Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Rory Cellan-Jones with Sophie from Romania (Part One)

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

This week - we’re with one of the nation’s most loved dogs, Sophie from Romania - and her fantastic owner, Rory Cellan-Jones. Rory is a journalist and he is best known for being a BBC News technology correspondent. Rory was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in May 2019 and left the BBC after 40 years in 2021. Then in December 2022 - Rory and his wife Diane adopted their Romanian rescue dog, Sophie. Rory documented Sophie’s progress settling her new life on social media - and she subsequently grew a huge following, and changed Rory’s life! In this part of our chat, we discuss Rory’s early life, growing up with a single mother, reconnecting with his father and the experience of welcoming a nervous rescue dog into his family. Follow @rorycellan on InstagramYou can get your copy of Sophie From Romania hereYou can get your copy of Ruskin Park hereYou can listen to Movers and Shakers: a podcast about life with Parkinson’s wherever you get your podcasts! 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.

Sophie, what does it feel like to be one of the most loved dogs in the world? It's all right. The food's okay. Sometimes. The walks are a bit much. Walk, walk, walk, walk. It's all he talked about. This week on Walking the Dog, Ray and I popped over to Ealing and West London to take a stroll with a rescue dog who's basically captured the hearts of the nation. The beautiful Sophie from Romania and her wonderful human companion, Rory Kethlyn Jones. Rory was best known for many years as the BBC's technology correspondent,

but he's now won a whole new legion of fans after sharing Sophie's adoption story on social media as he tried to win the trust of this very anxious, shy and nervous dog. It went completely viral, leading to news crews arriving at his house and people everywhere becoming totally invested in their journey together. So I was hugely excited to meet them. Now, Sophie has made astonishing progress, but she can still be. quite wary of new dogs and people. So we weren't quite sure how it was going to go,

but we were both genuinely blown away by how comfortable and calm she seemed around Ray. That could be because he looks more like a gerbil than any kind of dog. But look, it was a massive win and we'll take it. Rory is delightful company. He's such a thoughtful, sweet, smart, decent man who's got the most fascinating backstory, which you must read all about in his brilliant memoir, Ruskin Park.

He's also written very touchingly about his adventure with Sophie in his book, Sophie from Romania, a year of love and hope with a rescue dog, and do also listen to the wonderful podcast he does, called Movers and Shakers, with a group of friends, one of whom is Jeremy Paxman, where they chat very honestly about navigating life with Parkinson's. I adored Rory, and Sophie was just the most gentle little soul I've ever encountered, so I've decided Ray's found a brand new best friend. I really hope you enjoy our chat. I'll stop talking now and hand over to the fabulous duo themselves. Here's Rory and Sophie from Romania and Ruiway.

Hello, sweetie pie. Sophie, Sophie, dog. Come on, come on, come downstairs. Come downstairs, sweetie pie. Come on, come on. Or am I coming up to you? Good girl. Come on, downstairs, come on.

Downstairs with Dad. I think Sophie from Romania might be imminent. This is so exciting. I feel like Wembley and Harry Stiles is about to come out. Sophie. We've had the first glimpse of Sophie. Actually, if you could move up, just walk a bit further to the left down the street. This way?

And we'll catch you up. That's a good idea. There we go. Good girl. Oh. Come on, Ray. Oh, who are these people? They look nice.

Oh, you're very excited by the side of Raymond. She does get a bit barky. That's fine. Raymond, who's that? It's a lovely girl, isn't it? Raymond. She's giving you a sniff. I think you'll find Raymond is more high maintenance than Sophie.

Oh. Giving you a sniff. The walk is completely led by her. She won't go on her. a stand a walk these days. We just go where she takes us. Yeah. Um, we try and force the pace sometimes, but our behaviourist has sort of taught us to go with the flow, as it were. And where she's taken to going, the last two weeks, is her friend's house around the corner. Is that Juno? Yeah. Juno won't be in, but, um... Juno is a puppy. Juno is a puppy. It was about

45 kilo. Sophie's 15 kilos. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no, that's not nice, is it? That's not nice. Oh, darling. Should we, um... Should we keep going? Should we, I think... Come on them.

Do you want to cross the roads? Should we follow you? Yeah, yeah. No, no, but... But you be calm, girl. You be calm. Come on. So, my darling. Waggy tail.

Waggie tail. It's all right, my sweet. Shall I give her a treat, Rory? Yeah, if you have you got one. Yeah, but I won't look at... I know the technique. I've been looking at it. Well, I'm sure you do.

Well, only because of you. Now, what have we got here, Sophie? This might be a nice little start. Oh, I think you know what's coming here. I'd like a treat, my love. Good girl. Oopsie. There we go.

Here we go. And where are we going to go now? Good girl. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Come on. Rory, I have to say, this might be one of the most exciting moments in my life.

Are you a long-term Sophie follower? Who isn't at this point? I got stopped everywhere we go, so does Diane. You know, Diane's got this sort of huge career in economics and so on. And people stop her and say, how's Sophie? She got on a plane back from a conference the other day. And the stewardess said, You're Sophie's mum.

I moved her forward in the plane. Do you want another one? Shall I give her one more? Is that too many? but um Sophie there you go my love good girl what a good girl no come come on that's enough that's enough let's go let's go let's go follow daddy now good girl my love good girl good girl special occasion to get you warmed up and relaxed with the treats so obviously I'm with the very wonderful Rory Kathleen Jones I'm quite

proud of my pronunciation. That's rather good. Because I didn't go, a lot of people go for Rory Kethlen. Yeah. And I'm half Welsh. Right. My mum was Welsh. So I thought I'm going to make the effort. I'm with Rory Kethlen Jones and the, if you don't mind me saying, far more famous now. Sophie from Romania. Yes, come on, Safe. Who is absolutely beautiful, Rory. She's a beautiful dog and she's saying, Dad, we're being followed. Would we get a frost to go in front? Who's to say?

We'll get to this corner. She likes to turn this corner. There's a cat somewhere around here, which is a side of her. If you want to walk. Should we walk first? Come on, Raymond. There's a good boy. So we're going to go down this road here.

Yeah, go straight down that road. I wonder if you could tell us first. Because normally I start this podcast by saying, have you got a dog? You know, we talk about growing up with dogs, etc. But I feel with Sophie, we need to address the fact that she has become this huge online, not just online. She's just become one of the most famous dogs in the country now. And you brought her into your life.

Was it about two years ago? December 23. Yeah. Just before Christmas. She arrived on a transport from Romania in the middle of the night, 3 a.m., literally the Saturday before Christmas. and she was immediately terrified, which we were not surprised by. But what was surprising was how long she stayed terrified. Now, Sophie, you've got to be nice to Raymond.

Raymond's a small dog. She wants to play, I think. Yeah, she wants to play, but she doesn't know her own strength. Hello, my darling. Do you know, Raymond's actually, I found your book, which we'll get on to, so fascinating, because Roman's quite a fearful, anxious, dog. It was so interesting. You've obviously had a similar, much more extreme journey with Sophie, but she's famously a Romanian rescue dog, isn't she? She is. You decided to get her, you'd had

cabbage. We had a lovely dog called cabbage, a rescue dog who died at the beginning of that year, about 16, a very energetic collie in a younger time, collie cross. We were both heartbroken and her lost Diane in particular. But in about the autumn, she began to say, I think I might be ready. And we ended up getting this dog because a friend around the corner, I met on the street,

had a little dog. I said, where did that come from? And she said, Romania. And she put us in touch with him. Now, I just interrupted you to say, she's got this pattern lately, Sophie, of heading towards a particular house, haven't you, on our random walks?

She's got a newly acquired friend, a lovely ridgeback called Juno. And she keeps taking her, even at 7 o'clock in the morning, to sit outside Duno's house. And we have to say, it's not really a polite time to visit. Sophie, that's how you end up with a restraining order, my life. So, as you say, you decided to see, Ravel just do this, Rory. he just stops and it's often it could be a wheelie bin or a bike well Sophie's exactly the same

really we're completely lead and sometimes it makes walks rather random no but I feel really comfortable with you because I often feel a bit self-conscious that he's not like a normal dog because this wasn't what I expected I thought I'd get a dog and he'd be yeah come on let's it whereas he just does this

he just sits there so she I mean the key thing to remember is that for the first six months she literally spent 90% of her time behind our red sofa in the living room. Yeah. Then she started to come out a bit, but it was more than a year before we took her for a walk. So it was sort of 14 months before we got her out of the house to go for a walk.

So, and walking then became a lot easier and then became harder again. And we've sort of plateaued at this sort of thing where she will go around the block and a couple of other streets, but she will not walk to the park, which is where we used to walk. Is this common with rescue dogs, this kind of level of fear, particularly Romanian rescue dogs, or was she an unusual? It is quite common. There are specialised groups for Romanian rescue dogs. This is Juno's house. Is this where Juno lives?

Yeah, this is where Juno lives. And we go down that back alley, but we're not going to today because Juno is not here. I'm pretty certain Juno is not here. This is where my wife quite often has to give her a treat to persuade us to go away, that we're going another way, and we then go back that way usually. You are a good girl. You're a good girl, but you're very nervous. Funny little girl.

Raymond. Raymond, where's Sophie? There she is. He's very shaky today. Oh, he's got Parkinson's obviously. First ever dog with Parkinson's. And you've of course written a brilliant book about this, Rory, about your journey with Sophie from Romania,

which we're going to talk lots about. But I think what really struck me about this whole experience you've had with her is it really wasn't what you anticipated, was it? No, absolutely not. I mean, as I said, we'd had a rescue dog, a British rescue dog. And she was quite flighty at first, and she was never a totally calm dog. This is cabbage.

Cabbage. Who was a collie? A collie cross, yeah. A lovely dog. And so we fully expected her to take a little while to settle down. And eventually people began to tell us this three, three, three days to get over the journey, three days to begin, three weeks to begin to get to know you all, and three months to be perfectly settled. And all these milestones,

kept passing and she was still spending most of her time behind the sofa and was terrified of everything. Yeah. So that was a bit of a shocker. But the walking was a particular worry, concern, disappointment, because part of my whole routine as someone with Parkinson's is exercise. Exercise is important. And I'm not a great one for going to the gym.

And with cabbage, I used to rain or shine every morning probably before seven. be out with the dog. And that's what I expected with this new dog. But, you know, if I was going to go out, I was going out on my own. So that was a disappointment. Do you know, but someone gave you a great piece of advice. I think it might have been on social media saying,

was it love the dog you have? Not the dog that you wished for, yeah. Yeah, it was actually, I think it was my friend Sadaf, who, who, whose Romanian dog I first met. Yeah, I think that is good advice. You have to be, I mean, the most influential person in our lives has been Sy, Cy, Sigh Willer, our sort of behaviourist friend who lives in Scotland a long way from here.

But he's been a therapist both to Sophie and to me, really. He's treated us both in a funny kind of way. because his mantra, which I sometimes get impatient with, is patience, patience, patience, patients, go at the dog speed. And you're not a patient person, Mauree, are you? You've admitted this. My wife says this. I mean, I've reluctantly began to sort of understand what she's saying.

And some former colleagues, I think later in life, it's kind of grumpy old man syndrome. You know, I used to get more tense in a TV edit when I was a TV reporter. And the producer was sometimes thrown me out of the edits. You're making everybody else tense now. She's ever so sweet, Rory. She's got an incredibly gentle energy. Yeah, she is, she's a, she's a very pretty, isn't she?

Is she part German Shepherd then? Well, that's what we assume. She looks very German Shish. She's like a lot of Romanian dogs actually. She appears to be quite a lot of German Shepherd, but very small. She's, she, she, she, I suppose she was one-ish when we got her. and I kept thinking she's... I said, hello, good girl, Sophie. Thinking she's going to grow

and actually been quite relieved that she didn't. I think we'll have you on the same side. She seems to like it when Ray is in her sight rather than behind. You like to look at Ray. You want to play, don't you? He's a bit... He's not like Juno, Sophie.

He's a little one. He's smaller. And what we found is that... A lot of people tell you this, that dogs on the lead are actually worse than dogs off the lead. But we can't have her off the lead except in a very secure. Yeah. Because she'll escape.

Oh. You very helpfully documented your early life in a brilliant book called Uskin Park. Yeah. Which I loved. I wanted to talk a bit about that as well because obviously people have known you for years as the BBC technology correspondent. And then you retired. Then you became famous as Sophie from Romania's dad, essentially.

In fact, I was immersed in just finishing that book, Ruskin Park, just as we got Sophie. And six weeks after we got it, my agent called me up and said, to my astonishment, there are five major publishers wanting to know if you're going to write a book about Sophie. Do you think that was because of... But do you think the sudden interest was... The story worked somehow. The week before Christmas, it was a miserable year. The war had started in Ukraine.

There was a cost of living crisis. And she was a very pretty dog with a story that just connected with a lot of people, instantly connected with a lot of people. I mean, my job was BBC Technology correspondent. I was an early adopter of things like Twitter. And I used it, you know, I had a big following on Twitter already. And put a huge number of followers on.

but so I kind of knew about that. And Cabbage had been a minor personality on Twitter, but Sophie's story just immediately gripped people. I want to go back to your childhood because you didn't have dogs growing up. No, not at all. Partly because of where you lived. Well, I was brought up by my mum,

who was twice over a single mother, in what I think you'd call a posh council estate in South London on the borders of Camerwell and Dulwich, Ruskin Park House. It was built open in 1950 and it was supposed to be for slightly, you know, some snobby description of the kind of people that they wanted. But it was a council flat nonetheless. It was one of the very first to be sold off. My mum refused to buy hers.

5,000. I'm not paying that. Anyway, the rule was. was no pets. Occasionally I used to see an elderly Lainie with a snuffly little Pekinese. And I thought, oh, funny, yappy little dogs. I do apologise, Warren. I hope Ray's not triggering.

No, well, I grew up, as I said, without dogs, they're actually quite scared of them. Really? Why were you scared of them, do you think? Were you quite a fearful boy anyway? I was quite a fearful boy. What we try and do is cross the road here and carry on up. My friend, do you know, Connie Huck, she lives around the corner. Connie and Charlie, I told her I was coming to see you today.

Her sister's my MP. Well, we worked that out because I was talking to Connie the other night and I said, I'm reading Rory's book. And he's mentioned something happening on the, I think it was a coronation day. And he refers to his MP coming to the street party saying, oh, have you left your dog at home? Why is she a Republican? And I said, I think that's Ruper, your sister.

And she said, give me the address and we worked out it was Ruper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is Rupert. And she said that sounds very much like the kind of thing Rupert would say. So yeah, Connie was very upset that she couldn't join us. Well, not join us. Say hi. She wouldn't have crashed. But, you know, she's a neighbour and she'd like to have said hello.

So anyway, I'm sorry, go back to what you were saying, Roy. So I was brought up by my mum in this flat. And my mum didn't certainly want pets of any kind, didn't like. whether they be dogs, cats or anything. If you're a child of a single mum, you take on at first at least, quite a lot of your mum's prejudices. And I used to go out and be taken out sometimes

into the country by nice aunties and uncles and every now and then someone would have a big dog that would bark at me and I would be scared as a kid. So that was my upbringing. And of course the irony is that my father who I didn't meet until I was an adult loved dogs and owned dogs all his life.

And of course, you were basically the result of a relationship, a workplace relationship. A love affair, yeah. Your mum and your dad were both working at the BBC and there was a bit of an age gap. Well, she was the older woman, wasn't she? Oh, my goodness. So the story is she was, she'd been married,

joined the BBC in the war in Bristol, had a child by her husband and left her husband because he disapproved of her working at the BBC when that child was five in 1947 and in 1950 came to London to work in television for the first time which is incredibly exciting I mean she was a secretary but it was pioneering days of live television

and she ended up in the drama department and got a temporary promotion one for one production all the plays then were done live it's extraordinary she got a promotion from being the sort of director's assistant

to being sort of floor manager and she had as an assistant fraud manager a young man who turned out to be 16 years her junior although he didn't realise that at the time called James Catalan Jones and he was starting at the very bottom

so my mum was actually senior to him it always makes me laugh or grind my teeth. Because I think my Wikipedia says something like an affair between a noted BBC TV director and a secretary, which is such a clichéed view and ignores the fact that she was his boss when they got together. It also says on your Wikipedia entry, Rory was born out of wedlock. I know, that's hysterical, isn't it? Somebody, I know, keeps trying to change that. I know. It's such a, an archaic term. To be honest, Rory, I did have to think, give it some serious thought if I, if I wanted to come over today when I read that. You were going to hang out with somebody born out

of the regular. So this is such an interesting story and as I say you wrote a memoir about this, which is absolutely gripping. I felt that most of the information you had, you were like a detective doing a cold case, piecing together a lot of this information from hundreds, if not thousands of letters. That was the point. And this, you were, and this, was that the heart of the book was a discovery. In 1996, when my mum died in that same council flat, and I went to clear out the flat, and I knew she was a hoarder, but I didn't realize, to what extent,

she kept every letter she'd received, it felt like, for about 60 years, and lots of copies of letters she'd sent. She was a BBC secretary. She kept carbon copies of everything, even personal letters, in a slightly obsessive way. and when I opened one particular collection of them there was a pink stocking box Kayser stockings

with a note on the outside saying keep for myself and Rory later and inside scrawled on a brown envelope was for Rory to read and think about in the hope that it will help him to understand and then just below that was a bill from the three-crown hotel in Anguene-on-Sea in Sussex for a weekend's bed and breakfast in April 1957 made out to a Mr. J. Kathleen Jones. Was that your conception?

So, well, I was going to say I was born in January, 1958, so do the math, as the American say. And beneath that were all my dad's love letters and a whole bunch of letters that my mum had written and received telling her friends and sisters that. about the affair and how it was going. Now it wasn't that I didn't know my origins by then, but being taken on this journey through these literally thousands of letters, intimate letters,

and even letters to her lawyer, who was quite a character, full of emotion, just brought the whole thing to life. And when you were growing up, Rory, did your mom explain everything about your dad and say, look, this is what happened. We had a relationship. He was a bit young and immature. He panicked and now that's why he's not really in the picture.

It didn't work that way. For a long time, I assumed my parents were divorced because I had his name. Because she had done this extraordinary thing during the big legal battle they had. She had changed her name by Deepol, but literally the day before I was born, so that I would have his name. Because of the shame back then associated with being... Yeah, yeah. Legitimate. As I got older, I think she used to drop little nuggets of information.

There was never a sit-down and tell-me moment. But, I mean, the good thing about her, because my mum was a very difficult person in many ways, was that the one person she never spoke ill of was my father. She thought of it as, you know, I think, a wonderful time in her life until she got pregnant. And always blamed the lawyers, which was a bit irrational. So if the lawyers hadn't interfered, it would have been all right.

That must have been a coping mechanism for her, though, to think. If it hadn't been for the lawyers, maybe he would have been with her. Oh, you're eating something disgusting now, dog. What is that? What is he eating? What is that in your ear? Oh, you're silly girl. Your dad goes on, who's not in your life at all, as you say,

and a bit of mystery around him. And then he goes on to become this incredibly high profile director, who I was familiar with, who directed... The Forsight saga. Forsight saga. Which was the great soap story of the 1960s, late 90s. I think that must have been quite tough for your mum, because there must have been a sense of almost pride and I picked a good one. But on the other hand, well, this is a bit awkward. I can't really move on. We used to... Well, it's worse than that, because for a long period, they were still both working.

in the BBC drama department in television centre. I don't know if you've been there. Yeah, my dad worked there for years. Oh, right. Well, the fifth floor. He was in BBC documentary. Oh, yes. The fifth floor, sort of donut, it's a sort of circular corridor. They would have been walking past each other all the time.

But there was one really sad moment when she takes you, because when I related to that, because my dad worked there and he'd always, it's quite weird when I think, he'd say to me and my sister, oh, just go and have a wander around and see if anything's being filmed. and we're just wandering to studios. And it sounds like you did a sort of similar thing, but there's a very heartbreaking moment when you go with your mum into a gallery,

production gallery, when something's being filmed. And there's a director in the gallery, and it's your dad. And you just, she doesn't speak to him. And what does she say afterwards? No, no, it's kind of worse than that. This is her being manipulative. Right. Because I was about 13 by then.

And I used to go and wander on my own. She took me and took me into this gallery. And there was a curly-headed bloke with his back-to-camera who was obviously in charge and sharing a joke during a break. And she leaned over and said, that's your father. And I just couldn't wait to get out. I could not think of a more embarrassing situation

than to meet my father accidentally at 13. Yeah, that was very difficult. Yeah. And I did meet him and have a good relationship. later on but I only wrote the book waited 25 years after finding those letters after my dad had died to write the book and you contacted him what was interesting is that you ended up doing incredibly well because I get the sense that your mum was determined for you to be educated and I suppose it was a sense of

self-betterment if you like and you ended up going to a private school and she sort of scraped and found a way for you to go there, Dulwich College. And then you ended up at Cambridge. She must have been so proud. She was. I mean, this is part of the journey of revelation of the letters. There's a whole file on my education.

She wrote to every head teacher, headmaster of every public school. There was a letter to the headmaster of Eden who wrote back very snootly. you had to put him down before birth. He's three now. It's ridiculous. And she could never have afforded that, obviously. And she wrote to the headmaster of Westminster, and it's lucky I didn't end up there because my dad's children ended up there. And that would have been different. And you had the same name, of course. Yeah, exactly. What you have to know is she'd already been through a somewhat similar experience with my half-brother Stephen, who was 16 when I was born, and who she'd, one-parented, as it were,

since he was five and she'd been desperate for him to have a quality education and but he ended up leaving school at 17 he wanted to be in the theatre and he did go into the theatre oh good sophie's turned around this is good because we're we're no longer on this path home now come on then ray follow sophie good girl you contacted your dad as you say when you were i was in my last term at Cambridge and it was one of those moments when you're thinking about your life and I just thought how mad is it that I've not met my dad and I've seen his credit rolling up on the television and people have said oh any relation so I just wrote to him I wrote to him at Yorkshire television where I think he was working at the time and the letter went astray and he didn't get a reply so I wrote

another angry letter and they both arrived at the same time and he sent me a sort of soothing reply and we started to meet for slightly awkward dinners. He would take me out to dinner every few months, and it didn't feel like we were getting very far. And then five years later, four or five years later, his oldest boy, Simon, my half-brother, who was by then working in television too, called me up at my TV centre desk and said,

hi, it's Simon, should we go for a drink? and Simon sort of basically ushered me into the rest of the family. How lovely. Yeah. So I know him a lot. It occurs to me that someone who had that story, you know, of course, the first thing I think is that sense of abandonment. Yeah. That you had from birth, essentially.

Well, the funny thing is, I don't think I did. I think you're born, it takes you quite a long time to work out that other people are different. well that you are different you know friends at school lived in standard families but I I certainly didn't have that sense at first but I think partly because my mum had such a wonderfully warm family mainly based in the Midlands who I was packed off to every holiday so I got that sort of nurturing there you had a sense of belonging somewhere whereas my older half-brother Stephen his dad was very much on the scene with visits and there was a lot of tension. Right.

And I had none of that tension between the two parents because one of them was just totally absent. If there is a sort of, you know, emotion that carries you throughout your childhood, I would say it's one of embarrassment. Absolutely, absolutely. Why did you feel embarrassed? And what did you feel embarrassed of? I felt embarrassed of the flat where I lived. I would never take school friends back there.

Why? Because it was humble. Pokey one bedroom flat where I slept in the bed. bedroom and my mum slept in the living room on a what she called a divan. Embarrassed about my mum. I mean, everyone's parents are embarrassing when they're a certain age. My mum really was embarrassing. Now, what are you doing, Sophie?

What do you do? Sophie, she's climbing into somebody's flower beds. Oh, no, no. Oh, God, what have you got there? Is that a dead mouse or something? Oh, horrific. Horrific. Oh.

Do you know what? It's normal dog work. But they're so lovely about seeing that. Yes. Because you never thought you'd get to this stage, Warren. You have to remind yourself that you're saying, oh, God, what have you got there? Oh, what's Dad got here?

What's Dad got here? Oh, these are good, aren't they? Nuggets. They're called Nuggets. Special nuggets, Sophie. If I can get, if my friendly fingers can get them open. You're waiting with Sophie. She's such a good job, aren't you?

So, yeah, that embarrassment you're talking about, just that sense of... So my mum, the fact that my parents were, as I thought, divorced. Did that make you a quiet child, Roy? I, I mean I wasn't particularly extrovert, but I was actually quite, I think I was quite a fun child. Once I was comfortable in an environment, I could enjoy myself. And I was comfortable in these family homes, my aunties' homes, my two beloved aunties in Birmingham and Bedfordshire and in my extraordinary godparents home

are Geoffrey and Jane Grigsden who had a wonderful home in a farmhouse in Wiltshire I mean everyone suffers a degree of embarrassment in adolescence that don't know oh look it's a cat don't get over-excited just but a poor cat that cat had the most cliched response to Sophie I've ever seen in my life I think Hannah Barbera would send it back and say, no, even kids are going to find this a bit hackneyed and even trope.

No cat would actually go, you seem like, and I know as we get older we can sort of say, well, it worked out okay. I met with my dad and it was fine and ultimately I was welcomed into his family and I've got this different family now as well, which is lovely. But, you know, that's an incredibly painful thing. Yeah. To feel that your dad wants no contact with you and to not really understand why? It's very, I mean, maybe I'll have therapy one day. My hairdresser, my physiotherapist and my piano teacher,

I partly view as my therapist. I've never really kind of thought about that very deeply. I don't look back on my childhood as being full of pain. I mean, I don't look back very fondly on where I live, Ruston Park House, I always wanted to escape from there. I don't feel traumatised about it. In fact, the family always used to say to me, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Just calm down, sit down. He doesn't play like that, Sophie, because he's a little boy. But your tail's wagging, I think you just want to play. And he's such a frightened little boy, Sophie. Poor little Raymond. So, no, family used to say to me. Can you show us where to go? You lead the way.

My mother was, you know, quite an erotic and highly strung person. Oh, I love her. She sounds like me. So was my brother Stephen who went into the theatre. And he was very thin, very theatrical, quite nervy. And they used to say to me, Rory, how come you've turned out so normal? My wife now says, well, it's coming out now. I really hope you love part one of this.

week's Walking the Dog. If you want to hear the second part of our chat, it'll be out on Thursday, so whatever you do, don't miss it. And remember to subscribe so you can join us on our walks every week.