Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Caitlin Moran (Part One)

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

This week Emily and Ray take a North London stroll with columnist and bestselling author Caitlin Moran and her adorable cockapoo, Luna.Caitlin chats about her extraordinary childhood growing up as the eldest of eight children on a council estate in Wolverhampton, largely educating herself through books from her local library, and the remarkable start to her career which saw her become a published novelist and award-winning journalist while she was still in her teens.She’s since become one of Britain’s most celebrated writers, from her hugely popular column in The Times to the million-selling How to Be a Woman and a string of bestselling books. Caitlin talks about that journey and what she’s learned from a life spent writing about everything from feminism and family to culture, politics and the everyday absurdities of being human.Her new book, How to Be Hopeful, sees Caitlin searching for ways to find a little more peace and optimism in a sometimes overwhelmingly gloomy world. From putting down the headphones and making space for wildlife to the strangely addictive pleasure of litter picking and, naturally, spending more time with dogs, it’s full of small, practical ways to bring a little more hope into everyday life. How to Be Hopeful is available now.You can also hear Caitlin alongside gardening expert Adam Frost on their podcast Outsiding, celebrating the joys of getting outside and spending time in nature.It’s a wonderfully candid, funny and uplifting walk with Caitlin and Luna – although Caitlin’s extremely generous approach to dog treats means Ray may have fallen in love just a little bit harder than Emily did.Follow Emily:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilyrebeccadeanX: https://twitter.com/divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Will NicholsMusic: Rich JarmanArtwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because he's like got floor-length black hair. He looks a bit like when you see kind of priests, kind of swishing along. Swishing along in Cathedral. Yeah, it's quite cassocky, isn't he? This week on walking the dog, Ray and I took a North London stroll with columnist and best-selling author Katlyn Moran and her adorable cockapoo Luna.

So Katlyn has written a lot about her dog Luna. She once brilliantly described having a dog as harder than a cat, easier than a child, but primarily magic. So Ray and I were so excited to meet them both and they were honestly such a joyful sunny duo. We basically fell in love with them at first sight, although let's be honest.

Catlin's fairly generous treat policy may have had a little something to do with it in Ray's case. And we had the loveliest chat about Catlin's genuinely fascinating life from her childhood growing up as the eldest of eight children on a council estate in Wolverhampton and largely educating herself through books at her local life, to becoming a published novelist and award-winning young journalist while she was still in her teens.

She's since, of course, gone on to become one of our most influential and celebrated writers with her unmissable column in The Times. I absolutely love it. And her groundbreaking feminist memoir, How to Be a Woman, which sold more than a million copies. Many best-selling books later, she's back with a brand new one called How to Be Hopeful, which follows her quest to find a little more peace in, let's face it, a fairly gloomy world, and she discovers lots of small ways that can really help bring more hope into your life, like taking a break from headphones, making your garden a little more wildlife friendly, and the surprisingly addictive joy of heading out to your park with a litter picker,

and yes, the absolute zen of spending time with more dogs. It's such a wonderful book, I can't recommend it enough, so do make sure to grab your copy now and you can also catch Catlin on outsiding the podcast she does with gardening expert Adam Frost celebrating the joys of being outside in nature. Ray and I just loved our walk with Catlin and Luna. Catlin's one of those people who's so warm and funny

and easy to talk to. You just feel like you've known her for years and to be fair it probably did feel like years to her because Ray and I just refused to let her go. It was practically getting dark by the time we said goodbyes but I defy you not to do the same should you meet her. Really hope you enjoy our walk here's Katlyn and Luna and Rui. Am I leading? Do you lead? Who's on top? No, you're... Am I the bottom or the top? How does this work? Walk wise. Someone always has to be in charge of a walk,

right? Is it me? This is your walk. My walk. Okay. Well, we won't bother with that bit down next. It's really boring. Okay. We'll go through the American Garden and then I'll take you to where someone was murdered and where the most rubbish is. Full, full-on prinsory park experience. How much she's sniffing? Does Luna sniff a lot? A sniff fari. So I remember reading about with dogs that they need to go on a not a safari but a sniff faring. And yeah she's very sniffing. Loopy. Oh she's found a fucking chicken bag. Go on Niddles. Luna? Uh-uh. Come on. Uh-uh. Good girl. Good boy. Oh look at that. Did you hear the rattle of the snacky bag? Is that where you heard?

Can you see his face? I can't. He's his tongue's going like this. He's ill with greed. I obviously exude an air of bounteous snacks, which is correct. He knows you're going to be good for it. I'm stuffed with snacks. I've had times when I'm interviewing other people, and like if they're looking at a sad, I've subconsciously reached for the dog snack packet in my bag to cheer them up. And then I remember, no, humans are a bit more complex than that.

You can't simply give them a meaty snack. You can't say that to Alex James treats. Oh, he would 100%. If I threw a meaty treat for Alex James, he would leap across his farm and eater. He's a human Labrador. Come on, right. I always keeping up with you. Catlin.

He's being such a good boy. Okay, also tell me if my pace becomes due rapid. I'm a fast, angry urban walker usually. Are you? Yeah. So if I become too rapid. That interests me because you're a very sort of gentle, positive. Your energy isn't like you would be a fast walker.

Like a fluffy, floaty walker. Now, that's not the reality. But that's not because of my vibe. that's simply because of my genetics so I've got this... I've got this thing hypermobility syndrome, Elis Danos, which means that all my connective tissue is very rubbery and soft and one of the first ways, and everybody always gets diagnosed with it way, way into their life and how you usually find out you've got it is

you're doing a party trick at a party and someone who has medical knowledge goes, oh, you can do the splits without any kind of warm-up or you can fit your entire fist into your mouth by doing. dislocating your jaw. You've probably got Elyla's Danil syndrome. So it just means that we're super rubbery and flexible. And so walking quickly, we can manage to keep all our joints together and keep our posture correct. But once we start walking slowly, we just kind of flop. There's no hope for Ray. You've got the right dog for you then. So yeah, so Lunas hypermobile as well. So we both have. I mean, I don't know what you think, but I don't think Ray's hypermobile.

He has perfect posture. He has the posture of a supermodel. He's moving. I have. I have I need to paint an oral picture for the listeners. Raymond has, when he walks, when he chooses to walk, and he's a dog who knows his own mind, has the beautiful, flowing, upright walk of a Croft's champion. But very often, Raymond decides that he doesn't want to walk anymore. And he simply stands and waits for what he knows will happen, which is the Uber of your arm to scoop him up and give him a little lift. Oh, God, it's so depressingly predictable.

That is exactly what is about to happen. Literally like he's dialing you now going pick up in two minutes. Can you see he's got an absolutely indignant face? He's outraged that you have not already done what he wants. I'll pick you up now, come on. I just ever thought about having like a baby carrier or some kind of big pocket for him? Do you know I'm seconds away from a pram? The happiest I've ever been, I went on a very long mountain walk with Luna.

And the next day she was absolutely knackered. We were in the Welsh mountains. and she just couldn't, she just did not want to move anywhere. So I went to a secondhand shop and bought a baby's buggy. And I popped her in the buggy and started wheeling her around at Agavani. And not only was I happy as a clam, but every other middle-aged woman that I passed just smiled at me like, yeah, you've got a bet, you've got a dog in a buggy.

You are living the high life right now. I do think there's something fabulous about it. Well, I also think there's something fabulous about you. And I'm so thrilled that you've come on this podcast. And we're going to talk about your brilliant book, how to be hopeful which I couldn't put down. Oh thank you. It's my new manifesto for life. Seriously. Yeah. It makes me so happy. Honestly it made me feel hopeful. I'm so like mission achieved because as I was writing it I was like I want this to be useful and

like I only ever write a book if I think I've got some important information that I want to share. You know I don't want to like just knock out a book and I've got nothing to say and with this I spent years brooded originally it was going to be called how to be happy and I was like no happy's too big a swing for the trees. Yeah. And also no one can be happy all the time, but hopefulness can be a quiet state and also it is a decision. And it's one that it's been very hard to make over the last 10 or 15 years. This is a very anxious age and people don't tend to have much hope at the moment. In fact, it's almost becoming polite to say that you are hopeful because we presume everybody's having such a terrible time. If you went actually I'm okay or I'm going to try and be

more hopeful. Everyone would be like, oh, check your privilege. Like kind of like, why are you hopeful? But yeah, I like hopeful as well because it's possible to be hopeful even when you're sort of going through really something tough. You can still have hope. So it's an acknowledgement that life has great moments, but we can't avoid the difficult moments. And also, hopefulness doesn't predicate that you be having a perfect life and be perfectly happy. There's the, I found, I had talismanic sayings pinned to the wall as I was writing it. One of them was when Nick Cave, where he said hope is optimism with a broken heart.

So you can have gone through awful things. You can be going through awful things, but you can still have hope. And one of the things that sort of, because the reason that it's a decision is I came across this piece of research really earlier on where they'd surveyed like 30,000 Americans a couple of years ago, and they asked them two questions. The first one was, did your country have a bad year last year? Did your country have a bad year last year? And the majority replied, yeah.

And then the second question was, did you personally have a bad year last year? And the majority said, no, it was fine. It wasn't perfect. Everybody's got problems. But actually, my actual life is okay. And I think when I wrote the book, I just wanted to, I think we're ready for a mood change. I think my feeling is that we've passed peak despair now. Everybody's ready for a vibe change.

We want things to be different. If not for ourselves, then our children, because for our children to be listening to a conversation where we're constantly going, the future is doomed. Everything is hopeless. This is an unprecedented age. Like, good luck with you inheriting the planet is terrible for their mental health. And you can make the decision to decide to be hopeful. You can do hopeful. And if you read studies in psychology, 80% of what we see, 80% of what we perceive to be happening is simply what we presume will happen. So the example of this is, do you remember there was that advert in the cinema was about 10 years ago where there would be a load of people playing basketball? And the caption would come up.

see how many goals are scored. And you'd be watching the basketball players and at the end of it would go, how many goals are scored? And everyone in the cinema would chat out, seven, eight. And then the second caption would come up, did you see the break dancing bear?

And then they'd play the film again. And behind the people who were playing basketball, there was a man dressed as a bear, break dancing. And the point of the advert was, generally you'll only see what you expect to see. It was exactly the same film. The bear had been there all along, but because we were told to look at the basketball players,

we had not been looking out for the bear. And that's how our brains work. 80% of what we're perceiving at any time is what we presume will be happening. We're only taking in 20% of the information that's around us. So if you decide to make this, if you put yourself in a hopeful mindset, you will start seeing more hopeful things. You will start looking for good news instead of bad news. I love that.

It's really, you know, I don't want to say take back control because that's been co-opted by some people I don't agree with. But you can take back a bit more control about how you feel, you know, about your local area, about your life than we think we can at the moment. Do you know what? I mean, you're so fascinating to listen to you, Catlin, that actually I haven't even done the usual and asked him about your dog. Oh, yes.

Because this doesn't normally happen. Normally I ask very kind of, you know, not formulaic, that's putting myself down, but I ask a series of questions about your dog, but I was so wanted to hear more about what you had to say. Well, we went deep straight away, right? But I like that. But I like a formula as well. I don't really do small talk either, so I like that. Will you introduce me properly to Luna?

Well, she's currently rolling in something absolutely. Disgusting. Look at her. Legs are kind of in the air like a dirty little horse rolling in some revolting piece of umskine. So Luna's coming up to 10 years old and She her most notable traits are when she walks towards you she looks like she's smiling. She's a nine-year-old cockapoo. She's very small and when she walks towards you she looks like she's smiling. She's very popular dog. She doesn't think she's a dog. She doesn't really hang out with other dogs I know look at her. She's doing a particularly lopsided and Winston smile at the moment. Hey, come and see Luna. Come on. And so she's very cheerful dog, a very placid dog.

But she's also, I get quite tearful when I think about her because she was also a dog with a purpose because I didn't want to have a dog. I'd had terrible times with dogs when I was growing up. And when my daughter got very ill with an eating disorder, she kept saying, I want a dog, a dog will make me better. And everyone was like, well, you can't, you can't buy a dog, you know, you can't strike that bargain with someone who's really ill.

That's not how it works. And in the end, I was like, she's so ill and so sad. I'm getting her a dog. and at first we were going to get a rescue dog we were like we'll do the noble thing we'll rescue a dog and we were just going around rescue places all over Britain being shown huge dogs that were very troubled and one night on the way back from Darlington

where we'd seen this horse-sized dog that was just dragging my ill girl around the field on a lead I was like you know what screw it I'm going to buy a fluffy puppy I'm going to buy the fluffiest puppy I'm throwing money at this problem I'm going to buy a fluffy delightful puppy and so I'd read all about what the best breeds were to have if you are a family with a troubled child and everyone said get a cockapoo

but the other advice they gave was go for the most boisterous and curious dog the bravest dog that comes up to you and talks to you kind of that's the dog for you and when we went to view her with her siblings she was not the most boisterous and confident of dogs she was lying under her seven of the siblings with a very resigned look on her face

because she was the brunt and my daughter just looked to him and that's our dog I want Luna and cockapoo's that's interesting that that was advice you received that they're particularly is it because they're sort of empathetic or they just they pick up on your knees or they're quite bright? All of that so they're obviously they're half spaniel half poodong.

Yeah. So they're very bright. They're very very very easy trainable but they're the kind of standard units of dog that you get in North London. Like there's a kind of great cockapoo flock of North London of which she's part. Half of which do you seem to be called Luna which confuses her. But the main reason people get them is they're just the right size for a normal urban house. Yeah. They're easy to train. They don't shed. They're hypoallergenic. Yeah, they're just the right size. They're very placid, they're very easy to train. So she was, yeah, we brought the placid, easy to train, runt back. And on the day that we brought her back, because we'd sort of reserved her when

she was tiny, the deal that I'd struck with my daughter is she started eating breakfast again if we got this puppy. And on the first day, she came down to breakfast with a puppy in her lap. And I put breakfast in her last three years, she had not eaten that breakfast. And I'd gone to school hungry. And on that first day, with the puppy in her lap, she picked up a spoon and started eating her scrambled eggs. That actually makes me cry. I know. I'm so sorry.

I'm not a pause. I'll make me too. But it really does. But that's the magic of like, you know, that was, you know, my daughter chose her medicine. She knew what her medicine was. And we trusted her and she was like, I need a puppy to help me eat again. And she was right. And she kept her from that day on.

She ate breakfast every day because she had made a promise in order to get her dog and she wanted to eat them. Isn't that incredible that impact this dog has had on your family? Oh, I mean, every day. I think she's, you know, I always say to my husband, she's the best money we ever spent, like without a shadow of doubt, the return. Because then once my daughter was better, we were like, oh, well, that's great. And she was, you know, suddenly had gone from being really sad and isolated and not leaving the house and ill, to just running out the house and not being terribly keen on looking after or walking a dog.

So I was like, oh, Muggins is going to have to look after this dog. I hadn't realised that my daughter had needed the dog, but also I needed that. You know, I needed someone to help me feel better about the world again because once you've looked, once you've been a carer for someone who's very ill, you often feel, and it's called Anhedonia. Basically you kind of cut off your emotions because you're dealing with someone who's very emotional and you just become a calm carer. But you can't turn your emotions back on once everything's okay.

You can't tell yourself to start feeling joy again. And it was the dog that taught me to be joyful again. I felt very flat, had no emotions at all. It's apparently a very common thing, particularly particularly pose. lockdown and for ages I was trying to find the solution and in the end it was like I just need to live a life that's a bit more like the dogs yeah like dogs know how to be joyful if you lie in bed yeah in the morning and you wake up and you're kind of of I'm so anxious everything's so terrible or you're just not feeling anything at all

if you've got a dog that just climbs up to the top of the bed and just starts and licking your face and it's like get up we need to go in the garden I need to do a wee and you need to drink a cup of coffee while you watch me and listen to the birds then the dog is telling you how to enjoy your life on a day to day basis. So. And then you think as well, I think one of the things I got Ray sort of as a result of grief really. And when I got him and I brought him into my life, I realized that I couldn't help but start the day laughing because he looked so ridiculous. Right. It wasn't even a conscious thing. I'd want to cry because, not because I was wallowing, but just that was my natural state at the time.

Yeah. You're full of grief. And I would get up and he'd, his sort of attempt at looking dignified was so comical, I just start laughing. Well, they are like caught jesters, aren't they? And when you read about sort of in history, kind of the bored or grieving king, sort of sitting in his throne and then the jester is brought in to sort of tumble around and kind of bring jolliness. And that's...

Well, you've got Luna and Raymond. Yeah, they're the little furry jesters that come into our lives and just, you know, and they recenter a house. They bring in a whole new energy. Like, kind of you are suddenly living in their world. Like, kind of you go into the garden more because you're like, you're potty training them and kind of like hanging out with them and suddenly as a family rather than sitting around in the house kind of staring at each other slightly glumly shell shot by what had happened to us as a family we were all out in the garden watching this little dog kind of you know sniffing and like we're doing tiny little pathetic woofs and jumping over a twig while we applauded her and we suddenly had a new we suddenly lived in this new world and it was the world of this jolly little puppy it's magic the transformation they're remembering and it's also I love the fact one I think you're right I think that being really more dog thing is interesting because I love the fact that Raymond starts every day with a reboot.

Yes. So he's not, are you okay? No, I'm just really pissed off about something he did in 1996. I'm still thinking about the mortgage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't, no. He doesn't carry baggage. And the same with Luna. Every day is a fresh start, you know. And it is a fresh start for us. Like, you know, it is. That's the, the sun has gone down and the sun has come up again. Like, you know, the dogs are wise in their philosophy, like kind of. I mean, you say the dogs are wise. Have you seen my dog? Look how slow he is, Catlin. He walks, because he's like got floor-length black hair. He looks a bit like when you see kind of priests, kind of swishing along.

That's just a little over Catholic. Swishing along in Cathedral. Yeah, it's quite cackey, isn't he? I think he's quite holy. Oh, God, I'm going to pick him up. He's got quite a holy aura. Come on, you're slowing us down. So I'm also fascinated.

You mentioned that you were, you had concerns about getting a dog, because which was sort of linked to when you were younger and experienced with dogs when you were younger. So let's go back. I mean, everyone knows a lot about your childhood because you've written about it and I feel I know it. But then it's still, I think the reason that we all want to know about it is because it is utterly fascinating.

Oh, it's bonkers, yeah. It's a very unusual childhood. Obviously, we didn't think it was at the time. No. And I didn't for a long time after I was adult, but sort of gradually start telling stories, presuming everybody else is going to chip in with a similar story. like, yeah, so we had this whole drill for when nuclear war happened.

We were all going to get in the Volkswagen cabinet and drive to Wales. And then apparently we would be able to live in a hedge on a handful of rice. That was my father's plan. What was your guy's post-apocalyptic nuclear plan? Everyone's like, yeah, we didn't have that. We were going on holiday tomorrow. Well, it was you. I'm just going to pause this for a minute.

I'm showing you the local sites. Oh, I love this tree. Well, you may like it less when I tell you that its name is the wanking tree. This is where when I was on a walk with my daughter, The man was just wanking on the tree. And we didn't feel scared of him because it seemed to be quite a specialist. I thought you were going to tell me something really special.

But he's really special. How many wanky trees have you encountered? Ruined the walk. I thought you were to say, Pete's proposed to me by this bush. Very much not. No, no, it's the wanking tree. Yeah, it's the wanking tree. And a man was wanking on a tree

and that seemed to be the object of his affections. I mean, every girl is at some point going to see a flash that was my daughter's first one. And I'm glad it was quite a benign tree-based one. It broke her in slowly to being an adult woman walking around a park. I mean, the bark looks rough. Yes. No, no, no, no, there was no contact.

No, he was just simply staring at it. Oh, he wasn't using the tree as the love interest. No, no, no, there was no contact. No, no, he was, his hand was the vessel, but the tree was the object of the affections. Luna, I'm so sorry this happened on your manner. Well, I mean, she went over and wanted to eat it after it happens. Oh, so I'm like, oh, she was. away like don't eat

giz dude that's a lesson you have to teach a dog. That's not your diet. So you had, it's seven siblings you have, didn't you? And it's your mum and your dad. And I'm always fascinated by the three bedroom house aspect of this. Yeah. So it doesn't work

right, it's too many people. It's a lot. Yeah. It doesn't, we don't fit in. So my brother, as though he was the fourth born and the first boy and so we realised we needed to segregate the sexes. And so he was given his own room, which was under the stairs where the gas meter was, and we put a curtain over it to give him privacy. It was a mattress in there and a curtain. And the curtain, because it was so near the kitchen, was just requisitioned as the world's biggest towel. So whenever you

wash your hands in the kitchen, you just then use your hands to dry, and use the curtain to dry your hands. Do you want to go around the bit where someone was murdered? Or just, I want the listeners to get a full sort of taste of... Let's go to the 24 hours in police custody area. Yeah, yeah. But this is also down here, because my new... my new hobby of litter picking. Oh yes, I want to see this in action. This field is the focus of my attentions because the main part of the park is fairly well maintained by the parkkeepers but this bit is a wild west of empty vodka. Okay let's do some litter picking. I love it. I brought my litter picker. I'm going to induct to you. Yes.

I'm going to induct you into the joys. Oh here's a special thing. What's this? Which will work really well in an hour only medium. Go on. So at the theatre of the mind, we're approaching a very rusty Victorian fence. post yes in which there is a tiny little hole and this year a family of Bluitts had a nest in here the the hole is about the width of my thumb and when they were born the newborn blu-tits seven of them poked out their tiny little heads and would squeak for their mother from this that's so sweet it's it was one of those beautiful moments of like nature and urban environments where they made a

little house in this tiny fence which was right next to a very busy path yeah and people there will be thousands of people walking past here every day and being delighted by the fact this is bluebird bluebird little mess yeah little bluebird company were in there together it was very cute Lou know where are you going you're going on the river I once saw a crayfish in there the size of a lobster did you yeah it's very exciting so you're very this is what I noticed about you're very observant about your surroundings aren't you well apparently that's part of ADHD and it's it's in so it's all right it's infuriating to people that I'm on a walk with because we'll be having a deep comment

conversations such as we are having now and then I'll suddenly be like oh look over there it's a red start and then I'll go back to the deep conversation the language I like it but that's I can do both I'm not not listening to what we're saying I'm keeping I'm holding space for the deep conversation don't hang on to the thought because that would have been gone the blue tip and then I wouldn't have seen it exactly would maximize the walk like the world is you know my one of my the idea of missing the wank tree are you actually kidding me it's my gift to you I gift you Emily Dean the wank tree you're if you ever come into Finnsbury Park

again. Do you want to use that as the trailer? Yes. I want to know about your wonderful parents. Yes. And they do sound pretty wonderful your parents, but like something out of a kid's novel. Yes. Do you know what they were? They were, they were, so that generation of flower children, the problem with being raised by flower children and hippies is they kind of remain children. So it's a very common thing for children of that generation to go, we were the adults. So the children were the adults and the parents remained in their kind of flower-like hippie stage. So you were sort of self-parented, would you describe yourself out?

Yes, and self-educated because they took us out of school. So it was very much, you know, the children kind of ruled the household. We did whatever we wanted. Completely unobserved and unshaperoned and unhelp most of the time. Because my mother was always pregnant and my dad was disabled and also really into Grand Prix. So he would just simply be lying on the sofa watching very loud motor racing. It's the wide resentment of all the rest of us who wanted to put in our video cassette. of Ghostbusters for the 400.

Isn't it funny? When you say that, it's very evocative that, I can so see, just that noise. Oh, it's a horrible noise in the world. They don't need those cars to be that loud. Of course they don't. Men like it, men like it to be noisy. Well, I think it's because men are so bad at expressing their emotions, so they like to listen to this kind of primal screaming machines.

I'm sorry that it's what it is, Will. They like to block out the noise. Literally, that's the sound of the souls. Literally this. Literally this. That's the sound of their souls. And the more Grand Prix they'd watch, the noise. more primal scrim therapy they need. This is very obvious to me. So your dad also, I know he'd been

a musician and I got to get the sense that there was this sort of Del Boy will be millionaires next year. Very much. So he had, I mean it's all the kind of, you know, once you go into therapy, it's all like the unrealised dreams of the parents are passed on to the children. So he had had his chance as a 15 year old to be a rock star. He'd been signed to London Records. he got David Bowie's producer producing them, and then the band had a huge row, and it broke up. And he presumed that he would just get another band together and would at some point be a world-famous rock star.

Yeah. But it just never happened. So our childhood was this in this kind of... We were just in this pending state constantly of waiting for a phone call that meant that we would all suddenly be rich, move out of the three bedroom councillors in Wolverhampton, stop being on Burnfitts. And so I, for instance, learnt the names of all of Bob Geldof's children

because I presumed I would go to school with them and they would be my friends in the future. Like we were, we were very prepared for this future, but it never came. And so he gradually became more depressed and more bitter as he realised that he had had his chance and blown it. And that's a really, we kind of lived with the weight of that sorrow because that's an awful thing to look back at pictures of yourself

at the age of 16 and go, ah, that was when I screwed it up. Like, that was, I was in with a chance and it just, it just disappeared. So, so when I got my chance when I was 15, I was like, okay, you grabbed it? Yeah, foot in the door, not going to stop now. And did you believe that he was going to make it? Do you think because it's your dad, you know, your children,

your parents at that point, I don't know at what point you did the fairy tale thing of killing your parents off metaphorically. Yeah, yeah. But did you think, of course, this is my dad, of course this will happen. Or was there a part of you thinking, I don't know. Oh, I've got my diaries from that time so I can tell, you know, I still believed in it until I was about 13. You know, it was very much every year he'd record a new batch of demos in his little

shed the studio that he had and it was my job to write the letter and address the envelopes to all the record companies because I'd been given a calligraphy pen one of the world's most useless presents for my birthday when I was 11 when at the point I didn't have a bed or a dress and gown or shoes I was given a calligraphy pen this is my parents logic so I would writing very beautiful calligraphy yeah you know head of a and art island records kind of somewhere in west london that would happen every year so until that yearly ritual every year was like we might make it and then gradually one by one, like kind of sad lambs being returned to the flock, the demos would be sent back with, sorry, we don't want to offer you a deal. And then around about the age of 13, I was like,

suddenly had a very big realisation slash panic attack, slash kind of the moment where I grew up, where I was like, oh God, he's not going to make it. I'm not in school. I'm not getting any qualifications. I'm not going to be the daughter of a rich man. I am going to have to start making my own plans now. Like, I've got to get out here. I'm going to be, I'm going to be stuck here forever. going to be working on the cheese counter at the map market around the corner. This is the only future available for me if I do not do something right now. That's amazingly young to have. That's quite a sophisticated revelation to have.

Do you know what to mean? Well, I was reading a lot of 19th century fiction at the time and like it's a very recurrent trope. Like both parents die in a typhoon off the coast of India and suddenly the children left on their own. It's also quite woman of substance as well, isn't it? Yeah. And also, you know, now, you know, part of, you know, one of my jobs is interviewing, you know, famous people and people who've achieved stuff. And they all have the same story. There's always a point, usually in their very early scenes,

where there's a massive rupture and something's lost, a parent dies, a fortune disappears. And that's the moment where they go, okay, I'm going to have to start now. They're running, either running away from something awful or they're running to something wonderful. But you very rarely meet someone who's achieved something that has not had at some point

some huge life-changing cataclysm in their lives really early on. Yeah. Well, they need the call to action on the quest, don't they? otherwise where's the call to action? Exactly, literally this. And then obviously the first time you do it, you fail. Exactly, yeah. And then you go into the forest and you meet the wise man and all this stuff.

And the wanking tree. And the wanking tree. Maybe he was the wise man. Maybe that was the forest. It was the wanking tree, the forest. So you mentioned that you were self-educated, which fascinates me. Because obviously I know partly this is because you'd gone to school and they weren't very nice these kids there.

are they to you? As most children in school, aren't, are they? I mean. But did you feel that was a sort of class-based thing or something in the way you were treated then? Oh, well, with us, though, it was a very, you know, it was a very sort of average state school. Checking hasn't done a poo-poo, Patlin.

Yeah, no, check he hasn't done. Well, how would you tell? It must be so tiny. You'd have to get a telescope to find Raymond's poos. Did you do a poo-poo? No, he didn't. Surely this is where having a producer walking behind us helps. Did you see Raymond doing a poo?

I've been keeping an eye and he's not done. Sometimes he gets dangleberries. I just need to check. No dangleberries today. The hole is clean. Raymond. You are so clean in your bump-poo today. Are you worried about that as he?

Do you want? What a poo-poo? Yeah, he had one earlier. He's quite regular. I love you now. You take care of his whole digestive system, I can imagine. I imagine he's a well-oiled machine. I was very good. So yeah, so the school, so were they a bit sort of snobby to you, those girls?

Oh, God, no, because I mean, we were, everyone there, it was a very, it was a very standard kind of like, you know, it's quite a run down estate right on the edge of Wolverhampton. So we were, yeah, no, they were not rich kids, no, everyone was, everyone was in the same boat as us, but we were hippies. So when we were going to school, they would all be into shaking Stevens in Duran Duran and have neon pop socks. We were going there in rainbow crocheted ponchos. And for packed lunch, that was the point where they sort of, I realized it was different to everybody else. For pat lunch, they would all have luncheon meat sandwiches, packet of salt and vinegar crisps,

a kit cat or a club, and a bottle of squash. What do you have? I would be taking a screw top jar, we'd previously used before, like a pickle jar that had been washed out and repurposed, that would be full of musli or miso soup. or miso soup. I can assure you that Musley was not a big thing in War Factor, 1989, 985. It was immediately rebadged as Poozley by my classmates.

And I have never known before since an envy, like the one that I had, of the girls who were eating their white bread, their mighty white bread and luncheon meat sandwiches. I was like, that's normal food. I wish I was normal. Of course, they were all probably dead from UPF now, but. I know, I was, I didn't want to say. Yeah, they would be constipated. But I do, so it was different that they were objecting to. It was that, you were different.

And also we were gobby. I mean, we came from a house full of books. Yeah. And like, you know, books like Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality and Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And my dad would be having, you know, he's a preacher man. So he'd be giving huge speeches about the origins of the Catholic Church. You know, all kind of.

Yeah, super-bripe. Yeah, super-bripe. So, and we're all neurodivergent ADHD, ADHD, weird, very overweight, hypermobile children that fall over all the time wearing crocheted ponchos. turning up talking about kind of you know Marxism and like you know I can look back now and see why we didn't really fit in and so you decided to educate yourself and your dad took you to the library didn't he was this were you at 13 when you were doing we were all we would all go to the library every day that was

the only parenting our parents would do and we all read really really fast so we would often go twice a day because I would have I would get a panic that someone might have returned a new book that would be on the newly returned shelf that I hadn't seen that morning so we would sometimes go twice a day just to top up and I could read like two or three books in a day very easily I was like a speed reader so it's interesting because I think it's rather a sort of magical story and then I think of kids today and I know school refusal is at an all-time high and yeah I sort of think it makes me a bit sad because I worry that if a kid did that now how

would you get them off bloody TikTok how would you get them off you know just watching Netflix all day but mainly social media. Well even before social media, you know, people were going, when they started to defund the libraries around the time of the austerity crisis, and people were going, well, you don't need libraries now, because everyone's got Google. You can find whatever research, you know, information you need there.

But Google results are predicated on what is the most popular and repeatedly brought up piece of knowledge. So everyone's learning the same thing. There's no, in a library, you can just go off down these rabbit holes. Ah, shall we, shall we... So, Katyn has got her litter picker, which she writes about how to be hopeful. I've heard about this. I've never seen it in action. She's doing it now. Let me open my bin bag. She didn't just write about this. This is an actual thing.

So it's a it's a foldable litter picker. I'm going to take a picture of you. Oops, doing this. Thank you. Because I love this. Because I love this. I want a satisfying video because look at the action on this. For 20 quid, look at the technology. That was very important. Looks beautiful look. Look at the action. Look at the action. Look, look, clap. And then clonk. And now, I'm ready for action. I've been through several models. This one's the best. It also means that when you finish, you can walk along with it over your shoulder like this, like a lead with an air rifle on the way back home. I'm going to take a video of you doing this. So, Katlin, show me how you pick up litter. I mean, it's very simple. It's a great action. But what I'm interested in also is not just the litter picking, but the information. So, for instance, this is a brand of lager called Dark Storm. You find brands you've never heard of before, like the most popular brand of vodka around here isn't like Smernoff. It's a vodka called Gary, which appears to come from somewhere

in Eastern Europe. It's like the vodka Gary, like the harsh abrasive taste of Gary is very popular around here. Similarly, Dark Storm I've never heard of before. 7.5% volume on a beer. Like that is going to wreck you. Contains sulfates put as a kind of an enticement rather than a warning. So that's important information to me because I hadn't seen this brand before particularly with its kind of almost like SS-like logo on the front of it there's a kind of Storm Trooper lightning bolt on it

that makes me think it's quite a right wing high alcohol cider So important it really Don't have a look? Have a look at dark storm Like dark storm? It's not for you Oh look Luna just sniffed Ray's bottom

That means she likes him right And then I do Then my second technique is one that I call gathering in the crops where you can pick up two or three pieces at the same time by simply using superior action. That gives me a little buzz. It's not nice though. I love that you do this. Look at these wristbands. There's been festivals happening in Finsbury Park.

So these are the VIP wristbands that someone's thrown off and put on the floor. I just love all the gossip when you find all these things. like, you know, you'll often find like some lube and some condoms and a couple of bottles of buzzball and you're like, oh, someone had sex for the first time here. That's nice. I can sort of pan out how your evening was. Yeah, you could, even to the point, even to the makeup of a social group. So if there's like 20 cans on the floor, then one of them will have all the cigarette butts in. And you're like, oh, the responsible member of the team here, put all the cigarette, used the can as a as an as an astray, whereas everybody else has left their fags on the floor. So I know whoever had that can was the responsible member of the gang.

and I, even though I don't know who they are in my head, I salute them and go, thank you, sir. This is like the excavation of Troy or something. Well, it's modern archaeology. Yeah, I do think it is. It really is. You get to see all these things that are going on, and it solves those of mysteries as well. Like, we haven't seen any so far, but one of the most recurrent things that you find in a park is absolutely pristine tissues and napkins. And for ages, I couldn't work out.

I came back and told my husband, I was like, the thing that I found the most is tissues. And he thought they were used to. He was like, oh, God, you're not touching them, are you'll get a disease. like someone who wiped their bum and throwing a tissue in a hedge. I was like, no, they're pristine. They've not been touched. And I couldn't work out why there were so many of them for ages. And then I told my daughter and she was like, well, it's Pret, isn't it?

And I was like, explain. When you go to Pratt, they give you a coffee and they give you a napkin. Give you a napkin when you go there. Right? And then as soon as you sit down on a bench to sip it, a wind gusts in, blows it away. Or people just discard it after they finish the coffers. Yeah, that's exactly why. So if anybody does want any clean napkins, like you could, I mean,

I have often thought about collecting them and simply using them myself. having them in a little used to your house right come here so I like this I'm going to carry on chatting to you while you're doing a little picking yeah tell me we should talk about the dog situation when you're growing up as well because am I right in thinking your pet did you have dogs in that house we did so so so the the childhood dog that we had before I was born was probably the best dog ever she was called Christmas oh Christmas as my father explained he was like so then you could have Christmas every day which is a

kind of soppy hippie thing that he would say and she was an amazing dog but then my father conducted most of his business in the pub and that would often entail him coming home with like three bags of gravel best not to ask where they came from or a bag of meat and one day he just came back with a dog he was like yeah I've been hanging out with this guy who trains police dogs but apparently at the end of the training a lot of them are dismissed as not being suitable for police work because they're kind of shit and so he got this shit police dog brought it back.

And all German Shepherds presumably are Alsatians. Yeah, an Alsatian. She was called Saffron. And I don't think she had been a police dog. I think this was a story. I'm going to pick this up. Use the pet. No, no, no, use the pincers.

Use the pincers. Feel the satisfaction. Oh, the pincers. So just so you know, Emily, you've gone for something that's quite risky. Oh, you've done well. Oh, you've got natural. You've got the natural.

You've got the knack. Usually you start with something big. I'm genuinely going to order one of these. I love this. If you were of a generation that grew up playing Pac-Man, It's gobbling up the little biscuits for like kind of points. It's exactly the same thing but in real life. It's incredibly satisfying.

To the point where now, if I'm in a bad mood, my husband will go, I think you should go and pit litter for an hour. Go and quit litter. Yeah. And it sounds like quite a rude and dismissive thing, but he knows my spirit and nature. And it really does, puts a pep in my step. So go on.

So the Alsatians were... So the first one was Saffron. And I don't think she had been in an official police academy looking back because she was incredibly nervous. First of all, she was a fully grown dog. She was not a puppy. She was incredibly nervous. And on the first night, she went out to do a poo in the garden and she strained for a very long time and was clearly in some kind of, she saw, you know, when dogs are doing a poo and they turn around and look at you like, help me, help me. Oh, I can't bear it. It's heartbreaking. Right. They're like, sorry, I need to devolve this to a higher authority.

This is my whole bum area is not working and I don't have hands. Help me. And so we went out and we could see that poking out of her bumhole was a the golden shining promise of a country life butter wrapper. Like the golden ticket in Charlie and the chocolate factory, but hanging out of her bum. And we had won the opportunity to pull it out of her bum hole. And so there was about 20 minute conversation about how we do it, and then we want to go a pair of chopsticks from the kitchen and just use them as pincers to draw it out.

So that to me told a story of a dog that probably hadn't been in an official police training academy. I would agree with you. Right? I don't think, I don't think the, our majesty's, police force are letting their police dogs scavenge around in bin bags. So she was a very sad dog. She was very nervous dog. She was never really properly house trained. The, you know how Proust has the taste of Madelines and tea is his childhood. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, memory. Mine is the sound of a small orange Phillips hair dryer

going full blast for many hours trying to dry out my mattress that the dog had urinated on the night before, which happened most nights. And then you could never, you can't dry at a mattress with a hair dryer. So we would just layer up towels on top of it and then like some horrible version of the princess and the pee. Oh, that's good. Let's do this one. Look at now, again. Top gun.

Top gun cigarettes. Have you ever seen those before? Oh, what are those? Right? I'm going to goze all the shit out of those later. Do you see how addictive this is? Topgun cigarettes? Like, they're really aspirational.

I mean, the ex-smoker in me is like, I would like a package of to, is there any in there. Oh, it's empty. No, there's no top gun cigarettes left. If there had been one, I would have been very tempted. I think that's a fine. piece of marketing that it's the signature blend of Top Gun that's going in the bag Gary and Top Gun what a night what were you doing last night I was on Gary Vodka and Top Gun and Gary yeah so what did you end up with this dog is this the

dog because you obviously left home to go and live in London yes with saffron and you took the dog with you yes so I was 8 moved up made it my 18th birthday present for my parents was they paid half the petrol costs of drive driving me down to London and dumping with me three bin bags of belongings and an Alsatian dog. I found out later that my dad had wildly everestimated how much the petrol the cost and in charging me had basically made a profit, which he would always refer to as corkage. Like if he did anything, he'd be like, oh, that's corkage. It's like, no, it's parenting, you're supposed to do it for free.

And you ended up coming to London because, you don't, we should say also you'd had a novel published when you were, were you 16? Yes, I wrote it when I was 13 and then it was published when I was 16. So I'd written a novel. That didn't get me to London because I had written the novel in the full expectation that you probably got a million pounds for writing a book. And you got like two grand or something. One thousand and eight hundred pounds. But I was, Luna, don't get run over by a Sierra. Come here. Good girl. Oh, Luna. Good girl. That was it. You did goodness. You can go on. Okay, good. And but because it's quite a novelty for a 16 year old to publish a book, a journalist called Valerie Grove. For the Times came down to interview me in Wolverhampton.

And after we'd done the interview, I just sort of, since she turned off the tape recorder, I was like, leaned across the table and was like, okay, Valerie, give me the real deal. How'd you have money being a writer? This whole book thing is for a complete waste of fucking time. How do I make regular dollar? And she was like, you need to be a columnist, babe.

You need to get paid regularly. Yeah. So I just started writing columns. And the times you started writing for the times when you were, how old? Well, so I won the Young Reporter of the Year competition. The Observer's Young Reporter of the Year competition when I was 17. And they gave me,

they were so impressed, I'm going to boast for 30 seconds, they were so impressed that instead of just giving me the prize, which was a computer, they said write, write as a column every week for the duration of the summer holidays, which was going to give me untold fortune, and I'd promise my brothers and sisters I'd buy them bunk beds. And did you? Well, they only published five of the six,

and when I rang them up and said, why aren't you published in the final one, I need the money? They were like, something's happened, we haven't got the space, maybe we'll print it later in the year. And with the kind of overconfidence, slash arrogance you only have when you're a child. I immediately walked around the corner to the news agents, looked at all the newspapers in the shop,

found the fax number for the Times, used the fax machine in the newsagents to fax them the column that the Observer had not published, with a covering note going, I've worked for the Observer, but I'd like to work for you now, here's a column, and by the time I got back home, which was a seven-minute walk, my mum was in the hall on the phone,

going, someone from the Times has just called me and says, do you want the job? And I was like, yeah. And I genuinely didn't realize until I was in my early 30s. That's not how most people get a regular weekly collar on a national newspaper. But isn't it amazing that actually you had, you know, the hopefulness of there was a naivety, a lot of naivety there. But it worked for you because you didn't have that thing of, oh God, how embarrassing? How embarrassing faxing it from the shop?

And what would they think? Who do I think I am to be doing this? Well, the great thing is about being incredibly poor and basically is essentially screwed, is that you have no shame. What's the worst that could happen? Like, kind of like everything, anything that you do, however humiliating it might be, is better than what will happen to you if you do nothing, which why I ended up presenting a TV show,

even though I was terrible, but presenting TV. No, you weren't terrible. I remember that, because I just remember, I'm slightly old than you, and I can definitely remember, I'd done my graduate training at the times, and your name was just everywhere. I can just remember, this girl is amazing. It's all everyone talked about. Well, I didn't feel amazing.

Should we sit down? Oh, yeah, shall we? Why don't we go under the tree, Cal there? Yes, how lovely. Yeah, no, I didn't feel amazing because like... I was going to ask that. Did you feel... I don't want to use...

I mean, imposter syndrome is kind of a cliche and I don't know, but I feel, I wonder if did you ever have that feeling of... Oh, way more. How long is this going to last? When are they going to sort of turn up and say, actually, we want this back to someone else now? Oh, well, more than imposter syndrome,

I also had... Yeah, yeah. I also had the, you know, because I was writing about popular culture and famous people had been doing it for a couple of years by the time I was on TV. So I was very aware of what was happening, which was at that time on youth TV, what they would do is they would get teenagers to present TV shows. And with no training and no experience, and suddenly you're very famous, and you're just put in front of a camera, and you're not really prepared for it. And as far as the production companies are concerned, they're in a no-due situation. If you're naturally good at it and likable and people like you, great. If people hate you, like they hated Amanda D'Cadine or Bruiser D'Cadne, her brother, who was pulled in for a year, right?

Brouser, poor bruiser. Then it's great because, like, people are going to tune in to Hate Watch. So I felt very, very aware that as far as they were concerned, if people hated me, that would be great. And to me, it felt like everybody hated me. There would be letters. I was working for Melody Maker at the time, and the cool music press. and there would just be dozens and dozens of letters every week in the time before we forget that before social media

people could still be fucking horrible if they just send letters and everyone was just like who is this fat-mouthy cow and now I look back and I'm like well of course most of them just were jealous and just wanted that job who wouldn't if I wasn't on telly and I saw someone on

of course I was going to hate whoever it was because I was like I should have that job that looks awesome but at the time it doesn't feel like that at the time you're just like oh god this is my chance everyone hates me, I've muffed it, I'm going back to Wolverhampton, I'm an unlikable person, I've been judged. The problem with when you first get famous is whatever reaction you have, it's like God has come down and said, I have seen into your soul and this is who you are. Like here is the receipt.

We have, we have assessed you. The report on who you are has come in and this is who you are. And it's a report written by the most bad faith people who have time to sit down and write an angry letter to a magazine. So, so that takes decades. The other thing that I think it's hard to separate that from, to kind of not believe that idea that, oh, well, everyone watching knows me better than I know myself. So that's the real me that they're seeing. I always thought I was nice and kind and, but they've seen the real me. But they've seen the truth. Totally.

And also at that age, you kind of are desperate for people to give you a label. You want people to turn up and go, this is who you are. Because it's, you know, it is the long, wearying job of life to work out who you are. So when people turn up and tell you here you are, you're like, oh, okay, job done. I really hope you love part one of this week's Walking the Dog. If you want to hear the second part of our chat, it'll be out on Thursday, so whatever you do, don't miss it. And remember to subscribe so you can join us on our walks every week.