Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Robert Peston (Part Two)

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

We rejoin Robert Peston and his dog Merlin on a sunny day in Regent’s Park for the second part of our walk. Robert tells us about his experiences with grief, how he feels about self-improvement and having an attention seeking dog. If you haven’t heard the first part of our chat, you can listen to it here! Follow Robert - @pestonRobert’s latest book Bust is available now - along with his two thrillers The Whistleblower and The Crash. The Rest Is Money is available on all podcast platforms. Follow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Really hope you enjoy part two of Walking the Dog with Robert Peston. Do remember to listen to Part 1 if you haven't already, and we'd love it if you subscribe to Walking the Dog. Here's Robert and Merlin and Ray Ray. I wanted also Robert to, if you're comfortable just briefly talking about this, I was so touched and sort of moved when I've heard you speaking about when your wife Sean died. Because I think it's so important to talk about it. about grief. Yeah. My experience of grief was that you expect to lose your parents,

it's awful, but there's an inevitability, but that that grief that comes with a life interrupted is different because you mourn the future, don't you, you didn't have? And I just think that would have been really helpful for people and I'm really glad that you've been so open about it. Yeah, it felt very much the natural thing to do and And I guess the reason in the end, well, I mean the times that I thought it probably was the right thing to have talked about how bad we are at grieving in this country and about talking about our emotions was when, I mean, on a number of occasions, men who'd been through, you know, the same kind of thing as I'd been through. the death of a loved one would come up to me and just say, you know, you know, thanks for, you know, sort of not being embarrassed to talk about this stuff because I, you know, they would say they found it very, very difficult themselves to talk about it with anybody, including

their close friends and, you know, if I helped a few people to be more expressive about what they were going through and to come to terms with it a bit better, then I think, you know, that was worth doing. I was just aware of people, they mean so well, but they will say, is there anything I can do? There's a lot of that. And I would think, I love the people that just did. They didn't ask. Bring around the hot food.

Yeah, you're so right. I mean, I remember there were a couple of female friends who just left, you know, meals for Max and me on the doorstep. And that was just, it was both, you know, practical help, but also just a manifestation of caring, which, you know, when you're going through that kind of trauma, it makes a big difference. It must have been so hard. She sounds an amazing woman. She was a good person. And, yeah, no, it was, I mean... It's all right, here's water. Oh, sweetheart. You met Charlotte, and I'm so glad that you did.

I'm so glad your story had a happy ending, and you met someone lovely, who I imagine must have been very sensitive and empathetic. You know, because in some ways that's a thing to take on as well, isn't it? Knowing that grief doesn't end. It's not like you'll wake up and say, oh, it's done now. I'll never think of Sean again. I think people, again, in terms of conversations that people don't have,

I think it is underestimated how hard it is for anybody who sort of gets involved with somebody who, you know, wife or husband has died because there's a whole history that you're not part of. And I think it is really, you know, so, you know, I've been very lucky to have to have. met Charlotte. A bit of a baby as well, can I say. Oh, definitely. And just also, as you pointed out earlier, an absolutely amazing creative writer. And the, but it is interesting, again,

learning about what happens to your ability to feel. So genuinely for a long time after Sean died, I didn't think I wanted ever to have a relationship with anybody ever again. There was a period of about, so I remember there was about a year after she died. I was at a party and a man I'd known for 20, 30 years came up to me and said, why aren't you dating?

And I remember hearing the words and thinking it was like us, it was like a foreign language, though, it just didn't compute. I didn't, you know, I was surprised that he didn't understand that that, was no longer something that was sort of part of me. But of course it did then become part of me, but it was several months after that, that I suddenly became able to feel again in a whole variety of different ways.

And, you know, met Charlotte and, yeah, was able to develop a powerful and important relationship. Well, but I want to talk a bit about I mean, you've got so many brilliant strings to your bow. I've just recently got very into your writing. Oh, that's nice. I'd read bust, which I loved, which is, that's your most recent book, I think, isn't it?

Yeah, that was out at the end of last year. To co-wrote. Yeah. Yeah. And it was so fascinating to me that book, because you talk a lot about, well, it's everything. It's about empire. It's about technology.

It's about, gave me so much insight into stuff I hadn't really thought about. like the fact that we spawn in this country, all these incredible creators like Tim Berners-Lee and Alan Turing, and we can't seem to translate that to industry or business. And I thought, God, I'd never actually made that connection for this. It's like America steals our ideas and makes money out of them. Why is that? I think the biggest problem we've got in this country, and if you want to talk about it in sort of cultural terms is although we've got amazing an amazing education system and you know we're very good at nurturing amazing amazing amazing actually in all areas of sort of intellectual activity whether our artists or scientists you know we can we nurture these really great people Our culture, however, is as a trading nation, right?

You know, just going back centuries, we're swashbucklers. And one of the things we are terrible at is long-term planning, in particular investing for the long-term. And we're very, you know, the big difference, there are a number of big differences between, obviously, between America and Britain. But the two biggest ones economically are, it's an enormous domestic market and therefore if you're a business in America

you've got this huge market at home and that market allows these businesses to become enormous just servicing their home markets one of the reasons why at the time people were thinking about whether leave the EU I would say this is economic madness because being part of an enormous

integrated single market is so valuable and our membership of the EU single market was the equivalent of an American company being in the United States of America it just gave us this completely costless access

to just all these incredibly wealthy consumers and businesses and so giving that up was mad have you been quite open about the fact that you were remain well are you allowed to be to be frank I've never said

whether I was Remain or or Brexit, people control their own conclusions. But what I did say night after night on ITV in the run-up to the decision was that if we left the EU, it was going to make us poorer. Because all the economic evidence said that. And I said, you know, you may want to leave the EU for other reasons. You may think that control of immigration is important and you may think we'll get more control of immigration

if we leave the EU, as we've all seen actually, you know, numbers of migrants coming in actually have increased massively since leaving the EU. So that didn't work out the way that many of its proponents said it would. But nonetheless, at the time, that was a sort of plausible argument for leaving the EU if that really mattered to you. Equally, if it really mattered to you, not having Brussels having such a big influence on the laws we write, If you wanted Parliament in that sense, our Parliament had more power, that was a perfectly credible reason for leaving. But since most people thought what mattered most was their living standards, you know, I did say night after night. You know, if we leave the EU, we are going to be poorer for a period and, you know, maybe for quite a long time. We are poorer and, you know, that was always completely forecastable and predictable.

But anyway, that was just one point. But the other point is, which is the other point I wanted to make, which is about, taking long-term risks, investing for the long-term. In America, they have these huge pools of money, huge pools of capital, which are prepared to back great ideas, back great entrepreneurs. And for a whole variety of reasons, we have never been good at supporting our businesses

and our entrepreneurs with the kind of capital they need. and therefore too many of them go to America to raise the money and then they end up, you know, essentially becoming American, you know, creating American businesses that are better for America than they are for the UK. And that is a big problem we've had for years and, you know, I've been banging on about it for years, maybe at some point we'll get a government that takes it seriously enough, try and take the steps, put in place the reforms that means we can hang on to more of, you know, these great ideas for the best, benefit of Britain. You sound like a politician, but like a good one, but like a really good one,

that I would vote for. You wouldn't want to be a politician. I think the problem with being, look, I like what I do and I can have, you know, I say probably sounds a bit arrogant, but I think I can have an influence from where I sort of sit and write and broadcast. I think the problem with being a politician for something like me is one of the things we talked about earlier is I don't like being told what to do. And the problem with being a politician, if you're, you know, whichever party you belong to, you quite often have to vote for things you don't believe in.

And that's not me. Hello. I love your chitou. This is Raymond. That's my friend's dog, Merlin. Yeah. Wonderful names. Oh, what's yours called?

Her name's Astrid. Astrid. Oh, wow. Don't we on Raymond. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't. My pen's dog is wing on Raymond. He didn't, but he came frighteningly close. Oh, God.

When I listen to you, I think, oh, this guy talks a lot of sense. Honestly, I wish there was someone like you I could vote for. Well, there we go. Not in this coming election. We'll continue the conversation. You've written some fiction books as well, and I think you're a really brilliant fiction writer. I think... I loved writing them.

It's definitely much more fun writing fiction. Did you enjoy it? Oh, God, yeah. So there's the whistleblower. Yeah. It should be a film, though. Is it going to be made into a film? It really should be.

Well, it's been optioned. Yeah. We'll see what happens. And you've also written the crash, which is your follow-up. And it's a lot of people I noticed, when you were being interviewed at the time, doing the circuit this morning and that. And it's really fascinates me because he's a, you know, we all write what we know. And he's a financial and business and political journalist. And you go straight.

And love for the interview he said. So how much of this is you? As if you were going to say, well, yeah, I mean, I take cocaine and I... Because he's quite hardcore. Look, I wanted the books to feel authentic. And in order for them to feel authentic, you've got to write about stuff that you know about, right? Yeah. And so, one of the reasons I wrote about, you know, I set the first one in the run up to the 97 general election.

I was plagiarated throughout the Financial Times at the time and absolutely sort of immersed in, you know, all the sort of scalduggery around the actual, you know, actual politics at the time. And so I just wanted to channel a bit of that. And then with the crash, obviously, I was absolutely immersed in reporting and breaking stories, you know,

leading up to the crash and then immersed in reporting on it. Again, it felt that the thrillers would feel more convincing if I wrote about, if I set them in worlds that I knew very well. You write so brilliantly and I really urge people to go and get them. I couldn't put them down, honestly. Oh, that's brilliant. Honestly, you're my new favourite writer. Well, you're my new favourite interviewer.

I really think you're quite a nice man, Robert Peston. Well. Do you think you are? Do you like yourself? Oh yeah, I'm perfectly happy with myself. It's all right. That's fine. That's not an issue.

I mean, look, look, we all want to change, right? Do we? Well, yeah, I mean, I've got all sorts of patterns that are really annoying to people. Oh, well, that's a whole other podcast. But anyway, the point is, the point is, give me a highlight. Just give me an example. Oh, I think I... Avoidant?

Yeah, I think I am a bit... What you mean if something horrible is going on trying to sort of... Yeah, well, I'm avoiding to the extent that if somebody's upset, I immediately try and solve the problem, right? So rather than, it's quite often when somebody's upset, what they actually want you to do is listen, whereas my instinct is immediately, well, if you just do this, this, this and this, it all be fine.

And that's not what people necessarily want. So I try, so that's a pattern that I've been trying to get over, be better at just listening and absorbing than fixing. So that's one thing. I mean, there are others, But all I was going to say is, you know, it's not that I, you know, it's not that I don't want to change. There's lots about me that I know, you know, there's lots of ways in which I want to be better, right? So that's important and, you know, I've got a therapist.

Therapy's a good thing, right? I don't, I think some people don't like themselves and I don't actively dislike myself. I'll be frank. I found it interesting when you were talking about perhaps not so demonstrative, your dad, that you've learnt from that, and that's not to judge him or criticise him. You're just saying, OK, well, that's useful, because now with my kids, I'm changing that. I mean, I think it's really important, you know, with parents. You know, we can all get really, really, really angry with our parents and say, God, you know, why did they do that?

you know but it's also important I think to put yourself in their shoes and and think about how it was for them and to understand so you know what I think about my parents is you know they did a lot that I now think wasn't great parenting I'm certain my kids look at me and think God he was crap at that aspect of parenting or whatever but you know what I hope my kids will do, which is what I've definitely done with my parents, is put myself in their shoes. And if you can understand why your parents did what they did, even if they mucked up in a significant way, I think that's quite important. I think it's important to try and, you know, I think with your parents, it's, you feel better about yourself if you could understand why your parents got certain things wrong and get over your anger. And that's certainly I've spent quite a lot of time doing that and I think that's important. Well, the most powerful phrase I ever learnt was everyone is guilty, no one is to blame.

Yeah, it's an important phrase. Do you know what I noticed about Merlin, Robert? Merlin liked it when I was giving Merlin a lot of attention and Raymond was looking on jealously. Is that what Merlin likes? I'm afraid. The problem is a terrible attention seeker. And so long as people are giving love to Merlin, everything's fine.

Oh, Merlin. Come here, darling. You give me cuggles. Come on, Ray. Merlin, come here. Come here. Oh, no, I told you that was going to happen. I told you that was going to happen.

Merlin, now you really have disgraced yourself. Come here. Robert, do you want to explain what just happened? So I warned early on in this walk that there was a risk of Merlin going into humping mode. And you just did. you very, very, okay, I've got to actually say this in a serious way because Charlotte will be very, very cross if I don't tell you off. You were bad, that was bad. Nauty Merlin. I imagine you're all quite good at confrontation, Robert. It slightly depends, actually.

So, I mean, genuinely it's like it's like depends. I don't like confrontation with people I love. But if you're saying in my professional life, I mean, I'm also not somebody who likes five. but I don't have any problem delivering a difficult message or you know challenging in a polite and firm way and that's obviously just part of being a journalist and doing the kind of journalism I do but it is the case that I don't like you know people who care about I don't like saying things to them if I think it's going to upset them. So that is, yeah, but sometimes you have to say things to people you really love and care about that, you know, that is upsetting. But I hate that. I just hate it.

Well, you wouldn't describe yourself as a people pleaser, though. Oh, God, no. No, no, I'm definitely not a people. Do you think I am? I don't think so. Well, I'm interested in that because so many people on this podcast, with the exclusion of Jeremy Paxman, who, come here. said, so they are and they struggle with it. Oh. So? I don't think I am. I mean, I think, I don't know.

I don't think I am really. You struggled with OCD a bit when you were younger. Yeah, when I was a teenager, it was really, no, it was horrible. I mean, it was, it was sort of ruining my life for a bit. You know, I would get almost no sleep in my early teens, because for whatever reason, I had this, I was a very, very, very anxious kid. And I just thought, for whatever reason, you know, the gas had been left on or the doors were unlocked. And so I would get up in the middle of the night and I'd check them and then I go back to bed.

And then I'd think I hadn't checked them properly. And I'd go and check them again. And it was very pernicious. And weird, I mean, it shows, again, it was that sort of manifestation of, you know, sort of how, you know, I don't think my parents ever noticed. It's sort of weird. It's just, it's that part, you know, it's just from that generation of totally hands-off parenting. So I had OCD at a time when I don't even know if, you know, the medical profession recognized it as a condition. Certainly I didn't really know this was a mental health issue when I was a kid.

And then, you know, as I got older, I just acquired strategies to manage it. One of the things I write about in the two thrillers crash and whistleblower are the techniques. that the central character Gil Peck has to manage his OCD he has these little chance that somehow reassure him he has these sort of little ritualistic chance that soothe him yeah and that was actually a technique that I just acquired you know in my 20s as a way you know if I could tell that there was some extreme anxiety coming on about something as seemingly trivial as whether I'd locked the front door or whatever, I would just say these chants and I would somehow get over it.

Do you still ever do it now? People have observed that I occasionally go into a sort of weird ritual so I think you might deduce from that that I do still do it. It's a self-soothing. It's a sort of self-suelling thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah I don't make a value judgment about myself. It's just a thing about me. Before we let you go, I should congratulate you too on the brilliant podcast you do. The rest is money with Steph McGovern.

And you two have got such a lovely chemistry. Oh, that's kind of you to say that. Of course, you have history, don't you? Because she worked with you. She worked with your producer. So during the, or in the latter stages of the financial crisis, she was my TV producer. And, you know, I spotted then what amazingly,

brainy creative person she was and we've became friends and we've remained friends she's become a great broadcaster and so when I was talking to the Goldhanger people like called Tony Pastor about doing this podcast you know she was you know more or less the first person I thought of as being somebody it would be great to do a podcast with. You're very good at communicating quite complex ideas and concepts into, I suppose, you know, for laymen's like me. I think, oh no, there's an entry point for me here. I don't feel frightened. That's nice. You know, you interviewed Liz Truss. Yeah. Recently. It was a big sort of, there's like five parts or something. Well, we did a, so we did a,

so what we did was I felt that people hadn't really understood properly why, you know, her time in office had been such in particular a financial disaster and I just thought that it was important to tell the story of why interest rates soared why the government came very close to being unable to borrow and and how incredibly damaging that was for the country and of course because of the financial crisis, she lost her job incredibly quickly. I felt it was sort of in the public interest to get to the bottom of what exactly had happened and then tell that story, which is what we did in the first three parts.

And then fair play to her. She agreed to be interviewed. And so I did this hour plus interview with her, taking her through what I perceived to be. the significant mistakes that she personally had made and also talking about what had gone wrong that wasn't her fault, the fault of other people and other institutions. And because, you know, I am somebody who, you know, I think it's important, particularly when you're evaluating a period of history that's done genuine damage to all of us. It's important not to

to simply scapegoat one person. And for all the mistakes that she made, she wasn't the only person in that period. To make mistakes, Bank of England made mistakes. I would argue that parts of Whitehall made mistakes. And so we talked, you know, so the five parts of the series, who killed this trust, is really about allocating

responsibility where it needs to be allocated so that we can then learn and try to avoid making those mistakes again. Robert, you strike me as one of the most hardworking people. I mean, you're never off, it seems to me. Well, sometimes that's people don't want to be off. Sometimes people bury themselves in work. Do you think that's the busyness is helpful for shutting out noise sometimes?

Oh, definitely. I mean, so, you know, I was talking earlier about how, you know I am somebody who wants to you know self-improve and I definitely have historically used work which I enjoy as a way of displacing problems and as a way of not dealing with personal stuff that I should be dealing with and I'm conscious of the need not to use work in a sense as a drug. So, you know, I think that is important.

But I do, but I'm lucky I do love what I do. And I'm also lucky that even though I do often use work to displace other things that I don't want to have to deal with, yeah, but I can, you know, I can switch off. I'm quite good at just, It can drive some people mad, but I'm, you know, I am quite good at literally shutting down all thought for a period. Are you? Yeah.

I can just switch my brain off and do nothing, which is definitely a sort of an important part of, you know, regenerating. One of the pieces of advice your dad gave you is always tip generously. Are you very good with money? I imagine you are. Oh, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I'm very good with money, but I mean, you know, I'm quite good at, you know, multitasking and organising all that kind of stuff. Are you? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm pretty good at doing lots of different things at the same time. What do you think? I always think this is interesting to think, you know, if you go out of a room and your friends are in there and you just hear the tail end of their conversation and they're talking about you, what would you most like to hear them saying about you? If they said the thing about Robert is, he's very... You know, the awful truth is, this is a terrible thing to say. I just, I mean, genuinely, I just want to be the best I can be. And I don't really care what other people say about me. It's just, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, yeah.

So the honest answer is I'm not going to listen because I don't really want to know. I mean, certainly I think that I have to judge, you know, I can't. be dependent on other people's approval. I have to, you know, I have to, I have to think that, you know, what I'm doing is okay and that matters more than what other people think. Presumably with fame, I know you've said in the past, you've kind of got to watch it a bit, I suppose, in that it can usher in narcissism. Yeah, look, I do think that part of the problem of doing the kind of things that I do is it does, if you've got narcissistic tendencies, of people in our world do have narcissistic tendencies. Having the kind of exposure that I've had

at different times can be pretty harmful and can make you appallingly self-obsessed. I've tried very hard not to be and others can judge whether I've succeeded but I'm acutely aware of the corrupting influence of being seen by lots of people and known and you know, it is unhealthy to, you know, derive your own sense of self-worth from the approbation of others. And I'm acute, this is one of things I was saying to you earlier is, you know, what I try and do is not worry about what other people think and just think about whether I'm doing the best I can. You've met pretty much every leader, I imagine, since Tony Blair you've interviewed. and... Yeah, I met, I met Thatcher.

I never interviewed her, but I did meet her, yeah. That wouldn't have been at one of Morris's din at Swares. She wouldn't have been welcome. No, no, no, no. Well, my dad actually did, weirdly, before she became Prime Minister, they did sort of know each other a bit. Because he was sort of leading as an economist, education expert, and she was Education Secretary.

he was very critical of certain things that she was doing. And so I imagine they might have met, actually, to be honest. But anyway, I mean, they were definitely never close. And he was always hugely critical of her. But now I just met her after she became, after she stood down as prime minister at a party and had a sort of longish chat with her. But I didn't ever interview her.

But I have interviewed every prime minister since. then. Who struck you as most impressive? I mean the most, this is sort of obvious and not very interesting, but the most charismatic politician I've ever met, I flew, one of the things as a political editor you do is you fly with a prime minister in their plane, you know, when they go abroad. And late 90s we went over to Washington and I had a bit of time with Clinton and just as you know just as a pure political operator Clinton was astonishing you know there was just something unbelievably natural about his charm I guess and I remember even though you know let's be clear by UK standards Tony

Blair is a pretty impressive politician I do remember thinking when I saw them together in Washington that it was a bit like seeing Cliff Richard with Frank Sanatra and and I honestly don't say that to disrespect Blair who I think is really a remarkable politician. But Clinton just had some magic. And again, this is not a judgment because quite a lot of what he did, obviously, in retrospect, wasn't as great as, you know,

one might have wanted or expected. But just in terms of that natural ability to sort of connect with whoever he's talking with, astonishing, just astonishing. You must... I mean, I was going to say you must look back on your life. You know, you're not... at the end of it.

I hate that expression. That's terrible. Take that out. Come on, here we go on, yes. But you must look back on your life and think, God, what an incredible, all these things that I've experienced. So I don't, so, so,

I think one of the reasons why maybe, so I don't look back. Do you not? No, hardly ever. I mean, one of the, you know, I'm always, to be honest, I'm always thinking about the next thing. I do that way more than thinking about what's, you know, what's come before. So, you know, why am I doing the podcast?

Because I just was looking at the sort of media landscape, and I've done podcasts before for ITV. And I just thought, actually, you know, there's not, there's not anything like the rest is money in the sort of podcast. I hate the word space, but that's kind of a better one. So there's nothing like the rest is money in the podcast space. We've got to do it. I almost never look back. And actually, part of the problem is if I do look back, it just feels I'm very superstitious.

And so, you know, if I look back and then I take satisfaction out of something, I think something terrible is then going to happen. So I've got to be constantly moving and constantly doing something new. You're a shock. So. If you stop swimming, you'll die. As someone says in one of your books. Well, it's what actually Simon.

the oldest, my oldest boy said, so we, after Sean died, we had this slightly eccentric family therapist who was mostly, mostly dealt with sort of little kids and you know, I'm not a little kid and Simon was his 20s and Max was 15 and he told us to go to his box of toys and pick out a toy that represented somebody else in the room, right? And Simon went and he picked up this shark. And he said, and he said, Dad, this is you. I don't mean because, you know, you're a, you know, a predator or nasty. It's because I, you know, I think you think that if you stop swimming, you'll die.

Which is quite a touching moment. Why wasn't he being paid to be the therapist? I mean, that's really insightful, isn't it? Yeah, it was interesting. It was an interesting moment. It was an interesting moment. Well, I like the sound of him. Both the boys are great. And how lovely you've got this big blended family now?

Because Charlotte's got kids as well, isn't she? Yeah, so Margot, Audrey, Douglas, amazingly wonderful children. Do you know what? I'm very into this blended family. And then at the centre of it, Merlin. So Robert, we're going to let you go now. I've loved walking with you. Have you enjoyed our walk? I've loved meeting you.

I think I've never met an imperial chit-su before. I think this is a privilege. And, I mean, Merlin is obviously very attached to all of you. So, Merlin, what do you think? Do you think you'd have a more loving home away from me? What do you think? Merlin, do you want to come and live with me and Rayway? That's a yes.

Goodbye, Robert. God, he's so disloyal. He's so disloyal. I really hope you enjoyed that episode of Walking the Dog. We'd love it if you subscribed. And do join us next time on Walking the Dog wherever you get your podcasts.