Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Louise Minchin (Part One)

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

This week on Walking The Dog, we’re joined by the fabulous journalist, television presenter and author Louise Minchin! Louise joins us from home in Cheshire with her two gorgeous labradors Waffle and Ruby and she tells us all about growing up Hong Kong, and the family legend surrounding her birth. We also chat about Louise's positive attitude, a life changing trip to Argentina, and what happened when she realised she was going to get a D in A-Level economics… Louise's new book Isolation Island is a tense, addictive thriller set within the world of hidden cameras and celebrity egos. On a remote island off the coast of Scotland, ten celebrities have arrived in the depths of winter to take part in the most gruelling – and lucrative – reality survival show ever devised. With a production team that seems incapable of keeping them safe, a gathering storm and the unrelenting gaze of hidden cameras, the contestants are pushed to the edge as they try and outshine their fellow competitors and hide their darkest secrets. But when a contestant winds up dead, it soon becomes clear that they’re not just fighting for the prize, but for their lives… Isolation Island is out on 12th September - You can pre-order your copy here!Follow Louise on Instagram @louiseminchinFollow 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.

Some of my friends think I have an attitude to risk that is risky. Yeah, some people might say that's a problem, but I think it's an advantage. This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I had a chat with the very wonderful presenter and author Louise Minchin, who was joined by her two beautiful Labrador's Ruby and Waffle. Ray and I had planned to go and visit them in Cheshire, but the weather intervened, so this week it's more of a zooming with the dogs whilst they lounge around being lazy. and occasionally, in Waffle and Ruby's case, have a good old bark, absolutely nothing. Louise, you'll obviously know for her long career co-anchoring BBC breakfast.

Ray and I were personally very cross with her for leaving because we loved waking up to her, but she's not the type to sit around for long. So shortly after leaving, she became a contestant on the 2021 series of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of here. And I felt she really came out of that show as a very calm, well-adjusted, person. And that's exactly how she came across during our chat. Her stint on I'm a celebrity has also clearly given her a lot of material for her latest project, which is writing an absolute page turner of a thriller called Isolation Island about a group of celebrities sent to a Scottish island for a reality TV show and things take a slightly dramatic turn. It's one of those books that's so

filled with twists and turns, it keeps you up all night. saying, just one more page. So I do urge you to pre-order it now from Amazon before it comes out on the 12th of September, as you'll want to get stuck in immediately. I loved our chat with Louise, and I really think you will too. I'll stop talking now and hand over to the woman herself. Here's Louise and Waffle and Ruby and Ray Ray. Now, Ray, we're about to start the interview, but Louise has disappeared because she ran off to get treats for her dogs. Hey Ruby Up

I just There's Ruby Good girl Waffle Good girl Good girl Up up up Waffle won't come up

Because she's much more polite Ruby here Sit down Sit down Sit sit Good girls Look Ray is absolutely He hasn't taken his eyes

off the screen Let me just give them the rest of the streets Because otherwise They won't leave me alone Oh who would have Labrador I should start, Louise, by saying, I'm so sorry, we were so looking forward Ray and I's coming up to see you and to meet Ruby and Waffle in person. But the weather's just been so unpredictable this week with heat waves and then it looks like it's going to be thunderstorms. And I just thought we'd give the dogs, you know, a break from the weather and just let them stay indoors for a bit.

Because you just never know at the moment, do you? Do you know what? Unfortunately, it's the most wonderful day. And if you'd come yesterday, it was horrific. It rained all day and literally it's the most wonderful sunny day it's warm and beautiful but you can't tell can you

it's August but you can't tell I should say I can see Louise Minchin's dogs in the background having some extraordinary it looks like some New Year's Eve rave going on with your dogs what are they up to Louise? Ruby is a roller look at her

this is a happy times that's the point she's being really really happy she loves her little waffle is now going to sit down and have an inch Ruby absolutely it's really strange So Waffle loves swimming and Ruby will roll. But people, when they see me out walking with her, go, oh my gosh, she's rolled in something.

She doesn't roll in anything. She just rolls because she's happy. And you saw a roll. You saw a happy Ruby roll. So introduce me formally, Louise, to your dog. So we've got, is Ruby the, is she a, is it called a yellow lab? Oh, so no, Waffle is my yellow lab. And she is, I always forget, she was born in 2012.

So does that make her coming up to 13 or 12? I get really confused. She's a little bit older. Yeah. We had her since she was a puppy, and she was the puppy of my brother and sister-in-law's dog. So we knew where she, you know, we knew her family, et cetera. And we chose her when she was probably about six weeks old. And so she's a golden lamberdorf.

And then Ruby is the very boisterous one who's just seen Rolling, and she's a black lab. And she's super shiny. I don't know if you could see, you probably couldn't see her, but she's, People keep asking me what I feed her. She's so shiny. And she is six. And we had her again since she was a puppy. We got her just after Christmas in a January one year.

And she has been such a wonderful, optimistic, brilliantly enthusiastic addition to our family. Do you know I knew you were going to be a dog person? I just knew you were. We've got so much to talk about. This book, which I'm holding up, Isolation Island, which I absolutely. absolutely loved, I should say. I'm going to get that out the way so you don't spend the first part of the year. I'm wondering whether you liked it and you're just like hedging your bets because in fact you didn't. You've done this interviewing job for long enough to know. I knew it was a good book because you know that thing when you take books to bed and you're just, you think,

well, am I going to watch the entire series of Mad Men again or, oh no, I need my isolation island fix. I've got to go back in. It kept me up really late. I loved it. That is the best news because I'm an avid reader and I've just been reading a book that you know they're good when you can't stop. You know, you get to an end of a chapter and there's a bit of a cliffhanger and you think, well, I'll just do one more. And that's when I think, you know,

so it's like a book is good is when you can't turn the light out. You can't put it down and thank you so much because... Oh, I want the next one. I'm going to hurry up. The sequel. This is the problem, you see, because it takes a very long time to write a book from the idea until it being published is two and a half years. And now I know people are reading it in two days and they want another one.

I'm just like, I can't do that. They take so long. And I'm just starting, I've done some work on it this morning, the next one. And it's not, you know, it's not a done deal and it's not, you know, I haven't got a deal with a publisher yet. And it's at that really exciting stage when I know that, well, I hope, I mean, I just, you know, I know nothing. I don't know whether they'll buy it. I don't know whether people want it, etc. But that I know when things are good when I get nervous, I get that kind of butterflies in my

stomach. And I literally was writing some stuff today and feeling that and thinking, okay, so maybe, maybe this will happen. Well, I'm going to insist. It's not a maybe. We are going to talk about this and I can't wait to discuss it with you. I wanted to start by asking you what your sort of background is with dogs and what your sort of history essentially is with them. Because I know you, were you actually born in Hong Kong, Louise? I was born in Hong Kong. And I had my first dog there, actually. My first dog was a dog called Malai.

And I mean, I left Hong Kong when I was four and a half, so I don't remember her hugely well. So my dad was in the army and that's why we were in Hong Kong. And this little tiny, fluffy sort of blonde dog turned up and just sat under his feet at his desk. And I think I've asked him about it. And I think I said to him, well, what did you try and do? And he said, well, I've tried to get rid of her. But she just wouldn't go. She just wouldn't go.

This little fluffy puppy. And so he brought her home and she was my first dog. And I mean, I don't remember her terribly well, but I know that that's probably where my love of dogs came from. And she didn't come back with us from Hong Kong. Oh, that's quite heartbreaking. But I think in those days it would have been really hard. When I'm really old, I'm 55, it would have been quite hard to get home. It wasn't like I could just shove her on a long haul flight.

like you can these days. I know they actually have dedicated dog airlines now. And you go to the airport and people have got their dogs. It just amazes me. It amazes me. And I've got friends who've done that. You've flown dogs back from the States and stuff. But anyway, so it didn't happen in those days.

I'm quite interested in your family because your dad was in the military, as you said, wasn't he? And was he a major in the Irish Guard? He was major in the Irish Guards. Yeah. And that's when we were in Hong Kong. And then he came back, we came back to the UK. when I was about four and a half, and then he must have left maybe two or three years after that, probably.

You see, when I hear Major, that's my dream because I had quite a chaotic bohemian childhood with sort of artistes, and there was no order, you never knew when you're going to get food, bills weren't paid. So Major makes me so happy because I think discipline, order, a very structured, sort of well-adjusted household is what I think. I love that you say that because that is so. not a true reflection of my childhood.

I mean, you can imagine that. And let's just go with that, shall we? But I wouldn't say that, you know, discipline. My dad, you know, he never got cross with me. You know, I was not made to put my, my, I mean, it would have been good, probably. I wasn't made to sort of line up my shoes or be super tidy or anything like that. No, that, no, it's just not a true reflection. But you can, you can stay with that if you like to.

I like it. And your mom, was your mom, was she sort of busy running the household? Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was. And she had three kids. So, and my brother, so we got back when I was about, yeah, four or four and a half. My brother must have been born shortly after that. So, you know, three kids under five. There was not a lot of money around at all. She, she was ahead of her time, actually, because she had a little tiny, you know, business. I mean, it was hardly a business, but she had a business called New to You. And it was selling, guess what, kids' clothes that had been used. So she was the original, you know, whatever you call it now. Sustainable clothing. Sustainable. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, way back in the 1970s or whatever it was. Incredible. And she would, I mean, she got, she wouldn't have made much money about that. But certainly we got a lot of our clothes like that. I remember one particular dress that, I mean, it was a kind of really flouncy, flowery, kind of gingamee, I don't know, whatever. It was blue and white and had sort of frilled and so not mean right now. and I literally coveted this dress. It was in her little shop.

It wasn't a shop, it was literally in our hallway. And I eventually managed to persuade her that I wanted it and I got it from her. But I think she probably didn't want to give it it because it was probably one of the most valuable items in her whole, all the things she had. But yes, we got our clothes from there. And you lived there, as you said, until you were about five.

So it's interesting hearing your memories because I lived in Australia when I was a kid, have sort of set up just for a few years. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I find from my time there that I don't have strong memories, but what I have is kind of like Polaroid snapshots. Yes, totally agreed. What sticks out in your mind, Louise, about Hong Kong?

I have two Polaroid memories, and one of them is definitely a memory because there's no picture of it. Because sometimes you remember things because you can see a picture or you've built the picture around the picture, haven't you? You've built the narrative. So I remember we lived in a very, the top of a very... of a massive building on like the 20th story. And I don't know quite which story it was.

And obviously, Hong Kong has a huge amount of typhoons. I was allegedly born in a typhoon, according to legend in my family. This is like this beginning of a blues song. I think she was called Typhoon Betty, by the way. It seems a very innocuous name for a typhoon. Anyway, we lived in this block of flats, and I remember having a bath in my memory. And because when the winds were so strong that the flats had to move with the wind or else they would fall down. And I remember being in the bath and the bath water moving because the block of flats was swaying.

And that's kind of terrifying, isn't it? So that's clear. It seems to be a clear memory. And then the other memory I had was, I think, and, you know, again, I was only little. Princess Anne came for sort of royal visit. And we went to go and stand on the streets and wave or whatever it was. was and I can, I think, remember her coming past and sort of everybody being very excited about her being there. So there's my only two memories from there. And your family sort of dynamic,

I suppose, what if someone, you know, if I'd have known your family and someone had said, oh, what are they like? They weren't called Dimensions, obviously. No. But they were, what was your maiden name? Grayson. Well, I'd like the Gracens. What if someone said, what are the Grayson's like? What would I've said? I don't know, actually. That's a good thing. They probably said, I mean, my parents got married when they were very young. They were both, I think they were, gosh, were they 21 and 23? Very young. And they were very beautiful.

And I think that's what they would have thought. They would have said, gosh, you know, and they had these children who, so maybe my mom was 23 when she had me. So they had very young children. So we kind of had that vibe going on where I think they were definitely kind of like a beautiful couple. So quite glamorous, a bit, Dawn and Betty Draper. Not glamorous, but just, yeah, they were definitely, you know, something maybe a little bit about them. And then these sort of three children and we were all sort of blonde and not, we weren't loud, actually. But just we kind of probably came with a bit of an, you know, you'd have sort of looked at them.

I was sort of golden family, probably. I would have liked to have been friends with the Graysons. And then we were, but we were really, like I was, the major thing, the army thing comes in and that we were, I was a tomboy. Apart from that one fluffy, frilly dress, I just wanted to be wearing flary jeans and a t-shirt and being outside playing in a river or on the swing. I just wanted to be outside. So I was very, yeah, we were quite, I suppose in those days,

yeah, we, you know, a big thing, we would go for a walk on a Sunday, so quite outdoorsy, not like climbing mountains or doing anything competitive, but being outdoors. Yeah, because I know I've read, You talking, which is really lovely about sort of going camping with your dad, when you, you moved back here, didn't you, we should say. Yeah, we moved back when I was four and a half.

My sister was, I've got a brother and sister. My sister's two and a bit years younger than me and my brother was born here. I always think when you've moved around, even at a young age, even if you don't remember that, I tend to think that it leaves you with a bit of a legacy. You have this energy in your family if we've got to be a bit portable. and you have to get on with people quickly. And I think it's so interesting that that's in your history and then that's a skill that you've ended up putting to use

for so many years in your work where you've got 10 minutes to get on side with people. That's a really intuitive way of putting it. And I also think it gives you, I think it's a brilliant thing because it gives you an ability to up sticks a bit when perhaps other people wouldn't. So for example, when the job at BBC Breakfast came up, We lived in London, my husband and the two girls.

And I knew that I couldn't do it as a commute. London to Salford, to me, was too much of a commute. And I wanted the girls, you're still little. They were 7 and 11, I think, or 8 and 11. And I was able to do that move because I just thought, you know, to me it's not a completely impossible thing to just move your whole family. You know, it's the same country. It's fine.

Are you quite a sort of, yeah, what's, the worst that can happen person? Absolutely. I mean, some people, some of my friends think I have an attitude to risk that is risky. Optimistic to the point of it being a problem. Yes, possibly. Exactly. I'm like, you know, I'm going to go on Master Chef. I can't cook. Why not? What can go wrong? I mean, the thing is, I didn't even know what could go wrong because I couldn't cook. Yeah, some people might say that's a problem, but I think it's an advantage. And when you came back, here you went to, it was a Catholic girls' boarding school, wasn't it? And what was that experience like? You've spoken quite fondly of that in the past.

Did you, did you like your school? I love school. I love school at the beginning because it was all for me about the freedom that I had there. It's, you know, it's a mentally privileged thing to do. And I just, I just played sport all the time. I was again outside. I was in every single team that there existed, apart from, I wasn't very good at hockey. Who was Louise? I thought it was a little bit dangerous actually. Get your head smashed in. I did.

Was that some sort of horrible hunger games thing? I wish I was good at it because it's such a fun game but I think in those days you know you didn't have any mouthguards or anything. I used to feel so sorry for the goalkeepers. You'd see them trudging out in those massive pads off everyone else.

I'm not sure we even had pads in our school. I don't think they did, you know. Maybe they did. I might be exaggerating. But I just, yeah, I just loved it for the freedom and for being outside and being able to play loads and load of sport and being, you know, with friends all the time. I think towards the end, I didn't love it so much because I was sort of, again, wanted more freedom to do exactly what I wanted to do. So I'm getting a slight sense of maybe a slight rebellious streak. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You said that with a slightly mischievous grin. Well, because I always got away with it. I do stuff under the radar. What do you?

What did you? You can tell them now. I didn't smoke and stuff, but I used to, you know, like leave the building when I wasn't meant to and be back before they noticed. Dirty stopper out? 100%. But no, just, you know, I just do things. I just be, it was about freedom for me.

It was about not being in the vicinity. You know, I'm not very good in being in one place for a very long time. So that's what I would get away with. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. You know, it was more like, I don't know, going. up and seeing a boyfriend. And were you one of those kids because there are some kids that can sort of bend the rules.

Yeah. And get away with it because they academically, they just do enough to keep their head above water. Was that you? Or were you a sort of straight A student? Oh, no. I wasn't straight A's. I wasn't straight A's.

I think it was a dreamer, you know, too much of a dreamer to get straight A's until I decided that I wanted to get A's. And there was a key moment when I was doing an, I was doing economics and I had a really great friend, and we both realized that actually our economics teacher was not up to much. She really, we had a bit of a wake-up call. And we both sat down and decided that we would teach ourselves economics. Imagine!

That's amazing. I've never heard of anything like that. It's completely nuts, isn't it? It's completely nuts. But, you know, this is way back when in the 1980s. and we genuinely sat down the pair of us and I did every single multiple choice that had ever been written.

I would wake up, I mean, this is where the drive kind of, you see a little bit of the insight into that. I'd wake up in the morning and I would write an essay before I went to breakfast every morning. In your free time, just because you felt that the way you were being taught

wasn't in the way you wanted to be taught. It wasn't just wasn't good enough. Do you know, I'm a bit frightened of you. Are you? Are you? It wasn't. I was going to get a D. I was going to get a D.

I didn't want a D. So I'll tell you what happened. So she and I sat down and my teacher would give me back my essays and go, A and I would like, rubbish. And guess what? Both of us got. What do we get? D. No.

We both got A's. What was the next highest mark in the school, in the class? D. D. D. So you were right. right. Yeah. I didn't know I was right. I just had a feeling I was right. And I figured I didn't want to have a D. Is that rebellious? What does it tell you? That shows a lot of self-belief and

self-confidence, which is very unusual at that age, I think, because that sort of, it's kind of a blueprint for how you should live your life in some ways, which is don't just go with the crowd. Yeah. If you think something's wrong, speak out. And you kind of did. You got on and you also you found a solution. I mean, it's quite extraordinary that story. I never told that story to anybody. I'm still friends with the friend who got the A. What do you think that says about you?

Looking back at it, are you quite proud of yourself? Yeah. Yeah, no, I am. I am. I do think it takes a lot of determined, sort of like courage and determination that has probably held me, I don't know where that comes from,

but has held me in good stead and there's other, when things that I think what I know and from that particularly might have been the start of that is you know when the going gets tough dig in dig in you know do your research do your due diligence do what you can to change things and I changed the course of my life with that because of course then I went to you know because I got the A and then went to St Andrews University which is now when you say that now I love it people go oh some tangrix Well people think of it like Hogwarts and things And also because obviously of the royal connection With William and Cape, that was where they met Yeah, and then that makes me even laugh anymore Go, were you there with William and Kate? And I just think, have you looked at my face?

Of course I wasn't. I would just say yes. I do sometimes say yes. She and I were in the same class. Yes, yes. They were a year above me, yeah. I read that you did have a really Quite a traumatic experience actually

with a friend of yours died Louise when you were quite young. And I just struck me that you were 14 and it was very sudden. And she, I believe, was a good friend of yours. And I just thought, again, that has a legacy on you, I think. I mean, maybe that's part of the legacy. So she was 14 and obviously I did my A levels a few years later. She was the first person I met when I went to school. She called Nicola Jackson.

She was, yeah, so, no, it had a massive impact on me and it still has an impact on me. So she was, the first person I met at school, she was absolutely lovely, very gentle character actually. The last time I saw her, she had been playing tennis and then she came back and she was lying on her bed with a terrible, terrible headache. And she couldn't feel her feet. And I was trying to warm up her feet. And that was the last time I ever saw her. And she died of a brain hemorrhage. I don't know how long later, because again in those days, you know, information was not a thing.

you know, you didn't tell people much. And I think about her a lot. I still think about her. I've tried for many years to try and get in touch with her family because even through the school, have failed to do so. Because I definitely think that as 100% had an impact on the way I approached life because she didn't get to do it. She didn't get to do the fun things I've had to do or been able to do.

So, yeah, a very profound effect on me. Yeah, I can imagine. And I think also at that age it's, You have no concept of your own mortality because you're not, you know, at our age, we're getting used to dealing with it with, you know, friends, friends, unfortunately, and parents and all that sort of stuff. You know, we all rack up a few of those funerals in our lives times by this age. But at that age, it just, it must be so shocking and unnatural.

It was. And also, I mean, it may have a pathway into journalism as well, because, as I say, we didn't really have a lot of information. I still, to this day, I know what she's. diet, it was a brain, some of the brain hemorrhage, but there's so many questions that I never got the answers to that would be, I mean, are they going to be helpful now? I don't know, I don't think they're going to be helpful now, but would have been, I think, helpful. And I think they were trying to protect us rather than give us information. And I'm not sure that is necessarily

the right thing. Yeah. I would have loved to being able to be in touch with her parents. And then, and that was never, you just, I mean, maybe they didn't want to be in touch with us. I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but I would have loved that. I would love them to know that I still remember her many, many years later. I think it's really lovely that you've mentioned her name now. Yeah. Well, I try. I try.

I'm trying. But I think that's lovely that you acknowledge, you know, I do. I lost my sister and I think I always, but whenever I say her name, Louise, it's interesting. I know that people used to feel a bit uncomfortable. I would worry that people would feel uncomfortable because I'd tell a funny story. Yes. And I'd say, oh, my sister did that and blah, blah.

And I could see people tensing as if to say, oh, how should I make my face now? Because this is a sad thing, isn't it? And you're telling a funny story. But it was really important to me. I thought, no, I don't want to deny her existence. And the fact that you've mentioned your friend's name there is lovely that she continues to kind of live on in some way.

I think that's lovely. It's hard, isn't it? Because I'm not very good at dealing with other people's, you know, like other people's grief. None of us are probably, are we? But yeah, it definitely has had, I mean, it sounds awful, doesn't it? But it's definitely had a sort of strangely positive way in which I approach life because of that. You know, if somebody's hurt, I will go, I'm not a doctor, but I will go in and I will help. And I've done, it sounds really silly, but like really serious first aid courses.

And I know that I have made a difference to people because I felt so. helpless in that moment. Of course I was 14. I could do nothing. I could do nothing. But it has left me with that feeling of if I can help, I will help. Yeah, I get that. You went as you say to St. Andrews and you went to Argentina for a year. Is that right? You had a kind of. You're very good. You are. I know my stuff. You had a gap. Yeah. No, it wasn't it. It wasn't a gap year. No, it wasn't. It was an internship. Internship. Yeah. So I went to St. Andrews two years and I didn't go there with my economics A level. I didn't go there to study Spanish. You're so proud of that, aren't you? Do you know, I think you get that into the conversation, probably once a week.

I don't at all. I think you do. I think you're going to Waitrose. I did this. I did this thing. You said, hello, can I have a packet of lambs lettuce and some red peppers and I got an A in economics A level? I think actually probably put me off right, because I didn't even go to study economics at St Andrews. I was going to do international relations and philosophy. That's what I wanted to do at St. Andrews. So that's what I got in on. And actually, the way that Scottish universities work, and it's still kind of the same now, is that you do three subjects for the first two years.

And we could choose, like, random subjects. My grandparents had lived in Spain, and I loved, and I'd done Spanish O-level, as it was then. And I wanted to do more Spanish. So I took up Spanish. I did more, no, I did logic and metaphysics. Oh, yes. And management.

And, I mean, logic and metaphysics, again, with the like with the economics. I mean, I didn't. I was really naughty at uni. I didn't. I love it now because obviously I've turned things around a bit. I was terrible. I didn't turn up for lectures. I didn't give them my work. I was having a proper rebellion in those first two years. Logic and metaphysics, I mean, logic is so ridiculously hard. And if you don't go to lectures, you are not going to get it. And eventually at the end of the year when I was going to fail, I thought, okay, let's do this thing again. Let's let's learn this stuff. So I learned it. Managed to pass my exams, came back the next year and they said, do you know all that logic you learned

last year? I mean, this is probably not factually correct. All that logic, well, it's been disproved over the summer. Well, you probably, Louise, with your track record. Yeah, but no, and I just thought, well, I'm out. I can't be doing that. I can't, I've learned it once. I'm not learning it again. But I started Spanish and I just completely fell in love with the language and the department was incredible. And then second year, there was this opportunity to, it was a scholarship to go and work for Coates Viola, which were big thread company, you know Coates Viola actually, but they made threads essentially in Argentina. And they were doing a swap, a student swap. So somebody from Argentina was going to come to Glasgow to go and work there. And I'm smiling because imagine the contrast,

somebody from St. Andrews was going to go to Buenos Aires. Who got the best thing? Anyway, I went to live in Argentina and work there for a year, which was absolutely life-changing. When I went there, I'd learned Spanish, not terribly well, because as aforementioned, wasn't the best student. In fact, I was the worst student in the Spanish department at that point. And went there, and the Spanish was very different because it has a complete different accent, lots of different words, and was utterly overwhelmed with the, I mean, it was so intense. I arrived there. There was no phones.

There was no internet. There was no nothing. I was completely on my own living in a block of flats again, sort of 15 stories high in this enormous city, not understanding the language. But it was a fast track again to learning. And I sat down, I didn't realize this was a theme with me.

I didn't realize. So I thought, right, better crack this. How are we going to do it? We're going to get 100 years of solitude in Spanish and a dictionary and I'm going to read that book in Spanish and at the same time

I also took the easier route I watched loads of soap operas because when you're watching a soap you get all the you know you get the chat but you don't have to be in the chat and then you start understanding the colloquialisms

it was actually about a nun the soap opera that I watched and that's how I learnt Spanish again also by obviously I was working in the language as well But yeah, it was incredibly hard, very, very difficult moments. But I came back totally in love with the language, totally in love with the literature, and I completely changed person.

And my professors just said to me, kept coming up to me. Because then, you know, my Spanish went from the bottom of the class to top of class. Funny that. But you were only speaking to people in a very so pop-wish way, presumably, going, I never wanted to see you in my house again. Yes, exactly. Get out. Who do you think you are?

whatever it is. You've been having an affair, haven't you? No, I'm your tutor. Why are you talking to? Turns out it's very useful. And they just kept saying, what happened? You know, what happened to you? Like it had some sort of damaging conversion.

I just said, look, I just really like Spanish, okay? But it was hugely, it has a huge impact on me. And I came back and really studied incredibly hard and really enjoyed the rest of university because I was so immersed in it. But that's so interesting to me, Louise, that a lot of people, and frankly they would have been forgiven for doing this, would have got on the phone to Major Grayson. I would have. And I don't even know him because I feel he would have sorted me out. Oh, he would have. He definitely would have. There you go. And so the instinct would have been that I would have, you know, crying, bringing on the tears a bit, help me out, send me some money. I think I want to come home. You didn't do that. Why? What is it in you that makes you want to take you?

off those things out. I don't know the answer to that. There is a thing, I suppose, I had set out to go for a year and I was going to go for a year. And there was this terrible moment. I remember in a supermarket where it must have been quite early on. And Argentina, like it has been, the last few years, has been going through very difficult times. And at the time, there was hyperinflation. I'll just give you a sense of it. So when I arrived, one dollar, so American dollar was worth 650 Australes, is what they had then. A few weeks later, $1,500 was $6,500. So I would take my money to the supermarket.

So this is high inflation like you have no control over. And I'd know vaguely from, I spent, let's say, $5,000 last week. Let's say, I'll buy the same stuff, $10,000 this week. And it could be 20. And I just was so confused by the money and the language. And I had got the wrong amount of money. and this woman on the till shouting at me in Spanish. And I just literally had broke down in floods and floods of tears

and just thought, what on earth am I doing here? But at the end of the day, you know, I learned the language. I fell in love with the people. I just absolutely, the whole thing was incredible. And I didn't come back for the whole year. But it was incredible because you tufted out. And I would have. So I wonder if that is something, whether you're like that,

whether your parents have contributed to that a bit in the way they've raised you maybe? Probably. You know, probably. I mean, I know I've got through things that are difficult. And that was really, you know, there were moments in that year where absolutely my dad would have been, he'd have come out on a plane to get me. But actually, maybe that's the thing. Maybe the fact that I know he would do that is always in my back pocket.

I just think, you know, if I put up my hand and say, I'm out, he will do that. So maybe that's empowering. But I also think that's something in you, which is, oh no, I'm not giving up. It's such a valuable quality that. It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy, but it is a quality that, yeah, just dig in. It's going to be, you know, this is bad. Let's just dig in and, you know, things do get better.

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.