she nearly killed herself getting downstairs every single night because you only had five rings.

I'll listen to the best music of my life. And you'd be like that. Oh, I miss, I used to listen to the radio all the time. BRMB was our station. Simon Davis was the DJ. Huge crush on him. I'd phone up continuously. I'd be like hello yeah yeah yeah

I used to go to the road shows, what you talking about I was there front and centre and I'd be like hello, please could you play Babe Boy Take That and they'd be like, nice to hear from ever again, here's Babe Boy Take That all the time and also

he once came to our school for the Christmas concert BR&B and then he was like, I'm going to play a special song for you girls tonight and he played Snow Informer. What a great... You know somebody shot me down the layover, come on mum now.

And we were like oh he's great you don't get that lad do you you really don't thank Christ oh I miss it was he the most famous guy to come to your school was he the most yeah we didn't have any

because some people were like oh I had take that or we had and I had Simon Davis playing give my mum down. That was it. Oh, no, we once had Johnny Ball. Oh, that's quite good. Yeah, we once had Johnny Ball revealing all. Was that the show?

Have I made? On the ball? Johnny Ball reveals all. Wasn't that what the show was? That doesn't sound at all right. I'm going to Google that, but I'm certain it was Johnny Ball Reveals All

I really wouldn't google Johnny Ball Reveals All and he did an experiment with what's those round things that you put your feet in and the electricity like oh yeah so that was quite exciting did you have anyone famous come to your school

not that I really... I don't think so, no. We had, like, local celebrities, Panto celebrities. Bobby Nutt, who was quite... Bobby Nutt was quite... Bobby Nutt. Martin Gane. No, not really.

Oh, we had Nick Owen as well. The man and Nick. Well, he lives in Birmingham, doesn't he? So he's just, like, he's always hanging around. Yeah, Nick Owen, Johnny Ball and Simon Davis, the DJ. So what was your, apart from being arrested, what was your biggest teenage success? Arrest, you had your arrested, great coat.

What was another thing you were like, I've smashed being a teenager? What else was a teenager? I, oh, this is, well, I've smashed being a teenager. What else is a teenager? I, oh, this is, well, I once went to, my mum once went to a parents' evening. And as I said earlier, I thought I was quite an artistic person. You know, I was constantly like painting stuff on the walls.

And we went to a parents a parent's evening and my my art teacher mr robinson said said he didn't want me to do art you don't mean you take your options at whatever third year or whatever it was back then and he says uh he just doesn't have the ability to to crack on with this like i mean and it's and i was i was absolutely gutted and then my mom i cried on the wheel my mom was in the car and she says uh and she's right she says we'll show him what and she booked me and she did pottery at a college and she booked me to do gcse art early so i did art in in a year when i was 14 and got an A. And she went back into her parenting. She was like, there you go.

I'm still like that, Robinson, you dick. Oh, my, that, there's a story. There's a book in that. That is the love, that is like a bit like Billy Elliot. But it's you and it's doing Art GCSE in a year. That's a lovely story. Well, my mum was always like that.

She's always someone who would proper fight your corner. That's what I'm a bit like with a mum. As a mum, I'm very like he said what to you? I'm going up to school. I'm going to get him on the phone. Which I'm sure annoys everybody but

you gotta like kind of stand up for your kids haven't you yeah of course yeah i mean i think i think that's probably where i started started to settle down and work out that i need to sort my shit out a little bit because uh i had a teacher as well who was like that miss kennedy it was um no most of the teachers kind of written me off and I do not blame them, I was an absolute disaster in terms of going into school and stuff like that but it was Mrs Kennedy, she was one of those teachers

who took me to one side and she'd overheard what another teacher had said to me basically and I remember she took me to one side and she says I used to go to school with him and he was never the sharpest tool in the box so don't worry about it

she was my English teacher then and she proper put in hours you know what I mean to make sure that I did the work and she convinced me that I had some sort of talent and stuff like that to have someone like that in your corner at that age was just phenomenal.

Yeah. Oh, that's so nice. So with my mum and with that one particular teacher, I probably sorted my shit out just about in time for me, for me, exams and stuff. Did you do well? Did you do well in your exams? Not really. I did a whole lot better than I was expected to. But, you know know i wouldn't uh i wouldn't say i pulled up any trees i was blown away the idea that i'd got any kind of qualifications yeah this was amazing to me i was full of celebration that day i can't believe but it was just because i i'd written myself up a little bit a lot of teachers written me off as well like

and uh just wasn't expected to do anything at all so yeah without but without someone you know having that having a little bit of faith in you i think i probably would have yeah somebody fighting your corner it is it is i think in education sometimes boys can kind of slip through the net a bit especially just like nice boys they don't say you know so when i was was teaching, I tried to encourage them, but it is. Yeah, I had a careers teacher, Mr. Warren, and I told him, I made the mistake. There was a kid in front of me called Kevin, Kevin O'Connor, who went in and the careers teacher was like,

what do you want to do? He said that stage. And he said, I want to be a goalkeeper. And he basically got laughed at. He ended up being a goalkeeper. They're right. So not at a great level, but certainly enough to be a pro. So but encouraged by Kevin O'Connor, when I went in,

I said, I want to be a journalist. And I wanted to be a writer. I knew that I wanted to be a writer because I took typing. Because I wasn't allowed to take art. I ended up taking typing. Yeah, I did typing as well. But I figured that's what a journalist needs to be able to do, type. So that's what I, you know, I went into the careers teacher, Mr. Warren.

I said, I want to be a journalist. I want to be a writer. I always remember what he said. He said, I said I want to be a journalist I want to be a writer he said well I want to be Burt Reynolds Burt Reynolds we all want to be Burt well I want to be Burt you can't be Burt Reynolds no Burt Reynolds is Burt Reynolds

also it's like a journalist is an achievable attainable it's not like you're going to want to be an astronaut I just want to be a journalist I want to be Burt Reynolds also it's like a journalist is an achievable attainable it's not like you're going to want to be an astronaut you're like I just want to be a journalist I want to be

Burt Reynolds you're asking wanting to be a fucking goalkeeper and you're having to go meet for goalkeeper but he said

well I'll see what I can do and the next time he'd got me an application form to become an apprentice fitter of gas cookers for uh for british gas

so i don't think he had a good greatly left base no he sounded like a right ass i want to be so final question which i ask everybody are you glad you were a teenager back then or do you wish you were a teenager now i mean i imagine everybody will be of the same opinion about social media and stuff like that i'd be able to say the same thing about about uh you know that every mistake is recorded and every mistake becomes but i mean put this my my 14 year old arrest would have been uh would have been that would have been on tiktok that would have been on tiktok you walking out go yeah well and that would have been like uploaded to tiktok or it would have been a hack if you get you'd be doing a video going um here's a hack to get free money from the machine putting it in hack it and you'd be like on the new yeah that that i've done

my own tiktok walking back through the school days to snow in Forma. That's what I'm for. Yeah, and I want a TikTok of the dog weeing on your teacher's coat while she lies in mud, crying. I'd quite like to see that. There's an awful lot about that that I have no envy for at all. Partly because it's not just that your mistakes are recorded and they become, you know, it used to be a myth when we were kids that there was a permanent record. Well, now there is a permanent record.

That just seems really unfair. And I don't like the idea of that, especially when the age that we're talking about now, you are trying to work out who you are. It just seems really, really, a really tough thing to have to deal with. But there are massive pluses as well, though, about being a teenager. I like the connectivity that teenagers have now. I've lost contact with an awful lot of people that I wish I hadn't done over the years.

And I think that's easier now to not lose that contact, even if it's in a cursory way. Definitely. And I also find you can find your tribe a bit. So if you were a mis misfit you'd have found other misfits and you would have known and i i think that is quite nice connecting with different people well like we connect with you know all the people on this podcast i never would have met unless there was social media and our followers um you know you you meet like-minded people and you get to chat about stuff which which I really love.

Yeah. Something occurs to me as well while we're talking, that there's something really good about being a teenager now, and that's that the Mr. Warrens don't have sway. The people, you know, the gatekeepers that say to you, you can't do, you can't be. The tools exist for teenagers to say, no, I'll just fucking do it myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they do it brilliantly. I think there's a, I've got an awful lot of time for today's young people, especially, you know, they seem very, aside from their attitudes to social justice and stuff like that, which I think is miles ahead of from where we were. Oh, there was nothing. There was, no, it was nothing. There was... No, it was terrible.

It was terrible. It's much better now. To be gay in our school, even to be black in our school, actually, wouldn't have been any picnic. I mean, talking, you know, late 80s, I can't imagine having to go through school, you know, having to deal with that.

And I think kids today seem a lot more switched on about that sort of stuff, which is a good thing. So as much as I wouldn't swap, I think I can completely understand why some people who had a harder time at school at that age would definitely, you know, have an easier ride and a better time to be uh to be teenagers in school now but no i wouldn't i wouldn't swap i quite like the mistakes you're a product of these mistakes aren't you and i quite like the mistakes that uh that that i've made i don't mind them too much i don't think i did anything too too bad and uh i quite i quite like the way i'm now so i don't think it's like it's like a bit of a self-help a bit of a therapy too bad and I quite like who I am now it feels like a bit of a self help a bit of a therapy session

and you know what I just like who I am now you need to be like at the end of the breakfast club where he puts his don't you forget about me as you walk out the room don't don't play that shit at the end of this as you walk out the room don't don't yeah play that shit at the end of the podcast no you know i'm gonna play don't make you feel good or informer one or the other thank you very much for being on the phone box uh podcast matt and i will speak to you soon bless you cheers

if you took a shot every time i sang steph and dennis didn't make you feel good um you'd be a bit tipsy by now i think he i think i might be getting a letter from his lawyers copywriting me because i sank it so many times it was so wonderful to speak to matt and have a little bit of an insight into what a teenage boy's mind was like. Also, Googled Johnny Ball Reveals All was in fact a show. A strange title for a show, but it was like a science show. And he was revealing all through his experiments. Johnny Ball, of course, the dad of Zoe Ball, and he was an absolute icon in the 90s on TV. So that was another phone box podcast for you i will be back again same time next week thanks for joining me i hope i've kept you company on your

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