Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Jon Ronson (Part One)

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

This week on Walking The Dog, the brilliant journalist and author Jon Ronson joins Emily and Raymond from New York City! Jon has an adorable - albeit sometimes needy - elderly Spaniel Poodle cross called Josie who emigrated to the US with Jon and his family, alongside their other dog Floppy, a Tibetan Terrier, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago.Jon tells us about an infamous portrait that hung in the bar of the hotel run by his family in Wales, why being an outsider makes a good journalist, and what happened when he emailed his teenage bullies to tell them that he was a bestselling author. Part Two of this chat will be available on Thursday!Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Night is on tour in Autumn 2024. Visit https://www.fane.co.uk/jon-ronson for dates and ticketsThings Fell Apart Season Two is available now on BBC Sounds and all podcast platforms Read more about Jon’s work at http://www.jonronson.com/ Follow Jon on X and Instagram @jonronsonFollow 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.

Elaine was always put off dogs by her mother who would always say you can't get a dog because then they die and you get upset. You know, that's not the best attitude, right? What about all the years before they die? This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I got to chat to, frankly, one of the most brilliant men on the planet, journalist, author and documentary maker John Ronson. John lives in New York, so this week it's more of a Zoom with the dogs while they lays about snoring. John's got a beautiful Spaniel Poodle Cross called Josie

and we also chatted about the dog he sadly lost not long ago a Tibetan terrier called floppy. It's hard to know where to even start when you're trying to sum up this man's career highlights because whatever he writes just seems to get the world talking. There's his book, so you've been publicly shamed about online humiliation and the psychopath test which got us all wondering if we were in fact secret psychopaths

or the men who stare at goats, which was adapted into a Ewan McGregor film. John was every bit as funny and as fascinating as you'd expect. And his family anecdotes are honestly a thing of joy. I cannot wait for you to hear the one about the family portrait. I loved my chat with John. And I should say that season two of his brilliant documentary series, Things Fell Apart, about the Culture Wars in America, is available now on BBC Sounds and it's so worth a listen.

And if you want to see John in person, and he'll be touring the UK in the autumn, chatting about his specialist subject, psychopaths, in John Ronson's Psychopath Nights. So do go book your tickets now at fane.co.uk. I'll stop talking now and hand over to the man himself. Here's John and Josie and Ray Ray. Hi, John.

Hello. John, can you see Ray? Yeah, Ray's adorable. What an adorable dog. Do you like him? Very much. My dog, I've only got one dog now, one of our dogs, and the other dog, I don't know if I should say that in front of Ray, and the other dog is very, very old.

She's out at the moment, but when she comes back in, you'll hear her coughing. She just coughs. She coughs all night long, like in that Leonard Cohen song. So you'll hear some coughing. I'm so thrilled to have you on this podcast. I'm holding Ray here, and I'm going to start just by saying, I am with, I'm so sorry. I was about to do a lovely introduction and Ray just lick my nose.

John Ronson, how do you feel about dogs licking noses? Oh, I'm entirely in favour. My dogs can, I'm happy to be licked. You know, and the dog can take the lead, is what I'm saying. I can, I'm speaking of dogs taking the lead, one of the issue, one of the negative issues I have about dog ownership is the whole, tell me whether this is just me. But when I'm not taking a dog for a walk on a leash,

I sort of feel a little uncomfortable about the power balance. It's almost like some sort of S&M thing. Like I'm, do you know what I mean? I don't like it. It makes it feel uncomfortable. I always want to be on like a level playing field and I don't have this sort of master slave thing going on. I know what you mean.

I do sometimes look at my dog. I'm already so immersed in this chat with John Ronson because he's the most fascinating, brilliant man I've ever encountered. I've only met him four minutes ago. But I should say I'm with the wonderful John Ronson. I sound like John Travolta, the wickedly talented John Ronson. I do sometimes feel slightly uncomfortable. I agree with you.

When I have Ray on the lead where I feel it is some sort of awful punishment harness, I've put him in. Yeah, you're suddenly like some kind of dominatrix, and that's not why I've got a dog to dominate it. I mean, I understand that sometimes you have to have a dog on a leash because otherwise they're going to like run into the road and get hit by a car. Although I'd tell you something, oh, I'm going to tell you a sad story. Many years ago when Floppy and Josie were young and my son was young, we went off on holiday to, I think, Italy. And we left the dogs with a dogminder who was like living in the house. And anyway, she took the dogs to the park and the dogs both escaped. They ran out of the park and we're obviously looking for us.

and they found our dogs like trotting up the pavement together, like, you know, trying to get home so they could find us, like, you know, like the incredible journey or something, big dog and little dog. It broke my heart. I don't think we ever went on holiday again after that because a holiday without the dogs is no holiday. The emotional blackmail of the dogs.

I love it. Can I, John Ronson, please talk me through your history with dogs. I want to know firstly you have one dog currently, is that right? Yeah, we had two now we've got one. Soon we'll have none because she's very old. And then we're going to wait a little while, go to Wyoming. And then when we're back, we're going to get another dog. That's our plan.

So you have Josie, am I right, in saying currently? Is that your current dog? And she's a Tibetan terrier? No, floppy was a Tibetan terrier. Josie's a Spaniel Poodle Cross, a very, very old one. I mean, not so much now, but for quite a long time, for the last year or so, Josie was like veering between being like a puppy and a hospice dog, which was kind of slightly annoying in both regards.

Like first thing in the morning, she was like an annoying puppy, and then the rest of the day she's a dog that needs constant hospice care. So I did say to Elaine the other day that I felt that I was slightly less in sympathica with Josie than in the past, because now she just coughs and chews and coughs and chews and wants treats. And Flossie was your Tibetan Terrier, who you really... Flopi. A floppy?

Yes. We named him that actually before we got him. And he wasn't that floppy, it turned out. We should have called him alert. So floppy was your Tibetan Terrier and floppy. Did you lose floppy quite recently, John? It was probably like two years ago, maybe. I'm so sorry.

I'm dreading that day. Was it all? It must have been so sad. Well, before it happened, I was dreading it. I remember one time I was like, you know, in bed with the dogs and I suddenly got this like terrible realisation that like they were going to die. And I thought, I hope that I die before the dogs do. So I don't have to go through that.

But then, you know, one floppy died, it was fine. You know, he lived to the age that dogs live to. Imagine if someone said that about us, John. You know when John died, it was fine. You know what? If I lived to the appropriate age, then that's okay. I think it would be fine. Look, the tragedy, like the tragedy is if like a young dog dies or a dog dies like in an accident, like it's hit by a car.

If a dog lives a great life in upstate New York, running around, chasing squirrels and then, but not chasing squirrel so much that it's bad for the squirrel. and then dies at the appropriate age, then grief feels inappropriate. Again, I hear you, but if someone said that about me, I'd be really upset. I'd be fine. Look, if I died at an appropriate age, people can be fine with it. I don't care. So, John, talk me through your history. I want to get a bit of the John Ronson origin story, because you grew up in Wales, and did you have pets growing up?

up in your family? Only ever cats, never dogs. We had a series of cats, some of which didn't last long because we lived on quite a busy road in Cardiff. So they'd sometimes get hit by cars. And as a young kid losing a cat, like when I was about 10, we lost our first cat. And it was, you know, it was a terrible shock. And but we never had dogs, never had dogs. And nor did my wife, nor did Elaine. And I guess 15 or so years ago when my son was, I guess, I don't know, 10-ish, whatever, I can't figure that out. We decided to get dogs. Elaine was always put off dogs by her mother who would always say, you can't get a dog because then they die and you get upset, which isn't really the best. You know, that's not the best attitude, right?

What about all the years before they die? Can I say I love the sound of Elaine's mother. Right. So for that reason, she was just like a tough scot. Don't get a dog. They die and you get upset. But we did get a dog. And then Floppy was a great dog, but it didn't do everything that you want in a dog.

Like, wasn't that cuddly? So we then got a second dog a little bit later to provide all the services that Floppy didn't provide. You see, that's what I've done. I made sure I got a dog who's. He's very thirsty for likes because it just means he just can never get enough. Right. And also I've raised him to be a bit like sort of Norman Bates in Psycho where he's very codependent, never wants to leave the house.

Right. I want to go back to your childhood though because I'm fascinated by your childhood. And my mum's from Cardiff. And my only memory of it is my kleptomaniac grandmother took us to a shop called Howles. Oh, Howells. It was a department store. And she said, I used to nick from that shop. But the problem is they don't trust you like they used to.

Well, my father worked at Howells in the men's suits department. And word got around all the eligible Jewish girls in Cardiff that there was a new Jew in town because he was from London. And so they all checked him out. And that's how my mother met my father at Howells at the department store. I love that. So tell me a bit about your parents, because was your dad, he was a wholesale or something I read. Is that right?

Yeah, he was from London. So he moved to Cardiff to work in the men's suits department at Howells. My mother, they married. He eventually set up a warehouse called the Croft Street Warehouse where he sold, you know, wholesale goods, cutlery, furniture, Christmas decorations. I worked there on a Sunday. My mother became a social worker and that was our life. What was your kind of family energy like, John? I don't know why, but because you're very funny, I am quite dry and I imagine your parents having a really good sense of humour. That sounds quite rude, doesn't it? Your parents must have had a good sense of humour.

I've got to say, not really. These were different times. My dad was, you know, very much in his own world. to play bridge and golf and all of that stuff. And so, yeah, you know, I don't have great memories of, I don't have many memories, I mean. My dad died a few years ago. Remember they're still alive in a care home in Cardiff? So I'm going to go and visit her in a week. So that would be nice. And your family opened a, sort of it was a hotel in the back in.

Yes. Is that right? And I know this because you, told a story once about how your mother commissioned a portrait, a family portrait. After years of wholesale warehousing, they bought a hotel in the Breck and Beacons called the Nant V Lodge Hotel with my brother and his wife at the time. And it did very well and they won a big prize. They won the Welsh Hotel of the Year competition. And so to celebrate, so I'm in New York City, see you may hear some noises outside.

To celebrate, they phone me and they said, we're going to commission an artist to do a family portrait to hang in the bar. They said he was a brilliant but troubled local artist. I remember saying that to Ira Glass and for Miss American Life, and he said, nobody ever says that about plumbers. Nobody ever says, we've got a brilliant but troubled plumber

but for some reason. Troubled artist is seen as a boon, not a downside. So then my mother said, okay, we've come up with like a brainwave theme for the painting. Because this is a hotel, we're going to be like serving drinks to three celebrities of our choice.

She said, I want you to come up with three celebrities, you know, by the weekend. So as a kind of hostile, sort of passive-aggressive, silent protest, I suggested the Beverly Sisters, because they all look identical. And my mother said, you can't choose the Beverly Sisters. I said to my mother, who are you choosing? And she was Kennedy, Gandhi, and somewhere else.

I can't remember. I said, who's my father choosing? Who's dad choosing? And she said, Sevi Ballesteros, Jack Nicolaus, and another golfer. All golfers, Gary Player.

So my father was going to be serving drinks to golfers, my mother to, you know, great figures from history. I chose, Eich and Tina Turner and Boris Yeltsin. So again, it's a slightly hostile protest. So we waited. And every so often my mother would like phone the artist and say, how are you doing?

He's like, fine. And finally came the day of the big unveiling. And the artist came in with this portrait all wrapped up in a brown paper bag. And he said, I need to tell you. something. He said, what I want you to know is that I'm going through an artistic phase that some people find hard to connect with. And he said, what I'm saying is that there's a chance that you won't like it. So my mother said, you know, up in it. So he rips open the paper. And all the celebrities have been painted with tender accuracy, whereas the ronsons stood among them as

human grotesqueries, like grotesque caricatures. So like, you know, my brother's like this kind of, you know, movie monster serving drinks to Woody Allen or whoever. So my mother just walked out the room and my father said, we're not paying for it. Anyway, finally they reached a compromise and the compromise was that they would paint out the ronsons that the rons would be replaced with other celebrities. It's so awful that you got painted out. Yeah, well, actually, I wasn't painted out. I was still, I was the only ronson to survive.

All the other ronsonsons were painted out. I think what's so brilliant about stories like that, family stories, that, you know, it sort of sums up the family in microcosm in some ways, you know, and that's what I love. Definitely in my case. Very much. It's very much a microcosm of it. the family. But I'll tell you a positive ending to that story is that it, you know, the painting

hung above the bar at the hotel. And after it went on This American Life, a longer version of the story I just told you, people would come from over the world. Like my brother would phone me up sometimes and say there's a, there's a party from Australia who came out of their way to see the painting. And so my brother started photocopying, because I wrote a piece in the Guardian about it too. My brother started photocopying the piece and leaving it in the bedrooms, the hotel rooms for people so they would know the provenance of the painting. So I had a positive ending. When you were at school though, John, because I know you've talked about this and I've got to be honest, when I've heard you talk about being bullied, which I know you were bullied, and I was listening

to you talk about it and it really upset me. And I don't know why it really personally affected me. I think just because I think of you as a very sort of kind and sensitive, thoughtful person, and I felt so angry. It was really strange, this feeling I had. I was really upset. Well, thank you. I mean, in the end, it worked out fine because I became a best-selling author. I used to tell this story about how I woke up in the middle of the night, you know,

20 years ago, whatever, still angry about the boring. who threw me in the lake in Cardiff when I was 15 and I emailed one of them to tell him that I'm now a best-selling author. And he emailed me back to say that the reason why they threw me in the lake was because I was a pain in the ass and the tenor of my email leads them to suspect that I haven't changed. So that didn't work out how I'd hoped. What I often think about that experience is it's good training for a journalist to be on the edge of the playground looking in, to on the outside looking in. I'm always suspicious of journalists who are part of something, who are like part of some kind of elite, either an ideological elite or, you know, the inside,

you know, having been to likes of Ivy League, college, you know, the Bullenden Club, or even or on the left, you know, part of an ideological group. Journalists have to have to be independent, unaligned lone wolves. And what better way to become a, lone wolf than being bullied at school and being forced to the edge of the playground. So rough as it was, it's, it's, also it's kind of who I am. You know, I was clearly, you know, I was, you know, I was bullied for a reason. And I think the reason is that I was, I was very uncomfortable at school. I was uncomfortable with the lighting, the strip lights, the uniform.

Other people, I think, were just fine wearing nylon or polyester or whatever. shit the school uniform was made out of. But I was constantly aware of it, constantly itchy, constantly, you know, disturbed by the, you know, those awful strip lights that they have at school. So I was constantly walking around just uncomfortable and not wanting to be there. And clearly that, you know, people realized that. And that's why I was, you know, because everybody else was comfortable. Well, not everyone, but most people.

So that's interesting. So do you think you probably did have kind of. sensory issues now that they would... Yes. I'm pretty sure I had... Not all... I've been thinking about this. Not all five senses.

A few of my senses, I think, are completely normal, or completely typical. But I'd say a couple of my senses aren't. Hearing, touch. I would say that I'm unusual. So yeah, I'd say that was probably... That was probably the sort of motivation. Are you demonstrative?

Do you feel if someone you don't know, for example, greets you with a hug, are you a bit freaked out by that or are you comfortable with that? Yeah, I don't mind that so much. You know, the odd hug's fine. But I have a real problem with fabrics still to this day. Like I wear, you know, I only wear certain types of cotton and stuff like that. And I always wear a baseball cup because I really don't like bright lights. So I'm constantly in a kind of, you know, shade.

And I avoid noisy, like, parties. Like, I'm fine, like, at gigs. Like, I'm more than fine. Like, I love going to gigs. But I really don't like lots of chatter. Would you describe yourself as pretty much a textbook introvert in some ways? Yeah. Yes, I'd say so.

Again, I think that's a positive thing for journalists who has adventures. because you don't want a journalist. You don't want somebody to go off and have the kind of adventures that I have and really enjoy it. What you really want is somebody to be doing all of these things and hating it because that makes the writing better. So the fact that it's always a wrench for me to leave home and go off and have some Madcap adventure, I think that's good.

Like, I think putting myself through that kind of pain is good for the reader or the viewer. you have to be the outsider looking and otherwise there's no story, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And also, you know, slightly hard, I suppose, but not so odd that the reader or the listener or whatever doesn't connect to me, you know, because I'm going to these sort of far out, fringy, strange places. So I have to be a kind of, I have to be a sort of representative of the reader or the viewer. So I can't be like, you know, too strange.

also a little bit of artness just makes the story more interesting too. We are going to get onto things fell apart because it's so brilliant, John, honestly. And I'm telling you that on now. I told you off air just now. But Frank Skinner, who I did a radio show with for 15 years, has a great thing he says.

Whenever I say, oh, Frank, I thought this was brilliant. He says, why are you telling me that off air? What possible good? What can I do with that? So I'm telling you that on air. By the way, when you said that just now, I suddenly realized who you are. took me a minute to realize that, you know, we've met, we've met at parties and now I've

completely placed you. It took me a second. I apologize. My eyes were drawn to Ray and his Ewok, his Ewokness. I want to get on to things fellow pot, but I just wanted to say, I get the real sense that coming to London was so game-changing for you, just in terms of your confidence and becoming John Ronson part, you know, 2.0, essentially. Yes, I loved it. Well, I used to go to London quite a lot as a kid because, you know, we lived in Cardiff, but my father's parents lived in London in a ground floor flat in Portman Square right next to the Selfridges Food Hall. So it really, you know, fab place. So I used to go there just as often as I possibly could and I'd, you know, spend the night at my grandparents. And I'd lose myself in London. I'd get on a bus and just go wherever the bus took me. And then I'd jump off and get on another bus. and losing myself in London or the noise and the hubbub of London. So it was never, well, actually I say I was never not going to move to London.

But actually, I applied to two colleges, London and Bournemouth. So I might have ended up in Bournemouth. And I think that probably would have been a mistake, because if you're training to be a journalist, you want to be where the journalism is, and that's central London. So I think if I've got, apparently the journalism course, at Bournemouth that I was going to do was a highly regarded course, but I don't think I'd have been happy there, you know, all wind-swept on the beach, forlorn on the beach. I'd much rather

have been, you know, going crazy in London. Because you studied, was it kind of media studies, essentially, that you studied, that you studied at university? Did you always think I want to write? Had that always been a real passion for you from a really young age? No. I always associated writing with having a kind of miserable life alone in a room. Kurt Vonnegut would always, who was like my favorite author as a teenager, he would always be self-deprecating about what a terrible life he was having, sitting alone in a room, chain smoking, pal-mouse. And as a young man, I thought, I don't want to do that. I mean, that sounds awful. I, you know, I don't want to miss out on life. But it just became clear when I was

in London and then when I moved to Manchester that it was what I was good at. And after a while, you just think, well, do the thing that you're good at. If you, if you're, you, if you're, you're you're lucky enough to be good at one thing, do that. And then I fell into it and now I wouldn't have any other life at all. Yeah. Now it's the perfect life. But no, it took a number of years. You know, when I was working with bands in Manchester with Frank Sidebottom and a spank

called the Man for Demonte, that's what I really, you know, I loved it. Being on stage and music and, you know, writing really felt like second best, like a lonely man's pursuit. I have to say, I do love that John Ronson era is the, we should say, John, well, he managed a band called The Man from Del Monte, which if anyone not of our era is listening to this, it was based on, it was a nod to a very famous and quite naft TV commercial at the time. Yes. And where exactly this sort of colonial figure in a white suit would declare that, you know, those fruit were all right. And then all they, basically all the, you know, the locals from some far away country were just excited.

You think about it as a pretty, I haven't seen it for a while, but it doesn't feel quite offensive because, you know, exactly this sort of white saviy would swoop in his white suit and say, I say yes to those pineapples. That was, yeah, the ad went, the man from, I'm obviously, won't do the very offensive accent, but it would say it was a man in a white, our man in Havana sort of suit. And he was quite a retond man as well. Yeah, a little bit like Colonel Sanders, I guess. And he would come in and then the locals would say in, in.

A very heavy accent, probably all from sort of Brooklyn or something, would say the man from Del Monte, he say, yay, and everyone would throw their hands up, meaning the orange crop was successful and he wanted to buy them. But this became such a trope that I could remember you'd go to parties in the 80s or something. And if anyone was wearing a white suit or they'd go, oh, a man from Del Monte's walked in. Yeah, a little bit like if anybody ever, at the same period, if anybody ever offered anybody Ferreiro Roche, chocolate, they'd say, Ambassador, you spoil us. Which is, again, I think anybody listening Andrew Ravere, should have no idea what we're talking about. We essentially got all our cultural references

from three bad adverts. Yeah, Ambassador, you spoil us. The Manfredermonti, he'd say yes. So yes, and the Man for Don't Monty were very good bands, like very good. They really were. They were very good. The singer, Mike West was a bit. was extremely talented and still is.

He still performs in a band called Truck Stop Honeymoon. So why then you're wondering, didn't they make it? I think it was a combination of me not being a very good manager. But also, we were slightly out of time. What happened was we were part of a family tree. There was the Smiths, and then the Smiths basically gave the world James. They championed this band James. and James then got very successful,

and James championed the Manfredo Monti. But just as that happened, all these more sort of working class seeming bands like The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays all came along, and that became the thing that everybody loved, and we were seen as a little bit too sort of Fay and guitar. We came from the sort of C-86 tradition of bands like Toulou LaGos and the monochrome set, you know,

these wonderful sort of janguels. guitar bands and suddenly that type of music fell out of vogue when bands like Happy Mondays came along. That was what happened. When you got involved in, I suppose, writing and TV, did that happen quickly for you or was that something you were sort of plugging away at, you know, hoping to get a break or were you discovered in a way? Well, that's the thing that happened really quickly. Like after, after desperately trying to convince record companies to sign the Manfred Domonte, you felt like you were just constantly hitting your head against the brick wall.

As soon as I started writing, people were like throwing opportunities at me. I wrote for, well, I wrote for my college newspaper in central London, and I used some of those pieces that I wrote. I sent them to smash hits and this magazine at the time called The Sunday Correspondent, and they all offered me work. And then from that, I got a column in Time Out and The Guardian, and then I got my own TV show. It was like an incredible, like, a super,

soon as I started being a non-fiction writer, just the world opened up. I really hope you love part one of this week's Walking the Dog. If you want to hear the second part of our chat, it'll be out on Thursday. So whatever you do, don't miss it. And remember to subscribe so you can join us on our walks every week.