Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Angela Barnes (Part Two)

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

In the second part of our walk with Angela Barnes, you join us back in Brighton's beautiful Stanmer Park with Tina and Raymond.Angela and Emily have an in-depth chat about ADHD, Angela catches us up on her wedding and she tells us all about her brilliant history podcast with John O'Farrell - We Are History.If you haven’t heard the first part of this chat, you can listen to it hereKeep up with all things Angela here: https://www.angelabarnescomedy.co.uk/ You can listen to Angela’s podcast We Are History wherever you get your podcasts. Catch Angela at the Edinburgh Fringe this August with her work-in-progress show "Angela Barnes Is Getting Worked Up"Listen to Emily and Ray’s first walk with Angela from November 2021 hereFollow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Part 2 of Walking the Dog with comedian Angela Barnes and her beautiful cockapoo, Tina. Really hope you enjoy. Here's Angela and Tina and Ray Ray. Did you suffer from depression? I did for a long time and actually I had quite a wobbly year last year if I'm honest. So one of the reasons I was a bit late meeting you, I was going to meet you earlier today but I forgot that Thursday morning is my therapy morning. so I went straight from therapy to more therapy it feels like so I'm at that a you know perimenopause sort of age and last year I had a real wobble with it

you know sort of HRT and all of that business and the ADHD meds were I had a bad reaction to them so I had to come off them and and it was all just a bit bleak and a bit sort of I suddenly felt old and a bit kind of the world's changing a little bit in our industry you know, with the way kind of social media is, and I just felt like a bit of a dinosaur, and I think you feel that more as a woman anyway,

because, you know, you're allowed to be old as a woman if you also happen to look 30, then you're allowed to be 60. But if you're, do you know what I mean? If you look like one of the real housewives of Beverly Hills, then you're allowed to age. You can be 50. Yeah. But if you just are a normal woman, then that's not allowed.

No one wants to see that, ugh. You know, and I started having a bit of a crisis of, okay, well, is it time to start looking at what else you can do? You know, is it time to look at those transferable skills and kind of... And I really had a bit of a existential wobble last year because I don't feel like I'm done yet in comedy. You know, I feel like I've got a lot to give. But unfortunately, people need to want what you're giving, you know.

And I really worried about it. And then I just sort of... I started having some therapy and I changed my HR... and things like that and touchwood. I think I'd got a bit of, what's the word? There's a word I'm looking for. A bit of perspective, I guess. I think I'd sort of gone down this hole and everything.

I'd catastrophize, which is what I want to do. Right, because I would say, well, I was just watching your ITV special the other night. Right, yeah. Do you know what you mean? Yeah. And so I get it. I'm looking at your outsides and your insides feel very different. Yeah.

But I'm thinking, oh, the other week I watched Angela's ITV special of her hugely successful tour, hot mess. I mean, most comedians would dream of that bit. And then I see, and I'm not, by the way, diminishing how you're feeling. No, no, no, it's just reminding you that from, it's so interesting that I look at that. And I think I saw her ITV special. Then I saw her do this incredible thing, the show called the World's Most Dangerous Road. Oh yes, with Rod Gilbert, where they're driving across Italy doing this. So I'm thinking she's at her absolute peace.

But you're not feeling that. And why is that? It's so funny that the sort of, I mean, that's part of what depression is, is kind of, not willfully, but just not being able to see the evidence as it is in front of you. Like with World's Most Dangerous Roads, we filmed that in June last year. And it was sort of maybe a couple of months after that that I started. to take this little tumble. When I was on tour, the second half of my tour, I got COVID.

And so I had to cancel a few tour dates and reschedule them. And then it really hit me this bout of COVID I had. And then I sort of went back a bit sooner than I should have done really. I wasn't, I didn't have COVID anymore, but I just hadn't recovered. You weren't matched fit at all. And I went and did a show in Birmingham, and it was the sickest I've ever been doing it. Like, I don't know how I got through it. And the next day, I was supposed to have a show in,

evesham in Worcestershire and I was with my support act who's also a good friend of my Michael Fabry and we were driving to the show and I just had this what I now know was a panic attack like I've never had before because I lost feeling in my legs and both my arms and I just fell and I literally and my hands went into these claw shapes and I thought I was having a stroke I thought oh I don't want to die in evesham so he drove me to A and Ead like I was in a real state and they sort of did ECGs and all sorts of things. I had to cancel my show that because I was supposed to be going to a show. And they just came back and said, what you've had is a, is a really brutal panic attack and you need to take some time out really and slow down. And I just, I was getting stage fright, which I'd never had before. So, you know, you get nervous for gigs, but I remember doing a show at the Brighton Dome. It was, we do a show every year in memory of Phil Gerard, my friend,

stand-up who died and me and Ramesh put it on and Ramesh was hosting it this last year and I was backstage and I just didn't want to go on this and he was like you're all right I've never seen you like this and I sort of said I don't know where this has come from but I just I just didn't want to get on stage which is a problem when that's your you know what you do for a living and you're in the middle of a tour and so I was sort of I was taking beta blockers I was just to get myself on stage every night to do the shows. Was Rommis helpful in that situation? Well, I mean, he's, you know, a busy man and not,

I wasn't very honest with people because you don't want to show weakness, you know? You don't want to show that you're struggling. So you just play it down and go, oh, no, I'm fine, I'm just having a wobble or whatever. And obviously, those closest to me knew. I just wasn't sleeping. Anyway, so I had a breakdown, really, is what happened in the autumn. So my tour finished in December and I just took a bit of time out

So December of January I didn't really do much work I was still doing my podcast and things But I am And just sort of sorted myself out I went to see a menopause specialist And started therapy And started to you know Different HRT and things like that

And touch wood You know started Because the other thing as well is I know I feel better if I do some exercise. Like if I swim a couple of times a week, it makes a huge difference. I know, isn't it annoying? I know really annoying,

because you don't want that to be the case, but it really is. Is that a wee? Yes. Tina, not me. And if you're busy, it's hard to fit that in because, you know,

it's like, well, I've got a drive to Manchester on Tuesday, and then I've got this meeting on Wednesday. And then, you know, and I'm sure you're the same as me with your ADHD, handle too many appointments in one day I feel overwhelmed even if that appointment is a Zoom call can I just say Andrew and I have discussed this yeah

previously she has she hasn't just outed me no no we have told about you and your ADHD what is this what did you not know Emily so Angela you got diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago yeah 2021 yeah yeah yeah And I feel like when you were diagnosed, it felt like the end of a sort of mystery. Yeah, it helped me explain a lot of things in my life. That up till a diagnosis, the only word I had for them really was failure. And I thought I just wasn't very good at certain things. Or I just couldn't, you know, didn't meet those arbitrary life goals other people meet.

And I wasn't, I just thought I wasn't a very good human. I just wasn't very good at humaning. And that wasn't a nice feeling, really. And it was frustrating. And I couldn't understand why I couldn't do these simple things that other people took for granted. Like what things? Well, like, you know, having a task that you want to do

and just doing it. I remember growing up, the phrase I can hear from my dad rattling through time is just, if you just do it, then it's done. Just do it, then it's done. Because I would have things I needed to do, and I'd be so worried about getting them wrong or failing or it being back. or someone, that it would paralyze me from doing it.

And it's like with writing, with anything, I love writing comedy. It's my favourite thing. So why am I finding it hard to sit down and do it sometimes? And I realised it's this fear of failure, this fear of, because as soon as you've written a joke, you're going to have to say it in front of people and it might fail. You're going to be judged on it.

And the fear of that was just paralyzing me. Right. And I think that's something which people who aren't familiar with, ADHD and just associate it with boys shaking their leg a lot in a chair at school. Yeah. What that's to do with is a dysphoria around rejection as well. Yeah, absolutely. So the idea that people with the kind of ADHD you have, which presents much more typically in females, is there's an emotional aspect to it, which is rejection feels like nothing on earth.

And to the point where, you know, doing what I do, you get a lot of negative to your social, media and things and people say we'll just ignore it and I do I don't look at it but if I do stumble across it it feels so personal because even though I don't know that person and you know people will say well I mean look at their why do you want that person to like you it's not about that person it's about me and that feeling of rejection that feeling of it's a horrible feeling that somebody that doesn't know you doesn't like you and to me that is just a but I've not done anything to them you know I can understand someone not liking me if they know me and I'm not their cup of sit or what.

Bottom line is it doesn't matter if I'm never going to meet these people. Why should I care? I know that intellectually. But this fear of rejection is a real thing with people, particularly women with ADHD. And it's this sort of disproportionate reaction to it and a very emotional gut reaction to it. And our job has a lot of rejection in it. You know, a lot of jobs we go for, we don't get, a lot of...

And like you say, you look at your peers and you go, well, they've got that, I should be doing that and I, it all sort of can build up. And I think that's part of what happened to me last year was I just got, I focused on that too much. And like you say, I didn't, well, I didn't do, you know, what got me to five out of ten. I did, why aren't I at ten out of ten all the time. And you can't be, you know, and actually, there's, gosh, so many people who would kill for my career and what I do. And I, I'm grateful for, not grateful for that, but, you know, I'm grateful to be where I am. And actually, I'm in quite a sweet spot because I can walk through town and I don't get bothered by people and I don't, you know,

I can get the tube and not be bothered by people. And usually if people do recognise me, which doesn't happen very often. But if they do, they're nice. They say, oh, you're Angela, aren't you? You know, I don't get stick or... Yeah, because they recognise you from TV. Yeah, and your live gigs as well. Yeah, from that or from...

Funnily enough, I suddenly got a spike in being recognised after doing House of Games. That was the thing. People blooming love House of Games. The thing you hear an awful lot these days is everyone's got ADHD now. Yeah, that old chestnut. How do you respond to that when someone says that to you? It's funny because people very rarely say it to your face when they know that you've been diagnosed. The way I sort of address it is I know it feels like that at the moment because no one knows how many people are neurodiverse.

No one knows what that percentage of the population is. And the way I describe it to people to try and get them to understand is it's a bit like left-handedness, right? There was a time when people who were left-handed were forced to write with their right-hand. Because being left-handed was sinister and weird. Now we accept that a proportion, a percentage of people are left-handed. We live in a right-handed world because most people are right-handed, as a society is set up for them.

Well, it's the same with neurodiversity, right? A proportion, be it. 5% 20% we don't know of people, their brains aren't neurotypical in various different ways, be that autism, ADHD, dyslexia, whatever it is. But the world is set up for the majority, because it has to be. So for that 20%, 5%, whatever it is, they find life difficult in a way that if you're neurotypical, you won't. And so that's just a fact. But in the past, what might have happened to those people is they might have ended up in crime, they might have ended up with depression, I was being treated for that, you know, could have ended up taking their lives, who knows?

Because they, you don't understand, like knowledge is power and people are scared of labelling people. But for me, I was like, when I didn't have a label, all I had was failure. But having a label gives me a reason, not an excuse or anything else, but a reason, which means that now I can accept that there's some things I can't do in life and some things I can. and the world's not going to change to accommodate me, that's fine. I'm not asking it to. All I'm asking is that acknowledgement that I do exist and I'm not making it up. It's real.

And the reason it feels like, oh, everyone's got ADHD at the moment is because, say, it is 20% of the population. That guy, I can't do the mass now. That's what? 12 million people in this country? That's a lot of people to get diagnosed. So, yeah, if 12 million people are suddenly realising something about themselves, that's going to feel like, oh, everyone's got ADHD.

Everyone's got this. I've had people tell me it's fashionable. And I want to say to them, I want you to go to my 20s and watch my life, see me in hospital wanting to kill myself. See that person and tell that person, aren't they lucky? It's fashionable to have ADHD now.

Aren't they lucky? You don't know me or my life or what I've been through. So don't judge me on that. And the other thing I say is, well, people didn't know what heart disease was until they knew what heart disease was. But no one was going, everyone's got heart disease. Sit down and eat your large sandwich

and get on with it. Like, that's just, you know. So that's my answer to people who say that. And you're not going to change some people's minds because some people don't like hearing. I think what part of it comes from is some people don't like hearing that they interpret it that being too neurotypical means we're telling them their lives were easy and ours weren't.

It's not what we're saying. But people don't like being told that they're typical and they're normal and their lives were. So by being neurodiverse, it's like we're made. making ourselves special, that's how they see it, and they want to go, you're not special. Well, it's almost a bit like, I suppose, with the comedy world, where it was just straight white men

on that circuit, the reason there was some resistance to that when women came along and when more diversity was expected was, but we've always been happy doing it this way, and now you're coming along and telling us, our way isn't the only way. Is there an element of that as well? I think so. that we have to bend to accommodate you now.

Yeah, why should we accommodate you? Right. Just fit in. Just fit in. Why do you think you're special? And then, but those same people will moan about crime and punishment and they'll moan about, you know, oh, there's youths running amok and there's this, that and the, it's the same people.

Go, yeah, but if those people were given what they needed, you know, weren't forced to learn in this Victorian way that we still do education in this country like it works when we know it doesn't, then maybe you wouldn't have people breaking into your car every five minutes or, you know, these things are all related, but they don't, they won't see it like that because people can only think with their own brains and can only see the world through their own eyes. And so they can't understand that other people's brains work differently and see things differently. I found this, I've got a very helpful piece of advice from a friend of mine, you know, was also a friend of yours who's no longer with us sadly.

It's Gareth, Richard. Oh yeah, lovely Gareth. who was a comic who really sadly died last year and Angela you were very sweet I always remember you know it was in the news a bit just because we did a radio show with Frank Skinner with him and yeah

Frank mentioned it on air and was understandably very emotionally distraught and you know as these things do they obviously got picked up by the media but I remember you were one of the first people to reach out and say you weren't asking for

gossip, for want of a better word. You weren't saying, what's happened? You just said, I just want you to know, I'm devastated, and I'm really thinking of you. You sent me a beautiful picture of you and Gareth, Gareth, Latina, yeah, because Gareth had supported me on a few tour shows. And he is, when Tina was a puppy, and he used to sit with her in the green room while I was doing the show.

So I had a lovely photo of him with her in one of the green rooms. But, you know, he said to me, Gareth, tonight you find I'm getting really emotional now oh you're okay oh come here I know so weird it's so fresh isn't it's only been a year it's because it's a year it's the anniversary yeah I'm so sorry yeah you know what garris said something to me which was really helpful and I used to talk to him about ADHD and I remember saying to him well I was telling a friend about something that I was struggling with you know an executive functioning yeah And she said, what you need to do is train your brain.

I'm like you, but I just train my brain. I've worked hard. I've trained my brain. And Garry said, that's exactly what a neurotypical person would say. Yeah. And do you know what? I said that to her next time. Great. And she understood. Yeah.

There was no aggression about it. And I thought it was a real example of how, in the way that you've just really, brilliantly summed up how to respond, which by the way, I will be writing down. And I want the transcript because I've never heard that's so brilliantly put before. Oh, thank you. Hello, gently Tina, it's all right. There we go. Oh, it looks like you a bit.

I like this dog's got a little more suit. She's got one like that. She's got one. It's luminous yellow. Oh, I'm obsessed by this dog's. It's gorgeous, isn't it? Can I just say there's a dog in a onesie, which I'm all over? It just look a bit like a man.

There's a dog in a sort of pyjama suit. It does look like a man who's escaped the hospital. Because the dog just cocked his leg and I felt disgusted like it was a man doing it. I don't think a dog in clothes should cock its leg, do you? I know what you mean. If you're going to act like a human being, going to dress like a human being, act like one. That's a lame, dog.

If you're going to wear our clothes, use our toilet facilities. But wouldn't that be weirder if you'd seen him stood at a urinal? That might have been weirder. I would have had a lot more respect for that dog. I really went off it when it cocked its leg. Don't go in our shops and buy our clothes. I need to congratulate you on your brilliant podcast. Oh, thank you.

That you do with John O'Farrell. Lovely John O'Farrell. And it's a history-based podcast. Well, you tell us a bit more about it. I know all about it. So it's called We Are History. It is our history podcast, but don't let that put you off, because it's not a heavy, John and I are not historians.

We're slightly nerdy about history, but we like learning about stuff. So what we say is we read the history book so you don't have to. So basically we'll read something that interests us, and then we'll do a podcast episode about it. So you can learn about it, but in a more fun way than reading a dense history book or listening to a dense history podcast with, you know, people who actually know what they're talking about. I mean, it's one of my favourite

things that I do, but you know, the least lucrative for sure is the way. But it's a real little passion project of ours. So we've just done our, God, I think like our 10th series or something crazy. It's just, it's in the middle of it now. So it's just we are history. It's on all your

pod players and stuff. And it's just every week we choose something that interests us. And it's pretty diverse. It can be anything from, you know, the of London to we've done perfumoe affair we've done nudism in Germany was a topic we did all sorts of and you just did one on live aid we did because I heard which was fascinating so John O'Farrell the only downside of working with John O'Farrell he's the he's the most prolific

but he makes you feel lazy because he's since we've been doing this podcast he's written two musicals. So he wrote Mrs. Doubtfire musical that's on in the West End at the moment and he wrote the live aid musical which is on at the old Vic at the minute and he wrote Chicken Run which came out at Christmas Chicken Run too, wrote that and he's just, I went last night to the book launch of his new novel so he's all right calm down mate that's that'll do for now. It's really clear Angela

listening to your podcast that you two just genuinely have a lovely dynamic and energy and friendship. We do well there's this because we didn't know each other before the podcast, really. It was 10 years ago John came to see my Edinburgh show in, well, Edinburgh. And he wrote a nice tweet about it. And I saw it and said, oh, thanks. I knew who he was and sort of wrote back and said, oh, that was very nice. Thank you for coming to the show.

And then every now and then, you know, just on Twitter like you would do, before Twitter was a human binfire. You know, you just sort of comment occasionally on things people posted or whatever. And then I decided I wanted to do a history podcast because I sort of had this It's what I was interested in And I read a lot about history and stuff And I wanted to

Because I didn't study history really at school And I wished I had But I just hadn't You know, school had sort of put me off it And so I wanted people to find The fun in it like I had A little bit And I thought, I don't want to do this on my own

Because it's a lot of work on your own It'd be nice to have someone to bounce off I thought, who? And John had written a couple of sort of funny history books that I'd listened to in the car on the way to gigs, you know, like audio books. And so I thought, well, you can't hurt to ask. So I sent him a message.

And he apparently, I now know, so he's got a daughter, Lily, who's in her 20s. And he asked her, he said, oh, Angela Barnes has asked me if I should do a podcast with it. Do you think I should do it? And she was like, well, yeah, obviously. Thank you, Lily. So thank you, Lily.

And, yeah, so we started doing it. and we've been doing it a few years now. And yeah, people really like, you know, we've got a really nice fan base. They really enjoy it and they really interact with us about the stuff that we do. Here's a question, Angela. Yeah.

Why are people so obsessed, and I include myself? Yeah. Why do people love Henry the Eighth and that whole period? Which is interesting, isn't it? Because it's not a period that I really have been that, sort of the whole Tudor thing and the whole sort of Henry the Eighth thing. and he's, I know, I mean, I love the musical six. I'm sort of a modern history freak.

So I, originally, I pitched to John that we should do 20th century, a podcast about the 20th century. And he was like, no, no, we'll run out of things to talk about. Let's just do all history. It gives us more scope. And you're like, damn, I'm trying to avoid that extra work, though. Haven't you got a bit of a crush on him with the ape? Isn't that your sort of shouldn't but would?

A bit. Yeah. I have. She likes a bad boy. A frame photo. It was in my bedroom. Under pressure, I removed it. It's now in my living room.

Obsessed. Yeah, that's weird. You'd think you could fix him, don't you? That's the problem. You'd see Henry the 80 go, ah, you just hadn't met me. That's the thing. Can I say, as a redhead,

I find your views very disloyal to your people. It's very much from a box, this redhead. There's no real redhead under this. What's Raymond doing, Andrew? What is Raymond doing? He's sort of having a little nibble on some leaves, I think. There are his leaves now. Come on, moment. Let's get away from this.

Or some deforestation going on. There's a digger man. Isn't it funny? That looks like quite a nice little way to spend an afternoon, did it? Do you know? A little digger? I remember one of my parents' godsons, and he used to say that he wanted to be a digger man when he was older.

He now owns an art gallery, I think. Quite different. Well, I said to my husband once, because I sometimes feel guilty that I, you know, I've kind of got my dream job and I feel very lucky. And, you know, my husband's got a regular job. A good job, but it's, you know, and I said, well, what would your dream job be? If you could give that up and do, you know, whatever you want to do, what would that be? And he really had to think about it.

And the thing he came up with, which I was, I'd like to be one of those guys who cleans windows in skyscrapers. Like with a harness, because he loves like climbing and stuff. He's like, and just like dangling from a thing cleaning windows. It's sort of the modern day gladiator. Yeah, kind of. I was like, okay. Because there's jeopardy. It's like element of danger, but also nothing, you know, it's not brainwork.

And you met your other half. You met him online? I did. So it was 10 years ago. And I found it quite hard. I'd been at that point, I was very much a comic playing the clubs on the road, you know. And I just had no social life, really. because every weekend I was gigging

and just, you know, gigging as much as I could to sort of make ends meet really. So, and I, I sort of knew fairly early on that I wasn't very interested in dating a comedian because I think one comedian in a relationship is one too many, really. Why? I just think, I don't know, I think part of it was, maybe it's my own insecurity of that.

I didn't want to date someone that I'm effectively, that I felt in competition with maybe, or I don't know what it was but I and also I just not met you know I hadn't met a comic that I I'd never had a relationship with the comic so um so I said I sort of joined the internet dating thing and did it a bit half-heartedly for a bit and then one day I was looking at it and Matt my now husband on his profile he said that he grew up in great yama and I like like I saw his pictures and he looked very friendly and nice and um Great Yarmouth is where my dad had his sex shop.

Did you drop that in on your first message? I sent a message, go out, you go off from Great Yarmouth. My dad ran the sex shop in Market Square. So he says, like, well, I couldn't ignore that. But you know what? I think that's a great opener because how he coped with that will tell you if he's the right person for you. Is that what you were sort of doing in a way?

I think so, yeah. I must have sent it and then go, why did you mention that? idiot that's not a thing you mentioned but anyway he messaged me back and um our first date was quite funny because i shouldn't laugh really but um god bless it i this was back in 2014 and i'd had um a friend of mine who i dated when i was in my 20 or like 19 or 20 or something when i dated him and we'd stayed friends this Australian guy but he unfortunately was um a big drinker and he very sadly passed away when he was 43 and so he died earlier that year and my first date with my now husband he lived in north London and I lived in South London at the time I lived in Crystal

Palace and he lived in Finsby Park and so he very thoughtfully found a lovely little pub on the river for us to have our first date in and he said it's sort of halfway between us so and it's the transports easy and he put so much planning into where we should have our first date I didn't want to tell him that that was the pub that was run by my ex-boyfriend who just died I didn't want to tell him that so our first day I walked into this pub and my ex had died like a month before and he's been my ex many many years before like over 10 years before but we'd stayed friends and so walking to that pub was quite emotional really and I just sort of walked in and but we had to be had a really nice first day.

I didn't tell him until much later, maybe about a year later. I was like, well, by the way. He said, why didn't you say? We could have met somewhere else. I was like, you put so much thought into it, and it is a lovely pub. Well, I'm really glad you did end up meeting each other.

Yeah, me too. I did all right, I think. I loved your show, Angela, that I saw. It was filmed and it was on ITV. I mean, I'm telling you this. I'm sure you've been given a heads up by your agent. It was called Hot Mess. Yeah.

A lot of material you did about the, you know, being an older, in inverted commas, bride. Yeah. I think one of the benefits of getting married a bit older, it was funny because there was a big assumption by a lot of people, like in the wedding dress shops or in the, you know, in the wedding industry, if you like, that it was our second marriage. And it wasn't for either of us, it was our first. You know what they were expecting? Trousersuit. Trousersuit. And you know what else?

Go on. Two livid stepchildren. You're giving me filthy looks. That's what I say. I said, so don't you think I'll ever get married. I said at this stage in the game, it's going to be forgiving trousers suit and two angry stepchildren.

What was nice about our wedding, I think, and we had a beautiful day, but we very much did what we wanted to do. For a start, we were paying for our own wedding, so no one else had any say in anything anyway. And I think when you get to a certain age, I remember going to a lot of weddings in my 20s and early 30s

and a lot of parents had more say than they should have had in some of them there's a lot of weddings I went to and I can't tell one from the other in my head I can't remember which was which and I desperately didn't want that you know I didn't want and I sort of and what because we got married in 2021 I had sort of

a bit of time during the pandemic during the lockdowns I kind of planned the wedding I wanted but in a sort of not too bride's not a bridesillary way I mean, just in the... We just hired a field and put some tents in it and just had a party.

And it was great because it was a really sunny, lovely weekend and nobody had been to a party for two years. I was going to put him down, Angela. Let's see, we'll give him one last go. Oh, bless you. You're going to need a bath, aren't you?

Does he like being bathed? I've got a confession to make once I'd let him get in the bath at me. You have to sometimes. She gets in, like, we put her in the shower, but you have to get him with her. Have you ever done that? Oh yeah.

He's like my child. Yeah. Well, they are, aren't they? We don't have children, so... No, we forgot. Yeah. And as I always say, it's not going to happen now. My reproductive system's like an Astro on an Easter Monday.

Some age left, but they're shit. Mine's like, you're the ones your grand used to send you. Really cheap, nasty chocolate. I've got a bit white. Hello, Doggy, what's this one called? This is Willow. Hello, Willo. This is Tina and this is Raymond.

Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, Willow. Oh, she's gorgeous. She's having a great time. Yeah, Tina's a nightmare for rolling in things. We took her to, we spent a Christmas down at Canber Sands.

And we were having a Christmas day walk on the beach. And Tina was running up and down the beach, having the best time. And then Matt said, what's that she's running towards? That big rock. And we looked and she'd climbed this. inside a seal carcass. Like a dead seal on the beach. It was the smell.

It was, and she was so proud of herself. She just came out like, you're welcome. Don't I smell great? Yeah, I really loved your show. Thank you. Thank you for watching it.

It's interesting when you talk about, I guess not feeling confident, you know, and having those moments of self-doubt. I wonder if your secret weapon is your vulnerability. Maybe, I do think, for me, I think complacency's the enemy of comedy, right? And I think the minute you think you're a great comic or you start behaving like you're a great comic and then it all just comes easy, you stop try, there's a danger you'll stop trying. And then when you stop trying, you know, you start phoning it in or whatever.

But I buy words. Buy wood, that was lovely. How special place then. Makes her sound like doggers. She'll get the car and come back. Good job, my dad's not still here. We'd probably find him there. Do you know what?

I think we can safely say what he would have wanted. Absolutely be so proud. Forget the career in comedy. Bye-bye, words. I love saying goodbye to woods. Oh, got me as mad as you are. Bye to some woods. Oh, this is so lovely.

Isn't it be lovely? Yeah, I think we should, you know. You know, we were talking earlier about how, I keep telling you what we've been doing, but there we go. We were talking earlier about someone who's given you some great advice, which was when you say, how's today it's a five out of ten, you say, great, what brought it to a five? Yeah.

And you know what? Today has gone possibly from quite a three to me. I'm at the seven mark now. Oh, good. A bit of fresh air. That's what it is. Dogging in the woods. A bit of Angela.

No. We're back at the garden centre, Ange. Oh, we are. We've done a full loop. Look at that. Should we get you a little snack for the way home, Ray? Oh, how is he in the car? Does he mind the car?

Do you know, he has a lovely sleep? I might put on some Angela Barnes and John O'Farrell. Oh, lovely. That's the day. I want to sleep. It's funny though. People do say that. I listen to your podcast when I'm going to sleep. Oh, thanks.

I think. And why don't we say our goodbye is here? It's been so lovely. Thank you for having me back. I've loved it. And Tina, you've been an absolute star. She's got a tail between her legs now because she knows I'm going to put her in the car. She doesn't like it.

Bye, bye, Ray. So good to see you, you. Beautiful little fellow, are you? Yes, you look at that little face. I just want to, oh. Is that me or Ray? But both. I really hope you enjoyed that episode of Walking the Dog.

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