Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Bryony Gordon (Part Two)

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

This week Emily and Ray are sheltering from the rain on the sofa in Battersea with the journalist, broadcaster, podcaster and author Bryony Gordon! Bryony tells us about how she got into journalism, why she chose to write about her twenties and how she feels about being raw and open in her writing. She also tells us about a very special friendship…You can listen to Bryony’s brilliant podcast The Life of Bryony on all podcast platforms!Bryony’s brilliant books - including Mad Woman, Mad Girl, The Wrong Knicker and Glorious Rock Bottom - are all available to purchase here!Follow Bryony on Instagram @bryonygordonYou can subscribe to Bryony’s monthly newsletter here!Follow 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.

Really hope you enjoy part two of Walking the Dog with Brani Gordon. If you haven't heard part one yet, do go back now and give it a listen as I think you'll love her. If you want more Brani in your life, you can hear her every week on her new podcast's life of Briney, and I'd also love it if you subscribe to us at Walking the Dog. Thanks so much for coming on our walks every week, by the way. Ray and I are frankly thrilled to have you joining us. Here's Briney and Ray Ray. I'm interested as well in how you got into journalism, because

because you went to, you were pretty academic, weren't you at school? I mean nepotism. No, but you were pretty academic. You were kind of, you did well at school, didn't you? And then you went, am I right thinking, you went to university and you didn't. Drops out. Why was that? Did you just feel? I always, yeah, I don't know, looking back, oh, God, it's such a long time ago now,

but I felt I didn't, I think probably, looking back, I was, I was depressed. and I didn't really know how to handle it. And I don't know, like I think I had all these notions about what I would be like at university and I wasn't like that. And I didn't, I didn't know, I didn't make many friends. I was a bit lost and I, you know, there was a lot, I was, you know, but I was drinking quite, I don't know.

It's funny, but I, obviously I blamed everything but that. It was like, it was the course. I don't want to do this. but I just felt very low and wanted to come home. I mean, I was so embarrassing to say as like an 18, 19 year old, but I felt really homesick and I wanted to go home. I also, so I had, oh God, this is the privilege that fucking reeks off every time. I had during my, I had done some work experience at the Express.

and I'd like raided my mum's contacts book and again just privilege privilege privilege and I'd gone and done a couple of weeks work experience after leaving school and I'd actually ended up staying just like making just doing research for people like James O'Brien and this is very sweet I loved your you did his brilliant full disclosure interview and it's so sweet the way he's always like he was saying to you was I was I nice and was I okay and you're like yeah you were really nice no but if we do I don't know about you but I do get that thing

when people are like oh we've met before and I'm like oh shit and when people people often are like oh we had a really great night out legendary night of drinking and I'm like I don't remember I'm always really shocked when people said oh yeah you were lovely to me when I did this or when I did that I'm weird Are you sure? So, yeah, so you, journalism was always something, because your mom was a journalist. Oh, my God.

You would look at her life and think, it's so glamorous. It wasn't even that. I just, I just loved newspapers, which seems so funny now because, like, nobody reads newspapers. But, you know, I remember we'd come down every morning and there'd be all the news, you know, my mom would be going through all the papers. And I'd be like, I just found them really thrilling. I was like, what's going to be on the next page? You know, what's going to.

And I always remember when like news happened, maybe there's a sort of slight weird addicty kind of thrill to it. But you know, like we don't really get this so much anymore because of 24 hour news. But, you know, I remember if something really big happened, they would like interrupt normal television programming and put on like a news bulletin or something, you know. And it just, I remember thinking, God, this is really, it's a really important thing, you know. And I grew up around journalists. It was kind of this world I knew.

But I also loved always from very young age writing. And I would, I guess, sort of like, write sort of fantasy news article. I was always, you know what I mean? I was always sort of like thinking, I don't know, I think, you know, I was maybe living with a journalist, you think, you know, you grow up and you hear the way they talk and you sort of. You absorb it. Yeah. So it was, I just never, I didn't know.

I did. I wanted to play for. Arsenal, but that was never happening. And I wanted to be a marine biologist. But I think I also just really wanted to impress my mum. Yeah. You know? Like I wonder if now, if I'd gone back, you know, probably, oh, look, Ray's come

back to me now that I've stopped talking about mental illness. He's a fine one to talk. He's got a lot of anxiety issues. I've given them to him. no, bless. Yeah, so go on. So, yeah, I think I just really wanted to impress my mom. Did you?

Yeah. Be like, Mom, look, I got a byline or something. Like, it was that was the kind of, yeah, I think the bit of that in it, but also, you know, really just finding the whole world quite fascinating. Yeah. I did that, stayed at the express and then ended up getting a job. I mean, this is like, I'm really truncating things here. So, but at the Telegraph.

Your first book, The Wrong Nickers, came out, when you did that come out, Brianie? That came out 10 years ago. Was it? Actually, oh God, yeah, 10 years ago. Oh my God, over 10 years, just over 10 years ago. And I remember just being so blown away when I read it because I just said it was so brilliant and so funny.

And you were saying stuff that no one else was saying. People were having lives, I mean, maybe not quite like yours, but you know what? There were elements. We all, you know, I identified with that book a lot and I, it was funny, crucially. It was, but, because it was, we should say what it was, and it was documenting your life as. My crazy 20s. Your crazy 20s. And I wrote it on my, on maternity leave when I was very much like, that's behind me, you know.

But of course, actually, I was kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah, and I It was yes, it was a kind of Ha ha ha ha I mean it was I think I wanted to write a kind of book About being single in your twenties that wasn't that Like it wasn't glamorous like sex in the city But it also wasn't sort of like You know the the person was slightly sort of like

Feclous like Bridgett John I mean it was because like Bridget Jones I had felt like such a fuck up the whole way through my 20s essentially because I can get a boyfriend you know it's now talking to it now you talk to like a gen zeta now they're like what's and what I love about gen zed as well they think it's a very old question that for years you know it was like people would say to me any men what's the latest yeah yeah yeah yeah and I work with you know my producer would be would never ask someone no no no because it's why would I

why is it any of your business it could be a woman it could be dog well no, that's illegal, but I mean, do you know what I mean? It's like... It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, like, I have to... I'm like, it wasn't that long ago. Like, when people talk about the noughties, like it was like, you know, like ancient history, I'm like, no, that happened yesterday. That was yesterday in my brain.

You know, like, we were reading magazines where it was like, oh, look, a ticker or cross next to her outfit or her, you know, like, you know, someone with, you know, a bare bit of... of, you know, a tiny bit of extra, I don't know, belly fat being kind of like shamed and flayed over the front. Some of the size eight. She's piling on the pounds. Yeah. Oh my God. And like, you know, I just, so I have some sort of sympathy for myself and for all of us, you know, when I'm, because I do wince now at how absolutely like all of my, like, it didn't matter that I was like being hugely successful in journalism or like I was all I could focus on was like the fact that I couldn't get a bloke to

settle down with me you know I was I mean I was a drug addict and an alcoholic we now know but like so perhaps it wasn't that much of a surprise but it was like this kind of embarrassment and anyway I also was I was such a fuck quit like I was such a flibbitty jibbit and I took a lot of drugs and I had you know I had I was having a lot of fun but it was you know I hadn't read a book where someone was like honest about that sort of element of a feeling just this sort of just feeling I think all of my books the thing I've wanted to do is like if one person reads them and feels better about themselves that's the goal and it was the same with the wrong knickers it was like I wanted girls in their 20s to read it and

go it was okay to feel like I'm not being like like a bad feminist because as well as trying to do all this I would also quite like to just be loved, do you know what I mean? But yeah, that now. But it was, yes, so it was quite a sort of, it's quite, I mean, I talk about it. It's not a novel and it's it was my life. How did you find that success, Riley? Was that something that, looking back, do you think you attempted to self-sabotage it in a way? I don't think I ever like, I don't think I, I think it's a really interesting thing, success, because I think if you are utterly devoid of self-esteem, it's sort of meaningless. Because for me, it wasn't like, it was like, oh, I'm doing well, I'm doing okay, but I need to do better, you know, and someone might stop liking me, you know, and I, and I, so I need to say, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? What's the next thing? That was very much my, so I didn't, I didn't think, I mean, I don't, and also I, also I wouldn't have seen it as a success. I would have, I would have, I would have, I.

I was, you know, I was very, and still am very sort of critical of myself, you know. And so like, oh, it's done well, but it's not done, you know, that well. Would you be comparing yourself to other things? Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, there was no like dealing with it. It was no like, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't, it was just, I don't, I mean, it's, I feel like, it, it feels like a different person. You know, I look back at myself aged 34 and think, I was a child. which is just embarrassing because I was 34 and I had a child you know I had this little baby but like you know sometimes I think she's more more emotionally mature than I am now you know

because I do think that you are like you very much you know your maturity levels are basically the years you've got you've had of sobriety so I'm basically seven I think the more significant thing was I'd had this baby and I thought this baby along with the husband was going to sort of like make everything better and you know had the bugaboo and the flat in Clapham and the you know and the nice husband done a job and this is what you know this is what we were told in the 80s we had to do you know the end of the rom-com tip but yeah and then we live happily ever after and what was happening in those 10 years ago was the sudden sort of dawning realisation that actually i was still a fuck up i was just a fuck up with more things

and things that I could use to beat myself with because I was like, why are you still a fuck up? I remember, I genuinely didn't occur to me when I got, when I got pregnant, that I would continue to drink in the way I had drunk before when I gave birth. I just assumed that it was like, I don't know, I just assumed I'd been a party girl and now I was going to be a mom and it was such a hot, like that horror when I, my daughter's was like two weeks old and I was like, all I want to do is get drunk. And I was like, what the fuck? You terrible fucking human being, you know, like how can you not, how can she not have

made everything better? And so, and then, you know, and just having to like bury that knowledge quite deep inside you and like, you know, endless justification, happy mom, happy baby. You know, and I think that's something that, you know, lots of people struggle with. And yeah, so it was, it was more that like that knowledge that the outside stuff doesn't change the inside stuff. You mentioned there about, you know, and you've been really open about this, the struggles you've had, you know, with alcohol and drugs. I noticed, funny enough, when you interviewed James, And he mentioned glorious rock bottom your book, which documents your struggles with that, both alcohol and drugs.

And it was interesting to me that you said at one point, oh, I don't know if I'd write that book now and I find it difficult, which I understand talking about it. And I just wanted to tell you that I think it is such a triumph, that book. I think it's so incredibly powerful. And it really was interesting to me that you'd said that because, You've so gone there and it's you you've made yourself so vulnerable and it's so compelling and so honest. And it's that thing that you most dread people knowing on the street. Once you put that down, it hits home with people in this. That's the stuff that people contact you about and say, you've changed my life reading about this.

Well, also I think it's, yeah, I think I really went there and people really do go there in the depths of alcoholism. And we have this notion of alcoholics as sort of like park bench, drunks or whatever. And my view is that, and that's just not, I mean, that is one type of alcoholic, but it's not every type of alcoholic. And I always remember in rehab, the counsellor saying to me, shame dies when you expose it to the light. And people have said to me, oh, you know, aren't you worried that your daughter's going to read it one day? And I'm, and I was like, well, listen, either we want people to get better and we accept that alcoholism exists. stuff happens it does happen you know um or we just continue to ignore it and people stay in shame you know because shame does keep people sick and i think you know when you behaved in a way

like that you don't think you deserve to get better you know you're like i don't deserve happiness like there were points where i was really like all i deserve right now is like death to die you know that will make everyone's life better. In many ways, you know, for all our sort of progressiveness as society, I think we're quite resistant to the notion of people changing. You know, we're quite binary, actually. You know, people are held to account of things they thought 15 years ago and there's no kind of idea of like they might have changed their mind

or even, you know, like I might think something today and I might change my mind about that thing. that's okay and we're just very you know we need more than ever I feel like we need to put people in boxes and sort of lock them in there and I just think you know one of the beautiful things about life is that if you're lucky it gets to keep evolving and you get to be all these different things and experience all these different things and have different outlooks and my you know my perception about life is different today than it was six months ago just You don't know me.

It's important you know how brilliant that book is. It is raw. It feels exposing. And I get that. But the end product and the results of that is that it's very powerful because as a reader, you trust this person. And you're going on this journey. So I always think when someone is prepared to really be that revealing, it means I believe the good stuff as well. I believe everything you're telling me you're such a reliable narration.

you know um but yeah i found people do also believe like it's really interesting like i i not that i go on these or go down these wormholes very often but obviously there's lots of like awful forums aren't there out there where people we won't even name no and people will tell you they'll say oh it's always reading the thing about you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and people and say oh she's some hobby nepotistic only know you know it was all this kind of yeah they make but also like the thing is like oh she you know i i just don't believe anything she now because there's been so many things or there's been you know like she's oh you know alcoholism and you know and you know and it's like this is what life is like you know i'd love i would have loved to have you know

know written a book about oCD got it off my chest got better and to like like strolled off into the sunset and lived happily ever after but i don't know it's it's well those things are all linked as well yeah absolutely to not understand yeah yeah yeah yeah like these are are all, it's like, oh, I can't believe the person

with the ADHD diagnosis likes cocaine. I mean, what else is wrong with you? It's like, those things are all linked because it's a neurodivergency

is linked to all sorts of things and mental health issues. You said a really interesting thing in mad woman, which is your, it's kind of a follow-up to a mad girl. Yeah.

That was clever of me to work that up. But in a mad woman. I'm lucky. enough. A bit of insight here for you. All right, mad old lady. Mad bag. Can I be the mad old old?

I'd like it again to mention. But yeah, I think in Mad Woman, it was, I think it was in Mad Woman that you made this point, which I thought was interesting about how you sort of come to the realization that you've been sort of punishing yourself in a way, saying what's wrong with me, you know, I'm broken. my brains let me down and then you sort of realised oh no this was my brain trying to help me all along my brain was sort of trying to send me alerts I have sort of friends in the you know in the sort of psychotherapeutic

world who you know who sort of believe more and more that or they're there of the opinion that things like depression and anxiety are actually they're the cure they're not the like almost the curing themselves, they your brain send, yeah, saying, like I, I had this notion. It kind of,

it was planted into my head during the pandemic, during one of those in terminal lockdowns. And I was, I was in a terror, like, I was in a depression, right? And then, but it was like the first time in my life where I realized that, like, where I felt like, oh, God, everyone else is too. And I, I realized then I was like, oh, that's because it's totally appropriate. Of course, our brains are depressed because we're not connecting, we're not doing any of the, you know, there's this major kind of trauma going on in the world. And I was like, oh, what if actually mental illness, you know, we think of people with mental illness as kind of freaks and weird, but actually increasingly I'm like, no, maybe a lot of people's brains are actually responding

appropriately to the world in which they live, you know, and we, we don't live, you know, there's all sorts of people that will say this, like Gabo Marte or. you know, but we don't live the sort of connected human healthy lives that we, you know, that we're supposed to. And I realise that a lot of this stuff is actually quite appropriate to stuff going on in one's life at any given time. Do you know what I mean? And for example, when I was talking about OCD, you know, having a little kind of moment of OCD earlier today and being used to go, of course my brain's kicking in because this stuff is happening. in my life, you know. I think that that notion of madness, you know,

I hope that over, you know, that we'll start to see it as more as kind of, yeah, it's not, I don't think that, I don't think that any of these things come out of clear blue skies, do you know what I mean? And I think we have this notion of troubled, you know, like a very 80s thing, troubled children or, you know, everyone is a product for their environment, basically right

troubled is great I remember John Ronson when he was this whole thing he did about he was telling me that his mum had commissioned this family portrait and she said I've commissioned a portrait for the family he's a troubled local artist that's it

you don't need to know any more troubled just there's something so but you know I was going to say to you it's interesting isn't it because all that you've, you know, and you also speak really honestly in Mad Woman as well about binge eating, which again I think was really important that you spoke up about that because I started to realise reading, I found it very, I don't know, it just made me so, I realized I was ignorant about

a lot of that stuff in terms of, oh God, yeah, I can see how linked that is and how hard that would be for you. There's a brilliant expression you use, which is about eating, which is lunch, breakfast and dinner and you say it's like taking a tiger for a walk three times a day. That really stayed with me. It's very, in some ways, is that the hardest thing to manage of all in some. Food. Yeah. Yeah, I think it probably is. There are people out there who would rather come up to me and tell me about their cocaine habits or their alcoholism than they would about like the way they are food. Why do you think that is? Because it's because I think it is this sort of it's the very first

thing that any of us used to control our outside worlds with. Do you know what? And that was something you did. Well it's a kind of inherent isn't it? Like if you think about it and also I don't need cocaine or alcohol to live. I mean I might have felt like I did at times but I don't. You know, but I do need to eat and so you know I think that notion of food noise that was now beginning to hear about because of you know people talking about it. that they then go on sort of injectable drugs or whatever that turns off the food noise. But there's so much sort of shame around it, you know. And I think obese people are, they provide this sort of role in society, which is that they're a sort of helpful group, you know, a lump of people upon the pun, to kind of judge and shame.

It's a demonised inside of. Yeah, yeah. And so, and I think that it's a really interesting thing about, and that. this lack of understanding of what binge eating in particular, which I think is, you know, we know it's the biggest eating disorder that exists, but we don't really hear about it, you know. And I've always believed that obesity is as much a mental health illness as it is a physical illness. And we use food, you know, to numb and, and, you know, and I have used food to kind of shut things out. And people sort of start to get at it, don't they, with, you know,

know, like, you know, ultra-processed food and, you know, people are starting to sort of put two and two together, but they're still sort of coming up with five, I think, on it. And I just think there's a lot of judgment. I just think there's a lot of judgment about it. And I find it, it's really interesting because I, I just think we're so obsessed as well with women's bodies and we're so obsessed with, like, narratives attached to women's bodies. So, you know you see it now with like the need people have to shame body positive influences who might have used a Zen pic or whatever you know and be like oh you know it was all bollocks and you're like but actually what people body positivity is about is not about

weight or looking a certain way it's not people going oh being fat is brilliant and it's better than being this. What is people is basically essentially is just saying I have a right to exist as I am whatever size I happen to be at any given time. Do you know what I mean? It's a bit like when Cher said if I chopped off my boobs and put them on my back, I'm allowed to do that and it's no one's goddamn business but my own. Do you know what I mean? We have this obsession with women's bodies and not just allowing women to be without attaching sort of like, you know, we have to that notion as well, women have to be happy with their bodies the whole time. Oh, you're not really happy with your body though, are you?

Like, well, no, who is? I want to talk to you. Yeah, and I know everyone wants to talk to you about this, about your friendship with Prince Harry. Yeah? I'm afraid it's going to have to come up because I've always been rather obsessed with it. I'm very invested in it.

He's hiding up step down. You've even married someone called Harry. No, I know. You got there first. has to be, but you know, what I love about it is I can sort of see how it happened because I feel I can see how someone like that who's growing up clearly in this, you know, very stifling, formal environment and then you come in and you're a sort of, you know, ball of sunny energy and you're someone who does sort of tear down those walls a bit, I think, and you cut through

all that and I wonder if he just felt like you're a bit of a breath of fresh air almost you know when he met you that actually that he could have a real conversation with you because what I'm saying is I think people are probably not very authentic or real around him yeah yeah and I think you can't really do anything but you I can't I'm really bad like I don't have like the one bonus of being brought up with no boundaries is that I have I have also very like I I everyone is sort of the same. Yeah. Like I have no sense of, oh, you should be more discerning with this person or...

You weren't saying ambassador, you are spoiling us. You weren't Ferreira Roche and Harry, is what I'm saying. No, no. No, so yeah, so when I... You call him has, for example. When I started working with them as part of like heads together, the mental health campaign. Yeah, I just, I don't know. like I just don't, I don't believe in treating people differently based on who they are or what they do from, you know, and regardless of royals through to people, do you know, on both extremes? I'm like, we are all humans and we are all the same people and we're all, we've all got these like messy kind of primal bits inside us, you know.

When we were, you know, I was doing a lot of work with them because I was writing, it was talking, it was talking. It was talking. a lot about my own mental health and you've published your book Mad Girl at that point about OCD Sunday time's bestseller so and I'd set up this thing called mental health mates which still exists now which is people which kind of walks for people with mental health issues it's like peer support and um I just I just got on like we just I mean he's just a bit he's you know that that print I mean he's very similar do you know what you think Prince Harry you know that kind of slightly cheeky, fun, you know, we just got on and I just sensed that he, he just got, you know, like the mental, I mean, not that the others don't, like that, that was, you know,

the others, but I, I don't know, I just thought about ask, I was like, I had this, I was wanting to start a podcast at the time. And I thought, I'm going to ask if he'll be the first guest on it. And I was like, anyway, I didn't, he said yes. And that was the sort of when he first spoke about his mental health issues after his mother died or the fact that he just ignored them for so long that they kind of built up over 20 years and yeah we it was a sort of quite a special moment because he sort of trusted you know it was like because of my many fuck-ups that he spoke to me not like in spite of them you know we've yeah we've sort of stayed in touch since and you get asked all the time, don't you? People say, what's he like? I don't really want to ask you that because that's an

impossible question to answer. What I'm interested to know is, what do people get most wrong about him? I mean, where to begin? Like, I think that people get a lot wrong about him now, you know, and I guess that he's sort of miserable and hen pecked, you know, that he's not, you know, I don't, I think that's very wrong. You know, I think he's living his best life. And he's not been sort of brainwashed by Megan. Do you know what I mean? Like this is such a bizarre notion.

Well, it's this idea that if a woman has any agency, she's controlling him because that's a relationship of equal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So not used to seeing that. Yeah. Oh, she's a controlling. It's like, no, no, no, that's what a relationship should look like.

We're also not, you know, talking about boundaries, we are not used to seeing women with boundaries going, well, actually, I don't, this is a shitty way. I don't want to live like this, you know, in this kind of weird gold cage. You know, like, and I, I think we're so, like, what? You know, and so I, I don't know, like, oh. It's interesting as well when people talk about her and a sort of like this idea that, oh, she got what she wanted and you thought, but hang on, pick a lane. Because if her idea was to profit from this association, surely she would have stayed in. in the fucking palace. Listen, I think, you know, with their sort of proxies, aren't they, for, like, you know,

like I think it's, as ever, like, if I make a judgment about someone I don't know, it always says more about what's going on in my head. Right. I think they serve as, a bit like, you know, a bit like obese people. They serve as, like, helpful people that people can kind of just kind of throw darts at. you know, without ever really questioning why they feel that way. We need to talk about your brilliant new podcast, Life of Brani, the name's good. I like the name.

When I suggested the name, I whispered, I was like, maybe we could call it the Life of Brighney. And this is, you launched this recently with The Mail, who you do a column four, regular column four. It's sort of like this space for mental, for you to chat with friends. and experts, Matt Hager's been on it and it's talking about the sort of issues that you talk about a lot, it's kind of mental health issues but there's quite a sort of lively, benign, nice energy to it as well. You know, it's not, it feels like a safe, warm space, crucially.

Is that, was that the idea behind it? Yeah, I just think I wanted to have conversations about things that are, that matter. I guess, again, it's those, like the books, it's those things that I'm like, hmm, I, I've been sort of feeling these things. Have you been feeling these things? And if so, shall we just, you know, like with the book, let's just all meet up and talk about them and feel them around the book. And it's like in podcast form. So I had, so I had the, you know, I started a podcast in 2017, which was called Mad World. And then.

That was the one Harry was on. Yeah. You know, I was at the telegraphed. 24 years and then I left and went to the mail because I was like, I want to be writing about these important issues at the biggest media or, you know, newspaper in Britain. And you were saying you got some flack for people. Yeah, yeah. People were disappointed. And I think, again, for me, it's like all I care about is being able to talk about

these issues. Like I know I've made the right decision, you know, and I don't really. really have to justify it or explain it to strangers on the internet and they're entitled to their opinions and you know, I do love it though when people feel the need that they've never met you to tell you that you've disappointed them. It's like, I'm so sorry. Like, can you write me a school report? You know, my sonny disposition has turned against you. Like, I've, despite her sonny disposition, she's disappointed me. Fascinating these power. I mean, that's a whole other podcast, parissocial relationships where it's like, I have to be doing.

this exact like also like what why do you think that only like guardian readers get to get to read about alcoholism and depression you know we like we need to stop siloing each other off in extremes and going you're over there and I'm over here and we can't ever come together in the middle and talk you know compromise has become a sort of dirty word right hasn't it and actually anyway so I am loving it there and they let me have the they let me write and talk about what I want to and it's fantastic and so I'm really enjoying having these conversations so it's yeah it's it's very early days I don't really know what I'm I'm just sort of like I really want to have a conversation about people pleasing or I really want to have a conversation about you know all of these kind of different

issues about hormones and mental health I want to have a conversation about binge eating like just the stuff that really like bothers us but doesn't often get spoken about. Well, I really recommend everyone gives it a listen. You basically look. You don't have done a half of them so far and every single one I thought, yeah, that's me, that's me. How do I deal with guilt? Yeah, guilt. All of these things that keep coming.

And then there was one you did with James Middleton about, I mean, obviously I was straight in there, Brian, about animals. talking of animals, we're going to have to wrap up soon. And I honestly don't want to leave this house. I think there's a very special energy in here. I don't want you to leave either. Will you ask Harry? Not that, Harry.

Will you ask Carrie if I can move in? Yeah, no, totally. What do you think, Eadie, your daughter would make a way? We do have quite a lot of, like, random people living here at the moment. Seriously, no word of a lie. Like, my brother has moved in. Rufus. Yeah, Rufus is living here.

He's got a good dog's name. He's basically our dog. We're very much like an open, like, you know, come. Like, this is going back to the socialising thing. I'm like, if you want to hang out with me, come and live with me and we can watch Grey's Anatomy together. And then talk about Grey's Anatomy. I'm all over that and Ray likes it.

Brian, I've so loved having you on our podcast. What a thoroughly lovely woman you are. I always knew that. Right back at you. I'm so impressed by people that do the work. And you really have, you know. And I feel like Ray would be really comfortable moving in here. Ray is very comfortable.

Now, as long as I don't talk about OCD, look, Ray's, we've broken down the stigma of mental illness to Ray. And he's now comfortable to sit. He's now sitting with his uncomfortable feelings. Oh. He just turned away from you. Yeah. Do listen to Brian's podcast, The Life of Briney.

And read all her fabulous books. Mad Woman was out earlier this year, I believe. Yeah. I think it was. I know more about the publication dates than she does. And also, I honestly, I think you can get sort of weird deals if you buy the old multi-purchase. So I urge you to check out all of her back catalogue. That sounded a bit rude.

There's all sorts of things running. Running. Running. Alcoholism. OCD, I've forgotten. There's a book for teenage girls. There's a book, oh, seven, but there's something for everyone,

except perhaps, there's no books about dogs yet. Hey, stay away. That's my dog. Finally, I've loved this. Thank you, Emily, and thank you, Ray, for coming. What do you think of Ray briefly? What do you, like, what,

don't ask me to tell you what I think of Ray briefly, because I would like to do, entire hour talking about Ray is like he is imperial. Can you see he's got the wisdom of the Dalai Lama? He's definitely he is, I thought he was the Dalai Lama. She's so polite. Bye, Brian. Bye, Ray. Bye, Dalai Lama. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, Malma. Namaste. Is that what you say to the Dalai Lama? I don't know. I've never met him before. I really hope you enjoyed the episode of Walking the Dog. We'd love it if you subscribed and do join us next time on Walking the Dog wherever you get your podcasts.