Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Richard Madeley

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Emily and Richard take Ray for a walk on Hampstead Heath. They discuss Richard's childhood, meeting and falling in love with Judy and his incredible career - including Britain's most successful book club in conjunction with WHSmith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, I like that one. That's... What's that, Richard, do you think? Is that an Irish wall found? A golden doodle? That is so not an Irish wolf found. This week on Walking the Dog, I took Ray out for a stroll on Hampstead Heath

with a man you'll be very familiar with. I'm going to go TV legend. Richard Madelew. Richard doesn't really need an introduction, but here you go. He's a TV presenter, journalist, author. He runs Britain's most successful. book club and he's a newspaper Agony on, but you'll know him best from his incredibly long-running

and successful TV partnership with his wife, Judy Finnegan. Richard is incredibly good company and he's refreshingly candid. He said at the beginning, you can ask me anything you want, and he was right. He opened up about his childhood, his first marriage, his dad's sudden untimely death, and he told me all about his relationship with Judy and how they fell in love. Richard doesn't have a dog himself. he said he'd have an issue with the poo and I can't argue with the man but he was very sweet with Ray and the most exciting thing of all I got to go into Richard and Judy's actual house I loved spending time with Richard and now I know where he lives I'm moving in their kids have left home they could accommodate a lodger easily do check out Richard and Judy's book club

in conjunction with W.H. Smith they have some brilliant recommendations and it's Britain's biggest book club. Anyway, I'll stop talking. Here's Richard. We're going to go, Richard? Yes, let's go. You've got a draw, look at this, draft excluder. Oh, vital, the wind howls in across the heat. It really throws it down. Shall I put Ray down? Do you think I should put his lead on now? Are we going over there? Going over there, yeah. Okay. I don't carry him all the way, Richard. Well, I tell you what we should do. We should walk on the pavement all the way down and there's a footpath that cuts across

And we can do a do circuit. Lovely. Let's cross over. Let's cross over. Oh, look, there's already some other dogs. Oh, it's Dog Walker's Paradise here. How old? Oh, Richard didn't ask a lady who age.

Go on. How old is? He's three. Three. And he's called Raymond, because I wanted an old man's, like, pub name. Do you know what I mean? I'm with the very marvellous, Richard Madele. Did you say harmless or marvellous?

I didn't catch that. Well, I can vouch for. Harmless is probably better. Probably more accurate. You're striking it's fairly harmless. Mostly harmless, yeah. Okay. And we're in, I won't specify exactly where, but in case any burglars are listening,

but we're in a lovely part of North West London. And you've lived here a long time? We've lived here for a well over 20 years. I mean, I'm a Londoner kind of born and bred. Actually, I was born in, I was born in Essex. It's born in Romford. Yeah. But for some reason, though, everybody calls it East London.

Do you have to wait for Raymond? Is this going to happen a lot? He's standing in the middle of the road. Raymond, come on. Come on, Raymond. Raymond, come on. I don't think he thinks I'm harmless. He's giving me some very odd looks.

Maybe you should carry him. Do you think I should, yeah? Can I ask what your attitude to animals is? Because I've brought my dog Raymond, because you don't have pets, do you? No, we don't have pets because I suppose we're too selfish. I mean, we've got lots of kids, and they're a handful, even when they're grown up. And I mean, I like dogs. really like them. Most breeds, very few breeds I don't like. But if we have a dog, you know what it's like.

I mean, it's a complete tie, isn't it? It would make travelling difficult, we'd make... I know you can put them in kennels, but I don't like that. I don't like the thought of... Do you put him in kennels? I find nice people that can look after him. There's a place called the Country Dog Hotel, which is essentially like the Soho farmhouse for dogs, and they pick them up and no humans are allowed there. And also, although I'm not particularly screamish about anything, I don't really want to, several do they have to pick up dog shit? I just don't want to do it. I know I'd get used to it, like changing a nappy on a baby,

but I don't really want to. Like I said, it's selfish. But I know if I did, if I inherited a dog or one came into my life, I know that I wouldn't be talking like this. I wouldn't be thinking like this. I know it would be great. I understand that. And did the kids ever put pressure on you when they were growing up to get pets?

Because you know what kids are like with, oh, can we get a puppy or was that not really a thing for them? Well, I think when kids, know the way their parents are going to respond. I mean, they learn pretty quickly that there are some things that's just a waste of time arguing for you. And arguing for a dog, which I can't even remember them doing. They must have done, they must have done, would have got this kind of complete blank, no,

we're not doing it. And they would have just moved on to something else, like, can I have a computer? And did you have dogs growing up? Yeah, we had a dog called Prince, who was a collie, kind of the lassie breed, who was completely, I know people say this about their dog, but he was completely insane. And he was totally untrainable. My mum spent a fortune going to dog obedience classes with him. Really?

We're just cut across the hoof here. And he wouldn't sit. He wouldn't come. He wouldn't fetch. He wouldn't do anything that dogs are supposed to do. He just ran around in tight circles barking. And whenever we took him out for a war, we learned quite quickly you couldn't let him off the lead. Because the moment you unclipped his lead, he just run away.

Talking of which, I might let Raymond off the lead. Yeah, because... He would just run away and he would disappear for a day. And then it was always the same thing. We'd hear us scrabbling at the front door. At the end of the days, it got dark. And mum would go and open the door. And he'd be there absolutely black

with foul-smelling mull. He'd found some sewer farm or something and he'd always go there and he'd come back and mum would have... You know what, college would be the long day? He'd take ages to clean him up. So in the other gave him away. Oh, really?

He sounds like a really bad boyfriend. I love it. Coming home covered in shit. Yeah, exactly. So your childhood, I'm particularly fascinated by, because you wrote a book called Fathers and Sons a few years back, and I really loved it. Oh, thank you.

And I think what I loved about it is it wasn't a traditional autobiography. It was actually about tracing, sort of making connections in families and how sort of, um, in a way, damage can be passed down and do you have the power to stop that when you recognise it? That's how I saw it. You've got it in one. That's exactly right.

Since I became the agony art for the Daily Telegraph on Saturdays, took over from Grand Norton when he pected him, it's shown me something which I kind of knew for a long time. It's very basic Freudian thinking really, but it is that they fuck you up, your mum and dad. And so many of the problems that I get in my post bag are clearly rooted in childhood. Not all of them, but most of the emotional problems are rooted in childhood and in upbringing.

Which doesn't mean to say that parents should cop the blame for everything, but you've got to be able to trace it back and analyse it. And that's what I did with fathers and sons. I mean, my grandfather was called up in the First World War and had a horrible time, as they all did. He was in France for nearly three years. He lost part of the foot, lost his hearing. And like so many men of that generation, it totally fucked him up. And he came home and shut up about it.

hardly ever spoke about it, but that was all part of a general sort of repression. Yeah. And it's funny, I was watching Rocket Man, you know, the Elton John, the bath. Oh, yeah, did you like it? I thought it's terrific. Yeah. It was really good. All of it.

I liked all of it. And you see how Elton John's middle years, well, youth and then middle years, almost until now, were completely screwed up by having a father who wouldn't give him a hug. His mother was obviously horrible. Yeah. And it drove him into this incredible spirals of basically self-abuse. Yeah. In the sense of drugs, not oninism.

And that was because of his mum and dad. Oh, look, he's a bit frightened. I might just pick him up. Hello, sweetheart. This is a very big. It's an Alsatian. It's just because it's big and he gets frightened, yeah. Hello.

It's a beautiful Alsatian. I wasn't being rude picking him up. He just gets a bit frightened. They look lovely dogs, though. What's that? Is that an Alsatian? He's not quite an Alsatian, is he? He's too shaggy for an Alsacian.

Look at this one, Richard. He's got a bit of Belgium in him, but. Ah, yeah, yeah. He looked amazing. What's the call? Oh, he's trying to give you a stick, Richard. Come here. What's he called?

Caesar. Caesar, yeah, yeah, you would be, wouldn't he? He's such a Caesar. Yeah, he's big too, isn't he? And a Titus as well. You got a Titus? Oh, very Roman. Hello.

Titus, the Dalmatian, great. Are they twins? No, no. They're actually two different family. Are they? Cool. So you're either real dog lovers or you run a dog walking business? I think you run a dog walking business.

We do as well, but we're not doing as well. We're not doing as well. Okay. Oh, I like that one. That's... What is that, Richard, do you think? Is that an Irish wolfound? A golden doodle?

That is so not an Irish wolf found. But he looks like an Irish wall. He does. Okay. Bye-bye. Nice to meet you. Oh, look, this snowsers following us, Richard. Hello.

The schnauzer's taking a fancy to Richard Radley. Do you like that, by the way, the encounter with people? Oh, very much. Do you? Yeah, yeah. I think it's one of the reasons I became a reporter. You're quite sociable, aren't you? I'm very sociable.

I'm very sociable. I'm very interested in, genuinely interested in people, which sounds like self-praise, but it's not. It's just a statement of truth. It's very hard to bore me. I wanted to go back to what you were saying because I found it interesting about that childhood thing, because in your book, I was really, I couldn't believe it's the most heartbreaking things. sort of Dickensian story about your grandfather, who was essentially abandoned by his family, your great-grandparents.

Well, that's, basically, it was around about the turn of the century, the 8, 19th, the 20th century. And obviously, this is years before my grandfather's experiences in the trenches, which, you know, didn't help. What happened was, his father, I think he was one of, my grandfather was one of six children. And his father ran a drapery business in Warwickshire and he went bust. And he went to see his brother who lived with his sister on a farm in Tropshire, very remote farm in Troopsia. Kiln Farm.

Well remembered, yeah. To ask for a loan. And the guy said, I won't loan you anything, but what I suggest is you emigrate to Canada and I will give you the money for the fares for everybody, but I want to keep one child to work on the farm. And the perfect child for that was my granddad because he was just about old enough to be useful. I think he was seven or eight, so he could start, you know, carrying stuff around and doing work. And my grandfather, his uncle, would get a good lifetime, you know, sort of young life's work out of him. So I think the deal was he'd had to stay on the farm until he was 21. But nobody told my grandfather this.

So didn't he just wake up and everyone had gone? Yeah, they left their place in Warwickshire for Liverpool to get the boat to Canada. My grandfather thought he was going with them. How old would he have been? Seven or eight. My grandfather thought he was going with everyone. thought other than his parents that he was coming to. They overnighted in Shorebury, the little village in Shropshire, and my grandfather woke up alone. He'd gone to bed and big feather

bed with several of his brothers and they all crept away in the night and all the baggage was gone and only his bags were left in the corner of the room. It was daylight and there's no one there. So he thought they must be downstairs having breakfast or something and he ran downstairs, nobody there except his uncle, old sort of whiskered, mutton chopped Victorian figure and this spinster sister and they basically told him his fortune without any pity or sympathy or warmth they simply said right this is the deal they've gone and you're staying for the next 13 years 14 years and then you know if you work hard we'll send you to Canada but you won't see them for 14 and 15 years I'm absolutely brutal

it's like it was like something out of Les Miserables oh it is it's like yes you're It was really was, and I just felt what was fascinating was looking at how your grandfather, who'd also lost a son, which it felt like that was never spoken about. John, yes. And your uncle, I guess, who you would never have met. Yes. Obviously. But it felt like that was how those men in your family, that was their coping mechanism,

was to shut down and not allow vulnerability. and then your dad, to a certain degree, he was sent away to boarding school, and it was fascinating seeing how that sort of sins of the father in a way was handed down. And I was interested to know just chatting to you now. Like your mum sounds like this very glamorous, she was from Canadian, and she was an actor, wasn't she? She was an amateur actress in Canada, yeah. Yeah. Was she very sort of beautiful?

Yes. Was she? Yes, she was a very, very attractive woman, my mother, and very vivacious. and I think she was undoubtedly the person who broke that trail of disappointment and sadness and a sense of being unloved. Mum changed that completely. She changed it from my father, first of all. She loved him completely and she was the first woman in his life or person in his life ever to properly love him because his parents were very distant.

His own mother was very distant. So he felt loved for the first time in his life. It's a bit like Elton John and David Furnish. Helmson goes through life looking for love because of his parents. Finally finds it with David Furnish, and the sun comes up in the morning. Yeah, yeah. So that was good, wonderful for Dad.

Your dad was a reporter, wasn't he, originally? And then I got the sense that he ended up working for Ford in Dagenham. And that's when you guys relocated Essex. But I felt, I don't know, it was interesting. I wondered how he'd felt about, I know he died, obviously, when you were quite young, you were 21, weren't you? Do you think you had a sense of your dad feeling that he hadn't really, pursued the path he wanted?

That's a very good question. I think he was definitely, I think his horizons were definitely limited by the emotional privations of his childhood. By being, I mean, being sent away at 14 or 15, it's very late to be sent to boarding school. I mean, most kids start and prep, and they adapt to it as their lives unfold.

But dad went when he was a kind of a freedom-loving 15-year-old, but during the war, and it was pretty brutal. And I think that definitely screwed him up for a very long time. felt utterly betrayed by his parents. They gave no choice in the issue. And it was a very harsh school. It's a good school now. It's called Denston in Staffordshire.

But at the time in the war, he used to tell me terrible stories about it. And a tremendous bullying and pretty savage Dickensian type discipline. And for a boy who was having fun, went to Wem Grammar School, day boy, enjoying life, suddenly get girlfriends for the first time, to be suddenly transported for reasons which were never actually made clear. It was never clear why it happened. Your childhood, I mean, would you have described it as happy? Were you a happy child?

Was it a happy home? I think so, yeah. It was like all family life. It was quite complicated. My dad was prone to sudden outbursts of great temper and he could be violent. He, in a sort of semi-disciplined way, not with his fists or anything like that, but, you know, he produced a bamboo cane and he came me with that sometimes. not again in a ritualised, fetishistic way, but, you know, just three or four hard whacks, you know, on the upper thigh or anywhere, really.

And you had a sister's? And was it just you that he would? Yes. Yes, it was just me. Why do you think that was? Probably a sense of old-fashioned pseudo-scivillery. I don't know. You didn't hit women, you didn't hit girls. He'd certainly never hit my mother, ever.

And he wasn't what I would define, well, by the standards of the day. as a violent man. He wasn't. He didn't get into fights. He didn't lose his temper and hit me for no reason. He would hit me because I'd done something wrong, you know, something naughty. And, you know, reasonably important transgressions, like lying about something or whatever, but the penalty would be to be hit. And I have to say, that was true of most of my friends. You know, I mean, I was a child of the 60s. And corporal punishment was still in, I mean, de rigour in schools. I was caned several times. In the 1960s, you know, the year of flower power, It's been caned.

So it wasn't seen as in any way. I didn't think it was unusual because it wasn't. It was normal. So there were those interludes. And did it stop? It stopped at some point. Yes. I'm thinking about it.

I think it probably stopped when I was about 10. Did you stand up to him and say, I'm done with this? No. No, I don't remember any kind of confrontation or, you know, seminal conversation about it. It just sort of stopped. And maybe that was something to do with the modern that we were moving into. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he just got himself under control. But he was a very loving father, very demonstrative, lots of hugs, lots of kisses,

lots of presents. Yes, I would define it as a happy childhood, but I'd say that the absolutely qualifying factor there was mum. Really? Yes. She was a very, very, very good mother in the sense that she was very demonstrative, totally in your corner, funny. My first memory there actually was one I must have still been three and I can see her now standing in the kitchen door in a kind of Vera Ellen type dress

looking at me and smiling and pointing up me and saying four tomorrow so I would have been three and... Isn't that funny those memories? Yeah, it is strange. Obviously you left school, didn't you? When you were... 16.

You were 16 and... It was a complete accident. The plan was, I'd just finished my... my O levels as we called them then, the GCSEs, still waiting for the results. It was the summer holidays, I was 16, I'd even 16 for a couple of months. And I knew then, I'd always wanted to be, a, it sounds ridiculous to say, but it's true, I was desperate to be an RAF fighter pilot. Now I can see you as that with the aviators, you've got the look, Richard. Well, I really, really, that was a real ambition and I did a lot of, you know, proto

research into it. And then when I was about 13, my eyesight, slightly deteriorated. It became very slightly short-sighted. And I remember I had to wear glasses for a while. I remember going to the RAF and there was a recruitment office in Brumford and explaining. And I said, does this mean I couldn't fly? And they said, well, no, you could fly a transport aircraft and stuff, but you can't fly super sonic jets. You have to have 20 to vision for that, really good vision. And that was all I wanted to do. That was all I wanted to do. So that dream went and it was supplanted pretty quickly by a perfectly good replacement, which was to be a journalist. Like my dad had been, he'd been a reporter. Then he was at that time working in

public relations with Ford. And he used to tell me lots of stories about his life as a newspaper reporter in this country, in Canada, where he emigrated. And it sounded great. And it was, it is great, actually. It's a great life if you suited to it. That was my next thing. So in this particular summer holiday, I wrote to the local paper, the Brentwood Argus, and asked if, what today we would call work experience. Yeah. I could have a week's work experience. Coming in, making coffee, making the tea, sweeping the floor, and just getting the atmosphere of a newsroom. And I've got a letter back next day by the first post. There was still two posts in those days. The first post from the editor, saying basically, fuck off kid.

We don't have room for teenagers in the office. This is a newsroom. And then, and then I was mortified. And then in the second post, I've got a much nicer one with him saying, look, I'm sorry, I was having a bad moment. Come in tomorrow. It's press day tomorrow. When the paper's gone to bed at about four in the afternoon, come in and I'll give you 20 minutes and explain how it worked. So I put my one and only suit on and went to see him the next afternoon. And obviously, I knew quite a lot about journalism because of my dad. So we had a very good chat and after about 20 minutes, he looked at me speculatively and said,

do you want to start tomorrow? Wow. And I thought he meant the work experience, you know, the week. And I said, what, for a whole week? He said, no, no, no. He said, I'll take you on as an apprentice and we call them indentureships in this business. You'll be signed up for three years, indenture for three years.

Every ten months, we'll send you to college where you'll learn shorthand and law and blah-da-da, public administration. and at the end of three years you take your exam and you'll be a qualified journalist at 19 and you'll be ahead of the pack. There's something must have stood out then in you. Do you think like a curiosity or,

because I presume he didn't offer jobs to every relatively unqualified 16-year-old. Do you know what I mean? What do you think it was? Well, if I say it myself, I was actually a very good reporter. Right. I took to it like a duck to water. I was really good at it. I was good at asking questions.

I was good at ferreting out stories and stuff. I loved it. I really, really enjoyed it. And I think he just must have seen that potential. And also the fact that I knew a bit about what I was talking about because of dad, you know. Yes. So it happened. And so I went home and told my mum and I said, well, I'm going to have to ask my mum and dad.

It is 16. And I went home and I explained it to them. And mum was delegated to it. Was she? Well, the plan was for me to do air levels. Go to university, probably read English and get some kind of graduate placement scheme, maybe with the Guardian. And that generation particularly, I think, were very into the university. It was like, yeah.

He was seen as really important. So mum was dead against it. Dad phoned up every reporter that he knew and he had his contact book was full of them. And I can see him sitting at the phone that night for an hour. And every single one of them said, if he knows it's what he wants to do. If that's what he's going to do in four or five years,

then do it now. And as the editor says, you'll be ahead of the pack. So I did. I never went back to school and I never looked back. Oh, sorry, Richard. Ray's found love. That is doggy love, isn't it? It really is.

And the sun's shining down on them. This is like if Richard Curtis did dog films Oh he's got all lit, you're not looking your best for your days. No, he's very leafy today. He's very leafy. Do you have moments when, particularly when you were doing this morning for so long and it was daily? Were there blank moments where you thought, oh God, I've forgotten someone's name? Oh, that's a very good question.

No, to be honest. Do you not, no? No, pretty high functioning. I mean, obviously unexpected things would happen that you couldn't possibly prepare for. For me, my favourite was when we were interviewing live, about 11 in the morning, Anna Chancellor, the actress, duckface and four weddings in the funeral, yeah?

She was on a play or something, so we came over a commercial break. Anna's here, before we talked to her about the play or the book or whatever. Here's how we all remember. And we had a clip from four weddings where she's at the altar with Hugh Grant, when Hugh Grant jolts her because he's in love with someone else. And he says that to the whole congregation. And she knocks him out. Remember, she chins him and knocks him out.

So we showed that clip, and we came out live. And Anna's here now. Just before we talk about the play, that character you played there, wonderful, duckface, I've seen that film a million times, and there's never any reference in the dialogue as to why people call it a duck face. I mean, obviously you're very beautiful, so nothing literal. Why would she have been called duckface? Another Chancellor, who's very innocent, said, oh, well, I suppose it's probably because, you know, in her backstory somewhere, people used to call a fuckface.

So there's a protocol in live television when people swear. that you turn, one of you turned, in this case, Judy just did it in cynic. You turned to camera and you say, obviously Anna didn't mean for that to come out like that. So if anyone watching has been offended, we apologise. And that gets you off the hook with Offcock. Yeah, exactly. So Judy said that, unless she was finishing, Anna Townsler leaned across

and took her by the wrist and said, no, no, Judy, it's true. She would have been called fuckwise. So I said, Anna, Anna, Anna, this is a daytime show and it's live. And you can't say that. You can't use that word at this time in the morning. Yeah. And you suddenly saw the scales drop from Mariah, the innocence word,

she realised and she burst into tears and fell into Judy's arms. It fell into her lap and all of this. Actually, I don't remember how the interview continued. That's where the tape stops. But we did come off air to have a lot of people who had been in touch, but not one complaint, not one complaint that she said fuck twice. It was all basically people saying, oh, for God to say, that was the funniest thing.

Tell her not to worry, it was fine. Of course. And this is the weird thing about swearing, is that it is effectively a sort of, it's an accepted hypocrisy, isn't it? That everyone does it at home. Of course. And it's kind of like,

but we don't want people on television doing this. Absolutely. It's a very, very odd thing. Well, I was doing Good Morning Britain a few weeks ago. Yes, because you've been... I've said it for peers. Yeah. You do it a lot, though, don't you?

I've been about... Total of about three months of the year, which is plenty. There's more than enough for me. Is it? Yeah, I don't want to do it too often. But anyway, and I said bloody at some point. I can't remember in what context, but it was, just as you would say,

oh, what a bloody shame. And the papers went bonkers about it the next day, made we swear, I thought, it's only bloody. I mean, you know, it's not the C word or fuck. I mean, it's just bloody for crying out of that. And I actually knew that the papers had completely got it wrong, that I knew that the viewers didn't give a toss that I'd said bloody. I don't know if he had any complaints, but I wouldn't, I don't care if we did. It's just not offensive, not these days. I want to just talk briefly about when you lost your dad because you got married Richard, didn't you, when you were quite young? Yep, I was 21.

Yeah. Ridiculous. Why did you say ridiculous? Well, it's far too young to know what you're doing, I think. And it was, okay, that's not fair because some people know exactly what they're doing at 21, but I didn't. And I married, and it was completely my fault, I married for completely the wrong reasons. What had happened, Ros, I'd spent three years working in papers, four years working in papers. I've become deputy editor of the East London Advertiser.

It was going well, but local radio was really beginning to blossom in the UK, particularly with the BBC. This is 1976. And I really decided that I wanted to get into broadcasting, and radio was the way in. And I wrote to all these burgeoning stations all over the country, and they all wrote back and said you're too young. You're only 20. You can't do it. Well, 19, I think that was. Except Radio Carlyle, now Radio Cumbria.

And I got a job with them. And I went up as a contract reporter, basically. you know going out with the tape recorder reading the news all that and it just never crossed my mind until i got there that i was going to be 350 miles from home you know um without anyone you know today we would call the support network no friends no family um just stuff up in carlis you know which i'd never been to in my life before so i had absolutely i knew nobody there and in those days BBC local radio was quite largely staffed by sort of Radio 4 rejects, you know,

or people who were slowing down a bit. Did you have that sense of feeling, you had to earn a seat at the table and you didn't quite long? Well, I felt socially and culturally up there. I felt a complete outsider. I was a Rompford boy, basically. I'd only recently stop talking like that, you know, because I went to school in the east end of London,

went to school in Marlind. You know, I went school in Rompford before that. Because Dad was a public school boy. At home I spoke pretty much like this. But amongst my friends, and I wasn't putting it on, it's like slipping from one language to the next, if you're bilingual. I spoke like that. I spoke like that.

So when I got up to, and I spoke like that in the newsroom, because we all spoke like that. It was, you know, East Lander newspapers, weren't it? Yeah. So when I got to Carlisle, they all spoke like this. And it was actually a lot plummier back in the, even back in the mid-70s than it is nay. So I had to sort of adjust to that. They're all much older than me, mostly married with families and stuff.

and you didn't know anybody in Carlisle and I had this horrible little flat in Warwick Road that used to flood when he even burst its banks and I'd been there for about three weeks and then I met the girl in the flat downstairs. Linda who was very pretty, very funny, a little bit older than me

she was about 26 I think and really good fun really good company and I kind of clown to her like a drowning man you know and she became very important to me in those early months in Carlisle She was an anchor basically and she fell in love with me.

Yeah. And I persuaded myself that I had fallen in love with her and we got married. And it was a classic foliarder. If we just waited a bit, we would realize that we were totally unsuited. Yeah, we'd like each other well enough but it wasn't, it wasn't right. And it was my fault. I pushed it. You know, I've always felt bad about that.

I pushed it. I persuaded her to do it. She went along with it and it was a mistake. Were you not very confident with women when you were younger? Or were you? Because I see you as this quite sort of dashing suave. No, I was never a player, if that's what you mean. Well, not really.

I suppose I would see that you wouldn't, that you'd be the person that you think, oh yeah, Richard's... No, I'll tell you what. Not going to struggle? No, I think I did a bit, but that was because I went to a grammar school in the East End, which was a boys school called Cooper's Company. founded in about 15, 16 or something. And by the time I went there, it was kind of falling apart. It's reinvented itself now.

It's a great school that moved to Uplandstown. It's co-ed. But when I went there, having come from a mixed junior school, it was a shock to go into an all-male environment. I didn't like it. And it was pretty rough. I mean, these are East End Boys, you know, pretty handy with their fists, and the occasional knife and all that.

And it was not good. It wasn't a good grammar school at all. It was a rough place. And I felt quite intimidated there. And it was, you know, kind of job to get through the day. And then we moved from Rompford to Brentwood and I changed schools and I went to a comprehensive Stonfield, which is great school, which is mixed.

And I was incredible. All my male classmates in these mixed classrooms, and I think I was about 14 by then, 14 and 15. They were very relaxed around girls because they'd never not been around girls, you know. I was tongue-tied. I didn't know how to approach them, what to say. I was completely out of my comfort zone and very, very shy of girls. very, very shy, very nervous. I don't think I went out with a girl until I was about 16.

In fact, I think I was. I think it was after I'd gone on the paper, and I suddenly felt that I'd found my identity. I found my niche. I was a newspaper reporter, you know. And it gave me an identity, and it gave me a shape. And it was after that that I developed a bit more confidence. Well, that's a very neat illustration of that idea of,

in order to, you know, to feel loved. You have to sort of feel self-respect or love for yourself, don't you? It's that you feel right. I think men feel that as well, particularly that, you know, back then, the notion that men identified themselves by their job effectively. Yes. So you weren't datable until, you know, it's like, what are you doing? That's exactly right.

And it's daft, but that's how it was. And so shortly after you got married, your dad died, didn't he? He died when we were actually on our honeymoon. We'd got married up in Cumbria. It was an incredibly small ceremony. It was in a beautiful medieval church in the countryside near where Melvin Brown was born actually. Oh right, yeah. But in the foothills of the fells.

It was just me and Linda and my mum and dad and her mum. And that was it. And we had kind of just the six of us had a wedding reception at a local hotel and then we went off on honeymoon. And we'd been down in Somerset for about four or five days when I came and this is long before mobile phones and I'm all of that. I came, we came back from the beach on hot August day and there's a message as I can still see it. There was a piece of A4 paper pinned to the door of our little rented cottage saying Richard made me call mother urgent. I don't know how she trapped us down but anyway. So I went to a public call box in this little village. It was near

Wookie Hole and called mum and this is about four in the afternoon and she picked up and I said it was me and what's up and I always remember exact words she said I have have to tell you that your father died today at three minutes past one. And it was kind of bullet to the brain. Basically, we had no idea there was anything wrong with him, and neither did he. He worked in the Ford Press Office in Wally in Brentwood, and we lived in Brentwood. And he used to come home for his lunch most days at about 1 o'clock. And this particular day, this particular afternoon, he'd come home a little bit early.

And mum, who'd been upstairs, she was very old-fashioned sort of six-his wife, she's putting her makeup on to the husband. She heard, she heard him trying to get him through. the front door and his key scrambling in the lock and he wasn't opening. So what on earth that? Is that Chris? And she went down and opened the door and he was standing there looking like death warmed up. Pale as a sheet, trembling. Car parked in the drive at a terrible angle, door wide open, papers blowing up and down the drive. And he just said, I think I'm having a heart attack. And so she got him in, got him onto the sofa in the front room, called an ambulance, came back to put her arms around him and his last words to her were do you have to hold

you so bloody tight so she loosened her embrace and he just winked out just like that and it turned out the post-mortem showed that he'd been a very heavy smoker until a couple of years previously he was 49 so he'd smoked probably since he was about 15 and he'd basically fucked up his arteries they were completely furred up a lot of damage a lot of CO2 to the... And probably quite high stress in terms of driving around. It's that... Yes, and short-tempered, you know, he wasn't good at managing stress.

Yeah. I'm sure he had high blood pressure and all of that. So yeah, but to look at him, he was pretty fit and, you know, not overweight or anything like that. He'd stop smoking, he didn't, he wasn't a drinker. But yeah, so he died. And that didn't help the marriage because it certainly... He was only on honeymoon. It took a lot of focus of it.

Yeah. And it was a tough year actually that first year. It sounds horrific. We began drifting apart pretty much from then, I think. And then I was very much chasing my career. I moved across the border television in 1978. You're presenting. Presenting there and reporting, you know, in the newsroom, news reporter, newsreader, all that.

And then I got a break and went down to Yorkshire Television, which was a lot bigger. Worked with Richard Weichley, the late great. In the newsroom there, again, as a... on the road reporter and presenter, newsre reader in studio and started to do other shows, did a few sports shows. And then I got poached by Granada. And then you got poached by Judy.

No, that's not what happened. Well, it depends which version you. Well, what is the actual version? Because I heard that Judy, I love Judy, that she came up to you and apparently said, I'm your mummy, because she was your mental. Well, it's true, but it's just to finish. So every time I made this big move,

like from Carlisle to Yorkshire, it happened very quickly, and Linda would stay behind, pursuing her own life, you know. And then she followed me to Yorkshire, and then I went across to Manchester, and that was, I think, the final nail in it, really. And we just agreed that it hadn't worked

and we should divorce, so we did. So by the time I got to Manchester, I was going through the process of divorce, which was perfectly friendly, it was all right. And, yes, on my very first day in the news, I was in Key Street in Manchester, I was sitting at my desk, sorting out my papers, and I felt this two hands on my shoulder from behind,

and it looked up, and it was Judy Finnington, who I knew of, She was quite well known in the north as a regional presenter. And she said, I'm your mummy, which I thought was fucking weird. And then she laughed and she explained that, yes, it was Granada's mentoring system. You were assigned either a mother or a father for the first week. And does he think, well, this is a bit orcs because I actually quite fancy you? Well, no, because she explained what it meant, really.

So I laughed. It was funny. Yeah. Did you get a feeling when you met Judy? No. It wasn't, no, it wasn't like, you know, sort of instant, you know, What are they used to say about Hitler, Fuera contact and all that stuff. No, I liked her, and I'd seen her,

they sent me a video cassette when I agreed to join Granada of Granada reports, the nightly show, with Judy on it, and I thought she was very good. In fact, she was the very first woman reporter, woman face at Anglia Television. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, she was the very first news reporter

that was a woman there. Anyway, she was very good, yes, and very pretty, and all the rest of it. But I was going through a divorce, and I wasn't looking for, you know, something else. So we got to know each other over that that first year. My divorce came through. She was going through bad times and her first marriage too. And she had two two little boys, my stepson's, Tom and Dan. And we just basically became very good friends. We liked each other. We had a very similar outlook on the world, on life. The Falkans War was kicking off at that time and Granada was very, very hard left. It was a very lefty newsroom.

And the newsroom as a whole utterly disapproved, A of Margaret Thatcher, and B of the Falklands War, they had a very Michael Foote approach to it. And Judy and I were the only two people in the newsroom who thought that we absolutely had to fight the Falcons War. Right. We didn't have an alternative. I remember some huge arguments with the rest of the team, and we realised the two of us were on the same side, beleaguered by everyone else. I remember saying, one meeting, don't you realize?

You talk about Margaret Fatcher being fascist. Don't you realize that the person who's invaded the Falcons is a fascist dictator, the real article, General Gavis. He's a Dictor. He's a dictator. Of course we've got to go in and get these people back. Anyway, that's another story. So we became friends. We became a little bit like soulmates.

I'd been going through a divorce and so was she. So we had that in common as well. How did you, I always call it, because I've had this where I've got together with friends. And I call it breaking cover. Like someone has to break cover first. Do you know what you mean? There's the first one who says, look, I feel, I remember a guy I got together with and he sent me a text.

romantic at the time actually because he said I wanted to kiss you tonight and he said because I thought what if no one does that would be wrong I thought oh this is quite Richard Curtis but it was brave of him yes it was well actually so do you did you do a similar thing no it was a it was a moment of mutuality what happened was we'd we'd done a year together on Granada reports the show had come off air for the summer as it used to do in those days and they asked and they've moved us into pole position as the two main presenters Granada recognises we had good chemistry on screen. So by then, we sort of squeezed out.

I wonder why. Well, as it turned out, we sort of squeezed out the other presenters really, and we were the main presenters. And so Granada sent us to Blackpool one Friday to record some promotions for the return of Granada reports in a few weeks time. Yeah. So we went there together in a taxi. We spent the whole day filming together, just the two of us and the crew. And then the crew went back to Manchester and we went to a hotel and had dinner together. and had our probably our first properly our first properly intense uninterrupted conversation together

just the two of us so we hadn't ever gone out for lunch or dinner before we did or candle it and all the rest of it and then we got on the cab to take us back to Manchester and that's about an hour and a half and that's about an hour and a half and carried on talking became very confiding and very intimate and when we arrived at her house where she got out

we just kissed each other It was... It just felt natural. It was part of... It seemed a completely natural conclusion to the conversation we've been having. But it was a proper kiss, and it wasn't chaste. And the next morning when we called each other out, we said, well, what happened yesterday? We both agreed that something probably quite significant that happened and that maybe there was...

It was something we need to do something about. And off it went. And we embarked on basically our relationship. Granada weren't that pleased about it. Were they not? No, they're very old-fashioned view about it. They thought it was... excluding and in some way morally wrong. Very odd.

Yeah. And then they changed their mind when they realised what a cash cow you'd be. Well no, initially they split us up and we... And I carried on doing reports and Judy worked on another programme and then we got married. Yeah. And then we had our children. And Judy actually said to you which I liked, didn't she? Because you knew you'd be taking on, you were sort of relatively young man in your late 20s. And didn't Judy say I come as a three-pack? Yes, she did. That's exactly what she said. Yeah. When we'd moved on to the questions, should we get marriage that's exactly what she said what did you interpret that I interpreted it to mean that I had to make a full as a bigger commitment to my

putative step-sons Tom and Dan twins as I was to her that they that it was all part of the package yeah if I couldn't do that some men can't I couldn't do that then it was an no no deal now as it happened Tom and Dan who are now in their fort is less than I'm very close to they're adorable I mean they were blonde little blonde twin seven-year-old I gradually got to know them you know, when I'd go around and see Judy, this is after she'd separated from her husband. I became more and more of a presence in their lives, but only during the day, and I never stayed over. We thought that would be wrong for them.

And then after about six months, we came up with a plan. It was summer. We thought we'd rent a cottage in Cornwall, go down there as a group, as a family, and then I would obviously have to stay over, and I would become this fixture at the breakfast table. So we did that for a week. We had amazing weather. We stayed in the beautiful valley in Cornwall, near some beautiful beaches. It was a total success. And we drove back to Manchester. And when we got there, by arrangement, I carried the bags in.

There was a sort of a little interregnum. And Judy said, um, boys, what, do you think? It's all right for Richard to stay here, isn't it now? After last week. And they sort of went, oh, yeah, yeah. And she said, oh, good, okay, well, then bring your bag in. So I did.

And she sent them up. And I had my first test as a living stepdad. That moment, the boys had gone upstairs to have their bath. they'd run to run their bath. And one of them shouted down, Richard. I said, what? I said, there's a huge spider in the bath. Can you come and get it?

Now, I had a real thing about spiders. I hated them. I was phobic about spiders. And if there was one in the room, I couldn't settle till we'd have been despatched. And you did just look to me and raised an eyebrow. Okay. So I went up to the bathroom.

And you know, when you go away on holiday and you come back, very often the insects have taken over. And there was this huge tarantula sitting over the plug hole. It was massive and fur. and hairy and pulsing. It was my worst nightmare. So there was a magazine, there was a country life or something on a occasional table in the bathroom,

and I rolled it up in order to kill it. And immediately the boy said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't kid it. Daddy doesn't kill them. Daddy doesn't kill them. Daddy picks them up and puts them out of the window. Oh, great. Great for Daddy. Fantastic. But, you know.

Well, the country life, Richard, you're giving it a very smart funeral. You're seeing it off in style. It's not a meat magazine. Maybe it was Fantasy Fair. Or Spiders Monthly. So, plan A gone, so I just had to do it. Araknid phobic medley, puts it down, leans forward, it took a huge breath and picked the bastard up by one leg,

and it wriggled all over my hand, and I opened the bathroom window, and I dropped it out, and cured myself of fear of spiders in an incident. And I went downstairs, and Judy said, right? And I said, give me a ginatonic. And she said, it was only a spider. And I looked at her, I thought, this is one thing you'll never understand. You'll never know how brave I was up there just now.

It's interesting because obviously you and Judy worked together for over 10 years on that show. Was it 12 years? We did 13 years on this morning. And we did about 8 and 9 years on Richard and Judy, the 2 months straight on Channel 4. Which, it's funny. 21 years. What they did was essentially just call that what everyone started calling this morning,

which I suppose summed up how successful you were as a couple, but it wasn't this morning. It was Richard and Judy. Yes. I love that pensioners still got, oh, Richard and Judy. still call it that. But what do you think the secret to that success was? There's no single magic bullet actually to programs that succeed to the extent that that did. Yeah. And it's presented to succeed. It's a mix of things and I know what they are.

Well, the first thing is we were both very, when this morning came along, we'd both been presenting in television and we've done a whole range of regional programs and a few network ones for years. So we knew the language. We knew what we were doing. And we were quite good at it. We were, you know, we were, some people are, some people are. we just happened to be lucky enough to be able to do it. And we presented very well together. So we had all that already in the bank, you know. So the presenting duo of this new show called this morning was sort of that was okay, that ought to work.

But of course it's not just about that, it's about content. And what I was discovering then, we both were, and I know for a fact now is that programs that work, it doesn't matter what they are, whether they're dramas, magazine shows, Good Morning Britons, BBC Breakfast, you know, the ones... Shows that work and last and get recommissioned and become part of people's lives

are the ones where those doing it know why they're there. They know what the show's for. The show's got to have a point. And the shows that don't work are the ones that you realize as a viewer at a very instinctive level then they're not sure who they are. They're not sure what their personality is

or what they're doing in that slot. They're just basically filling air time. And those shows get found out very quickly and they die. But if a show develops its personality and the people working on it, all of them, especially the presenters, know what the personality of that show is, then it takes off. And we knew that we were serving what was called then the Hidden Agenda, that there were things we were doing on this morning that no one else was doing on television. It was based very much on American models.

We watched a lot of American daytime shows. And also, the other thing was, it was really in your face in the sense that people forget this, but this was 1988. and as a concept, daytime television was seen as immoral. I mean, the moment we came on air, papers like the mail, the Express that we write for now, all of them said, what? Television in the day? I mean, you know, we'd had open university, but television programming, because basically,

television was to be watched in the evening when you'd done a good hard day's work or a good day's studying. It was your reward for your day not watching television, but to sit on a sofa. in your living room, at 11 in the morning, in broad daylight, and watch a television show. It was seen as the nadir of morality. Well, it was the first, my memory of it, I certainly remember it being the first sort of guilt-free daytime TV experience, you know. But also, I have another thing, which is I think, Jonathan Ross, who lives,

who is your sort of neighbour in a way. That's his house, that's his house there. Yeah, just there, isn't it? He said, once I remember watching TV with him, and I said about a presenter, oh, they're good. And he said, do you know what that is? because they're themselves. And he said, whenever someone,

he said that's what is the difference between someone that you feel comfortable watching and you don't, is when someone, and it's a bit like I suppose I always feel with you and Judy, that it doesn't feel your dynamic. I appreciate that you're on to a degree. Yes. But your dynamic isn't wildly different perhaps from the one you would have in real life.

No, it's the same as you being pretty much the same people over breakfast together and then when friends come around for dinner when they come around for dinner you're sort of on and you're putting on a bit of a show aren't you and you're serving food and everything and you're not quite the way you would be if you were just sitting watching news night

but it's still you but just in a slightly different dimension and the other thing and I agree with Jonathan completely about that the other thing is and Clyde James said this many years ago and it affected me a lot in the sense that I could see the inner truth of it that he said on television

he meant presenting So on television, it's never what you say, it's how you come over. And that was so right. It's about tone. And we instinctively understood that the tone of this morning had to be friendly and warm. And I say this myself, but crucially intelligent. Just because it was a daytime show, that was no excuse for sloppy thinking, you know, or cheap gimmicks. Although we did have them, which were fun.

But basically, it had, should simply never underestimate the intelligence of the audience and should engage with them on the highest level possible for that kind of show. And also, we were journalists. Of course, originally. So you were, was that sort of difficult, though, because the pressures you went on to have your own family and Chloe and Jack? And was there a point, especially when you had the kids, when that ever became overwhelming for either of you?

No, I'm asked this, and Judy's asked this, all the time. Yeah. I think Judy found the whole fame thing trickier than I did. Did she? Yes. Why do you think that is? She's much shyer than I. In fact, she's the most, in many ways, she's the unlikliest successful television presenter you'll ever meet because she's very, very shy. Quite withdrawn, quite self-conscious, doesn't have a great deal of confidence, but when the red light goes on, something happens. And she turns into this extraordinary sort of confident, gift. communicator. So in the downtime, when we weren't actually in the studio, there'd be stories about us in the paper and stuff, she found that more disturbing than I didn't

give a fuck. I didn't care at all. And I still don't. When you were written about and things? Oh God, yeah. I'm not telling you. But then I would say, to be honest, Richard, I do think Judy suffered a lot of misogyny at the hands of the media. Well, of course she did. It's all women do. Even at the time, you know, before it was sort of accepted to acknowledge that kind of stuff. I do remember thinking, this is awful. Because that's not her job.

She's not... And in the way that a male presenter, there weren't pictures of him in supermarket weekly saying they look tired or... Was that tough? It was tough for her. But what I would... I used to obviously tell her that it was bullshit

and bollocks. And try not to take it personally because it was, and frankly is today in 2019, it's still de rigour for women on television to have their appearance picked apart fairly or unfair, well, it's never fair, but you know what I mean,

accurately or inaccurately, for whatever reason, whatever motive, and it's never right and it's still going on. So I used to say, you know, there's a lot of people in the boat with you, and you're quite right, it doesn't happen to men to anything like the same extent. I was going to ask your question. Would you say

you were a feminist? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Really? Yes. I think any of my women friends would definitely think that I've had a strong feminist outlook, because I do. I've never not felt that men and women are and should be completely equal, paid equally, treated equally, given equal respect. Yeah, I mean, I don't even have to think about it. Do you think having a daughter is helpful for men in that respect in any way? Because I often think sometimes... I think being married to a feminist is helpful.

I mean, you know, Judy's been a feminist since she could think. And I think being exposed to her thinking, her analysis, kind of, what was the other phrase Clive James used, he said that his job was to turn a sentence until it catches the light. That's nice. That's a great phrase, isn't it? Yeah. I think that I always had kind of, if you like, proto-feminist instincts. But being with Judy very quickly, polished them up and made them a lot more focused.

But yeah, I mean, if somebody accused me of not being... feminist-minded, I'd be quite insulted because I am. You know. You struck me as like you have a very close relationship with your kids and Jack manages you, which I love. Can I say he is a very good manager? One of the best I've ever dealt with. Yeah, he's a natural, isn't he? He's really good. I'm very proud of him. What do you think the differences are between your parenting and how you were parented, either consciously or unconsciously? I'd say that it was a combination of being unconscious and unconscious. I think that, well you mentioned at the beginning of this,

fathers and sons. I had a very happy childhood, as I said, and a very loving mother, and I was aware because, you know, the stories in the family about what happened to my grandfather, and my father was very frank about how unhappy he'd been as a child. I could see that, as I say, somewhere in the book, you know, it's a cliche, but cliches are there because they're true, usually. The sins of the father can be visited on the son, and I was determined to have none of that nonsense happening in my life with my family. And also, I just, I just, I don't know, maybe one has to be lucky with your children, but I found my stepson's intensely lovable.

I found Jack when he came along intensely lovable, and then Chloe, as our only daughter, intensely lovable. I mean, it wasn't an option not to love them. But the temper thing, that was obviously a sort of slight maily male trait, did you work to sort of make that less of an issue, or do you think you just didn't really ever have that as a person? Because you seem quite a gentle blow. I don't think, no, we've all got a temper, obviously.

So I'm not saying that I don't lose my temper, because I do sometimes, but not in anything like the way that my dad did with me or his father did with him. No, all that rage. I have no reason to be angry. I mean, I've had a really lucky life, you know. Good, good parents, loving parents, a great sister. No traumas really in my upbringing other than when dad died at 21, but that can happen to anyone. Bloody interesting career.

We got the exclusive with OJ. world-exclusive interview with those. People were pissed off about I imagine. Oh yeah, obviously, tons of professionals, Ellison. Screw that, you know. So we did the, we had the contracts all night, we got him, and it was going to be the first of a new evening series that we were trialling out for ITV.

I can't remember what it was called. The Tonight Show, something like that, at 7 o'clock. Yes. And it was half an hour, which is not really long enough for that kind of show. But anyway, it was a trial. And we got him for the first one. Huge publicity, obviously, huge launch show.

It's going to be great. And he was going to be the whole show. So it was going to be him, the break. the second half and out. Now that will actually give us in terms of air time. If you count in the titles, the credits, the commercial break, you're probably, in a half-hour slot on ITV, you're looking at about 24 minutes.

Yeah. Okay? That's tight for an interview of that magnitude. And of course, it's live, so you can't overrun, you know, and recut it. You've got to get it all in. So Judy and I did a lot of almost rehearsal, really, with each other, and going through angles and things and how we were going to play it. And you're right, we didn't ask him,

did you kill Nicole? Of course you didn't. I do seem to remember though that one of us said, you've been acquitted OJ, why do you think so many people still think you did it? Which I think is a much more intelligent way to ask the question. Anyway, we had pre-recorded an interview a couple of days before we want to know with Neil Diamond, which was going to go out in a subsequent week, and he sang a song and all that. And that ran for about 12 minutes that item, and it was in the can, but not to be used for a week or two.

And the day, the day that we were due to interview O.J. Simpson, Then head of ITV, whose name I'm not even going to mention, Long gone. You can't Google it. Long gone. Marcus Plantany was called. He can't help himself, maybe. This is why we love him. Long gone now.

He had a panic attack, basically. And he contacted Granada in Manchester where we were and said, I don't want the whole show going to A.J. Simpson. Have you got anything else? And they said, well, we've got an interview with Neil Diamond. He said, right, OJ in the first half, Neil Diamond in the second. Now, to this day, I don't know what the logic of that was. But he just suddenly thought that giving half an hour of ITV air time to a man who everybody thought was a brutal killer was possibly a bad PR movie.

He was completely wrong. It was a scope. It was a major scoop. So we get told this at about 5 o'clock and we're on air in two hours' time. Well, you can imagine the row. I have to say that was a long time ago. If that happened now, it had happened even 10 years ago. What would you do now?

I would have walked. Would you? Absolutely. It's undoable. Well, it's a bit like saying to Emily Maitliss, we're going to put a sort of Casey Perry 10 Minter on the top of it. Exactly. It reduces your job in a sense. No offence to Neil Diamond.

No, no, no, no. Come on, mate. But anyway, we didn't, we should have walked. We had the route and lost it. Granada, we weren't happy either, but that was the Dick Tapp. And we went on air. And we started the interview and it had two effects. The first one was it distorted the way we did the interview.

A lot of people said they thought it was good. It would have been so much better if we'd known we had half an hour. But we didn't. We knew we had 12 minutes. So we were rushed and we had to have to move. move on too quickly. Yeah. And then there was just easily the worst moment in our joint broadcasting career,

easily the very worst moment, where Judy had to turn to camera. There was a lawyer in the gallery from ITV to make sure that we didn't overrun with a stopwatch. And when we got the thing out of time, Judy and he was in the middle of a sentence and we really just got him warmed up. He was just starting to sweat, you know, had beads of sweat on his top lip. We were getting to him. And Judy had to interrupt him, say, well, I'm sorry, OJ.

That's all we have time for. back after the break with Neil Diamond. And the audience went, there's a live audience, and OJ went, what? And the shame of it, the professional shame of it,

it's still with me. It wasn't our fault, but it was awful. It was just, oh, it's terrible. And as I say, if that were to happen, or anything like that were to happen, no, I'd simply say,

well, we're not doing the show, find someone else, because we're not doing it. You know, you've made it impossible. And I think if we'd done that, we might actually prevail. Yeah. Were you convinced after meeting him, though, of his guilt, by the way?

I think that would be arrogant, actually, to say that. I'm very, very, very suspicious of his defence. Very suspicious of his defence, most of which I can't remember now. And he certainly, and then, you know, he was an American football player, so do you expect this, but he certainly had a bone-crushing handshake and quite a... Almost threatening presence. He leaned very much into your body space when you met him. He tried to dominate you with his shoulders and he'd come in the heart.

Well, it was interesting seeing Mike Tyson interviewed recently. It was actually on that Anthony Joshua documentary and he said he was talking and he said the problem is I just never heard no enough. And he said, when you don't hear, and I think with sportsmen that's a peculiar thing perhaps as well. Well, you see, the thing about sportsmen is they have to be at that level. Not your son-in-law, of course. James has come out of the jungle.

Well, even so, you know, James would admit this, and actually made reference to it in his speech, to be a successful athlete or sports person. At international level, at that level, you have to be fundamentally selfish. I mean, you just can't not be. You can't not put your needs and your services first. They have to come first, otherwise you're not going to win. So, you know, imagine being married to Andy Murray, bless him. At a fundamental level, it's all about him. It has to be.

That's not because he's a selfish person by birth, as it were, it's because you have to become so. Yeah. So you're right. So, you know, I never heard no enough. I can believe that. Absolutely. You're a granddad now, Richard. I mean, you knew that.

Three times over, yeah. Yeah, because obviously the twins as well. Well, one of them, Tom, yeah. Yeah, Tom, yeah. Two daughters, yeah. Are you a good granddad? I like to think so. Yeah.

I think you are. Well, it's great. You're a very young, hip, granddad. Well, I don't know about that, but I have huge, with them and obviously we've got a grandson now we've got two granddaughters seven and one and kit my grandson who's 15 months jack's yeah and kit and i actually we really do get on well but there's i mean everybody says it in the fact everybody says we've definitely got a bond he always comes you know toddling across to me and grabs hold of my legs and just stays with me when when we

meet you said something once and i've never forgotten it um people go on about madeleisms and oh yeah because they always make me think and you said Do you, have you, what do babies dream of? Yeah, that's right. And I never forgot it. I thought, what do they dream of? I think what I said was, do babies dream? Yeah, but what do they dream?

I've seen that in the list of madeleisms, which are meant to be, you know. What is that madeleism? Is it saying, oh, you know? Well, isn't it a reasonable? Oh, Richard? Oh, a pair of sunglasses. Someone's dropped some sunglasses. Are they done bored?

Are they don't forced? No, they're not. I love, Richard said, are they don't poor. No, they're the white company. They're the white company. That'd be nice for Judy. Well, they're right in the middle of the... I'll put them on a wall when we go back.

I don't remember the context in which I would have said that, but it would have been an aside in a conversation. But I thought, oh, that's interesting. Well, it's a thought, isn't it? Do babies dream? Yeah. And actually... I think what do dogs dream of? Apparently they're owners.

Thank you, Ray. Yeah. Well, if you look at a sleeping baby, quite often you'll see what they call R-A-M rapid eye movement going on, and that is a sign that someone's dream. So, yes, babies do dream. And what do they dream of milk? You know, the stimuli that surround, do they dream of mobiles? Or the bars of a cock?

What do they dream of? you know, what are their uncontrolled, unhidden fantasies that are going on in their sleep? I think that's a totally fucking legitimate question. And yet I see it used as an attack on me. We wish I don't care about. That's completely fine. But it's not logical to say that that's a stupid question because it's not a super question. Richard, do you have therapy?

No. You answered that in quite a... No. Why? Well, oddly enough, because we were discussing it... Because you're an agony, uncle. Well, no, we were just... It's funny, we were discussing therapy with friends a couple of days ago.

None of us have had therapy. And we were talking about other people's need for it. And clearly there is a need for it. No, I've never felt in, I don't feel repressed in any way. Maybe that's why you have this whole thing about maidalisms. I've never felt repressed or bent out of shape my life or my circumstances. You know, as I said, I think I'm an incredibly lucky and fortunate in my life. You're quite resilient, would you say?

Yes. Yeah. I think, I am a believer in the stiff upper lip. Are you? Yes. Yeah. I actually do think that obviously there are times when you do need to. to talk things out and talk things through and I do that anyway naturally but I think I

think one's response to being bloody but unbowed as it were um it's actually quite a good test of character and I think it's if you can it's best to be brave when adversely comes knocking at the door because it's not going to last forever which shouldn't I agree with that but I think what you were to take us back actually to when we started your point is I think you beat you're brave but I think you have to recognise the damage and then be brave. Yes. Because I think what sometimes happens is people feel an emotion, anger or fear or whatever, and they just act out without realising the root of it.

Do you know what I mean? Yes. No, I think that's, I think you're absolutely right. It's like, okay, maybe I'm behaving like this because. Well, then let me answer the question slightly differently. Yeah. I think if you have reasonable self-knowledge, you're probably going to be okay without therapy. I think if you actually are unaware of something,

something in your background, your past, that's been passed onto you, and you can't see it, but you can see the effect it's having on you and those around you, then obviously therapy is a great idea. But I think if you're pretty sure about who you are, why you're the way you are, you have self-awareness, you should be okay. I mean, not everybody goes to therapy. What way do in this postcode, Richard? There's a man coming out from house. No, we've got the decorations in. Oh, that's not a euphemism, by the way. really have. Richard, but I've really loved my walk with you and I want to ask you. Oh, here we go, the killer question. No, it's not, I'm not doing an OJ. OJ, did you kill her? I'm not doing an OJ.

It's a sort of nice thing and a, well, I think it's the sort of shit sandwich in a way because it's asked a nice question than a bad question. Oh, get on with it. What do you most fear people saying about you when you leave a room and what do you most hope they'll say? I've got an answer, but it won't be the one you expect, but it's the truthful one and so it, yeah, so I don't I don't give a fuck and that's because of the profession I've been in for the last 40 years because if you care, if you let it bother you what people's opinion of you is, you're never going to sleep at night because being on television automatically means that a proportion of the people watching you are going to hate you.

It's just how it is. You know, there are television presenters who I've subsequently met and are lovely and have become friends who when I first saw them, I hated. We're all the same. We all have these irrational likes and dislikes of people in the public eye. Now that doesn't mean to say if someone dislikes me, they don't have a damn good reason. I'm not saying that to dislike me is to make a mistake, they might be right. But I don't care.

It comes with the territory. It's what I always think of as the invisible taxation of being well known. You're going to attract a program and equally some people are going to like you. And it's the same visitor coming into the same room and you've simply not got to obsess about it. So I never leave a room and think, oh, did they like me? I never leave a room and think, are they talking about me now behind my back? I don't care. Because it has no effect on reality, you know?

That's a good attitude to have. Well, it keeps you sane. Keeps you saying, not worrying about what people think. Have you enjoyed meeting Ray? I didn't see much of Ray. He's a bit shaky. He's cold, isn't he? You're a cold boy.

No, I have enjoyed meeting Ray as much as we talked. Does he always tremble like this? No, he's just, sometimes he has, look, Ray. Let's put these sunglasses on him, though, when I discovered. Oh, no, that's a picture. You need you take a photo that time. I really hope you enjoyed listening to that. And do remember to rate review and subscribe on iTunes.