Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - James O'Brien (Part One)

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Joining Emily and Raymond on Walking The Dog this week is award-winning radio presenter and bestselling author James O’Brien - with his gorgeous cavapoo Polly! James had an unfortunate incident with a Bassett Hound when he was younger - and he spent many of the following years as a strong objector to all things dog-mucus-related. However, since Polly has come into his life, he’s come round to the dog side. We discuss talking openly about adoption, the impact of his private education and his subsequent teenage rebellions. James also tells us about his extraordinary entry into journalism - which involved John Major and a suit.... and also a very memorable encounter with Sean Connery!Follow James on X @mrjamesobGet your copy of How They Broke Britain hereYou can listen to James’ podcast Full Disclosure on all podcast platforms, and you can hear him on LBC every weekday from 10am!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.

You don't want someone to see you letting your dog do a poo and not clean it up and then go on Twitter to say, I saw that James O'Brien earlier and he let his dog crap all over the towpath. He pretended he hadn't noticed. This week on Walking the Dog, Raymond and I went for a West London stroll with award-winning radio presenter and author James O'Brien and his beautiful dog, Polly. James is of course the host of a hugely popular Daily Current Affair show on LBC and he's also written a series of best-selling books like how to be right in a world gone wrong and most recently how they broke Britain. And somehow, he also finds the time to do brilliantly

in-depth and revealing interviews on his podcast's Full Disclosure. So I've got a full disclosure of my own. I've been a huge fan of James and his show for some years, so I was genuinely a bit nervous about meeting him. This was my version of a meet and greet with Taylor Swift. But I'm delighted to say, James was everything I hope for and more. We had such a lovely chat about his childhood. He told me about the really unusual break he had into journalism involving John Major and a suit. And he also talked really honestly about the huge benefits he'd gained from having therapy.

James, by the way, lives in the most idyllic pocket of London ever. Anne seems to totally adore his dog Polly. So Ray and I have basically decided to move in with the O'Brien family. If someone could let them know, that'd be great. Do read James's brilliant book, How They Broke Britain, if you haven't already, as it's honestly unput-downable. You can also hear him on LBC weekday mornings and on his fabulous podcast, full disclosure. I'll stop talking now and hand over to the man himself.

Here's James and Polly and Ray Ray. So, James, what do you think of Raymond so far? He's very beautiful, isn't he? Can he see anything? Does he walk into walls a lot? Also, how do you tell whether he's going forwards or backwards? You see, this is exactly what I wanted with James O'Brien. I've been here two seconds already. Favouring questions over greetings.

He wasn't over going, does he? Listen, listen. Come on. Please don't we on James's beautiful street. It's not that kind of place here. No, it's not. Where do you want to go? Well, I'm in your hands, James O'Brien. It'd be right without a lead, really?

I'm about to put him on. So if we go up the canals of the park, It's very nice. And your dog is quite stunning. Polly. She is, isn't she? Polly. Polly with a P.

She's quite recently groomed, actually. You said that in a slightly pointed way, I know. Well, no, she can sometimes look a bit of a state, bless her, like me. Polly! Oh, James, she's so beautiful. She's not very sociable usually with other dogs, but she seems... Do you know what? Quite at peace.

I think other dogs are so unimidating. by Raymond. That might be it. Look. Right. What's Polly doing, James? I told you. She's not, she doesn't want to go for a walk. She might think we're taking her to the grooming parlour. So when I take you over the bridge, you'll see that she will automatically go right because if she's going left, it means that she's... Can't have one of these, sweetheart.

There we go. Does Raymond want one? Raymond? Do you want one of these? Do you want to a tree? There we go. Are you interested? Interested? Interested? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Oh, Raymond. Oh, James, their little heart-shaped trees. It's a bit big for his mouth, isn't it? Hang on, I'll give him. Polly, well, you have half of this with Raymond? What? Do you think this is weird, David, Raymond can't eat a whole treat? What breed is that?

He is an imperial shih Tzu. Good Lord. Which always makes me sound like hyacinth bouquet. He's very grand. He is, isn't he? Polly's pedigree, actually. So what is Polly? Well, he's half miniature poodle and half cavi

Cavalier King Charles. So they call it a cavapoo. Come on Paul. This one. Come on there. Come on darling. So James. So this is where we play bull. I'm not even joking. There's an annual tournament. So we're in Brentford, we should say, which is James's Manor and it's absolutely beautiful around here, James. It's like a little sort of regency village. Yes it is. Unknown. You can live in Chiswick, which is more traditionally chintzy where we were before. We can live in Chiswick for 20 years and not know that this place exists,

although it's all changed now. There's an everyman cinema opening soon. Bookshop, fancy restaurants. It's a town transformed, obviously. And that's quite cool. That's where William Turner started painting. Wow. In the local.

And it's now a pub? Yeah. So I'm obviously with Jane's Abon and I'm with the very lovely Polly, who's just had me in, I don't know, there's some incredible energy she's got. Do you think so? Oh, look at her. She's very charismatic. I think she is actually. She's got a lot of personality. She's got very oddly human expressions as well.

Yes. Which is what I like in a dog. And James taught me through your history with dogs because... Yeah. I don't really have one. You don't really have one? I never really wanted one, to be honest. Did you not? No. I like Polly, although she's very much my wife's dog, not mine.

Well, she's a family dog, but there's always one person, isn't her, who's in charge. I think, I can't remember what happened. I think Lucy just decided she really wanted a dog and we found this one up in Warrington with the right breeder. She'd chosen what breed she wanted and she was a tiny little thing. She was the runt of the litter. But growing up I, I sort of actively disliked dogs. You had a bit of an incident with a basset house.

Do you know about this? How do you know about it? this? I overshare terribly. It's three hours a day on the radio. I'm going to have to go. I've got to fill it somehow, haven't I? Well, not only do I listen to you, pretty much every day on the radio. Well, that's nice, thank you. But I also have devoured all of your books. I don't mention the Basset Hound, do I? I do, do I? I do. I do. Good Lord. God, the word count must have been slow that day. Seriously. I had to squeeze that story in there somehow. No, I was molested by a Basset hound in one of those bouncy chairs, the chairs that are flat so those chairs like that. And my mum came into the room and our friends Bassetham was on top of me.

And I think, because Basset hans are quite slobbery, aren't they? Yeah. So I think, so I had a real problem with dog mucus for a long time. How do you know, I once got called a Pussy on the Alan Titchmaw on live television by Martin Klumes. You used to do these weird daytime debates on the Alan Titchmarsh show and you'd find yourself, I don't know, arguing with Gloria Honeyford about charity collectors or something like that. No, it's completely confected. I love Alan. Don't get me wrong. But I do remember, it was, we must have done two in one day because I was doing the why I don't like dogs argument. And then it was, and that's what upset Martin Cloons. And he shouted pussy from the other side of the studio. And it didn't get cut because it might have been live live, but anyway, it didn't get cut.

It must be one of those words that Offcom is quite relaxed about. But that was when I was waxing lyrical about how much I hate dog mucous. Polly has mellowed me quite a lot actually. Really? I can see, oh Ray, he does this sometimes. They call it stubborn Shih Tzu syndrome. Is it really? Not having it, like the toddler in the supermarket.

Well, like... Has he gone all floppy? Like a just-off oil problem. I can just stop oil protester. That's what he's like. Oh, hang on, I think you might be about to see the lock-in action. Oh, how exciting. Isn't it?

So in the 60s, there was a massive gasworks just up there, and all of this was, the other side of the road, was all derelict. The redevelopment in the last two years has gone nuclear. Yeah. But all this has always been here. But no one really knew about it. It's so beautiful, so it's all the canal redevelopment. Yeah, well, this has been a lot.

Well, this has been here forever. This is called a gauging lock, which is what they would use to work out how much cargo you had coming up the Grand Union Canal before you got onto the River Thames, which is just up there. Oh, are you going to take Poppy off the lead, James? Polly. Polly? Do you know why I did that? Frank Skinner's dogs call Poppy? Because now she knows that we're not going left, which is where the groomers is.

So she'll be a lot happier now. She can calm down. Yeah. Raymond, go and play. She's off. But did she not go to the loo then? She didn't do a poo. No, she didn't, okay, well done.

You strike me as someone. I'm quite conscientious about it. I imagine you would be. Also, you know, you don't want someone to see you letting your dog do a poo and not clean it up and then go on Twitter to say, I saw that James O'Brien earlier and he let his dog crap all over the towpath. And he did not. He pretended he hadn't noticed.

So James, so it was a no dog, I'm assuming sort of no pets. Oh cats, big on cats as a kid. Yeah, I loved cats. We had two or three over the years. Still do. And this was your dad, Jim, and your mum, Joan. Yep. And your sister Charlotte. It was a huge cat person. And you've obviously spoken about this before. So I hope you're comfortable me saying this, but you were adopted. Almost certainly, I will be comfortable talking about this. There we go.

You adopted at, was it 28 days? Yeah, very young. So it would never, I mean, it was a big deal and no deal at all growing up because I don't think there was much guidance. in those days on how best to handle it. So you've got an incredible gamut of experiences where some people, you've heard stories about some people didn't find out they were adopted until they were going through their parents documents after their parents died or they found something in the attic or something like that. That was never going to happen to us. Yeah. We were always absolutely aware, never not aware of it. And so I mean if there is a right

way or a wrong way of dealing with it, mum and dad certainly got it right because because we never felt in any way diminished or feel a bit different but not, and utterly loved, always utterly loved. So I was always very proud of being adopted, which is why I overshared so much on the subject. And so they told you from quite a young age. Not even told us. We never didn't know if you see what I mean. I don't know quite how that works. Yeah. But we never didn't know. We were always always aware of it. And that takes away that moment of trauma in a way, that moment of discovery that other people have. And, you know, we're both,

we can't say this about yourself really, but we're both quite well adjusted and dealing with it quite nicely. I think you can say that when you've had therapy because I think you've worked at it. Well, you know, the funny thing about therapy was that my therapist was, I won't want to say adamant

because that's a bit strong. She worked a lot with kids from boarding school, like me, quite big on separation anxiety, which is often subconscious, always subconscious. But she presumed that the more work we did, the more significant my adoption would become. And near the end of my therapy, she said, you know, I've never had a client like you before. I've never had an adopted client like you before. It doesn't, it doesn't, I've got a sense of Irishness, but my adopted father was Irish. That's why my name's O'Brien.

So she said, you've got absolutely no hang-ups at all about being adopted. There's no subconscious yearning or sense of separation. She said, you were telling me the truth. I thought you were fibbing. Or not fibbing, but. Yeah, burying that. Yeah, well, I mean, I actually literally used to tell people that corporal punishment hadn't done me any harm at all.

It had done me good. And that came out very early in therapy. That wasn't true at all. But the adoption thing, when I said, no, honestly, I don't have any desire to track down my biological mother. And she said, cracker, you're actually telling the truth, which was nice. Have you never felt that James? No.

Not right. I mean when my oldest was born and that was the first time I'd met anyone I was biologically related to since I was born. There's a sort of moment but it's just curiosity so I don't think curiosity gives you the right. If there's a psychological yearning that's very different but I could be a hand grenade in somebody else's life. Do you know what I mean? You turn up and nobody knows anything about you. Yeah. So there was just never anything remotely big enough in my mind to justify that kind of behaviour.

But I'm not, I just not, that's me, that works for me. I fully understand why other people need to do it, want to do it and sometimes regret doing it and sometimes don't regret doing it, but just didn't really apply to me or my system. Rui-way. He's coming into his own now too. She's now probably thinking, yeah, all right, that'll do. do. That was a nice walk. So now she starts walking behind me. When we turn around and start going back, she'll be walking in front of me. And whenever you've spoken about your family,

you just speak about them and write about them with, there's such obvious love. Yeah. It's the worst thing for a writer. Some writers get entire sagas out of the dysfunction in their family, but it's, yeah, no, it is. It's a huge part of who I am, a huge part. I think possibly the adoption thing maybe subconsciously makes me, compels me to be even more descriptive and open. Because I know that a lot of, I tell me, cricky, this will not your shops or someone came up to me at Leicester Square Station about a year ago. And I'd noticed someone, so I thought someone, not exactly following me, but someone had clocked me as I came out of the studio. From your radio show, yeah, when I came out of the building where the studio is. And sometimes you can tell someone's about to ask for a selfie or say hello.

And this woman in her probably late 20s, early 30s, and then she didn't do anything. And you can't comment on it. It was just weird if I go, hello, are you waiting for me? Or something like that. And then I got to the bottom of the stairs at Lester Square Station, and she put her hand on my elbow. She'd caught up with me.

And she'd say, gosh, I didn't know. I'm so nervous. And she said, I just felt this need to tell you that we've adopted a little boy because of you. And I said, obviously I kind of nearly fainted. And then I said, what do you mean? And she goes, well, we were thinking about it. Our IVF had failed. And we were thinking about it, but we just weren't ready for it.

And then we heard you talking about it. And we thought, gosh, that's how it can be. And I've met her a couple of times since she came to a book signing as well with her husband. I've met both of them. Seems how incredible. Yeah, that was pretty special. Wow. So that I'd like to think is why I talk about it also openly and so.

much because I want to provide some sort of alternative to some of the traditional narratives are all about trauma, aren't they, in alienation? Yeah. The other kids at school when I was about eight would say, if you're really, really naughty, would they give you back to the orphanage or whatever it was they had in their mind as the... Did they say that? Yes, but not unpleasantly, but there were just so much miscomprehension, really, is probably the best way of putting it.

I always think it's interesting. if say I was one of your friends or contemporaries parents and someone had said, what's James O'Brien like? What's little James like? Yeah. What would someone have said? Oh, that's a brilliant question.

I've never thought of it from that angle before. I think some of them would have said trouble. Not in a really bad sense, but if there was trouble to be got into, then I would probably be a bit of a ringleader and a bit of a show-off, but never in a kind of... putting other people down kind of way, more of a

look at me, look at me, look at me kind of way. Yeah. I was always into acting and talking and debating and all that kind of thing so even now someone's mum might say oh you're such a good actor at school or you were such a good debater at school. I mean only when I got to Ampleforth did my housemaster start telling other kids parents that I was a bad influence and they should keep me away from them but he had all sorts of issues with me so I don't take that as an objective sense of judgment at all. But you were always quite articulate presumably. Yeah but yeah and I you should have almost precociously articulate and smart and stuff yeah it's hard question to answer that

well it is without sounding a bit self-aggrandizing yeah of course well I mean look at what I do for a living obviously I can talk in a slightly more natural and fluid way than is than is it's like been good at football yeah you know you've still got to work at it but yeah and also it that if I was getting a hard time off older kids, I could make them look stupid in front of, which is not necessarily a superpower, but it certainly helps a bit. It means that they leave you alone.

You went to Ampleforth, as you say, which I'm always been a bit fascinated by. I know it as the sort of Catholic Eton, obviously. That's how everyone calls it, don't they? That's certainly what my mum liked to call it. Did she? But that was quite an achievement for your parents to send you there, James, wasn't it? Because your dad was a journalist, wasn't it?

Yes. And they weren't perhaps typical... No, I didn't realise until... ...that were sending their kids there at that stage. Well, I mean, no, but that very aspirational... I don't want to say lower middle class, because my mum will go nuts, but neither of them went to university. Dad left school at 15.

There was money. My grandma, who I never met, was a pub landlady. She had two or three pubs around leaving. at different times including the market tavern which anyone who knew leads in that era will tell you was one of the roughest pubs in the history of the world so it wasn't a gentrified upbringing but neither was it you know they didn't have forks in the sugar bowl and tea bags on the washing line or anything like that there was money around and dad I think as a combination of

his Catholicism and his class-based aspiration wanting the best the the combination of Ampleforth being a social achievement giving me advantages I wouldn't have got anywhere else and the Catholicism of it meant that they couldn't afford it really like yeah not really I realize now like quite a few families it it was a I can't say struggle because then you sound like one of these people complaining about VAT and the Labor Party but it certainly meant that their lives were very much affected their leisure time and that what they could do in terms of holidays and spending.

Yeah, it wasn't a choice that didn't impact them financially. Precisely that, yeah, quite a lot I realised later. And then very annoyingly, I mean, two bad things happened when I was 18. I got expelled, which I felt let them down enormously. But then Dad got made redundant by the Daily Telegraph in almost the same space. And that meant they never had the years of being able to enjoy his decent salary on the Daily Telegraph without having to find the school fees money, which they would have had almost I mean, it happened almost in the same six-month window.

And again, until he died, I hadn't really registered how unjust that was. Did you feel guilty getting expelled? Yeah, hugely. Because of the sacrifices. Well, I mean, that was the worst. I mean, I don't want to rub it in, James. No, but it, yes. I mean, it really, it was probably the worst thing was how much they were.

I'd like to say how much I felt I'd let them down. But it wasn't. It was that I had really, really let them down. Also, it was only weed. But for my mum's generation and my dad's, generation. Just before the 60s, you know what I mean? Born in 39 and 40, so they were too busy working to enjoy the 60s. And so drugs was the headline word, not cannabis, as it would be now. And, you know, parents would say, no, well, what was it? And you'd say cannabis and your

parents' friends would go, oh, that's all right, then don't worry about that. It wasn't. It was drugs and it might as well have been crack cocaine existed in 1990, but it might as well have been heroin. I might as well have been the Zammo Maguire of Kidaminsster. Yes, but the difference is... From the way it hit them and the way they felt. The difference is you would just say, you wouldn't just say no thank you. No, thank you, sir. Why do you think you were rebellious?

I was bored. Really? Yeah. I think that's usually it, isn't it? We're just bored. We're bored in lessons. Get bored outside lessons. Like the kind of thrill of the dread of mild.

dose of adrenaline when you're doing something you're not supposed to do. And I do you know what? I also always had a really big problem with people telling me what to do without being able to tell me why it was for a good reason. So that's interesting. That ties in with your sense of fairness and justice. Yeah, very much so, very, very much so. So I was fine with mum and dad, you know, the old, why can't I do that?

Because I say so. I never really struggled with that. But when it was teachers and also the perception that sometimes they'd treat children differently. So oh hang on, might not be able to get through. So they're doing concerts here now. That's gone across the path, has it? I don't know. Hang on. Maybe we can go right now. No, I don't think we can, can we. Does it just stop? Yeah. We can maybe go down by the canal, go on this path here. So go on. I really hated that sense, particularly when I got to big school and I got to ample force.

Polly, this way. The being tight. what to do and not not feeling it was fair you know look at her she's such a little madam we're going this way holly that's better so I remember one occasion where my housemaster had um we've got some important guests and there's so much hierarchy at schools like this it's hierarchy at all schools but I wasn't part of the hierarchy I wasn't you know he hadn't made me head of house or anything like that perfectly reasonably. But when he had important guests, he used to make one of the prefects move seats with me because I would then converse with the honoured guest. Do you see what I mean? And by the time I was in my upper six, I'd had enough of that kind of thing.

I thought, well, look, if you've got a really strict hierarchy in place, you don't opt out of it and bring in the the pleb from the bottom of the table who can talk well. And so we're sitting there, And before his guest came in, he told me to move and I said no. This is in front of the whole 60 kids. Really? Yeah. That takes balls. Well, by then I think I was on a bit of a path, to be honest with you.

You're 18 years old and they're still telling you what time to go to bed. So I think that's why you end up smoking a bit of weed and you end up getting into bother that you shouldn't have got into. I had a girlfriend who I really liked who was in town 20 miles away. And I used to get lifts in with my old English teacher and he'd have been sacked. I'd have been expelled if anyone had ever found out about it. But I used to lie down on the back seat of his car under a dog blanket when he'd drive me into town to meet my girlfriend, Rachel, whose grandfather had been a very famous poet that my English teacher had known in Hong Kong during the Second World War.

So there's some fairly magical stuff going on. And at the same time, I have to ask permission to, you know, not eat my pudding at lunchtime or stay up after 10 o'clock. So I just said, no, I'm not. And he said, right, you either do this or do that or do that. you can get out now. And I said, well, I turned to my two mates. And I went, you're going to have to, excuse me, lads.

And I just walked out the refactory, the dining room. And that was the beginning of me becoming the only boy in the history of the school that ever transferred out of one house into another. Because the personality, the relationship breakdown was so complete. And I shouldn't be putting up with that at 18. I'm not an adult.

I've got an 18-year-old now. And she's still my child. She's still a child. You know? There's a bit of this came out in therapy because you think you're the bees' knees. Everyone in the dining room thinks you're the absolute dogs. As soon as I get out, I burst into tears.

No one would have known that. Everyone would have thought I was swanning around like Tucker Jenkins. It's another Grange Hill reference for you. I mean, I can't get enough of them, actually. They're all good, aren't they? And I went straight to the theatre. And the woman that ran the theatre, Lucy Warwick, who's also an author. She just saw me and said,

what on earth is wrong? and I told her and she looked after me. I think she may even have pulled me a glass of wine. So it was a weird experience. I was growing up and really pushing back against being treated like a small child. But at the same time, I was still a child and needed looking after and nurturing. Should we try, see what happens? I quite like it.

He's taking the road less travel. And that made all the difference. I just want to check there is a way through. So James is taking us to a long. of undergrowth. Come on, Polly. You lead the way. You're so brave, Polly.

You can do it. She is, isn't she? I think we may have over-extended ourselves here. This would bring out, if I was on the local paper, this would bring out my, how dare they? Deny Council Taxpayers' use of the amenities this weekend. Yeah. Hang on. I should have done a wrecky, shouldn't I, before we came down.

We could fight through there, but I don't know how. Yeah, but look, what's on the other side? We're nearly there. I think we should go for it. Okay. You see, you know what I'm seeing through there, James? I don't want to trigger you, but I'm seeing sunlit uplands. There's a cot of sunlit uplands.

Finally! Finally! It's been a good 25 minutes and I haven't known some Brexit at you. That's the first Brexit reference. Well done. Is that it? I thought that bloke walking towards us five minutes ago meant that there'd be a path through, but I'm not sure there is. I know. I have a serious question.

about what he was doing. Yeah. Well, he was probably doing what we did. But did he give up? So I told you, as soon as we're heading back, she's ahead of me. It feels a bit like a disaster movie of some sort. She's found a route. Well done, Paul.

Well done, Polly. Come on, Ray. There we go. It's all right. Everyone relax. So how would you sum up your experience of ample fourth? Yeah. Given what you said to me, was it a happy experience?

Yes. I mean... That aside. I mean it's a bit apart from that. The camaraderie with the lads was beautiful. And I made, the three boys I got expelled with, we were like musketeers. We were inseparable. But the problem is the geography as well.

So you get expelled. Your parents aren't very keen on you ever leaving the house again. Yeah. And you're in Kidaminster. And you've got a mate in Fulham, a mate in East Grinstead and a mate in Cheltenham. And the lads you'd been at school with until you were 13, you've kind of drifted apart from, you've lost touch with. But as I get older, my memories of the place are a lot rosier because I think more and more about dealing with my age group as opposed to dealings with the authority figures which were. But even then in the story I told you, there's one horrible adult and one absolutely beautiful adult.

So, you know, that kind of defines the experience. Lad came up to me. I did a book festival in Ireland last month. And a lad came up to me who I remembered as being a bit. mean, you know, two or three years older than me and not singling me out for meanness, but just being one of the bigger boys that was a little bit fistic and, you know, dead legs and stuff like that. And he brought his brother-in-law and his sister and his wife to the event, and he was visibly starstruck. And I'd ask you for selfies and stuff like that. So often when

you remember school, you completely misremember how it would look, how the same experiences and the same events would look from the other person's perspective. I bet most people that were bullies probably don't even think of themselves or remember themselves as being bullied, mild bullies, you know. Yeah. Not professional bullies. So no, as the older I get, the more I think back on the happy times. And Facebook makes a difference as well because we're all in touch on Facebook. And there's a real warmth to that. Hello. Come to sit down for five minutes. I wonder as well. And I presume my this is something you went through in therapy.

Yes. You can totally see why I know you've said your parents almost saw it as the golden ticket that you were getting going there, which I see. And I had a similar thing with my mum, I think, of it, where it was you're going to have this advantage that I didn't, etc., etc. But I wonder if that ended up long term being a little bit more complicated for you because of the adoption and the double sense of being separated from a parent figure I suppose. Well, yeah, I don't think it's healthy to be away from your mum and dad when you're in your formative years.

There's no real way I could imagine my children boarding. Really? Yeah, and almost all of the people I was at school with didn't board. But, I mean, it sounds like I'm being judgmental about people who made different decisions, but it just doesn't make sense to me anymore. that you don't take that role yourself. I'd have been much emotionally healthier if I'd been with my mum and dad every night,

but they believed, partly because of that, as I say, with my dad, because of the religious thing. So you've got in loco parentis plus, well, these monks must be extraordinary human beings because they have a vocation. And so what better place for my boy than to be in the care of these incredibly devout, good men who've dedicated themselves to good works.

they weren't. Some of them are nasty, some of them are nonsters, some of them are very mediocre and some of the abuse that went on at school was terrible. So I don't know that, I think, I think the expulsion hurt more because of the sacrifice, but I don't think there was any doubling down on separation anxiety. It was, it was more, the golden ticket worked, eventually. So I just wish Dad had been around to see a little bit more. of the trappings of some of the stuff that's gone very well in the last few years. It would have always used to say, it's a Peter Cook joke. I'd say, if things weren't going well, what are you up to, suddenly, you're all right?

And I said, yeah, I am. I'm getting a few shifts. I'm writing a book as well. And you go, yeah, great, neither am I. There was always. And then, of course, I wrote some bloody books, and they were in the windows of waterstones and stuff like that, and he didn't see it. Saw me on question time, which was nice, but he didn't see any of the really daft stuff.

that's happened in the last seven or eight years, which is a shame, because that would have been a real validation of what he was, what he was trying to secure for me. Because mum who told me he used to use the phrase golden ticket. He never used it in front of me. I never heard him say that. Really? Yeah. But it is, isn't it? It's the great injustice of private education is that it works. It gets you into places you wouldn't necessarily have gotten into otherwise. As long as you're honest about that and you acknowledge the unfairness and the serendipity. And you just have to admit that you're lucky. Yeah. It's the maddest ones are the ones. So I do it on the show. They always ring in and I think I used to do this so I'm allowed to do the

criticism. I work bloody hard to send my children. So I'm like well hang on. There's a coal miner over there or a long distance lorry driver. You're suggesting that they take it easy. They spend their lives with their feet up. This relationship with I work bloody hard to send my children to private. So every parent who works bloody hard can make that claim. But no one ever uses it in the to to justify an unfair advantage, which I, you know, I've availed myself of it for my children. And there's working bloody hard and there's having an extra 30 or 40 grand a year. Yeah, precisely, precisely.

To spend on education. I'm interested in when you first... This is all the great themes, isn't it, that obsess me. There's a class, private education, adoption. Well, you're like me, I was privately educated and I've enjoyed the benefits of that, but I still feel, I feel uncomfortable with people who don't acknowledge those. That's all. That's all I want. That's what I feel. Because, you know, the alternative is that they believe that all they've assembled in life is as a consequence of their own gifts and talents.

Which, you know, in the case of some of my political bet noirs, is so obviously untrue. If Jacob Rees-Mogg had gone to a comprehensive school in Toxteth, do you really think he'd now be worth tens of millions of pounds and would have had a seat in cabinet? So I don't understand why it's difficult unless it's insecurity. It's quite easy to say. If I hadn't had the background I'd had or the education I've had, I wouldn't have spoken the language I need to speak to get into some of the places that I've got into. It doesn't mean it's not binary. There'd be people from humble backgrounds who go on to edit national newspapers or to be brilliant

broadcasters. But the numbers just tell you, it's a heck of a lot more likely to happen if you go to that kind of school and it's not going to be your genes, is it? It's not going to be a genetic inheritance. It's going to be an inherited privilege. or a gifted privilege. I really don't understand why people find it so hard to admit that.

Funny enough, I met Jacob Rees-Mogg when I was young. Really? And did you think, there's a man possessed of extraordinary natural talent, gifts, attributes. He'll either be winning Wimbledon

or writing a Nobel Prize-winning novel by the time he's 25. Did you? Do you know what, James? I just never forgot this extraordinary boring. A friend of mine was at Maudlin, was at Oxford. And I'd gone to stay with her.

And she was a really nice girl. But you know, you get thrown together with these people at university. And she said, oh, we're just going to see my friend Jacob. And I never forgot this because we knocked. And I heard, calm. Extraordinary, isn't it? See, I think that's probably his survival personality. Because he had such a terrible time at Eton for which an enormous sympathy.

But this came out in therapy. You build a survival personality. And mine was a sort of punitive. little scrapper, always up for an argument, always starting debates, always starting arguments, verbal fights. That was mine and it meant I lived my life waiting, you know, like this with my intellectual fists up, whereas his survival personality was clearly to become a kind of penny-fathersing in human form and that protected him from the pain that he felt. So, you know, I find it hard to like him, but I don't find it hard to understand how he built that. And he

won't even know it's there. He won't know that that's a suit. Well, he won't know how much masking he's doing on a daily basis. Masking is the authentic and the inauthentic itself. Yeah, because nobody is like something out of a dick in snowball. No, precisely. But it, but it allowed him to deal with whatever trauma he was experiencing at school. You left school, James, and you... Prematurely, Emily. I know. I didn't want to dwell on that. It's a bit orcs. Your entry into journalism is one of my favourite stories ever. Yeah. Because you were working in a Macra Scutum. Yes, on Regent Street. On Regent Street. And what happened, James? I'd started having the fear, the genuine fear that it wasn't going to happen.

I'd been turned down for everything several times, two, three years. So it's my student job. And I couldn't afford to be in London without an income, unlike some of my mates. So I'm working in the shop. I liked it. I like retail. I like menswear. But I'd been turned down, so it's now two or three years since graduation. And I'm still working in the shop. I may even have. have been more and I'm still working in the shop and I'd done work experience and it hadn't got me anywhere. All of dad's mates, contacts were either dead or redundant. None of them had any real sway in the to the level of being able to get me in somewhere for a trial

and we get we get sent to Downing Street because John Major wants a new suit and all the proper tailors were off sick and so we do it and we're on best behavior. It's like the two public school boys as opposed to the two lads who had grown up in Essex and were better tailors than we were but there's so much snobbery so they sent the privately educated lads and we sorted him out and a nice two suits of grey and navy 42 long taller than you'd think to take the waist in about an inch he was quite narrow so you get a six inch drop with a 40 so if your chest is 42 you get a six inch drops with 36 inch waist trouser and he was a bit slimmer than the they had quite a nice silhouette actually and on the way out

he said let me have another look at that book of cloth, you know, samples, cloth samples and there's a white, really nice white kind of twill almost and he goes, do you know, I fancy something a bit different I'm going to, I'd like a white suit and this is when John Major was the greyest man even his puppet on spitting image

was grey latex, everything about him was grey. He went the full Martin Bell. Yes, he ordered this white suit. He even said, I remember when we were kidding out, he said, you see, I don't. don't tuck my shirt into my underparent, which was another honour. He was lovely. I really liked him.

And of course, since Brexit and all of that stuff, you realise that, you know, we were very lucky to have Prime Minister. He seemed like a wise elder statesman, didn't he? Yes, absolutely. So we saw him out with a white suit. In the same way, sorry, George Bush, suddenly seems to have gravitas now. Yeah, yeah. Both of them actually.

Yeah. I didn't realise George W. Bush had flown combat missions. Yeah. It's amazing what you discover when somebody like Elon Musk describes Donald Trump as the bravest president we've ever had. And then you read the replies. So the bravest politician. And George W. Bush flew combat missions. Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts. John McCain admittedly wasn't a president, but he was imprisoned, I think, during the Vietnam, and refused to be released unless his troops could come first. So as an officer, he could have gone first. So,

anyway, Donald Trump dodged the draft five times is the bravest politician America's ever seen. So I go back to the shop. So we're back to John Major. I got a man. I got a mate who was on the William Hickey column at the Daily Express, you probably know him, actually, Henry. I realise now he didn't want me to get shifts. He wanted me to carry on being a contact for him because you'd get paid for stories that you'd say I'd get a tip off. But, you know, I would have been exactly the same if the roles had been reversed. I'd be like, no, you'd just carry on bringing me the tips and stuff like that. But I can't remember how. I think I may have spoken to his boss and they said, yeah, we'll give you 300 quid for it. I said, can I have a couple

of shifts instead. And I said, yes, I went in, I wrote up the story, filed it. They mocked up a page with John Major's head on top of John Travolta in his Saturday night fever white suit. It's a good story. It was probably the best story I ever got, actually. And why did I quote him okay with it? Well, yeah, we concocted a story that we'd been in the pub. And someone had overheard you. Yeah. And they bought it back. They bought it enough to get their boss off their back. right, which was the priority because the chap, who was the manager of menswear, I always knew him as Bob Monday, and that wasn't his real name. He'd come over on the boat from either.

Of course it wasn't his real name. Well, with a you, not with a row. Oh, okay. He'd come over at 15 to start work at AquaScooter. And they'd already been a Mr. King working there. So they called him Monday. And 40 years later, he's still, he was one of the nicest people I've ever met. And his son was trying to get into IT or something like that and was struggling.

We were a similar age, graduates. And he just said to me, listen, as long as you give me a little bit of notice, give me a ring the night before, and I'll be able to work something out. If you get short notice shifts on a newspaper, he took some pleasure in what I was doing. Because I've been there by now for three or four years. I'm very much. I'm very much of college of economics, which is hugely prestigious. Well, yeah, but I mean, doesn't butter any parsnips, does it,

when you're trying to get foot in the door. And so Bob gave me this sort of little key to, so then I could start doing shift. The Express asks me back a bit more, and then you get on the, you remember what it's like, you get on the kind of circuit. I wonder if John Major knows that he kickstarted your career. I know, he hasn't come on my podcast, but when he does.

He's all it did in a way, didn't he? Kickstarted my career, yeah, yeah, if he hadn't, I mean, I don't know. So, mum, she hates me telling this story, but mum had given up. by this point. So an area manager's job came up at Acresco Scooter and I mentioned it to her on the phone because they kind of suggested I might want to think about applying for it and mum was like, oh I really think you should, because mum worked in shops as well. She worked for Estée Lauder and she worked for clothes, Berketex and Winsmore, always concessions inside department stores,

which I did as well. And so she knew how the system works. She's like, you know, It might be time to have a little think about doing something different. And it happened in about a three-month window. And as soon as I got those shifts on the Express, everything began slowly at first. But at least I knew that I could start calling myself a journalist. So for quite a long time, I did both jobs. I'd be getting two or three shifts a week on a paper. So I did some for the telegraph, some for the standard.

And then I'd do two or three shifts a week in the shop at the same time. And it slowly narrowed down to the point. where I was more or less full-time newspapers and still doing. So I got a three-day-a-week contract on the Express, and that's when I could relax, because that was a proper income with benefits. That tells me a lot about you, James, because a lot of people who would have got a little story like that

would have had a short-term view if someone had offered the money, especially back then, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They would have said, of course, I'll take the couple hundred quid or whatever it is. Yes. I mean, it tells me a lot of things about you, but it tells me that you're...

It tells you're desperate. No, it does. What it tells me is that it's very, very bigger picture, isn't it? Well, I knew I could write and I wasn't getting any chances to write. So I'd done a couple of tips when I'd taken the money and I'd seen what they'd written up in the paper. And I thought I can do that. So I was never a scoop out, even when I got my feet under the table, and even when I was on the three-day-a-week contract,

with me and Charlotte Edwards, who's now a brilliant interviewer and just did a superb piece with Kirstama. We were such sort of rivals. She's Robert Peston's part. That's right. That's right. That's right. So Charlotte's a brilliant journalist.

But we were like, we had a real love-hate thing going on where we were incredibly competitive with each other and we'd slag each other off mercilessly when the other person wasn't around. But then we'd have lunch together every day and share our misgivings and our anxieties about the fact that things weren't going as well for us as they were for some other people. And then that slowly began to change. So I knew I could write and that's that happily the chap who edited the page at the time, John McInty, who does that. who does the FRIM Hardcastle thing on the mail now. He saw that and didn't put that enormous pressure on me to go out and get scoops because I was rubbish at that. You hated that, didn't you?

I hated that, I used to be physically sick. Did you? I'd turn up at a book launch or a film premiere or something like that and I'd know I'd have to speak to all the famous people in the room and it used to make my guts clench, physically puke. I don't know why. It's a form of insecurity. See, watch Henry, my old mate from school, who was by now, school who was by now deputy editor of the page and he'd just march into these rooms like you know

to the man are born he was much posher than me i don't know whether that had something to do with it but i was just i was just crippled with nerves crippled with it it got better it got easier and a drink would help but um but i wasn't very good at that and and happily the the column that i'd ended up on needed writers we used to do quite a lot of flowery language and once i got the hang of it that that became very valuable to the editor because it meant he could, he didn't have to come back from lunch if he could trust me to write up. What about when you went up to Sean Connery at the Premier? Well, that was the second day.

So these two shifts, they didn't actually go very well. The first one, they sent me to the National Theatre for Dickie Attenborough's 70th or 80th birthday. And I'd never done, I'd never done, Paul, what's up? I'd never done anything like this before. I wasn't quite sure what was needed. And they just said, go and see who you can see what you can pick up. My favourite ever story about trainee journalist. And I don't know if it's true.

I'll tell you when the tape's off, who it is supposedly about. But someone was on the traineeship on the Times, which I got turned down for three years running. And there was some sort of terrible motorway accident. And they told him to get down to the scene of the accident and see what you can pick up. And he came back with a bumper. You want that to be true, don't you?

I don't know if it is or not. But they see, you'll pop down there, see what you can pick up. So I go in, and the lift doors open at the National Theatre. And every single face in that room is famous. You know, from Dicayatimbra down. You know, Jeremy Irons is there, all sorts of famous people. Clive Anderson, who was very famous at the time. And in the end was the only person I spoke to because he was more nervous than I was in that room.

But genuine household names, all of them, everywhere you looked. And I just bottled it. I couldn't. I mean, how on earth does someone who was measuring inside legs the day before, march up to Knights of the Realm, you know, Ben Kingsley and interrupt their conversation and try and get them to talk to you. I just couldn't conceive of the confidence that you would need to do that. So I went back to the office and Richard Young, the paparazo, that doesn't do him justice. The doyen of celebrity photographers has got this pile of pictures, a foot high with all the famous

royalty. Imagine who turns up for Richard Attenborough's birthday party. The editors go, did you talk to him? No. Did you talk to her? No. Did you talk to him? No. It goes through them. And I didn't. Eventually, I said, look, I didn't really talk to anyone. I spoke to Clive Anderson a bit. I'll write up. None of it gets into the paper. And so the next day, they send me to Elina's L'Etois on Charlotte Street for a reception for British Oscar winners.

So it's a reception. It's not like I'm on someone's doorstep or I've woken them up. It's a reception for the press and the Oscar winners to mingle and celebrate. And there's a rumour that Sean Connery's going to turn out. And all the old hands are like, no, he won't. He won't come at all. But Alina, who was an extraordinary woman, she said, no, I really think he's going to. And then you think, well, of course you're saying that, because it's your party.

And you want us all to hang around. But then this little whisper goes around. Sean Connery's just turned up. He's pulling up outside. It's a proper little red carpet thing. So 50% of me is thinking, this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me. This is so good. I've got a little notebook in my hand and everything.

And 50% of me is going to be able to talk to him either. And he marches past all of us. He treats all of the journalists with contempt, so he didn't single me out. But I think, well, I can't go back. I cannot go back to the office and say I didn't talk to Sean Connery, like proper Hollywood superstar. And I'd done a tiny bit of research on the cuts machine, and his son Jason had just made a film of Macbeth.

So I called out something like, have you had the chance to see Jason's Macbeth yet, Mr. Connery? And he's already four foot past the press pack, walking, stalking up the corridor. And he actually stopped. and just goes, no. And that was it. And I thought, well, that.

And then I don't know where this came from. I have no idea where this came from. I called, what's wrong, Mr. Connery? Are you a bit jealous that you never got the chance to play the part yourself? In my memory, at this point, all the other journalists who'd been doing it for years, they all peel away from them,

like a kind of punch cartoon, you know? They're all disappearing into that, Homer, disappearing into the hedge. And he stops, and he turns around, and he stalks back, He stomps back down the corridor, which in my memory now is about half a mile long. But it's all in slow motion. And he leans in quite hard with his two fingers.

He hits me quite hard on the end of the nose. And he goes, I played the part before you were born. Do your fucking homework, shunny. And I'm like, oh, hallelujah. Now I'm 50% terrified and 50% oh, yes. What a story. And I think in the personal mythology, that is the point at which everything started to slot into place. 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.