Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Jojo Moyes (Part One)

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

This week, we’re on Hampstead Heath with the brilliant bestselling author Jojo Moyes and her gorgeous dog Sisu. Sisu is a Bosnian rescue dog who had a very dramatic entrance into Jojo’s life which ended up with a call to the pet detective. It’s clear now that Sisu and Jojo have a very special bond - and Raymond absolutely being a part of Introvert Dogs Club! Jojo tells us about her childhood rebellions, her extraordinary early jobs and how she coped with toxic workplaces in the 90s. Jojo’s new novel We All Live Here is a warm-hearted, wry and empathetic novel about a woman getting to grips with her estranged family. You can order your copy here! Read more about Jojo’s work at https://www.jojomoyes.com/Follow @jojomoyesofficial on Instagram 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.

Believe me, once you've cleaned men's toilets at a transport company, you will work so hard that you never have to do that again. That was one of my early jobs. Learned a lot. This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I went for a stroll on London's hamster teeth with best-selling author Jojo Moise and her adorable Bosnian rescue dog, Sisu. Jojo, as you probably know, has had an extraordinarily successful career as a novelist since her very first book was published 23 years ago.

she sold over 57 million books, including, of course, the phenomenally popular Me Before You, which went on to become a huge Hollywood movie starring Amelia Clark and Sam Claflin. I had a very good feeling about this walk the minute we clapped eyes on Jojo and Sisu, partly because Sisu, it turns out, is a bit of a gentle, sensitive soul like Raymond. And any fellow member of introvert Dogs Club is welcome in Raymond's gang. So the four of us had the loveliest stroll, chatting about some of the fellow. of the unusual jobs Jojo had to do before making it as a writer. Minicab controller was definitely my favourite. She also talked very honestly about the rejection she faced before her first manuscript

got sold and the really solid work ethic she clearly has that has brought her all the success she enjoys today. We also chatted about her brilliant new novel, We All Live Here, which I devoured in 24 hours. It's a beautiful story about the joyful messiness of families, female solidarity and how it's never too late to reboot your life. It's a thing of joy and you'll love it. So do order your copy now. Ray and I absolutely loved our walk with these two and I think you're going to adore them too. So I'm going to stop talking now so you can get to know the fabulous pair yourself. Here's Jojo and Sisu and Ray Ray. She's very stubborn. So if she stops, I just have to stop, I'm afraid, because she just...

And also she thinks she shouldn't be on the lead from this point. So she will be... mightily offended if we go another 50 yards and she's still on the lead. Come on, Ray. Your dog's going off the lead. Yeah. I will do that with Ray shortly, but the reason I'm not going to yet is because he is such a slow walker. Well, she's quite slow. Come, Baba.

Come, Baba. Yeah, she should be okay because she tends to stay near me. Unless she's in a mood with me, in which case she will deliberately cross the road or just. to walk off while giving me backward looks as if to see see this is what you get she's basically a vengeful midlife women which is why I love her do you know I think I want to get on very well with her good girl come on oh darling hello my sweet I think you must have treats have you got treats I haven't know in that case she just liked okay that's rare she just really like anybody do you know what I think I just so smell of dogs now

Do you know what I mean, JoJo? I feel it's in my paws. No pun intended. That is my fear that people walk into my house and just go, so it gets hoovered every single day. There are a lot of air fresheners and smelly candles and things. I don't think it smells. I'm sure my friends would have told me.

I can't believe I'm opening a podcast with talking about the fact that I'm afraid my house smells. This is good. isn't it? Can you just stop me if I start talking about sex or something? This is not smart, right? Okay. Come on. Anyway, so, I'm obviously with the wonderful Jojo Moyes, and we are with your dog. One of them, yeah. One of your dog. So do you want to talk us through who we have here today? Okay, we have Sisu, who is an 11-year-old, possibly, Bosnian rescue. Oh, great. And already, we need to get the poo bags. Can I give you this? She's taking a comfort break as we speak, not Jojo that is.

Oh God, and as every dog owner knows. Here we go. Autumn is the worst time for this kind of activity. Oh Jesus. She's doing another one, Jojo. No, that's just a wee. Come on, darling. She'll come, she'll come.

She just insists on doing everything at her own. pace and in her own way. She's so lovely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh my sweetheart. I really feel I'm bonding with her.

Well that's quite rare for her to go up to people. She's quite clear on her likes and dislikes. Oh, look at your dog behind her. What a sweet pair. Ray quite likes her, doesn't he? I can see. He's following her quite beautifully. So I got her at age.

She was six, I think. Well, they thought she was approximately six to seven. And the name is, it sees... Well, she was called Carina in Bosnia. They just give all the dog's names to try and get them home. And the day after she arrived with us, Liza Tail, which is that I had dinner booked with the novelist Anne Patchett in London, who you don't stand up.

And the dog had arrived on the Sunday. in one of these bizarre kind of van drops where they're basically dropping the dogs at assigned places across Europe. And you'd gone through, had you gone through a charity to get her? A small charity, small charity. Both my dogs come from the same charity. And anyway, so I was in some motorway service station

in Billerickey at kind of half past five on a Sunday morning, which was their drop-off with all the boy races who were showing off to their girlfriends. and then I pick up this absolutely terrified dog. I knew she was afraid, but I've never seen a more petrified dog. And they helped me load her into the back of the car. And they'd given us all these instructions as to how to help her decompress. And she got to my house.

She'd never been in a house before. And so I typed her all the instructions, gave them to my ex-house. That was now ex-husband, then-husband, and my kids. And I said she's not to go for a walk. yet, you know, literally she has to, is it cortisol? I can't remember what the adrenaline levels have to drop. And I went off to London to meet Anne Patchett and woke up the next morning and she'd got out and run away.

And I think I screamed because the guilt I felt that this dog had come halfway across Europe to a safe, what was meant to be a safe haven for her. and now she was in a country that she didn't know, loose, probably terrified. It took me 11, 12 days to track her. And we ended up using a pet detective. We had night cameras up in the woods to locate where she was stopping for food. Tell me about the pet detects me. Okay, so that was because sort of free...

Did he answer the phone? All she didn't go, hello? pet detective no it was a i was actually on a i had to go on a book tour two days in so by then we'd put up flyers everywhere we'd told all that we lived in the middle of the country and we'd told all the neighboring farmers everybody you know there was a facebook thing and we'd got advice from a lost dog charity and then i had to do a work event in birmingham and i was with claire my publicist and she said oh you should speak to colin the pet detective we've just done an event with him and So I rang this guy as soon as I got back and he's the first thing he said was you probably will get her back

which was incredibly reassuring because I just thought there's no way we'll ever get her back. I just you know I thought she'll get killed on my train. And he told me, I'm an expert in dog tracking now, he told me that dogs tend to triangulate around the area that they know. They don't unless they get chased out or so anxious that they, you know, feel the need to run away. They will stay within a few miles radius of where they last were. And so he gave me all these tips until he could get to me a few days later on how to keep track of her.

So we had the neighbouring farmers let us put up camp night vision cameras. We'd laid out food and water in various places. I was running up and down my drive with the sardine oil to try and tempt her back because he said what you want to do is keep her close to the house. Right. with as many food-based things as possible. We borrowed a humane trap, a massive oversized, humane trap from a charity in Kent.

I think on day 12, we were picking her up on camera, and then on day 12, we'd laid the trap for about three days, but without setting it, we'd just put sausages and things in there. And then on the last day, we got her. At the same time, I think I'd been doing some work for my publishers in Finland, and I heard about this word Sisu, which means independently and outdoorsy. And so we called her Sisu because it just made me laugh. It was a sort of in-joke.

We had a dog behaviourist come out and he said, the best thing you can do, we lived in this house where they'd left behind one of those outdoor dog runs. And he said, put her in there for a few days until all the chemical levels in her brain drop because she'll be a flight risk. And I used to go out and sit with her in this cage thing, this. dog run every day and she didn't want me there at all she just would retreat to the back of it you know and I'd sit there and I'd throw treats towards her and try and get her trust and then on about day four or five I went to go back in the house after an hour and she started to howl

and then I realised that she did want you know company or humans and so we with the help of this behaviourist we got her indoors and he showed us how to get her walking and from the that day she just didn't look back. So the pet detective essentially he did crack the case. Yeah he did. He came with his spaniel and he... I knew he was going to have a spaniel. In some ways I'm disappointed I would have I was hoping for a bloodhound but we'll let it go. He actually located her he saw her on day one of him arriving. The man with a tractor. It was amazing. Oh look they're putting that we're on Christmas fun fair. Yeah we should say if you can hear that in the backer.

See, Sue, come on. Digger. We're on hamster teeth and they're just putting up a fair. Dodgums. Yeah, the George's. I used to come to this a lot when I was younger because I kind of grew up around North London. So, come on.

And I got very obsessed with what I call fairground art where there's, you know, and there's very, very bad news, and you're sitting there thinking, is that George Michael? You know those pictures? I bet they're on there. I bet they're on that massive thing there. And like... Really bad pictures of pop stars and things.

But literally from like 1989. Wax work Madonna from, yeah, a kind of, Madam Two Swords equivalent in Albania. Sisu! Oh, no, she's a couch. She always goes off to the circus. Come! Come!

Come! Anything where there's a bin. Oh, good girl. Sisu saw the fairground being erected. You can take the dog out of the... The stray, or you can't take the stray out of the dog. She's like, yeah, I think there might be hot dogs here. Did you want to join the circus? No, don't join the circus.

Well, it's so wonderful to meet you and your beautiful dog with an incredible story. And I really love her already. I think she's very... She's a very gentle soul and she's very smart. She will read a room and work out who she likes and doesn't like within seconds. And she's usually right. So she's very observant. Yeah. That's like you then, because writers are like that, aren't it?

It may be. But she's slightly hyper. vigilant as well in a you know maybe I am too but she's worse than I am she didn't sleep for months after we got her she would be half asleep she would allow herself that light dose and then for the last couple of years since I moved to London she does her walk in the morning and then she's desperate to have her breakfast and then she goes upstairs and she lays on my bed and she sleeps so deeply she snores like an old man and that's her place of safety that's where she's where she retreats to. She's so gentle with Ray because Ray's such a little dog and he's sometimes

fearful of bigger dogs but she's been so sweet with him he's very confident around her. I've never seen him as confident around a bigger dog. Well they all go off energy don't they? Yeah. She just gives off very benign energy. She's the least aggressive dog I've ever met in my life. I think somebody could attack her and she would she shouts for help but she doesn't bite back. I'm so glad she came into your life, Jo-Doh. I'm so might. And you've got, we should say she's not your only dog. No, there is another one called Pablo,

who is out on the Heath somewhere at the moment with my partner and my best friend. And your partner, and your, I was pretending to be interested in your partner, I'm interested in your dog. He's a golden retriever type, partner and dog. He is the exact opposite of her. He believes in a benign universe

and that everything is going to be great and he just spends his whole life running up to people to be loved. There are lots of walking to us today. There you go. The thing I loved when I first came back to London and walked the dogs was for years, I saw nobody on my dog walks. I lived in a very remote part of Essex and Suffolk.

And there was just nobody. And I thought I loved it. I thought I loved being on my own. And then when I moved back here, here, the fact that you could buy a coffee, and I know it sounds really ridiculous, but to be able to buy a coffee and walk and then look at all human life every day has just become such a joy, like an understated joy connection. So that's interesting, Jojo. That tells me that you're probably a bit more of a... See Sue, come on. And you're someone that gets your energy

off, sort of encounters with other people. Do you like... I didn't think so. But now I think I do and I think maybe it's on the back of COVID you know we were also disconnected and all so lonely and separate and I think yeah what I realized after that good girl is that I I'm really lucky where I live I have my daughter two streets away and I have my best friend 20 minutes away and this is in North London not yeah not too far from where we are today that's right and so normally a Monday morning is my walk with my best friend Kathy but we're doing this instead One of my best friends, Kathy, lives around here. Oh, really? Oh, my God.

We don't share a best friend without knowing about it. Can you imagine if she'd been lying to us? And I said, oh, yeah, you're a really good one. Oh, look at this. This is a cute one. I want to go back to your early years. Yeah. Am I right in thinking you grew up in Hackney?

Yeah. And I love the sound of your childhoods because your parents were sculptors. Well, my father was a sculptor. My mother was an illustrator. and so when I look back it was quite an eccentric childhood but of course you don't think that when you're growing up because it's just your childhood and we had an indoor tortoise and a cat called Arnold

but that was it and they are not very animal-y people or my mother's gone now but they weren't very animaly people my dad later got a dog but I didn't grow up in the way that I am now which is kind of completely suffused in animals but I loved them I loved them from when I was tiny and I

wanted to be a country child but I was urban so that's interesting because when I was growing up I grew up with sounds like probably reasonably similar like I reckon our parents might have got on because my parents were sort of in the theatre and oh yeah my dad worked for the BBC and all that sort of stuff so it was very

like I would describe my parents as the kind of people if a check did come in it would be spent on first editions and we wouldn't pay the gas bill do you know what I mean? Oh I think both mine were quite sensible around money I've always been really sensible around money

and I think they yeah they it's quite interesting because it's only now in middle age that I've sort of started to listen to other people talk about money and how weird and emotional some people get about money and I'm completely unemotional about it. It's a practical thing. I try and make it work. I've

always paid my bills. I remember one time in my life when I had a debt because I'd miscalculated what living abroad would do to my tax bill. And I just remember it was a £1,500 tax bill in the early 90s and I used to wake up every morning feeling like there was a juggerna on my chest, the weight of that bill. I couldn't bear it. And so I'm not someone that could ever buy a first edition instead of pay my bills. No matter how much I wanted it, I would be the sensible person.

So that's interesting because the reason I said that is often, not always, as is obviously the case with you, but often that sort of creativity sometimes goes hand to hand with a certain amount of life. And that was certainly true in the family I grew up in. But it sounds like that wasn't the case with you. No, and it's funny, I've never thought about that until you, just said it. No, my dad ended up, he couldn't be a sculptor after I came along because he had to support the family. And so he set up a small business that moved art around for galleries. And that

that grew and grew and grew and grew and became a huge business with a royal warrant. And he ended up moving the Queen's Pictures and the government art collection and all the big galleries used his company. So he's a very canny businessman. And I think a lot of my businessmen, and I think a lot of my this sense I've probably inherited from him. I am that boring person who checks the bank account every day, the currency rates, the stock market. I do all that.

Did he get very bored of people quoting if I was a sculptor but then again now at him? Do you know what? You may be the first. I'm seeing him on Friday so I'll have to ask him. Oh, the dog walkers are out over there. Oh yeah. Come on Ray.

just pick him up briefly. Oh, is it too muddy for him? Well, he can get a little bit grand about mud. Raymond, it's barely muddy, you silly, Billy. So, or someone, I think someone's having a recreational cigarette. Oh, there's been a few of those already this morning. That's been a surprise coming back to North London and everything smells of weed. Do you know what? I get high going to the shop sometimes. Do you know what I respect about the weed smokers around here? They have such an amazing work ethic. They start so early. I'm not at 8am. It's amazing. I couldn't function. I can't even I've never even been a day drinker like I would be on the floor. No me too. We won't think too hard about that. So I'm getting a sense of your family life. Yeah. With these fabulously interesting

parents of yours from what you've told me already about the way you approach, you know, just life and admin and money. Was that always the case? Were you quite a sort of organised, considered, responsible kid? I think I was, gosh, that's an interesting question. I don't know if I was organised.

I was quite a rebellious teenager. But I do remember, like all my kind of real rebellions involved hard work. Like, I bought my own horse when I was 14. with the proceeds of a cleaning job. And I didn't tell my parents until after I'd bought him

because I knew that they would not allow me to because we lived in Hackney. And I used to ride at a local stables and then I found that there were all sorts of funny little stables dotted around East London at that point, hidden behind kind of garage doors and under railway arches. And so I bought this horse who I'd been looking after. And then I came home and told my parents,

and they just looked at me in shock and said, well, you can jolly well go and unbuy him then. You know, what are we going to do with a horse for goodness sake? And I said, well, I've raised the money. The other way around. But my dad said to me afterwards, we were furious, but then afterwards we were also quite proud because you'd just done it.

And then I guess the other rebellion I could think of was I worked nights at a minicab office on the Bethnal Green Road from I think it was something like five in the evening till one in the morning. I'm obsessed with this part of your life, we're going to come back to it. And my dad said to me afterwards if the worst rebellion you could think of

was to do a hideous shift in a minicab office for £15 an evening, then clearly we're doing all right. Yeah, my rebellions are quite weird, I guess. Well, I like it, because your rebellions always seem to have quite a focused end goal. Yeah.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I have had little bits of my life where I've cut loose, but I don't think I'm built that way. I'm just, I'm someone who's always looking at the consequences. You know, I find it so interesting when you talk to people. Are you someone who never thinks about consequences or are you constantly calculating? And I'm a constantly calculating person.

And I wish I wasn't. It would be so liberating to not think about it. People like me, I'm the... You're the opposite. What's the consequence? We need people like you in our lives and the world. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

And I'm very drawn to people like you. Not in the creepy way I would you to understand, but do you know what I mean? I think it's interesting. And I'm probably drawn to the opposite because I don't want to be careful all the time. I don't want to be boring. I need someone to kind of kick me out of that mindset. But so you're interested in writing. Did you always have a passion for it?

Did you know you had a talent for it at a young age? No, I didn't know I had a talent, but I knew I loved doing it. It was very Jojo. We're going to go this way. We're going to go into the woods. And I was an only child till I was 19 when both my parents had remarried other people and then started having new families. And only children in my experience are quite...

There's maybe a generalisation. You tell me what your experience is. was but I also find them quite sophisticated and adult because they're spending a lot of time around adults is that true of you I mean you'd have to ask other people who knew me at the time but I met my old lodger some couple of years ago who had been in our house when I was about three or four and he did say you were an extraordinarily precocious child he said I always knew you were going to do something I don't think like I'm not the brightest I'm not the smartest or most talented, but I do work harder. I will push harder than anybody else. That's the difference.

I will apply myself until I can do the thing. Maybe that's the most useful kind of intelligence. It's really useful. I mean, it's not always great for you. I think it's also caused me some problems over the years, because sometimes you really should just not do a thing or let go of a thing. Oh look, anyone got any rubbish? Seizu's met another dog, she quite likes. She sometimes gets really uncharacteristically giddy around dogs that she doesn't know. It's incredibly sweet. Hello, you. Raymond.

Oh, you're so adorable. His coat, is it a nightmare to keep untangled? It is. It's a real labour of love, but I've got him into quite enjoying it. Yeah. He started doing this thing, Jojo. It used to be a nightmare, but now I lay out a lovely Angora pillow over him. And I get the brush and all the stuff to comb him with.

And when he sees me get the comb. He knows it's far day. He lays out waiting for me. It's like I'm being seduced by some slightly sleazy man. Right. Should we go this way? Yeah, I'm sorry. It's only muddy just at this bit and then it gets nicer.

No, he's fine. But the woods are really lovely. So that's interesting. Did you apply yourself, Jojo, from an early age to writing? Were you thinking I enjoyed this? I loved writing creative stories. Yeah. I was a big reader and a big.

writer but I didn't know we didn't know any authors apart from Sheldon who lived at the end of our road and wrote about voodoo I mean that's a whole other podcast on Sheldon and Voodoo and introduced me to Halva

which I thought was the most disgusting thing I'd ever eaten it's quite a particular taste That was very big in the 70s I used to eat Halva It was big in the 70s wasn't it and yeah so I didn't know any authors so it didn't occur to me

that you could be one Did it occur to you that there was currency potentially in being creative because of your parents? I think it was almost expected. Yeah, I mean, there are no science brains, well, until I had children. Yeah, everybody in my family, that side of, you know, my mum and dad's family were kind of, actually, maybe not my dad's family, my mum's family were very creative. There's at least two other books in my mum's family. one is an illustrated Encyclopedia of Working Boats of Britain

that my grandfather wrote and then another one is a book called Time Bomb about the Guildford Four that my uncle wrote so yeah I guess my mum's side of the family at least were very creative and my dad was probably the first artistic person in his family are you popular as a kid oh gosh

I don't think I was popular or unpopular but what I did do was make good friends. You know, my best friend I've known since school and we still meet up at least twice a week. I think that's always a good sign in someone. Yeah, I think only children are generally quite good at friendships because we need them.

Yeah, do you know, my best friend Jane is an only child. And we've been mates since I was 11. Yeah. And I would say she's so good at that, nurturing and caretaking the friendship. And do you know what I mean? She's brilliant at that. Although I'm so envious of people with, I mean, my siblings, I love them dearly,

but they're all 20 years younger than me at least. Why is that? Is that because of your parents? Yeah, because my dad remarried and my mum remarried. And so my mum had my brother. I call them my brother and my sisters, even though we're only half blood or whatever. I just, I can't be bothered to make the distinction because I love them. But I didn't have that growing up with a sibling thing.

And I watched my two sisters together when they were young. and that way that sisters have of one minute they're literally punching each other's lights out on a sofa and then somebody else will walk in and they'll intervene and they'll go, no, no, we're fine. And I never understood that way that you could cross from one state of being to another. If someone upsets me, I'm kind of upset for six months.

I'm like, what happened? I think one thing that I had, she's sadly no longer with this, but my late sister, she, one thing that I think she really did teach me, I agree was conflict resolution. Yeah, was I needed 20 years of therapy to master that one. Oh, I needed that too. You went to university, didn't you? I went late.

I didn't want to go to university, and I did two years of, what would you call them? I think menial is the wrong word, but let's just say ground-level jobs. I was a market trader, and I worked at a minicab office, and I was a barmaid. It's like an episode of EastEnders. Oh, no. Do you know what? And it's been the best thing for a writer. Yes.

Because I have seen every state of human life, every element of the human condition. You know, 2am on the Bethnal Green Road trying to separate a fighting couple or, you know, waving a baseball bat, someone who was coming at you over the counter. I learned a lot. And I worked for Club 1830. I don't know if you remember that. Writing brochures. we're going to go this way way

actually we can walk we'll walk we can go through the mud he loves being carried I should have brought his papoose yes I have a papoose no judgment

I listen absolutely no judgment here so yes I imagine that's really that was good for negotiation skills because you were Club 1830 at that time

all the brochures were illustrated with pictures of real customers, clients. Yeah. But they were 90% of them drunk. So you would be negotiating with drunk people to try and stay still or pose in a group picture.

We should say if anyone's not aware. So it was a holiday company for 18 to 30 year olds where I soon discovered the primary aim was to get people... To shag? To shag. Yeah. And to get people as drunk as possible to facilitate that shagging.

Is that what you put on your CV? No, it was... traumatic at times. I used to go over, like I was insulated from some of it because I would go out with the photographer who was a good friend of mine and we would just sort of walk around blinking at the horror of it all. But you'd be scooping people up off the floor and crying women had just contracted some hideous disease or, I mean the whole thing was revolting. It was revolting. It kind of taught me a lot about what I did not want. I was going to say, eye opening in a slightly kind of traumatising way, I imagine.

Yeah, it wasn't a pretty thing. I'm not seeing men. Not seeing men at their best. And also they discovered that the poor reps, they would work them so hard. And they discovered that if they gave them two days off at weekends or even one day off, that they would get ill or that they wouldn't come back in. So they just kept them working through. And there was this thing called Pro Plus that came out of the time, a kind of, I don't know, glucose tablets kind of nuclear strength.

So all these reps would live off pro plus and then have nervous breakdowns at the end of the season. And I remember walking in, it became so normalised. I remember walking into the lues at the head offices which were in Camden Town at the time. And there was just this girl in the fetal position and the floor of the toilets kind of crying. And someone would step over her to go and use the hand dryer, you know, because you just got used to these poor young people being broken by a season. and I'm probably going to get sued now, but there you go. I don't think it exists anymore.

But when you've done jobs like that, as you say, and worked as a market trader and a minicab office, you are sounding like a contestant on the apprentice now, but hopefully slightly more self-aware. Exactly. And you didn't call itself Team Ignite or whatever. Tim Excelsior. I think what that does do, when you've done a myriad of jobs like that,

I think you only realise how useful those jobs, are further down the line. Oh, definitely. I personally believe. When you're doing them, you're like, oh, but actually, when I think of exactly those sort of jobs where I had to work in Gap as a greeter, and then I was like, and it's like, we've all done those jobs, you know. Well, except you look at like our government, our last government,

and so many of the people in that government hadn't done those jobs. And I do think, if you are dealing with public governance, you should actually have to do. do at least two years in those jobs so that you actually understand the world because so many of these people who were allegedly in charge had no experience of life beyond their cloistered little, you know, the Jacob Rees-Moggs of the world. They just... I think you're right. I think everyone, it should be like national service. Yes. Everyone should have to do... Just do a proper job. A some sort of service job. Clean some toilets. Because believe me, once you've cleaned men's toilets

at a transport company, you will work so hard that you never have to do that again. Yeah. That was one of my early jobs. Learned a lot. So you were a real grafter and I presume you ended up, you studied sort of at journalism college as well, didn't you? Yeah, well I think after two years of these jobs, I realised I needed to do something else. And I went to Royal Holloway and Bedford New College and I'd been working with blind people at the NatWest Bank. I used to type Braille statements for blind people. That was one of my jobs. Your CV is extremely. Ordinary. Yeah, it's a bit strange.

And anyway, so I was really good at Braille. Never mind. I want to, honestly, this will be a film about your life. Yeah. So I got, I applied to university. I'd had an ill-advised engagement that I needed to release myself from. What romantic engagement? And I needed to leave the area for reasons that we won't go into.

Of course. And I applied to university and I got in because I'd been working. working with blind people, I had this work experience on my CV. And so I did sociology and social policy, which I hadn't got a clue what I was signing up for, but I thought Royal Holloway was a really pretty building. And I'd been living in rented accommodation on the Bulls Pond Road, and it looked much nicer. So that was pretty much my sole reason for going to you. Love those reasons.

And then I loved it. And while I was there, I started doing work experience. I was making tea for the Egerman Staines News, the now defunct, sadly, Eggemann-Stain's News. And you got also some experience at The Independent, or was that afterwards? Well, no, that was after. I got my, I got a, I won a bursary to do a postgraduate course at the independent on the back of my work at the Eggerman Staines News. They were impressed by my ability to spell names right for golden weddings and anniversaries.

So I went and studied and then. Well, you've had a lot of experience in the mini-cab office. Yes. You've got to get names right. Don't underestimate the importance of the phone. So I'm ringing up to get the cab. Ring, ring, ring, wing. East End car service, where do you want to go?

I can't have anything with you before 20 minutes. Okay, passenger P-O-B is on his way. By the way, in case anyone young is listening. We didn't have Uber, but okay. No, no, we didn't. We had lots of really dodgy minicab offices. And then you had to wait and you had no idea of one. Look at this little doggy's face.

You get the best dogs here. So good. Just the variety of dogs. I love about walking on the heath is that everybody smiles at everybody else's dogs but nobody looks at the face like nobody looks at each other they just smile at the dog you ended up working at the independent yes I was there for six months then got made redundant because everybody who worked at the independent got made redundant at some point and so then I went to work in Hong Kong for a year and

that was interesting but it wasn't really for me and I'd kept in touch with the people at the independent and the next time they had a job opening which was we're go this way. Oh yeah. Which was um... Oh look he's really happy, Jason. On the night desk. He's loving this walk. Are you having fun? Yes, you love that dog. He's just so sensitive to dogs. And his character completely changes. Really? Depending on the dog he's with. He seems just very cheerful and straightforward. Well, that's because he's comfortable with your dog's energy. But if he's with a dog, I sort of sort of... slightly more, let's...

Boisterous? Yes. Invasive? That's what parents say when their kids are badly behaved, isn't it? She's a bit boisterous. She's very spirited. But when he's with spirited. She's very boundered. She won't invade somebody's space. I think that's the thing. I think Ray's very big on boundaries. Unless you're eating cheese, in which case she has no respect for personal boundaries. I don't know. I mean, cheese. I honestly, he turns into some... We can understand that. Yeah. He turns into like,

Patrick Bateman around cheese. So... Yes, so then I went to work for the Independent and I came back and worked on their night desk and then from the night desk I managed to get over. Sorry, I did lie to you about the mud. Oh no, I like it. Well, I've got my riding boots on.

So you worked in newspaper offices. I would have been there... That's what I did. And I was sort of, you know, did my early training there as a young woman and... Yeah. Looking back, Jojo, it's only... looking back on it now that I see Sue she'll pop out from behind a bush in a minute

there she is yay good girl see Sue you can get her darling she's like reward me I came back a busy she is she is yeah it's only now Jojo that I look back on that time and what do you think and I think it was a pretty toxic place for a young woman to be, quite honestly. We sucked it up. I normalized appalling things. Oh my God. Do you think that?

I discussed this with my best friend all the time. The stuff that we normalized in the 90s and thought was acceptable. Did you see that loaded documentary the other day? I haven't been able. I interviewed James Brown at the height of the madness and I think he slept through 70% of the interview and I was so furious. We've made peace since. Yeah. But now I think, what was I doing even tolerating that?

Well, I felt when I watched it, because I knew. But it's meant to be quite sad as well. Well, I knew James and I knew quite a few, and knew a few of those loaded guys. And I, I suppose I would have called myself a Ladet, one of those girls. Yeah. And quite honestly, we were all encouraged to be like that. I felt really ashamed of myself being part of the problem,

looking at that documentary. Do you know what I mean? I do know what you mean, but I also think it's important in life to just look at the decisions you made based on the information you had at the time and the age you were and what the system was telling you. And I think we could all beat ourselves up about how we bought into that. It was a lie. It was a lie. It was disgusting.

I mean, you know, you listen to Gal Porter, talk about how violated she was by having a naked body projected onto Parliament. But you had to just go with the laugh. It was all bans. I mean, in the news desk, you know, in the newsroom, it was the same. And the independent, believe me, was a very nice place to work compared to a lot of Fleet Street. But there was still, you know. It was, you realise it was a decade of sort of casual cruelty, but also there was that misogyny.

But also the bullying. I remember my old news editor throwing a phone at my head as like a. came in once. I just ducked because it was what he was like. I'm not going to name him now because he's dead and it feels mean to say since he can't defend himself. I had another news editor who used to say something so filthy and appalling to me every morning when I came in and sat down that I can't repeat it on your podcast. But it, let me, let me bleep it. I'm going to, I would sit down his head. I'm going to rip your beep, beep off and beep. down the fucking, oh sorry, beep, beep. I didn't do that very well. Did I even swear?

Okay, I'm going to rip your fucking head off and shit down the fucking hole. That was his morning greeting to me. And I, being raised in the 80s and 90s, like a good capitalist, patriarchal handmaiden, whatever it is we want to call it, wouldn't leave the job because I wouldn't be bullied out and somehow I thought that was good on my part and so and the only thing that made me feel much better was I once bumped into this man's wife a long time later when my career was writing and she said oh he always talked so fondly of you you know you were so good and I thought I'm not going to have this so I just said to her before after he was ripping my head off I told her what he used to say to me and I said I used to get so traumatized going to work that I would have

to listen to Mozart on the bus, on the way to work, to make myself go. Because if I thought about what I was heading into every morning, I would have had a panic attack. So I would literally self-medicate using Mozart. Thank God I couldn't afford hard drugs. And she was absolutely shell-shocked. She couldn't believe that this man, who she adored, her lovely husband, would talk like that to a woman, but I thought I'm not going to make this okay. I'm not going to say it was fine because it wasn't and I only can see it now, as you say, with a couple of decades of hindsight, you go, no, that's not okay. That's not okay. And actually my daughter has come to me with work problems in the past. She went to work for a cafe that was deeply dysfunctional. And she said,

I don't want to give up because I've only been there a week and I just listen to what she said. And I went, no, you get out of there. There is nothing that makes sense. it worth you staying in this environment, just leave. It's like any toxic relationship. Yes. And then the sunk cost fallacy takes over where you think I've invested all this time. Yeah. But I think what's interesting is that also that toxicity, you know, personally I think

it's helpful to have women in a work environment as well as men. I'm not saying women, you know, don't have their own issues and brilliant. And actually, at the independent, which was a, I hasn't tell you, the independent was not the place where these things took place. No, of course, no. But the woman who promoted me to the news desk did so when I was pregnant. That's how much faith she had in me. And I'm still friends with her now.

We just met for a coffee recently. And throughout my life, women have been the lifters, uppers. Your career as a best-selling author who sold, Am I right in thinking we're up to about 57 million now? Yes, 57 million. I know. It's a bit nuts. So what I love about your story, especially that you're such a fabulous writer,

but also what I love is that this is such an inspirational story to anyone who's thinking of giving up writing. It's a story of persistence. Yeah. And you, your first, was it your first couple of manuscripts or first three? Three books. My first three books were rejected. Yeah, and I was writing them while I was a journalist. And you'd written them in their entirety. This wasn't just... Yeah, yeah, no, no, this was whole books. I've still got them on bits of paper at home somewhere. I was so depressed by the time number three got rejected that I was pregnant as well. I think I went to bed for a couple of days. It just, it was too hard by then. And I'd had an agent by then who'd been interested. And then I just had an idea, for another one. I'd had a conversation with my Australian grandmother about how she'd known my

grandfather was the one for her and they'd become engaged over two weeks. She was Australian, he was Scottish, he was posted out in Singapore. I know it was Sydney, sorry, no, it was Sydney when they met and that became the genesis for another book and this time I only wrote three chapters and a synopsis and then it became the focus of a bidding war and six publishers bid on it and it was a sheltering rain right yeah terrible title i mean why did you say that it was called a temporal kingdom well i don't we really struggled with the title for that one it was a sort of generational saga at the time the big saga writers the maive binchies and the rosamunuches were announcing their retirement so suddenly publishers had a big hole in their schedules and I had happened to write a book

about three generations of women and so that's why it's having been completely unpopular suddenly they wanted my books your first book did really well didn't it it did pretty well I didn't none of my first eight books particularly set the publishing world like I never made the top ten but then that's because you're comparing them to I suppose I mean yes It was interesting because I read and I was really interesting this, that you, was it a publisher had said to you, your career is unrecoverable? Yes. No, after book eight, my sales had really dropped. I'd ended in a kind of downward spiral because what happened at the time was the supermarkets were really dominant in book buying. And if you didn't chart, the supermarkets wouldn't take you. And then if the supermarkets didn't take you, you wouldn't chart.

So you became stuck. in this downward trajectory. Yeah, Catch 202. And my then-publisher's Hodder, who had really gamely stuck with me over these eight books. And they'd paid me pretty well for someone who wasn't selling enough. They lost faith. Although there is a bit of a Beatles. Didn't sign The Beatles moment coming. Oh, no.

I feel bad for them. They passed on. Wait for it. Well, no, they didn't entirely pass. They offered me one sixth of what I'd been getting for me before you. and I recognised that there was a general lack of excitement about what the idea of this book. So who Jo's publicist is with us and she's grimacing in only the way that someone who understands the book world can. And Penguin Michael Joseph offered me a fairly small advance, but they were so positive and so strategic. They knew exactly what they were going.

Louise Moore, the head of the company, said, I know. exactly what I'm going to do with you and this is what we're going to do and she she'd read lots of my books she was a big fan and she just filled me with confidence I thought this woman really knows what she's doing and she said to me afterwards you know we thought that me before you would start the business of building you back up but we didn't realize quite what would happen but in the meantime we had had an offer from another publisher who I'll remain nervous who then after two meetings withdrew their office saying they didn't think that my career could be resurrected. That's got a hurt for them now.

Well, I try to feel bad for them. Oh, look at this. Little. Hello. Jingle bells. Oh, Jingle bells. So cute. Oh. Ray's my little friend. Is it a little... Is it a miniature pincher? Yes, you're right, Jojo. Hello, bye. Very cute dog. Your dog's not sure. What are they called, your dogs? Gucci and Louie. Ray, I think they're too posh for the likes of us. Oh, Louis in Tyre, that's why he's very interested. Raymond. Raymond is not sure.

Raymond is giving him the BDI. Oh no, he's a, he's called an imperial Shih Tzu. He's very imperial. Yeah. Are you talking about me? I really hope you love you. 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