Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Katherine Ryan (Part One)

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

This week on Walking The Dog, it's the one-and-only Katherine Ryan! We met Katherine in a location in Hertfordshire that was far too muddy for someone as glamorous as she... although Katherine dealt with it VERY well.... much better than Raymond. Katherine caught us up with her three dogs: Manny, Meg and new addition Cardi B - and they are all absolutely adorable!After encountering a few hurdles with the locals and the mud, Katherine tells us all about the games she played with her sisters growing up, what it was like to be interviewed by Louis Theroux and whether she really does tell everybody everything.The second part of our chat is available here! Katherine will be on tour with Battleaxe in 2024 and 2025. You can find tickets here!You can listen to Katherine's podcast Telling Everybody Everything wherever you get your podcasts. Katherine's reality show Parental Guidance is available here on UKTV PlayListen to Emily and Ray's first walk with Katherine from May 2017 hereFollow 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.

Kath. Oh my God. It's going to get better. Oh my God. This week on Walking the Dog, Raymond and I met up with the fabulous Catherine Ryan, who has three ridiculously adorable dogs, Mani the Yorkie, Cardi B the poodle and Megan,

better known as Meg Ryan. Fun fact for you, Meg is actually Ray's older sister. He utterly worships her. She can sort of take or leave him. It's a dynamic, I thought. thoroughly respect. Catherine is, no surprises, one of the funniest people you'll ever meet, but she's also one of the smartest and most honest people you'll ever meet, which all in all makes her an absolute dream to spend an afternoon with. I think you're going to love listening

to her, and if you want more Catherine Ryan, you're in luck, because her brand new show, Battalax is touring all over the UK later this year. This girl sells up fast, though, so get your tickets now at livenation.com.ukau. I really hope you enjoy my chat with Catherine. I'll now hand over to the legendary woman herself. Here's Catherine and Manny and Megan and Cardi B and Ray Ray. Ray's going into someone's house. Ray, because a woman's there. Raymond.

Ray, Ray, Ray. I'm so sorry. Raymond, come on, please. Come on. Come on, please. Luckily, he's not too vicious or terrifying, you know. You be careful. Or Shih Tzu breed will be cancelled in the UK.

You see, Kathy, we've got three dogs today. and I'm starting to realize why your life is so crazy having three kids. Three just gives you that little bit more admin. That's exactly it. It's constant vigilance and assessment. And before we start, we should include the bit about the absolute loser who tried to claim that the street belonged to him and we weren't allowed to park there for our walk.

What an absolute job's worth. And you know what? Am I petty enough to check the land registry on my way out? Of course I am. course Sam. You know, no one parks in my drive. You know why? It's gated.

If you want to act like a sultan, go move into a million, a billion pound property in the middle of nowhere. Otherwise, take your knocks, you know what I mean? We've all lived in a flat before. We've all had to park on the street.

It's really set the wrong tone for the podcast today. Maggie! There's Megan. I think you've dispatched him very well. Yeah, just with seething rage. All right. All right.

I said it in a tone of voice, it was just loud enough to be heard, but not that you could be accused of being passive-aggressive. I'm not British. I never will be. I try to be polite now and then. But this business of just letting people walk all over you, culturally, I'm not with it. Mani. Now, I have a much better life than that guy. I got things to do in the day rather than police the street. So... I feel you've really moved on for me. You are one of the most direct people I've ever met. Yep. I quite like it, though. Well, in an age where we talk about neurodiversity and all the rest,

I think surely I have advanced autism, but then I don't. Because a lot of people message me, autistics, if you can call them that, and they're like, hey, you're autistic like me, and I go, I don't think so. And then I have said before, I think I might be a little bit autistic, and then it offends people who've taken it as a personality trait now. Manny! Mani! They're like, no, you're not, I am, and I'm the only one who is.

Shall we amble around this grass? Yeah, let's go on the grass. I think most creatives have some sort of neurodiversity, present company included. Yeah, do you know, a lot of creatives will say to you, well, some creatives will say, how come everyone says they've got ADHD or autism to which I say, You know, it's just everyone in your community. Yeah.

Because generally people, it's neurodivergent, are attracted to this kind of world, I would say. Wait, we've lost two of the kids. Minnie! We'll get them on track. Let's go deep into the grass. It's so muddy, Catherine. I really apologize. I don't think it is.

Plus, I haven't worn, you know, shoes that can't be muddied. Kath. Oh, my God. It's going to get better. Oh, my God. Okay, we've just gone through some very muddy conditions. It reminds me of that children's book, we're going on a bear hunt. Like, this is really it.

We're in all the elements now. This is quite a dog walk for two glamorous ladies with micro mini pets. Where is Megan? Here. She's in the bag. Because Megan is medically fragile. I mean, there was no shock there. You look at Megan, she gets sick from her own shadow.

One evening, it was a terrible week in November. Remember, remember, the 5th of November. I came home and Megan was like on death store. I'd been at a corporate. I'd been really busy that week. It was midnight and Megan was breathing so quickly and really strange. And I knew then, thanks to medical dramas, casualty, etc. I thought, uh-oh, these are signs of major distress.

And I'm the type of person. I never go to the doctor myself. I don't rush my kids to the doctor, but I dialed the emergency pet number, and I went, oh, this is serious. And I brought her into the after-hours vet. And they transferred her via pet ambulance to the Royal Veterinary College. And they were like, yeah, she's really, really sick.

She might not make it through the night. And I was like, geez, prepared to lose Megan, really. And then they fixed her. They gave her Viagra. Yump. Because nothing you want. Wait, are you sure this was a vet you went? Yes, yes.

A witch doctor in the middle of the night. He said, Megan's problem is her erections are not lasting long enough. Viagra has many off-label uses, and she just has pulmonary hypertension that's caused by some inflammation of the lungs. We don't know why. And then she never had another episode until recently. Bobby came home the other day, and she was breathing the same way. Took her in. Same thing.

They did a CT scan, and she had all the stammer. in her lungs, but the damage isn't worse than it was before. It's just, it's weird. And then to find the cause of it, we'd have to do loads of investigations. So instead, we just manage it with these drugs that she's on now. So she takes Viagra three times a day. And both of those trips have cost, like, upwards of 5,000 pounds. I love that Megan takes Viagra three times a day. Yeah. She's so Hollywood executive. Catherine Ryan, I adore you, as you know. I'm so thrilled you're doing this podcast to because not only do I adore you, I adore your dogs.

Yeah. And you're partly the reason why I have a dog. Oh yes. Because when I first got Ray, I'd met you not long before. Yeah. And I was really inspired by your relationship with your dogs. Mm-hmm. And it kind of gave me an insight into a new kind of dog ownership, I suppose.

You know, that I'd had this idea that I don't have a lawyer, husband. And so I can't get it. I'll need a Labrador and that's not really what I want. Right. And I went around to your home and at that point it was just you and Viola, your single mom. The glory days. And I had this little cat dog. You had these beautiful dogs. And your dog, Megan, we discovered that Megan and Ray are siblings. Actual brother and sister with the same mom. And Ray really loves Megan. I love the squelching of the background and Ray's not managing it well. You see he's a cosmopolitan man. He's like, Mom, why have you brought me to the countryside?

We agreed. You don't have a lawyer-husband. I am not a golden retriever. And do you know, Mani, your other dog, who's a Yorkie, is so sweet. He's going to help him out. Wasn't that lovely? Yeah. Mani's a good guy and you know he's robust.

He is probably 11. and you can't knock Manny down. Like he's a scrappy, mangy, non-designer animal that I got from the train station in Wolverhampton. Look at Ray! No wonder you didn't want to come in the mud. Oh, my God. Get him away from that sweater.

I know. I'm wearing a prouder sweater that Catherine bought me. I don't know what to do. We don't have a towel. I'm worried about this level of mud on Ray. Yeah. So, I mean, I won't. minutes words, he looks like shit.

He looks, he looks, he's really suffering. He has such long, luxurious hair. And this is, I think, what a lot of women with super long, thick hair would want people to know, is that, yeah, it's all glossiness and glamour on the outside. But on the inside, they're shaving three times a day. They've got hairy legs, bikini wax is a nightmare. Well, no, I know what you mean. a Kardashian. Yeah. And that's what Ray is. He's essentially a Kardashian. And then there are little

hiccups like this one where he can't go on a muddy walk. Well, this is what I think. We've come out, I should say where we are. We're in Hertfordshire, beautiful Hertfordshire, which is Catherine Ryan's Manor. Yeah. And I suggested meeting you in a field, like we were going to have a duel in the sort of 19th century. Like gentlemen. Yeah. Like gentlemen. And it's so muddy, Cass, because it's been raining a bit, but I think we're going to have to head back to yours. Are you comfortable with that? Of course. Mine's just around the corner and Bobby has just redone the grass. It's half an acre. So to you and me, you know, not a very exciting dog walk, but to the littles, that's enough. We've got small dogs and they don't need all this space, do they?

We could do this episode on a treadmill. A very slow moving. So we've got, Manny and Megan with us today and I've got Ray and you also have another dog. Yeah, Cardi's at home. I left her behind because she can be a nightmare. She's not as obedient when she's out because she's a small poodle and she's the youngest and she yips. She's my only yippie dog. So we're going to have to listen to her. But that's okay. She'll be thrilled that we're joining her. She featured, you were recently interviewed by Louis Thruh. And Cardi had a starring role in that. Yeah.

She leapt onto his knee. Well, he's a very magnanimous character. We've got off the path now. Hang on, it's getting squelchier than I remember. I should say, I arranged to meet Catherine, possibly one of the most glamorous, well-dressed women I've ever had on this podcast in the muddiest, squelchiest field.

It's my fault for moving here, And let this be a lesson to all single cosmopolitan women listening, is that I'd still be living in zone two if I didn't get married and have all these extra kids. But these are the compromises you have to make. I don't know what I was thinking, to be honest with you. Remind me again of your history with dogs, so I can remind everyone.

You've done this podcast before, but I know... It's been a long time. Your early life growing up in Sonia, you had cats, And then your dad brought a dog home one day. On a whim. He brought a dog home from work because it was available. It wasn't a puppy. I mean, he was still of puppy behavior, but he wasn't a small dog.

Do you know what I mean? And that's a tricky adoption demographic. And a man at work had adopted him for the family, but the brothers in that family wore big, thick ice hockey gloves and would play fight with the dog, and the dog loved it. He loved biting the ice hockey gloves and wrestling the boys to the ground. So my dad brought this dog into our family, where we just had little girls, and any time we had gloves or mittens on, which was a lot,

he would hunt us in the garden and bite the mittens and drag us down. And my youngest sister, Carrie, was only three. And he was a Cocker Spaniel. He really stunk. He had anal glandish. It's not that he was vicious or anything. It was just playing, but he wasn't the right fit for our family. So I never made that mistake of like,

oh, I'm going to get a big family dog. I just knew that the hair and the playful behavior was not my vibe. And then I became a young woman during the late 90s, early naughty's when it was very on vogue to have these teeny tiny purse dogs, like Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Simpson, though hers was eaten by a coyote famously. And I thought, yeah, that's what I want. A dog that makes me feel important because it shivers as soon as I walk into a room.

Come here, Manny. Manny. I think I'm the only one who's been enjoying this fieldwalk, despite my earlier conflict with the locals. Did you like it? Yeah, I liked it. I found it the most awful experience of my life. I thought it was going to cry at one point. Oh, but haven't you done cold walks and snowy walks and all kinds of walks by now?

Ray doesn't do mud. No. He really doesn't look. Yeah. He actually won't walk now. He's so distressed by the mud. Ray, we're going to bathe you at mine. It's part of the spa experience, we'll tell him.

Come on, Ray. You're going back to your favorite place, Catherine. Oh yeah, so you've told me about the first dog and then you got Biggie. Oh, Biggie, yeah. So I moved away at 18 as quickly as I could. to be an independent woman. And by the time I was about 20, I got Biggie, who was a teeny, tiny imperial shih Tzu

just like Megan and Ray. But he was wonderful. He was small, small, small, and brindle, sort of a black gray. And because I raised him exactly the way you're raising Ray. In what way? Just close to my face. He always smelled of lip glass.

He wasn't expected to contribute anything to society but his charm and beauty. He was a great dog. He was great. And now these dogs, now I have three, just like kids. You know, they don't get the same one I won't experience for me.

Oh, Cass, look at your boot. Everyone, I'm in Catherine Ryan's boot, and I see a potty with a coffee cup in it. Small pair of shoes, some Easter eggs. It's everything I hope for. A little snow suit. Frozen sunglasses, which I should have worn on the walks.

Yeah, my potty training hack is to always have a potty in the boot. And then this is a little makeshift bathroom. When I'm out with the kids, I open the boot and I sit them in the potty, on the potty, in the boot. And it's a little private area. And the kids are fully potty trained. They've been potty trained a long time. I would go in here.

So would I. It's lovely. Megan, darling, we're going to go back to yours now. Are you going to give away a bath when we get back? Yes. So Catherine's just said she's going to stay mic on her drive back to hers. With most guests, you'd think, oh, what if we record them saying something with Catherine? It's fine, because anything she would say privately, she would say on the podcast.

Am I right? I'll make a phone call to the bank. Come on. This is the walk for me. So sitting down in the garden walk. I should say, we've come back to Catherine's house because it was so muddy. you were much more tolerant. We were in a field in Hertfordshire.

Yeah. I couldn't bear it, the mud. You were quite tolerant of it. And I know you're not sponsored by Hunter Wellington's because if you were, you'd have been fine in that mud. I don't know what the problem was. You had the right foot where you were warm. It wasn't actively raining.

I thought that you were a lot more amenable to these different climate. I mean, you're a well-traveled woman. I don't know what happened out there. I was fine with it. Yeah, the edges of your trousers are muddy. And mine too, these are vintage Gucci leather trousers, and I'm fine with it. And you're fine, but you know what I think that is? Autism.

No, I think I'm good in a genuine crisis. Yeah. What I'm bad at is inconvenience. Okay. I think I would have melted down had it been sunny and we'd been lost. Then I might have cried. Like, I can't be hot and sunny anywhere. And I'm a lot like my son in that way.

We brought Fred and Fenna to Mauritius. Fenna was something like two months old and Fred was 20 months old. And it was the worst, not just holiday, the worst time of my entire life. And you would think a luxury trip like that would be good? Absolutely not. I hate the sun. Fred hated the sun. Fred wouldn't get sand on his feet.

You wouldn't get water on his feet. And that's all it is, sand and water and sun. So I mean, at first I used to think, oh, okay, something's sensory, you know, different about Fred. And then I spoke to other parents and like boys just seem to be really difficult as children and as men. They're just very, very much ill-equipped for the world. I don't know. Like Fred has to, for a while, he had to have a specific shape of pasta and a specific sauce. He would only eat pasta and he had reflux and he had eczema and then now his tonsils and adenoids are too big.

I mean, it's always something with Fred. We love Fred and you'll see he's a changed man. Is he? What do you mean? When we go inside afterwards, he's a real performer now. He'll get his guitar out. He'll get his microphone out. He'll be like, do you want to show, Emily? He'll take his trousers off.

Let's just refresh ourselves. We were talking before we got back here. When we were in the mud pit, we were talking about your dogs. Yeah. And you had Biggie and Biggie died, which is so heartbreaking. I feel like that really got you quite viscerally, didn't it? At the time, luckily I've forgotten, and that's the thing with grief. When you're in real-time grief, I mean, you literally wrote the book on grief,

but I think that you know that what you require is distance. And then that pain will become less frequent, but it'll still come in with. like a tsunami, but you just need distance. But at the time, I didn't have that perspective, and I just thought, I'm gonna be sad forever. But luckily, Violet was just born when Biggie died, so I was massively distracted with a six-month-old and the breakdown of my relationship.

Like, I had fun things to really sink my teeth into. But if I hadn't, I was like, I'd be institutionalized with grief if I didn't have these other distractions because you love them. This is the thing with dogs, is that they're vulnerable and helpless like children, And they don't really live beyond adolescence, if you're translating it into human years. And they look to you for absolutely everything.

And when they die inevitably, I think it's a lot like losing a child because they're so dependent. And it's like it's just the worst. And Biggie, the first one, I think when Ray, Khats for Shalom, you know, when Ray gets old, very, very old and passes away so peacefully, it's going to be awful. And that's like why no one should ever get a dog. That was Catherine Ryan on walking. Do you know, that's why you're not wrong. No.

Because friends of mine have actually suggested I get a friend for him for that reason. Well, no time soon. But then I think it's a bit of an old logic. It's not like you say, well, my partner's going to die. I'll have another one just because I'll be so sad when he dies. Better have another one as a backup. Well, that's my point. I don't think there's anything wrong with that either.

You wouldn't wait for your shoes to have the souls splitting off and be walking around barefoot before you got a pair of new shoes. You have other shoes waiting in the wings, overlap shoes so that you're never barefoot. Yeah, but I can't wait to be a barefoot. I love the feeling. I find it very grounding. I imagine my elderly years actually and, you know, I love Bobby. you love Bobby, we all love Bobby. But I never imagined that I'd be married.

And now that I am, that's great. But whenever I fantasize about being an elderly, eccentric woman, he's not in those fantasies. And maybe he's just at home where he's got his own friends and he's doing something. But I've got like a Pietitare in New York or Marlebone and I'm eating out all the time

and I'm going to shows and I'm walking around. And I'm doing all of that alone. I love those communities they have. There's one in Japan, isn't there, where all those ladies bought a house together. Yeah. And they lived there as their own return. retirement community and I think, isn't that great? Like you just live with friends.

It's a really good plan. BK. could live with us. I don't think you would want to. This is the thing. I think he would love to be still in the country and doing his own thing. As you'll remember from my mother's visit, and we iconically, I mean, we recreate this conversation all the time in this house, where my mom leaned over to you after the premiere of Rupal's drag race, UK versus the world. And she said, do you know that no one in the Cootstra family has ever been to see a piece of live theater? It's like, what? Mom couldn't believe that Bobby's family are just interested in like being together and playing hockey sack. So your mom, people know so much about your family.

But just in case anyone doesn't know, this is in Sonia you grew up and it was you and your two sisters. sisters. You were the oldest. Yeah. And I feel, were you quite a classic controlling bossy older sister? I think every older sister is that way. We don't have a choice. It's like, especially back then, children were expected to entertain themselves and each other. And we weren't coddled like we are now. I mean, Bobby and I were even thinking about the kids and how much care they require. But our goal is to keep them happy 24 hours a day. Yeah. I, never go off shift. Like I'm sleeping at the foot of their bed like a dog. Sometimes I think to myself, I'm famous. Like what's happened to my life? And we just stop them from crying all day.

We're entertaining them. We're bending over backwards. And it is a full-time job if that's your goal. But I don't think that was my parents' goal. It was just back then. It was like keep them alive and don't get arrested. And also, we were raised by like 20-year-old girls. mothers were very young back then and very preoccupied with their own, you know, not like my mom had anything going on for herself besides like work and us. I mean, she was busy. But I think I was probably left to cry a lot. I must have been.

I said to Bobby, like, our parents did not do this, like they did not do what we're doing now. They didn't. There's no way. Did you like being interviewed by Louis Thoree? I really liked it. I saw him the other day with Jimmy and he was dressed very hip-hop for some reason. He had a little black beanie on. It was nighttime. It was indoors. And I thought, all right, Louis Theroux. I really respect

his work. I was lucky that I was so preoccupied with other things that I didn't really let it sink in. Like, oh, Louis Thru is going to be in my business for four full days. I had no preoccupations about like being, or I had no, what's it called? I had no worries about being caught out because Louis is famously really disarming and he gets people to really weave their own. web and like make themselves look stupid sometimes. And Bobby was a little bit scared of that. He's like, oh, I don't want to be tricked by Louis Thru. But I'm so overconfident.

I just feel like, A, no one can ever trick me. And B, like, I just, I think I was too honest for Louis Thruheur that he couldn't do his usual schick of like, and then what happened? I'm like, then I sucked him off so that I could leave early. Next question. I didn't really understand. I liked it, though, Kath. I said it was a really, um,

I thought what he did, which I thought was cleverer, is he knew he wasn't going to get anything new out of you because you put it all out there. But he gave the sort of essence of you. He did. You know, which I liked. He got your energy. He understood you, I thought he got you. He's great. And I love that production company and everything they're doing.

And they were so transparent about the interview. They were like, oh, come to our offices and you can have a screening of the interview and anything you really don't like, let us know. And I loved it all. And I knew, because he asked me certain questions that I knew were going to get in the press about historical outing of predators or whatever you want to call it. I knew Bobby was like, oh my gosh, you've got to stop answering those questions. But I left it in because I just thought, oh, it would be fine. Little did I know I was going to be in the news every day for a while again. But it was fine.

Like he handled it really respectfully and the family all looked good in it. It was adorable. And there was only one interview. actually. I did a podcast for someone who started asking me about money. And she was like, how much money do you have? And I told her, I was like, well, I just learned about pensions. And I says, and that you can tax, shelter a certain amount every year by putting money in those. So I put money in those this year before April 5th. And then I have this much savings and I have this much in the business. She's like, do you have a mortgage? I was like, yep, it's this much.

Like, I didn't care because I was. What was this? HMRC podcast. I know. I did the HMR. But they have. And then I spoke to my PR. This week on HMRC, I'm chatting to Kath Ryan about her return. Well, again, like, I have nothing to hide. I pay HMRC all the fucking money they ask for and probably more than I should. So I just have nothing to hide. But then my PR was like, you really shouldn't be telling you.

Like, for your own family's sake. Like, you can't tell everybody exactly how much money you have and where it is. And I was like, oh. Sorry, you needed your PR to tell you that. Well, I don't care. Like, I have more money than I ever thought I would have. and I pay all the taxes I'm supposed to, so I really didn't mind, but that would have made British people very uncomfortable. And she's a very posh British person, actually.

She'd never tell you how much money she has, so I was surprised she was even asking me. But again, she was trying to ask me a question that I wouldn't answer, because she was like, oh, you'll answer anything, won't you? And I went, yep, and she was like, what's your mortgage? And I was like, well, it's with RBC, and we've paid this much and there's this much left. And she was like, how much money do you have in your savings? I was like, currently this much, just because I don't give a shit at all. A couple of childhood incidents I need to discuss. Okay.

From your book, The Audacity, which you can still buy on. I really recommend you do if you haven't because it's absolutely brilliant. It's probably deeply discounted now as well. But there's a couple of childhood incidents, which I think are very significant for the Catherine Ryan story. There was the games that you would play with your sisters, one of the children. one was called airwig. Yeah. Do you remember airwig?

Yeah, of course. What was the dynamic with airwigs? Earwig was, because we have earwigs in Canada. I don't know why. There are different bugs over there. It's not exactly the Australian outback, but earwigs were an issue. So if you had a shower and left your towel on the floor of your bedroom, which my mother would be honest not to do,

or if you left anything damp anywhere, you'd have to pick it up and shake it because there would be earwigs in. And I remember reading that earwigs used to hide in wigs during the Victorian era and then go very easily from the wig into people's ear and like pinch away at their eardrum and make them deaf. So I was terrified of earwigs. So I don't know. That's the reference for earwig. And then we had a game where Joanne, my middle sister, was the earwig.

And Carrie, my baby sister, was Tiny Tim, this little ladybird. And I was the mom and I was always helping her escape the earwig. and we had a similar game called Jacques, where Carrie was a princess, and I was the queen, and Jacques was the butler who had to do everything for the princess. Shock, he's just a different incarnation of Eurewig. So Joanne was always Earwig and Jacques? Always. Why was that?

Well, Carrie and I, we were just best friends, and we looked alike, and we were the same sort of color palette. We were both very Celtic looking, and like twins. but born six years apart and just we got on we all had a vibe and Joanne was always a bit you know different and she still is and I still we still play those characters even on stage I really dunk on Joanne in a way that I think is funny and I think she's cool with but Carrie and I have always ganged up on Joanne first seriously and now sort of ironically but I think the fact that you did that is quite interesting I don't know how across the board that is Like were other families that you knew?

Were the kids putting on plays and doing creative things and shows? Or was that quite peculiar to you and your sisters? We were the only ones who did it every day. Yeah. I mean, we just did it constantly. And then as soon as we got a VHS hand-tiled camcorder, we were making movies, and we would just sort of pastiche television shows that were already on TV. And a lot of that content's really offensive.

And we just did it without. thinking dance routines everything every single day but our closest family friends were this Irish family called the Max Sweenies who I speak about in the book too and they would do a Christmas pantomime and that was very serious and it still is very serious when I go back for Christmas now their children do this pantomime and all the cousins but it's I mean it's on a level it's scripted by adults it's not completely self-produced by the kids like our material was I I mean, we present.

Jack, the butler. It's not, no. We'd present our stuff, and my mom and dad would be surprised. Whereas with the Maxweeney's pants, my, it's probably better quality, but, you know, it has ghost writers. I like that you get it throwing a little bit of shade. Yeah. A bit knocked about the McSweeney. Yeah, yeah.

It's not the same. Because you see the adults. The thing about McSweeney's is that, you know, they did have help. They did. They have choreography. They've got adults sort of panicking in the wings. I've met your mum, as you know, and I adore her, Julie. I think she's fabulous.

She's incredibly charismatic. She just seems to have this kind of inner confidence. Is that where you get yours from? Is that a mom trait, or is that something that runs through the Ryan women? My mom was always disruptive, so she was always a little bit of an outsider. She wasn't from Sarnia. My dad wasn't from Sarnia. my dad's from Ireland, but my mom was this glamorous blonde who came from a different city to Sarni

when she was 16. So I think she always held on to that, like, I am not you, people. And she was funny and she grew up in a family of brothers who were really, I mean, her upbringing was really quite toxic when you look back on it. It was your classic women are dumb broads and horrors and you have to be thin and you have to be beautiful. And you have to fall in line and be subservient and the boys, well as soon as the boys are barely old enough than they're drinking a bottle of Crown Royal every night and they're fighting and you know that was the vibe growing up and there was philandering with my granddad he brought a secretary to the family Christmas party one year you know my mom was always like what the hell's going on here and so she

elevated herself and had a better life but held on to some of the resentment from having witnessed all of that. And I knew everything. My mom certainly always told us the truth, which I didn't realize, I think, who was it that pointed it out to me? It would have been Louis Theroux or someone was chatting to me about a scenario where my dad and the uncles had been drinking and a fight broke out. So my mom pushed the dishwasher against the door to the basement. Everyone has a finished basement in Canada. And I woke up in the morning for breakfast and my mom was just very sunny, la la la, making breakfast and I said was the dishwasher pushed up against the door and she said oh that's because daddy and your uncles and your granddad had a fight last night and they drank too much and I thought

that they should be sequestered into the basement until they dry out and I was like huh and then I just sort of stepped over some vomit or something you know that wasn't all the time but any family gathering that would kick off and I just pulled myself up to the breakfast table and I ate my cereal and that was fine and I was telling the story or this story came from my book and someone said you know a lot of mothers would have lied and your mom never lied and I was like oh yeah I hadn't even noticed the level of disclosure that I grew up with and the same was true about men and about my mom's friendship sometimes she felt bullied by the other wives and she would always tell me what she was thinking and

what she was doing and what her aspirations were and that was the kind of mom I had so I don't think you know she was terribly confident I think my mom always wanted to be a little bit younger a little bit prettier, a little bit thinner, but I could see the vulnerability and her honesty for that. I could see that she was wrong and I think that's why I grew up this way because I was like, oh fuck that. Like I don't want to feel that way. I want to do everything and not be quote chained to a desk for 35 years, which is what my mom used to say about her own job. But she was obviously super bright and is your mom. Yeah. Because she worked, it's kind of a form

of coding in a way, wasn't it that she was doing? It was like computer analyst. It would have been called. I don't understand why she's not. not Bill Gates, yeah, because my mom was working in computers before I was born and I was born in 1983. So that was mismanaged somewhere along the line, you know. But your dad, it's an interesting combination. And obviously, I appreciate this isn't all genetics, of course. It plays a small part, but how your mom had this kind of fear, slight fearlessness and also a lot of inner poise, I think your mom seems to have. And from what I hear of your dad, it was like he was a, bit of a peacemaker at work and he was kind, you called him the white Obama.

He's the white Obama for sure. Everyone loves my dad. Even still, my dad's Mr. Sarnia. Like, he's very charismatic and genial. Like, everyone loves him. And he golfs. He's good with men. You know what I mean? They just like him. They respect him. He's tall. He golfs well. I don't know if that matters. I think it does. So does he get on with Bobby? Yes. to the point that I'm currently pissed off with my dad a little bit because Bobby pissed me off in November right before Megan's first hospitalization. And my dad was here when that happened.

And it was just a little like, you know, marital thing that I could have used my dad taking my side. But he didn't. He took Bobby's side, sort of, or just kind of didn't stick up for me the way I wanted him to. And I was like, God, this patriarchy exists, even in my kitchen. But yeah, Bobby and my dad are in love. I think men care about certain things like baldness doesn't bother women. Does it bother you in a romantic relationship? Yeah.

Someone being bald? Yeah. Well, it does. But Bobby's not bold? He's not, but I'm trying to work men out all the time, especially now as I've created one, and I've welcomed an adult one into my home. And I never thought I'd have to work men out, but I'm always kind of observing. I'm very curious.

baldness bothers you not for what it is but for what it signifies and how it's handled and what that means in terms of character and I don't think women actually care about baldness we care about character similarly I don't think women care about penis size I was thinking of a walking the dog way to say that but you know you can say penis size we don't care about that right's got no secrets no or right I don't like poor Ray. I don't like poor Ray when you're talking about penis size. Is it big? It's it's absolutely he's got a micro penis. Oh no but proportionally I don't mind that he's got a micro penis and of course you don't but if I had a son I'd want that for him because then he'd never leave me. Yeah, micro penis son would be ace. They all never

leave me he's got a micro penis great and that is because penis size only matters like baldness to other men it's like a language within their own community where we like a guy with a big dick, not because we want stitis every other week, but because we know that he's confident. He grew up with other men respecting him. He has lived a different life because of what that big penis means in his own demographic. And so this golf business and being tall and all this other stuff, like I don't really understand the language of men,

but it seems like all the stuff that they use to determine who else they respect. It's just confusing for me because I don't care about any. of it. So there's a long way around to explain Bobby and my dad, probably not because of their penises or hair, but they both probably, well, my dad does have a big penis. I've seen it accidentally, but it was flaccid. Thankful. I mean, I'm not in a Nickelodeon documentary, but it was big. And Bobby has a pretty big dick. They both have a lot of hair. They're both good at golfing. Like, I don't really know the language of man, but this is why they get along. It was big. It was horrible because I had returned from a flight.

I've always been a cosmopolitan child. I was nine years old and I was flying from our city, small airport to Toronto to spend the weekend with my uncle. And my parents didn't want to drive me. And I went on this 45-minute flight alone at nine years old. And on the way back, it was late at night because the flight was delayed. My mother picked me up from the airport, which was just 15 minutes from the house. and when I got home, because it was late, my dad woke up to greet me and say, like, welcome back from Toronto, and he sort of stumbled out of the room half asleep, and he was wearing boxers, and he came to hug me. I bet he was doing a lot of stumbling, carrying that around. I mean, he's six foot five, so he came to greet me and say, like, welcome back in his, I didn't know that boxers had, like, a flap, and his dick was, like, hanging out of his boxers when he came to say, that's when I saw it. It was the only time I've ever seen it.

And I was like, damn, ugh, hello. And I was only small, so it was an awkward hug. But you asked. When you say you asked, I didn't say, has your dad got a big dick? Well, you asked me if he was well liked in the community. And my answer to that is, was to go off on some tangent about the time

you saw his penis. Maybe the room didn't get that treatment. Well, I don't know what makes men popular. 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.