Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Nick Knowles (Part One)

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

This week Emily and Ray take a stroll with Nick Knowles, who has been at the helm of DIY SOS for an incredible 26 years, or, as Emily prefers to call it, Time for My Weekly Cry.Nick grew up on a council estate in West London, left school at 16 and spent the next few years doing just about every job imaginable. He tells Emily how he eventually blagged his way into television with the help of some questionably acquired BBC letterhead, beginning a broadcasting career that has made him one of the most recognisable faces on British TV.There are stories from a remarkably adventure-packed life, from working with David Attenborough and orangutans to chatting with Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace, plus the fabulous revelation that Nick once owned a pair of chinchillas. He also looks back on his adventures in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! And, of course, they delve into DIY SOS, the extraordinary people Nick has met through the programme and the communities who come together to transform the lives of families going through incredibly difficult times. The current series airs Tuesdays at 8pm on BBC One.It’s a candid, entertaining and occasionally unexpected stroll with a man who has accumulated more stories than most, all delivered, appropriately enough, while wearing a cowboy hat. Now Emily just needs to persuade him to find a tiny high-vis for Ray.Follow Emily:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilyrebeccadeanX: https://twitter.com/divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Will NicholsMusic: Rich JarmanArtwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And she said, I was like, I had this crash. I was upside down in the car. And then suddenly Nick Nolz had a pair of white trousers crawled in and saved me and my baby. So they sent her for a brain scan, thinking that she must have had some kind of brain injury. I was making up this story. This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I took a stroll with TV presenter Nick Nolz, who's been at the helm of the show DIY SOS, or as I call it, time for my weekly cry, for 26 years now. Nick turned up looking like the Marlborough man in a cowboy hat

and frankly I wouldn't have it any other way and we had the loveliest chat about pretty much everything from his early years growing up on a West London council estate to leaving school at 16 and doing virtually every job going before finally blagging his way into TV with a little help from some BBC letterhead he'd managed to get his hands on he's since of course gone on to become a hugely familiar face on TV

fronting a whole host of popular shows, along with memorable appearances on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Strictly Come Dancing, but it's his role in a high-vis as the host of DIYSOS that he's most recognised for, and I couldn't wait to chat to him

all about the current series, which, by the way, goes out on Tuesdays on BBC One at 8pm. And frankly, I defy you not to cry because there are so many extraordinary stories of resilience and the power of community coming up this series. Nick's had such an incredibly adventure-pack life.

One minute he'll tell you about the time he was working with David Attenborough and orangutang's. Then he'll mention chatting with Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace and suddenly he'll casually drop in that he wants owned a pair of chinchillas, which is why he's such a fascinating person to go for a walk with and Ray and I genuinely had the best time with him. In fact, I'm still holding out hope that Ray can get kitted out in his very own little high viz. to help oversee the next DIYSOS project as long as they're okay with the fact

that he doesn't get out of bed before 10am. Really hope you enjoy our chat. Here's Nick and Ray Ray. Right, Nick. Oh, listen to those birds, Nick. The geese. Are they the geese? They've arrived from Canada, haven't they?

Oh, already, I feel you know your stuff, Nick. You know about birds and history. I'm nerdy. You are quite nerdy. I am. Now I'm going to have to carry Ray through this area because it says no dog so I'm going to carry him. Is there is there an allowed dog area in here? Yeah through there but we could do a circuit here because it's pretty oh you're so do you work here what do you do? I have the coolest job in the world what I look after all the food in catering across the Kings parks across London oh do you this is my

friend Nick hello Nick I thought you would how are you so you're responsible all food across the Kings parks My job is a walk in the park and I put it on LinkedIn. So I look after Regents Park, Primers Hill, St James, Hyde Park and Greenwich. The posh ones basically. I was just going to say the potions. Yeah, yes, we have 21 restaurants and coffee shops, bars, ice cream parlours across, yeah. Wow. Does the King own them or do people rent the space?

It's a charity now. It's a charity now. It's officially a charity. I think that's the best thing for it, but it is all the King's Land. It's Crown Estate. We give the King and Country a big portion of it, but we're just saying it. but we're just separate kinds. It's been the Kingsland since Henry the 8th took it.

He knows. He knows these things, Nick does. It's fascinating. In the Reformation, yeah. It's a wonderful part of this, yeah. It's beautiful, isn't it? It's been my favourite park of all the parks. And I can say that as a father of five children, yeah?

Although the Hoy Palloy like me weren't allowed in until about 1845, something like that. Oh, is that right? Oh, I hope I would have been allowed in. I don't know. My family, definitely. We were coal delivery and stevedores emptying ships down in the dock, so we wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near it. Yeah, we're doing it.

a podcast that I do called Walking the Dog and I take people for a walk with my dog but I'm familiar this is one of my regular horns. There's a secret garden over there which is quite nice for filming. Oh but but can you take the dog? So the dog's only not allowed in the inner circle because the rose is the queen's rose is here but he's probably the best place to film the best there's a we're not filming we're just all doing all here. We're not filming. We're not filming. We will take some pictures though so we'll do it we'll do it we can do it by the roses well I'll let Nick choose where not sit. But if I carry Raymond, do you think it will be okay? I think you'll be all right. We're not allowed to stop anybody. We just like to say,

oh, no dogs allowed. But if it's in your hand, people will understand. Okay. If he's been walked in. We'll try not to let him savage anyone. If you say, it's always, fine. Have a good day. Lovely to meet you. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye. Oh, that's nice, Nick. I bet you get stopped quite a lot. I bet people stop you quite a lot, don't you? It's very nice because I think because of the nature of the programs

that I've done over the years, that people tend to wander up to me and chat to me like they've know me for years and a friendly. I don't think there's any sense of sort of celebrity about me. I don't think anybody thinks that. My family certainly don't. But, um, so people will come up and chat and just be really, talk to me as if they'd seen me the week before. I think that's true. I think some high profile people have what I call a sort of touch me not energy. Yeah. Whereas you don't think you have that. I'm not saying you can just go up and touch Nick, willy-nilly but I would say that's true and that's partly to do with the show that you do and also your general energy but um but there's nothing look the truth is I've I'll try and use a

different word but um that a lot of TV people start believing their own press releases and genuinely think they are a bit special and so they expect people to think they're a bit special when they meet them for the first time I've always worked on the fact that people probably I'm a bit of an art because I work on TV and if I and then I try to change their mind. So it's a good starting point and it's not a bad guess with a lot of people on TV as well. There's a lot of people that do get carried away with themselves. There's no difference between my job and anybody else's other than the fact that a lot of people work really hard to make me look good on TV.

So you know everything is set up for me to do my job but it's the people who do all that setting up that create the opportunity for me to do the things I do. Well, we're in Regents Park, and I'm so thrilled you're joining us today, and you've come up from your home. Are we allowed to say roughly where it is? Yeah. It's in Windsor, isn't it? Yeah. Everybody knows I live in Windsor. I went to a flower shop the other day and said, somebody said, somebody said, oh, you live down the road. And this woman behind the counter

went, no, he doesn't. He lives up here. And said where I live. So, yeah. And I've got Raymond. with me today, my dog, who's a shih Tzu. What do you think of him, Nick? I'm worried, well, it's good that you'll carry him because he doesn't look like he's got the, he's got many miles in him to be there. How dare you? He's quite um, bejou and compact, doesn't he? He really is. And you know he's never barked. It's his super- Never ever. No. And you like your history, Nick. I do like my history. And Raymond is an imperial shih Tzu and they were originally only allowed to be kept by emperors in the Chinese

palaces, royal palaces, and it was a sin punishable by death to own a Shih Tzu if you weren't in the palace. So I think he suits me. I wonder about the Kubla Khan had one, when he took over the Chinese throne. I don't know, I'll have to look into that, but they're quite a regal sort of breed. Do you know what I mean? Can you see he's got, he's got a sort of... Yeah, he's like, he looks like somebody who would expect his meals to be brought to him, rather than have to go forage for himself. And you don't have a dog with you. We should say that's the Regents Park Theatre.

I don't. They're rehearsing. Yeah, somebody's playing the mugger. That's more likely to be the cast warm-up music. Oh, okay. Hilariously, there was a West End show which was on, and I went to visit and they brought me backstage

to tell me that they used my album as warm-up music, which is hilarious. Because it was never, but it wasn't a very good album, didn't do particularly well. What was this? Every kind of people. Yeah, which actually... Excuse me, Chris Moore's got that to number one. He did get that to number one.

After I'm a celebrity. He got one of the singles to number one, which means that when I'm introduced in America now, I'm introduced as a TV presenter, film writer, and iTunes's number one artist. But nobody knows it was a joke in America. It's pretty good. So you don't have a dog.

Nope. It wouldn't survive. I'm not home often enough. Yeah, that's true. You're always filming, aren't you? And yeah, I only recently married last year and so before then there was no. Congratulations by the way. Is it like a year since your wedding? Yeah, just over a year. Yeah. And very lovely and I'm very, very happy. But I haven't had a home,

stable home in which to have a pet for a long, long, long time. And my one, you know, I did 23 countries for Channel 5 making travel shows in about 14 months and so my feet barely touched the ground during that time. And so did you, did any of your kids ever nag you to get a dog or a cat? They did, but at various stages. But cat, we have a cat. Do you have one now? Yeah, because it's really my wife's cat and the children's cat.

And there's no doubt that in the list of importance, it's sort of my wife and the kids, then the cat, then me in terms of pecking order. That's exactly how it should be, Nick. Yeah. And I have in the past had chinchillas, which I like a lot. Whoa, you just threw that in. I wasn't expecting Nick Knowles. long time ago.

Just suddenly say, oh yeah, I casually owned a couple of chinchillas. Well, I like them because they're like, they look like squirrels, but with big, big, bushy tails and with Mickey Mouse ears. I like that you said, I can't have a dog. Far too much work in maintenance. I'll get a couple of chinchillas. Yeah, but this was years ago before I got into TV. Once the TV career started, I was never home often enough to be able to.

What are chinchillas like as pets? Are they affectionate? Yeah. Yeah, they're great. I mean, they'll bite you a lot unless you train them not to. but if you can try them not to bite you, then they're very affectionate. What? They've got little hands, which is kind of cool.

Yeah, little hands on them. So you give them apple sticks and they eat it like a, almost like a cartoon... Like a tiny woman. ...curing a corn on the cob. They sort of roll it and chew the bark of it in a really friendly way. Also, they don't... They bath themselves in sand, but bowls of sand. So what they'll do is they're getting a bowl of sand and then rotate a high speed and fire sand all over the place.

It's very hilarious. They're very entertaining little pets actually. How extraordinary Nick. I've never met anybody who's owned a chinchilla. Have a go out of a board. Have a look at them. They're very pretty. Maybe, Ray. That'd be a nice friend for you, a chinchilla. About the same size as well. It's a bit more. So what was your relationship with animals? Because growing up, you kind of moved about a bit. Was it, um, talk me through because I know...

Always wanted a dog and parents wouldn't have one. My mum wasn't keen on dogs. Really? Yeah. We had one for about four weeks and then my mum decided that it should go to guide dogs for the blind and what kind of dog was it then was it lab yeah but I always wanted a I can see you with a lab yeah a long time ago that was a thing and then I and then I grew up without pets so but I've always been fascinated by wildlife and actually London zoos in the park here and my my love of wildlife came from my dad bringing me up to London zoo and me seeing an elephant for the first time in real life now I'm now part of the crowd that that says you shouldn't really keep wild animals in zoos and things like that.

But for that boy growing up on a council estate in West London, who was never going to come near any wildlife ever, to actually come that close to a wild animal, was actually a wonderful experience. And then fired up that passion for me. I became part of Born Free Foundation, which looks after endangered species around the world and ended up doing some work with Attenborough.

Do you know what I've noticed, Nick, is that normally the parkkeepers, they will come up to me and say look you shouldn't really have a dog but because I'm with Nolsey that's not happened I'm serious I'm serious because I think there's an element of firstly I wouldn't mess with you well I'm a fair old unit I'm this is the thing I don't think people get across on TV mainly because the rest of the people I work on with the TV are quite big too but I'm six foot two and about 17 and a half stone you've got what I look like a rugby player you've got presents do you're a

she says that when we're walking through a big crowd essentially in my other half we're walking through a big crowd i'll walk in front and she'll just literally stand behind me and the crowd's part for me whereas if she walks in front she gets bustled and hustled and i think that's just like a large wide unit coming to all the crowd's part for nick knolls yeah i wish it was on personality it's just on size sadly so growing up as you say this is in south hall isn't it in west london and you grew up it's three brothers and a sister? No, one brother and three sisters. Oh, that changes the whole dynamic.

Absolutely. It really, really does. And my brother, my oldest, my oldest two sisters and brother had pretty much left home while the time I was 10, mine 10, something like that. So it was just mostly me and my little sister. And your dad was an ex-R-A-F? X-R-A-F, yeah, was a pilot, was ground crew originally. when he signed up, lied about his age and signed up during the war and then at the end of the war

ended up flying hurricanes, went off to Zimbabwe or Rhodesia as he used to call it, and then trained there and then ended up flying in Palestine on a troop ship out to Palestine, he met my mum and they got married in Egypt at the end of the war. And so we see, I'm interested in them as a couple. were a bit older when they had your your dad was certainly older when they had me and I'm quite old now anyway so it was what plainly i mean you know he flew in the second world war and like most people's grandparents might have been involved but my it was my parents directly involved so um how does that so for my youngest son who's only 12 to have a grandfather who yeah flew in the second world war was really

unusual and how what look at that view oh yeah isn't that amazing nick that view down the avenue to that beautiful building at the end Terrace. And they're so lovely the way they maintain those gold gates. You think that's how they would have originally been seen. This whole place is beautiful, actually. Really, really beautiful. It's always like the king has got a bit of money to throw around on gardens. Bet you've done Buckingham Palace. Yep. I did a... numerous times. Did a lovely interview some years ago when I was doing something for Invictus with... Harry. Harry in the back garden. I was sat there in the back garden waiting for the cameraman to get ready to take a shot. We were sat next to each other on a bench.

Yeah. And I was staring off into the distance. And he said to me, where have you drifted off to? I was like, I was just thinking about my dad bringing it up here when I was about six or seven years old. And me having some paper and some crayons and sort of drawing and my face poking through the fence outside and thinking how weird it would be from my dad to think that I'm in here chatting to you. And he said, I get that. Imagine what it's like for me. That's good point actually.

That must be weird too. Yeah. So the park's amazing. It's got all this lovely history in it. Well, I do. See, this is, I know, I like being with people who have all this information. It's like being with Google. I want to go back to your dad and your mum because you're, we should say we're just passing a big water feature fountain here. This is the kind of thing that knit would help create.

Yeah, it might be a bit big for us, that. actually I didn't even know that with this I haven't seen this before and it's really impressive isn't it amazing it's gonna be 20 feet high yeah and about probably 30 feet long and he's a really beautiful waterfall the pigeon taking a bath in the middle yeah and he's sort of a comedy fat Victorian pigeon yeah and a lovely bridge do you approve of the workmanship here Nick this is no absolutely this is I mean when you think of the undertaking we do amazing things now we'll do a month's work in a day and we should say this is on DIY SLO yeah and

we'll do so in eight days we'll do eight months work and we can do extraordinary things but boom when when they built this there were no JCBs there were no no power tools there were no big diggers to do it so this was all dug out by hand and then all the stones were brought in by cart and put in place and you've got this beautiful island in the pond that looks like it belongs to mere cats it's so beautiful isn't it's really pretty so Oh yeah, your mum and dad. Was your mum a homemaker then?

Yes, very much so. Yorkshire mum came, joined the women's IRA when she was about, probably 18, 19, something like that. Went down to London, which was a massive shock to her coming out of Wakefield in those days in 1940, let's think, when in 43 maybe, and she got taken to the troop ship and she was stood by in a queue queue and she said, when do we go on the ship? And I said, well, we're getting on it now. And she said, well, where is it then? She said, you stand, stood next to it. She went,

this block of flats. She went, no, that's the side of the ship. She never seen anything like it in her life. So that was how naive she was. And then on the ship on the way over, she met my dad, who asked for a light, for a cigarette. And then about five minutes later, smoked another one and lit her cigarette with his own lighter. So he'd obviously, and she wrote a letter that day home to her parents saying, I've met the man I'm going to marry. Oh, isn't that lovely? And they got married in Egypt. And the sort of energy of your home when you were growing up,

how would you describe it? Massive work ethic from my father. Really? Yeah, who worked three jobs. I mean, working all day, he worked for the civil service. He was a cartographer. He made maps of areas for the MOD. And that was after, obviously, he was no longer in the RIA.

Yeah, he came out of the RF a couple years. And didn't he work in the sort of post office at night? to sort of help support the family. Yeah, he would do, especially at Christmas, he would do when there was extra mail, he would do shifts at night, and he would also work in a bar, in a local pub in the evenings as well.

So often he would be running three jobs, in the lead up to Christmas, he'd run three jobs a day to try and make sure that we all had something for Christmas and to pay for everything. Would you describe your background, it's weird to be asked this maybe, but would you describe it as working class?

Yeah, proudly working class. Yeah. People are really odd about this. that now they think they're going to offend people but no proudly working class and you know we grew up on a council estate in west London which was lovely I mean now people have a very sort of dismissive view of council estates and I think that's probably because all the good houses were sold off years ago so that people could buy their own houses and we have a lot of bad housing stock now but then our estate was really lovely people tended their gardens my mum we used to have a little red step at the front every every house had a little red step by their front door

door and all the mums used to use this thing called Admiral Red, which came in a tin that you would polish your red step with. And Mr Wilson, who only had one child next door, had all the gadgets for mowing the lawn and clippers and all the attachments. And my dad had a push along two-wheel lawnmower, old-fashioned 1940s lawnmower and used a pair of kitchen scissors to cut the edge of the lawn because we didn't have the money to be invested in. Yeah. So I remember sitting on a step looking at him and looking at Mr. the Wilson next door working with all these gadgets and thinking one day my family will have the good stuff which at that level as a child the good stuff was actually being able to afford a new lawnmower

and a pair of long-handled shears instead of a pair of kitchen scissors it's so amazing to think to use the kitchen scissors that now you know when you think now people don't even right you know it's like they use leaf blowers now the idea of having to collect leaves yourself seems like the worst kind of punishment we used to go visit my um Aunt and uncle, Uncle Fred and Nigel. Yeah, yeah. Uncle Fred and 90 Sheila up in Wales. My mum's sister married a Welshman when she was 18 years old. And died in her early 90s and so did Uncle Fred. So throughout my childhood we would go to Wales. And all the kids were all gathered together. And the first thing we did when we got there was all the kids, all the grandkids or kids were given buckets.

and we go up to the railway line where they used to chuck the, used to come from the coal mines. So they'd build kinds of coal by the side of the railway. And so we'd all pick up all the coal and stick it in buckets and fill up his coal bunker. So if he had like 40 family members from the greater family coming up there, he would use the opportunity to get 40 buckets worth of coal off the local railway line. So yeah, but it was really happy childhood. You know, my brother at seven years older than me would play me at football and beat me relentlessly. What were you like as a kid in it? Were you quite extrovert? Were you confident?

Yeah, because I had older sisters and then my brother came along. So the eldest girl, you got the eldest girl and the second eldest girl. Then you had the eldest boy. By the time I came along, my parents had kind of lost interest. So I was literally, I'd roller skate and juggle fish to attract attention. And I think that's probably carried on for the rest of my life. Yeah. A bit of children, you quite often find, TV presenters and people and actors tend to be either only children or middle children. Really?

Yeah, it's the attention-seeking thing, isn't it? Right. And were you at school and things? Were you academic or were you naughty and disruptive? No, I was good at stuff I had an interest in and then I couldn't apply myself to stuff that I wasn't interested in. And there was always, I've got a sort of magpie brain where I'll be talking about one thing and then,

oh that's the shiny thing over there is just retracted my attention and so I mean that has got another name now is you well know I don't want to dot far be it from me to diagnose on this podcast oh don't worry my wife has been diagnosing for some time and all of the various things that's let's stick with mad pie brain yeah well my worry also is when she stick a label on it some people go oh once I've got a label I know what it is and I can deal with it now but actually to a certain extent before there were any labels people just worked around whatever it was that they obviously had. Well, some people did, but some people just lost jobs and then drunk to escape their failures. Do you know what I mean? Well, yeah. I think this, I think both things are true. Yes, I think you're

right. In that, you know, it's that interesting thing with things like the menopause, I know this is very different, but I had a friend saying recently, oh God, no, you don't hear, stop hearing people talking about the menopause. And I know you'll think very differently because of what you've been through with your wife and, you know, complications she's had around her, you know, body and being female. And I think what's interesting is a male friend was saying this to me, said, oh, you just don't, women don't shut off about the menopause. They just used to get on with it. And I said, no, they didn't get on with it. They just couldn't talk about it now then. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And I think there's different things in different circumstances. So, for example,

with the menopause, my wife got more information and more understanding from Instagram stories of people who've been through it than she got from the medical profession. And so she's posting herself now to try and give people who are dealing with it some idea or making the decision about whether to have a hysterectomy or not. Because we should say Katie had one, didn't she? Yes, Katie had a hysterectomy. A year ago, she had an emergency operation about six months ago because some of it failed. And then she had corrective surgery again almost three months ago now. So she went from, you know, at 36 being plunged directly into full medical menopause, no perimenopause, no ease into it, or not that that's a wonderful thing, but no sort of... But there's some sort of a ramp physically, you know, where she had no ramp. She never had that. She was just piled into it, and she's been extraordinary. I mean, we discovered it just recently that her HRT that she's been using wasn't actually being absorbed into her seeing, the skin, because of her hot flushes and sweating and because of the summer.

So she was down on the only getting a tiny percentage of what she needed. And actually that was a learning curve too. So there's so many things to learn. We're being followed by a group of possibly foreign students. Yeah, there's a college near here. There is, yeah, yeah. What is it called? I think it's like a private university or something like that.

I know that because you see the students turning up and they have like bigatties and Maseratis. They're different to my day. Do you know what I mean? but it's a very um but that was nice so like that sort of young energy and enthusiasm and happiness as they sort of I kind of love that Nick don't you yeah I kind of love seeing young people a lot of people as they get older slightly resent it do you know what I mean but also want to tell young people you shouldn't be doing this and you shouldn't be doing that you shouldn't be doing the other it's like I'll

get a little bit tired of old men in particular telling young men what they could it shouldn't shouldn't do um so it's like you know you need to make some of your own mistakes and He doesn't look overly excited about the idea of actually walking now that you put him on the floor. Why won't you walk? Come on, show Nick that you can. Good boy. Show Nick you can walk. Oh Ray, I'm so proud of you. How did you, how did you balance yourself when you lost, I read that you lost three close family members in a very short time. Mum, dad and sister was, right? And sister, yeah. So she went first and then my mum went and then my dad. So you know, you've got to find a new normal all of a sudden, haven't you, which is very different.

It's, I suppose it's an interesting thing with multiple loss is that what can happen, and it happened in my case, is that you don't process each loss individually. Because you're looking at, you're mourning your sister, and then it's, oh, there's another one. I call it like whack-a-mole, you know, it just kept popping up. Then my mum, that's a different relationship. Yeah. Then my dad, that's a more complicated relationship because we were sort of a strange brief. so it just, it actually got to the point, Nick, where I was like, right, okay, I don't think I've dealt with this.

Hello suitcase, man. Something with a very large suitcase. The apprentice candidate. So yes, but that's very lovely of you to ask. Thank you, Nick. No, because it's a huge thing. I quite often talk to people talk to me about bereavement quite a lot, I think because of the programs I did. I think so.

I remember talking and I choose to be quite brave with it. it because I was at a polo match, a friend of my life, it sounds very pot, but I was at a polo match and somebody invited me over there at the boot open and they were having a glass of champagne and said, would you like one? That's very nice of you, thanks very much. I said, well, no, it would be our anniversary. It's our anniversary. We don't celebrate it anymore. I was like, why don't you celebrate it? And she said, well, because three years ago, well, my anniversary, we lost my mum. And every time it comes around, all I can think of is my mum, and so we don't celebrate it anymore. And he looked quite pained, and I said, do you mind me saying, if I could

bring your mum back for just two minutes and you told her that you don't celebrate your anniversary anymore because of the timing what would she say to you? She said, well, she told me to be so stupid and it's important to celebrate my. I said, well, there you go then. I mean, sometimes you need to get out of the loop. You can get into a loop with bereavement and also you can get quite into a loop. I shouldn't be telling you this because you'd get to deal with it, but I've lost my father and mother as well. Of course. It's very quickly, I'd decided that when I thought of my dad after he passed away, it would make me very sad. And I wanted to change that because I didn't, with all the amazing things about my dad,

and all the time that I'd spent with him and all the amazing things that happened, my first thought was the loss of him and the last few months when he was very ill. And I didn't want that to be what I remembered. And I wanted to be able to think of my dad and smile. Yeah. So I kind of fought it and tried to make it, tried to get to that point as quickly as I could. And same with my mum and other bereavements, because your loved ones would want you to think of them and smile,

not think of them and be heartbroken. But do you think sometimes what can happen is that you want to get to that point where it feels less painful, but then you sometimes miss out on dealing with some of the feelings around it? Yeah, you can't hurry it, and that's the thing with the problems of what I'm saying, is that there is no, you can't say to someone, come on, because that's essentially saying, come on, buck up. Yeah. It has never ever helped anyone.

There are certain things that people say that never work. Buck up or, what's this other one, is cheer up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or calm down. Now, never in the history of anyone being angry, has anyone said calm down and they have. It tends to add fuel to the situation. No, I don't mean that.

I don't mean that you should be able to say, I'm not doing that anymore. Yeah. But I think in the back of your head, you should work towards it because that's what your loved one would want. Yes. They would want you, the whole point of a parent is to prepare a child to continue in the world. And if you stall, when you lose your parents, it's a little bit of an insult to your parents that they haven't prepared you well enough to carry on. And also do you think sometimes, I certainly feel with my sister, which was, I guess, a life interrupted.

She was all her kids grow up. You know, that's tough. But I do find myself, Nick, with that, I would agree with you. If I'm ever, you know, we all get down days, obviously, or something happens and you're upset or you don't want to get out. of bed and I think I do think that I think what an insult what an insult to her and I also she used to say something to me if ever I would be scared to do something I can't do it I'm not good enough she'd say come on emil better than that and I say that to myself let's make me cry that's so stupid at all that's an absolute connection to someone who wanted the best for you

why would that be a bad thing to be emotional Nick Knowles has made me cry. He makes me cry. I never thought this would happen. Why am I crying? Literally, what is it about you, Nick? Why do you make me cry? I listen. Do you think that's what it is? Do you know what, honestly, when I'm talking to new presenters and people who, people come into the business to be presenters and they think that their job is to say hello, look at me. It is the very last important thing. What you're really there to do is say hello, look at them. And so when you talk to people, you should give the person you're talking to the absolute opportunity to be the best they can be and express themselves in the best way possible. So I, for example, never prepare questions before I go into an interview, ever ever.

Because if I'm interviewing somebody who's lost a daughter or his husband has passed away or has a family member who's diagnosed with a motion urine disease or something, and I have a set of list of questions, the interview will go where I want it to. go. That's so true. Whereas if I ask one question and listen and ask the next question off the back of what they say, the interview will go where they want to. And I'm never going to know the question to ask that will get that moment that makes it clear what they're going through. They will tell me what it is if I shut up and listen. I love that, Nick. I can't believe you made me cry. I am not surprised, actually. No, I, do you know what, I never apologize. I shouldn't have apologise because I think there's a lovely those moments.

Because you think it's a moment of true connection and a moment that reminded you what your sister A meant to you but also the advice she gave you which was really good advice about getting on life so that should be emotional and should give you that a combination of emotion and a bit of a boy up because yeah thank you Nick no I still chat to my dad and he passed away 30 years ago do you? I get important decisions to make or I'm in difficulty and I'll say to them, come my dad, whatever you're up to, sort, just take two minutes and sort this out, will it? We were filming in Norway, I was doing a travel program.

Norway's beautiful, stunning, but it literally rained and had low thunderous skies all the way through. My cameramen, who are best friends and mine, were working their asses off to try and make it okay by grading the clouds and making it all look very dramatic and all the rest of it. But it would have been nice to have seen a bit more of the mountains. And there was a period of about four hours where we were trying to, I needed to do a piece of camera and we were just, wouldn't stop raining and so in my head I said look dad I just just stop it for two minutes and I promise I'll get it right the first go I just need two minutes to do this piece of camera to get out of the van and do this piece of camera and the

director said I think we better call this I said hang on a second I've just asked me dad to sort it out and amazing about two minutes later it stopped raining we all jumped out of the van I did the piece of camera next to the statue we got back and it started raining so every down again when we were on these journeys so I spent more time with that that director than I spent with my family he said say to me, have a word with your dad, will you? We need this to sort out. But in my head, that gets me... But also, the thing about asking questions about somebody who's passed away, it's not about me really getting an answer from them. No. But it puts me in the frame of mind

to think of my dad, where I will know what he would have said. Yeah. And that helps. It clears out all the detritus that I don't need to consider and just goes to the heart of what he would have said to me. It's going to the heart of you in a way, isn't it? Oh yeah, because I am my father. I mean, you know, we are, we are, I'm not a massive one, I'm not massively religious. I don't believe in many of the forms of afterlife that people believe in, but I think your afterlife is your children and those ripples continue afterwards and how you bring up your children, what they believe in, and then into your grandchildren.

I can see things in my children that were my father, I can see things in, you know, in all kinds of people where you can see it bouncing back over generations. It's wintering today, isn't it? Isn't it? Suddenly, I put a winter jacket on and put a hat on so it was going to rain. We can carry your own. No, I'm good. Are you sure?

I can't imagine Nick Knowles is a sort of person that would feel comfortable with someone carrying his jacket. No, it's not. Even like asking someone to go and make me a cup of tea on set or something like that, you've got the directors go, can we get three teas over here to the runner and I'll say, please? Really? Say please. That's their job. I don't care is their job and I'll say please.

It's like I remember being a runner. I like and didn't bother me at the time but actually now that I'm not a runner anymore I can at least say please to the person who's running around trying to do the you know. 100% and I want to go back to your childhood actually because by the way I love that conversation with you it's giving me a happy heart.

That's great then isn't it? Yeah I think it's really lovely. Going back to your childhood you left school at 16 didn't you? I did. But you were, you did quite well. You were sort of academic and quite bright. Why was the decision to leave school and not do O levels?

Authority. I had a real problem with authority. Did you? Like my father, I would have quite liked a career in the military, but it was, you know, as Clint Eastwood said, a man's got to know his limitations and I was always going to get in trouble with authority. I had terrible authority problems at school.

Where did that come from, Nick? What would a therapist say? Well, on investigation, it came from my first. who equally didn't get on as well as he could have done at the, when he was a cartographer for the Ministry of Defence, because he would do all kinds of ridiculous things in the office and annoy the authorities. So, yeah, it would seem that that would be where it came from.

And was there also a sense? Also, I just wanted to get out and do stuff. I was going to say, was there also a sense of you being a bit, what did you call it, magpie brain? Let's call it that. And I need to do this. I need to do this on, you know, impatient to start your life.

Yeah, I mean, I played in a band. I worked in the theatre behind the scenes in theatres. I had an idea that I would write stories or write books or write poetry or write songs or. I wanted to be super creative. And actually, it wasn't really very good at any of those things. a good artist I wasn't a great musician I wasn't a great songwriter but I suddenly discovered that I could write and actually what I was really good at was talking to people and telling their stories or giving them the opportunity to

tell their stories and so when the opportunity came along to do some television I was really shocked to find that I sat into it really comfortably which I did when I was 21 and then having done one thing for television which was almost accidental I then went to try and work in the industry but of course having left school at 16 I had nine GCSEs I think but I hadn't gone on and done the A levels and the degrees everybody in my school did it was it was an Oxford Bridge school but funny enough I was talking about this really was it a grammar school yeah so you must have been quite bright to have got in there yeah I think so but it

was the attention span and the authority problem that that stopped me doing any better I think so can we take a picture here maybe on the logs That feels good for Nick because he's got a rustic outdoors vibe to him, Nick. Don't you think you do have that, Nick? Yeah, I think so. Well, I borrowed little bits from around the world as I've gone around things that I liked. So the hats, Australia and the jacket's American. I just think if I needed something sorted, I probably would call you.

Like if something went wrong in my garden or my house, or I just was in a panic. I think you might be a good 3 a.m call. I don't have panic at all. Yeah, I think you'd be a good 3.m. am cool. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah and I am like that. If I, several times I've pulled up with a scene of accidents, car accidents, where I'm 20 cars back and got out and walked past all the people sat in their cars to help someone out of a car who was in a crash. And whilst everybody else is

sitting there slightly shocked, I don't have that. It's a really odd thing. In panic situations, I go stone cold, what do I do next? It's a very weird thing and I'm aware it's not normal. What do the people People in the accidents think when Nick Knowles, I would have think, oh my God, have died or something. There was a hilarious one, actually. I was travelling through the countryside in... Am I hallucinating? Where was I, Somerset, I think it was. I was going to do some filming in Somerset.

And as I was driving along the road, I looked over my shoulder and saw a car upside down in a field. And carried on driving, and something was bothering me about it. And I couldn't work out what it was. And I got about a quarter of a mile up the road and suddenly realized that what was bothering me about it in a quick glance was that the wheels were still spinning. which meant it's only just happened. I thought, my immediate thought was that's been in the field of a while. That's what I would think. But I remember, it was the thing that one of the wheels was spinning.

I was like, that's really weird. So I turned around and went back, jumped out and went running across the field. I could hear this woman shouting and screaming in this upside down car. And the windows had crushed slightly, so it was, the window space was about half what it should be. But all the windows had chatted out. And she was shouting, where's my baby? Where's my baby? So I basically got on the floor, climbed in through the back window.

in the roof space because she'd let herself out of her seatbelt and had fallen into the roof space and was going around looking for her baby and her baby was actually above her still strapped into the child seat so at which point another guy had just stopped up in a van and he'd come and he was trying to open the door and he couldn't get the doors open so i took the baby carefully out the seat and handed the baby out the window one of the crushed windows and then helped her get out and then took us to my car which was an old ranger over and i put the back thing down the back lip down and later on that and then the ambulance turned up and they took over and took her off from there and I went on my way

and then I got this call I switched off my phone as I was doing the film I put it on about two hours later it was full of messages from from newspapers and journalists had she said to them Nick Niles helped me well she went into hospital and she told them they said what happened she said I was like I had this crash

I was upside down in the car and then suddenly Nick Nolns had a pair of white trousers crawled in and saved me and my baby so they sent her for a brain scan thinking that she must have had some kind of brain injury I was making get up this story. But it was actually true. Isn't that incredible? Yeah. But then I then got in the car and then just carried on driving and did the rest of my day's work. I was not, I think the people might be quite affected by that, but I, it was just very straightforward for me. And that's,

I've had a few like that. It was an oddly enough about two months later, I was on the M4, and a car rolled on the M4, about six cars in front of me. And I saw it because it appeared in the air above a transit van that was in front of me. That's how high off the road it got when it's So we all stopped on the motor. I wait until everybody behind it stopped and then I ran up there and there were two guys in there and they were trying to get out where they still had their seat belts on. So I sort of reached in and helped him out and then I saw another guy over the other side and parked up with a dent in his car. So I went over to jack on him. He says, I'm fine.

There's nothing wrong with me. But I could see blood on his t-shirt where he'd been hit and he didn't know he'd been hit because he wasn't. And then the emberhood's turned up and I said, there's a guy over there who's got side injury. He doesn't know how bad it is. And then these two guys at the side of the road are the ones that I got out of the car over there and she went, not you again. I was like, she said, are you causing these accidents? I'm like, no, I literally just had to be... Nick, it is getting a bit weird.

Yeah. It's like the importance of being honest, to witness two accidents, Algernon, maybe considered a misfortune. So, Nick, in terms of your career, I know you went to, you ended up going to Australia, and sort of blagged your way into a job in TV, didn't you? I did.

I basically had been a runner at the BBC. Yeah. But I also, the reason I was able to be a runner was who I talked my way into a job as a temporary accounts clerk. And so one of my jobs was to get all the heads of department to sign, I'd take them sort of 30 different pages and things. They just had to sign the bottom of them. Yeah. So I slipped in a couple of blank BBC sheets of paper and got them signed by head of BBC 2, head of BBC 1, wrote my own references on the blank sheets. And went off to Australia with the best CV anyone's landed in Australia with.

And it was before the internet, so no one could be bothered to check. and this child just sat there on their own. I know there's a child sat there on her own looking like she's got a bottle but it looked quite brilliant isn't it because it was just like yeah I'm in living my best life yeah so yeah I managed to talk my way into a job there and managed to blag my way through the first week being a news reporter for a news station on Australia the voiceover was the big shot I went I arrived with two things things happen. When I first arrived at the station, I came in the back entrance still at the front because I basically got mixed up.

And heard two cameramen talking about how annoyed they were, that presenters, the journalists directed the stories when they knew they were better at directing and if only the journalists would listen to them. So when I got sent out my first job, having never been with a cameraman or a camera before, I said, do you know, back in the UK, it's the journalist who always decide what the job done. It would be much nicer, I think, if you did, would you be up for that? And they went, I'd really love to. So that was great. He taught me through it. And then when I got back and wrote my script I said to the editor how do we do this and she said well the same the way anybody does you write the story you choose the bits of interview you want that you've recorded and we put them all together and cover it with pictures then the voice over and the voice over is a problem because anybody who reads a story

who isn't in television or tends to read it a monotone like that because why would you change your voice pitch if you do anything like so I did that and she said hang on a second called the news editor in And he said, it's a bit tean scones, mate, isn't it? I was like, well, look, I suppose. Can't you jazz it up a bit? I was like, how? So he said, today in Windsor, Caribbean Shire down at Barrett Garong,

the police were pulling cars out of the lake. So I went in there and thought, well, I've lost the job anyway. So I copied him, literally mimicked him. And he said, that's fine. So for the next year and almost two years, I basically put on a dodgy Australian accent as a user analyst. which didn't fall anybody in Australia, they all knew where it was a POM. I had two weeks of work.

Yeah. I did some of the weirdest reports they've ever had on a news station, because I didn't know how to do news reports. And then I went away and went to work for a landscape gardener and play rugby, which was what I was doing before I got the job. The landscape gardening probably came in useful as well. Well, it was just waiting. I used to work on buildings for anything that would keep me fit because I was playing rugby.

Really? Anything physical like that was good. And then three weeks later, I got a call from the station saying, we've got a massive mail bag asking where the Pommie bastard is. because they like you a lot so we'd like to offer you a job so they offer me a job and they said

your reports are so weird just go and choose a story off the board and just go and do it every day I was like fine so I did that's interesting feedback

isn't it your reports are so weird we love but you know that's the thing I wasn't taught how to be a journalist so that gave me so there was a point of difference

with you and people responded to that yeah isn't that interesting Nick I think so because it's very look they say that creativity

here's an interesting thing with our children when we, our children first to go of school, we cut potatoes and do potato prints and we do making rockets out of cereal boxes and we do all kinds of creative things like that. And then somewhere about 10 or 11, 12. We still do what, but essentially it's like stop messing about, stop daydreaming, concentrate on I'm going to teach you algebra, which you're probably never going to use in your life. Yeah.

We don't teach them how to use a bank account. We don't teach them how to do anything that would be useful when they actually get out. Or do you do if someone dies or, do you know what I mean? none of the back side of things is is taught but what we do is teach them the accepted way of writing a story or the accepted way of whatever it happens to be and of course all the great success stories have been people who've done stuff differently who's taken an original route through to it so i was very lucky that nobody taught me how to do tv so i did it very differently to everybody else and that became a point of interest and i've tried to hang on to that over the years to make

that I don't. Directors will say to you, will you just do something like this? Will you just do this? Will you just do that? And you have to be, on the one hand, nice enough that you'll carry the legs and help the rucksack for the cameraman or help them carry things around and turn up at whatever time they want and work as late as they want.

But when they ask you to do something that isn't you, don't do it. How do you say that? So if I'm the director, can you do this, Nick? Can you sound a bit more emotional when you ask that question? But that's not the point of emotion. the story that I'm getting to lead me to get to the point I'm leaning towards somewhere I think we can get there and if I go if I try and be emotional now also don't try and be emotional you should be emotional because you're emotional not because

the script wants you to be emotional yeah well then you're getting into broadcast news territory aren't you know that William Hurt thing I do that it's so powerful that it's like and that's what I want to get on to this because that's what's so interesting and I for me that success of DOI, SOS and you on that show is that I never sense the emotion always feels authentic. It's sort of balanced in the sense

that it's natural. Every now again we've got a new director we'll sit down to do an interview and suddenly after I've asked two or three questions the director will go could you just tell Nick about that and I hang on, hang on, wait one second, sorry, sorry about that, just give us a minute

and we'll go outside and I'll never tell the person I'm talking to you what to say. Never ever tell the person I'm talking to you what to say. It's just that I want, I said, I know what you want, and we'll get to it. But sometimes I'll ask a question, I'll ask a question, they'll give me a very long answer.

And the English people, English people when they talk, or British people when they talk, are very different to Americans. Americans have been grown up with show and tell, so they're very good at coming up with concise answers. What do you think of such and such? Oh, I think it's great, but I don't really happy about this. I'd like to see it changed to this, and you go, sure.

The British, you'll say, what did you think, what do you think about our great British parks? And I was saying, do you know what? I was talking to my wife this morning and I was saying one of the things about British parks, because we do go to British parks quite a lot. And we both like parks. I mean, you like parks. And I like parks. And, you know, they're so beautiful and so. But anyway, I was saying what we need in British parks. And nobody's doing this at the moment and they should be doing this.

You guys just say what you mean to say. The great trick is not to stop them because then they become self-conscious is to let them give their whole answer. And then circle round via two other questions and come back to it. ask the same question again. They'll think I've already told you that and they'll shorten their answer naturally without you having to change how they do it. Interesting. Things like body language are really important too. You'd like you'll get people who are really nervous and really shy. If I'm interviewing a woman I'll sit opposite her and look at her with a cup of tea. If I'm sitting talking emotionally to a man, I'll sit next to him on a bench or something and

look out so that we're not making eye contact. Men don't do eye contact and get emotional conversations. That's why they say have conversations with your teenage sons in the car. It's one of the reasons I love doing this podcast, you're comfortable, and I feel very comfortable looking at you in the eye, asking a personal question, for example, but some people less so. And what I loved about this podcast is that you're actually avoiding eye contact of it. It's a bit walk and talk. So if I'm saying to someone, have you had therapy and I'm like directly looking at them in a studio setup, that's a bit confrontational. Whereas if I'm saying, oh, Raymond, I'm picking up his poo and kicking leaves and saying, have you had therapy ever? Yeah. It's very different, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

And actually... I want to take a picture of him here. He looks so good. Making that, getting that comfortable... Finding that comfortable situation and getting a comfortable situation in which people can talk is so much of it. Not challenging people. And then I was going to say body language is really important too. You can use body language in lots of ways.

You can use it sort of semi-aggressively with like political interviews when I was a news journalist. that if you've got a politician who doesn't want to talk to you, who'll sit there with his legs and arms crossed. So you start with your legs and arms crossed. And then during the course of the conversations, you ask two or three benign questions during which you uncross your arms and uncross your legs. Very often they'll mimic you.

And then they'll feel more comfortable because their legs and arms are uncrossed, and then you ask them the difficult question. Now, you can work, but you can use it in a positive sense, which is that when you're interviewing somebody who is, like TV people say ridiculous things. They've set up lights and two, three cameras. and then in somebody's living room and then you go, ignore us.

It's like, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I will spend, the other thing I insist that my directors that I work with don't say we're rolling or action or anything like that. So I'll start talking to them whilst they're setting up, the person I'm going to talk to, we'll have five, ten minutes worth and I'll get a nod from the cameraman that they're running and I'll just go into the conversation because there's nothing like saying action or we're filming to make people feel tense. The other thing then is to do three or four questions that are of the director's not much interested in. Oh, the rangers coming for us.

They're little buggies. So our three or four questions that are really just chatty conversations about and nothing in particular. And during those few questions, I will then uncross my legs. If you, as an interviewer, they say you should look relaxed. If they're crossed up, arms and legs, that's a representation. to how they're feeling. If I then sit opposite them with arms and legs uncross, I look comfortable, makes them feel even more uncomfortable

because I look comfortable. So I will quite often cross my arms and legs to start the interview. And also I will make a mistake and go, sorry, can I do that again? And I'll make a couple of mistakes so that they can see that we're not worried about anything going wrong, that we've got enough tape,

that we're not bothered about me making a mistake. I've made a mistake, so it's okay if you make a mistake. That takes the edge off. Three or four questions that are of no particular importance. and then when they're comfortable, when they're uncrossed, then they can talk. And the other thing is, I think after 26 years of doing this, families who are going through tough times have seen me talk to other people. And I think there's a degree of trust then that I'm there to be fair with them. I'd be honest, I trusted you when you asked about my family and my sister just now.

and that's a sort of instinctive judgment you make. Yeah, and I don't think you talk to everyone. You're used to doing daily risk assessment, if you know what I mean, throughout your life. And when you ask me that question, it's like I make a split decision, like I was saying to you, and someone said, what's your dog called? And I think, do I feel comfortable going there? And I really felt safe with you, if that means. Well, thank you.

And that is a real privilege. And I don't underestimate that how, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think it's wonderful that people talk to me, that people trust me with those inner thoughts, and there will be something that they say which will absolutely take the viewer into a position of understanding what they're going through much better than anything I could ever say. 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.