You're Dead to Me - Lord Byron (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: May 22, 2021

Who was Lord Byron and why did he drive the girls (and many boys) so wild? Find out about this scandalous early celebrity who was described as, "mad, bad and dangerous to know". Greg Jenner is joined by comedian Ed Gamble and historian Dr Corin Throsby. This episode was produced by Dan Morelle and scripted and researched by Emma Nagouse.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. All day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. Here I'm joined by an expert historian with a head full of facts and a top comedian with more lols than an emoji factory. Today we are taking a trip to early 19th century Britain, dusting off our quill and parchment and penning a saucy love letter to one of history's most outrageous poets and most famous early celebrities. It is Lord Byron. As ever, I'm joined by two marvellous guests.

In History Corner, she's an expert on Byron's celebrity and especially all the naughty fan letters he got from the ladies. She teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a BBC Radio New Generation thinker. It's Dr. Corinne Throsby. Hi, Corinne. How are you? Oh, I'm very well. I love talking about Byron, so I'm very pleased to be here. Well, we're very glad to have you. And in Comedy Corner, he's a hilarious stand-up comedian. He's a writer. He's an actor. I'm terrible at acting.

He's a terrible actor. Yeah, that'll do. That's genuinely the way I'd like to be referred to. Thank you. You'll have seen him doing the funnies on Mock the Week, live at the Apollo, 8 out of 10 cats. He's the co-host of the smash hit imaginary dining podcast, Off Menu. It's Bloomin' Ed Gamble.

Hello. Hello. You said you were going to mess up that first go at the introduction and you nailed it well i mean i called you a terrible actor arguably that's no no no you nailed it very kind of you i'm an awful actor this is a history podcast ed how are you with history are you immediately panicking or are you thinking i've got this uh i'm not panicking and i don't think i've got this i don't know anything about history but i'm looking forward to learning okay and are you familiar at all with Lord Byron?

I know he's Naughty Boy. Yep. And I'm yet to establish the link between him and burgers. That's a powerful link. Yes. It's a powerful link. So, what do you know? We begin the podcast with a So What Do You Know?

This is where I guess what listeners at home might know about today's subject. And that is Lord Byron, or real name George Gordon Byron. A fascinating man, often credited as being one of the first ever celebrities. In terms of pop culture, I mean, he's not been in a huge amount of stuff. I was looking around, he's popped up in Ricky Gervais' extras. He's been in Wicked and the Divine comic book. There have been some fun movies about him in the sort of 80s and 90s. I think there's one starring Hugh Grant.

There's a different one starring Gabriel Byrne. But he's not really had a movie about him for 30 years. He's slightly out of the conversation. But 200 years ago, he was a massive, massive deal. He was the notorious seducer, provocateur, a tortured genius, a pouting beauty, a sports fan. He was infamously described by Caroline Lamb, his ex-lover, as mad, bad and dangerous to know. But what else is there to know about him? Let's find out. So, Corinne, Byron is born in 1788. He's not born a lord, but he is born to a kind of relatively

posh family. Both of his parents were from well-to-do families but his dad who basically married his mum for her money was a terrible scoundrel he's like central casting you know jane austen style he's like gambling the money away going off with lots of women and he's called captain jack mad jack byron wow yeah yeah good name isn't it great if you knew someone called mad jack byron you'd be like straight down the path with them yeah Well, also, I wouldn't marry him. She's crazy. Going up and saying, hello, I'm Mad Jack Byron. Certainly not marriage material. Exactly. And he also had another wife previously and that hadn't gone well. So it was a mistake. Did he have like a moustache that he twizzled?

Very possibly. But poor old Mad Jack wasn't actually on the scene for long because he died when Byron was only three years old, probably by suicide. So Byron was left being raised by a single mother and she was Scottish. And so even though Byron was born in London, they very soon went back up to Scotland and he grew up in Aberdeen.

Are they living in a big old fancy house? No, it was actually, they were relatively poor. So Byron has always, you know, he's got this sort of funny thing that he became an aristocrat, but actually his beginnings were quite humble. No wonder he's known for being pale if he lived in Aberdeen. Between Aberdeen and going to Harrow, he inherited the Byron title. It's a bit of a rags to riches, except that his uncle also left loads and loads and loads of debt. So the massive family pile that he moved down into, which is in Nottingham called Newstead Abbey, was actually in disrepair and falling down. It was like, hey, you're Lloyd Byron, congratulations. Here are all the things

you have to pay for. Absolutely. And financial worries sort of plagued Byron his whole life. He this very excessive lifestyle but was always a bit beyond his means age 10 he inherits the title and then soon after that he goes to harrow he was 10 10 yeah and he was a lord suddenly a lord i'd love to have been a lord at 10 lord gamble lord gamble sounds great that sounds like a betting website that sounds like a mascot of like, hello, two free rolls on the roulette wheel at lordgamble.com. So he's off to Harrow. Fancy school. Does he have a lovely time?

Not at first. So he was actually born with a club foot. So he was lame and walked with a limp and wore an iron brace to help his foot when he was young. And so he was actually horribly bullied. He really learned to kind of throw some punches then. It's odd that he concentrated on the punching if he's got an iron leg brace. Surely kicking would be the best way to go.

But he got into Harrow after a while and made some great friends, possibly more than friends. His classmates are boys. Yeah. And he's possibly kissing the boys? Possibly. I mean, there's always this question of was Byron gay? And it's a tricky one to answer because in those days, someone's sexuality wasn't their identity in the same way that it is today.

But he definitely had relationships with men during his life, we think. He never actually says it outright, but he had, in his time, loads of relationships with women. In today's term, we'd probably call him bisexual. So he does have a bit of a love interest at 15 with a girl called Mary Choweth. He had loads of crushes like that. He wrote a lot of bad early poetry at that time. Sure, he would have done that. He goes to university.

He goes to Cambridge. He also had a pet. Now, Ed, do you want to guess what that pet was? It needs to be something weird. Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought it up. And something that you could have laid your hands on 200 years ago sure a rat that's a very cute guess the real answer is a bear what a bear i wasn't even considering a bear yeah you went small i went small yeah he went byron he went big well look i didn't go to cambridge but i'm fairly sure there are rules of what you can bring

into halls yes there are and the rules were no dogs. And Byron loved his dog. And so the bear was kind of like this revenge against the master. He's basically got Paddington in his room. Oh, this guy's really cool, actually. I'm fully on board now. But yes, he's also meeting the ladies, meeting the fellas. He had in Cambridge his first, I guess, relationship with a man, a beautiful chorister called John Edelston. What would his Tinder profile be? Would the portrait be him posing with a bear?

Is that like, instead of the tiger? In his trunks. But really, it is this kind of funny thing where it just, there were so many people, and like different ages. He was like an equal opportunist when it came to age as well. He was really just open to anyone. Ed, have you heard of the the grand tour um yes can you tell me what the grand tour is okay so when jeremy clarkson punched the producer it's basically top gear but on amazon i mean that is not the answer i was looking for but i've really enjoyed how far it was wasn't it yeah yeah okay do you want to know what the grand tour was

in the 1810s? Why not? The Grand Tour was a thing that young aristocratic dudes would go to Europe to better themselves. When you say better themselves, were they bettering themselves? Well, they were certainly exploring parts of themselves that they may not have otherwise explored. Right. So they weren't bettering themselves. Exploring parts of themselves and other people. Possibly. No, I think that there was generally this sense of you can learn from the ancient past. They're going to look at art.

They're going to Florence. They're going to Rome. They're going to look at Roman sculpture. The idea is that it's a sort of cultural education. Yeah. Like usually the Grand Tour was really focused on France and Italy. Byron was sort of pushed further east. He actually went as far as Albania.

There's a great portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery in London, wearing Albanian costume. It's the most famous portrait of him, really, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. He really got into it. When he's out there, he's starting to write some poetry. The fact that he was going to places that people at home hadn't been to meant that when he wrote about those places,

people were fascinated and wanted to know more. Childe Harold, this poem that really launched his career, was about a young nobleman who's had enough of his life in Britain and in the excesses of that and is travelling through Europe. And of course, people were like, hang on a minute, that's basically you, isn't it? It's a bit on the nose. Where did you get inspiration? So it's called Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Yes. And it's a bit on the nose where did you get inspiration so it's called child harold's pilgrimage yes and it's released in cantos do you know what canto is ed absolutely not do you want to guess nope it's a long bit of a poem basically it's a long bit it's technical yeah it came out in four cantos over a period of years people got an appetite for it bring up the next series it was

really like a series exactly and people would hang on for it in the same way they might hang on for the next game of thrones so travel poetry is really a big thing he's hooked onto this genre of travel poetry but he's also known as a romantic and that doesn't mean that he buys people flowers before he kisses them it's a type of aesthetic philosophy isn't it so the first romantics were Wordsworth and Coleridge. They were the first generation. And then there was a second generation of Byron and Shelley and Keats and other people as well, but they're the most famous ones. And yeah, this was a movement that came largely sort of out of the French Revolution that really put an emphasis on the human imagination as being the sort of greatest force in the world. It's all about our imaginative

capabilities and the power of nature to take us out of an increasingly industrial world. And going on about feeling intense emotions, the sublime. Yeah, absolutely. The power of the landscape to transport us. And it was also this idea of the great genius, poetic genius that that Byron really can... Sounds like they'd get on my nerves a bit if I met them. Was he the sort of bloke who'd get a guitar out at a party? That is like... Oh, yeah.

Shelley's getting the guitar out. They were all up in the clouds and Byron was very much down on earth. Would he smash the guitar up? That is exactly it. Great. I like him again. Okay, we're back on board. Back on board with Byron.

So he's done a lot of travel. He's writing autobiographical stuff. He says he goes to bed and he wakes up famous. Is that true? And how did that happen? Possibly wasn't overnight, but he was a massive celebrity and his fame rose really quickly. He published a few poems as an undergraduate, and then he went away on what I guess we might call a gap year after university. And he published a poem called Child Harold. And it was in this poem that he developed the character that he would use again and again, which we now know of as the Byronic Hero, which was the pale, good looking, brooding guy with a dark past, but loves one woman only until you said that i thought

it sounded like russell brand russell brand definitely fancies himself as definitely he's modeling himself yeah absolutely so people started to think that the character that byron was writing about again and again was him and he put just enough hints there to make people make the connection but really it was this romanticized version of himself that's what starts him off that's what gets him really really famous he's 24 years old when he launches his career overnight almost when you say really really famous yeah is that amongst everyone like who's like going out and buying the poetry or reading the poetry and being like, oh, have you seen this guy, this new banging poet? His career coincided with the advent of mass mechanised publishing. So everyone could read it. Yeah, so it was being accessed by loads of people and also

increases in literacy. So more and more people were being taught to read, particularly women. There was this incredible appetite for new cool stuff to read. He sort of hit the zeitgeist just at the perfect moment when there was this new audience of readers. The upper class, the wealthy who are reading him to begin with, aren't they? To begin with, absolutely. It was wealthy, particularly women. And then as his career progressed and more pirated copies of his poems started to circulate, he was read by a much wider audience. And it's fascinating, Ed, because we think of fandom as like Beatlemania and whatever, but Byron has

fans, properly committed fans. Do you want to guess what the movement is called? Because you've got the monsters for Lady Gaga, you've got mixers for Little Mix. Byron, what do you think they're called? Byron Maniacs. Hey! Isn't he? Bang on. His wife coined the term. So mania is not a new thing. There have been manias before.

Sarah Siddons had a mania, but he is crazy famous. And there are people who are really into him, aren't there? This one is the one that feels fascinating because you can see the letters. We've got so many letters and you've read them, haven't you? I have, yeah. He was really one of the first people to receive fan mail on a mass scale. It was mostly women who wrote to him and they felt this incredible personal connection to him through his poetry. They felt that Byron was talking

directly to them and directly about their personal experiences. They would write to him, usually anonymously. They would tell him how much they loved his work and by extension loved him this is such a boring question but where did they send the letters i mean that is a great question um all over a lot to his publisher but he was famous enough in london that people knew where he lived well funnily enough a lot of them didn't seem to actually really want to meet him, that they wrote to him anonymously. And so it was more about the act of writing. It was more like a personal thing for them. We've got an example and I'd like you to read it.

Absolutely. Because you are a mediocre actor. Why did my breast with rapture glow? Thy talents to admire? Why, as I read, my bosom felt enthusiastic fire. Very nice. I mean, this is hot stuff. So he's getting letters like that from lots of women.

Sometimes they want to preserve him and protect him and save his soul. And sometimes they just fancy him. Well, kind of both. There was sort of this sense that, you know, this is a time when women didn't have much agency. And there certainly weren't that many female writers they're often written in like byronic style like in byronic verse expressing fantasies that they wouldn't otherwise be able to express almost all of them

say couldn't even imagine that i would ever write like this to someone that i didn't know i can't believe i'm doing this is Is that because he was sexy? Is it as simple as that? Or is there a feminine quality to the way he writes? There is that. And he was amazing in his writing. He did what I call really flirt with the reader. His poems are filled with gaps. There are some poems that have just asterisks for lines and lines and lines as if a bit of the poem has been taken out. And this really charged readers' imagination because they were able to fill in the gaps. Byron's telling his poem, say, oh, that exactly described how I felt. And it's like they're kind of projecting their own thing onto his poetry.

Have you got fans out? I mean, you've got loads of fans. Have they got a name? The Gamblers? No, there's no mania surrounding me, unfortunately. Hey, come on, give it time. I don't even like saying fans. I have people who enjoy my work, but I've certainly never set anyone's bosoms on fire. Not yet. No.

And also, the way to get in contact is Twitter, and that's very public if you... Yeah, I mean... You can't really do that. Let's talk about his image. Interestingly, he's one of the first people to use a portrait of himself in the front of his poetry. And so women were able to look at the picture and then read the description in the poem and be like, oh, yeah, I see what's going on. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. His look was, I guess, early goth he had um very full pouty lips very high pale forehead a quiff of dark hair and he started a fashion craze which was an open collar shirt yeah it was kind of a little bit of neck a little bit of sort of clavicle a little bit of hair poking out the top weirdly now i look at it byron's look is a little bit Ed Gamble. I'll take it. Very handsome man. Look, I'll take all these compliments. And when he's young, he's beautiful. He's glamorous. He's gorgeous. But he has issues with his body image, doesn't he?

Yeah. I mean, he actually had what I guess today we might call an eating disorder. Throughout his life, he was known to go on really quite extreme diets for a while he only ate potato and vinegar and drank soda water right when he was younger wear sort of really heavy clothing to kind of sweat out his weight and things maybe it went back to sort of his lameness and his self-consciousness about his body then but yeah he was very into kind of presenting this beautiful image so his look sounds quite sort of gothy vamp vampiric. What's the timeline with when people started writing about vampires dressing like that? At Gamble, you've literally hit the nail on the head.

Have I? Byron was the first person to really tell stories about vampires in English, because he travelled to Greece and they had a whole vampire myth going there. But the vampires were hairy, gross little creatures. And he told this story about vampires to a group of friends, including Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. And Byron's doctor, a man called John Polidori, was there. And Polidori decided to write a novel about vampires. But he decided to make the main vampire a beautiful pale pouting aristocrat right and it was that novel that then inspired bram stoker and sparked the vampire craze that we know today

so buffy is due to byron yes you could say that so he told the story of the vampires but made them look like him essentially yeah it's difficult to know whether Byron told the story of the aristocratic vampire or whether that was Polidori's take. That novel was like a huge hit and everyone thought that it was by Byron when it first came out. Now, this was in 1816, was it? In Geneva? Yes. In Switzerland. Now, this is a very, very famous night because that is not the most famous book to come out of that conversation.

In that room is also Mary Shelley. And she comes up with Frankenstein that night. Yeah, it's so cool. That was like it was the coldest, wettest summer on record. There'd been a volcano, hadn't there? Yeah, a volcano had erupted the year before in Indonesia and had created this crazy weather pattern that meant that it was incredibly dark and cold. And so this group of incredible writers were all stuck together in the house. And Byron was like, why don't we tell a ghost story? And Mary Shelley told Frankenstein and he told a vampire story. Oh, that's so cool. And Wes Craven was there and that's where they

came up with Freddy Krueger. Same night. Amazing when you think about it. He has a relationship with a woman called Annabella Milbank. Ed, do you want to guess how long the relationship, I mean, the marriage lasts? Two months. It's not that far off, is it? It's not that far off. It was a real disaster. He just wasn't really made for marriage.

She was a really prim... She was kind of cool. She was very intellectual. She's a maths nerd, isn't she? Yeah, Byron called her the princess of parallelograms. Hey! And they just didn't work. And they have a daughter, and the daughter's very famous.

You might have heard of her, but do you want to guess who the daughter might be? Isosceles Byron? Oh, my God. I'm literally going to go home and I'm going to, like, just name whatever I see.

Isosceles. That's the best name. No, I don't know who... Ada Lovelace. You ever heard of Ada Lovelace? I have, but I don't know why. She invented computer programming. So she works in the 1830s and 40s,

working alongside a very famous engineer called Babbage. And he came up with the first computer, and she was the first person to work out the possibilities of what computers could do. She is the daughter of Lord Byron. That's pretty cool. But didn't get to know her daddy, really. Not at all. He left the country pretty soon after she was born.

He sort of continued to write about her and think about her a lot, but sadly never got to see her grow up. Is that because he's been too dangerous and sexy and naughty? Basically, yes. The marriage completely falls apart. There's rumours that he was having an affair with his half-sister. He was basically surrounded by scandal and everyone thought it was best for him to go back to the continent. He's off to France and Italy and his mates are joining him out there. I think he had lots of really close friends. He treated a lot of the women, including his wife, badly. But it's so hard to hate him because he was just so hilarious and so generous and such a lovely

friend. Right. So if you were on his good sides, he was loyal to a fool. He loves animals. He's had dogs. He's had a bear. He's had a bear. All right. But when he gets to Venice, he's got a big old house and he's thinking, I'm going to get some pets.

Shelley tells the story of his pets. Do you want to guess what pets he might have had in this house? Well, he's got dogs now. Yeah. Because obviously, because he's allowed to have dogs. Yep. Do you want me to guess how many dogs? Sure.

Six. Not bad. Eight. Nearly me to guess how many dogs? Sure. Six. Not bad. Eight. Nearly there. He doesn't have a cat. Five. What? He's asking for trouble.

They famously don't mix. Birds. Yep. Parrots. He's got eagles, crows. Eagles? Eagle, crow and a falcon. Madness.

He's got ten horses. In the house? Yep. There are five peacocks. Of course there are. Two guinea hens and an Egyptian crane. And they're all just wandering around the house? Just horses in the house yep there are five peacocks of course there are two guinea hens and an egyptian crane and they're all just wandering around the house just wandering about the house you can't have 10 horses in the house there's also of course most importantly three monkeys that's the only one i'm on board with it must have stung oh yeah so bad so don juan is his

most famous poem probably from his entire career we sometimes mispronounce it don juan yeah he was sort of making a joke about how british people pronounce foreign words right um so even though it's based on the don juan legend his poem is called don juan and it's a comedy it is straight up comedy so this is where byron let go of the formula that made him famous back in the day and now he's having just loads of fun and writing this completely scandalous hilarious very long poem it's like when bobby de niro stopped doing like really moody acty parts and started doing comedies and everyone's like what's going on so this is byron's meet the parents right it's so much better than meet the parents if that's possible

and what's the plot of don juan so you might say how is this abandoning the formula because it's about like a young but slightly less fruity but still good looking about him again but he's a bit of a passive actor throughout the thing like stuff happens to him by happenstance manages to find himself on all sorts of adventures there's quite a lot of eroticism in it. It's quite political. It's really great. As he got later in life, he met the woman who would become his partner, like his sort of longest lasting relationship was in his final years. Her name was Teresa Guiccioli. And she was a beautiful, rather young Italian woman who was married to a count who was nearly three times her age oh wow and the count just turned a blind eye to her relationship to byron and byron even moved into their house just to let

you know when anyone mentions a count i immediately picture the count from sesame street so i was having an absolute riot in my head there but he's a vampire he's a vampire he's stolen byron's look no wonder she's into byron so he hangs around in it Italy for a while. Now, the Shelley-Byron bromance doesn't last long because there's a horrible tragedy. Shelley drowns. Shelley-Byron friendship, people have found really fascinating because Shelley wasn't exactly Byron's best friend, but they sort of represented two sides of romanticism.

Like Byron is the dark, broody, melancholic, and Shelley is, you know, head in the clouds, dreamy, idealist. The drowning of Shelley, the boat that goes down is named the Don Juan, named after a poem written by Byron. And Byron was there when, because they had to burn Shelley's body due to Italian law, and famously Shelley's heart didn't burn. And they gave Shelley's heart to Mary Shelley to keep. Byron wanted to keep Shelley's skull and everyone was like, no, that's weird. Not a good idea.

Because he had a habit of turning skulls into drinking cups. He liked to drink out of skulls. And then he heads off to Greece. His sort of late Elvis phase in Italy, he's kind of letting himself go a bit. He does a bit of a kind of what am I doing with my life? And he'd always been interested in Greece from the days when he studied ancient Greece. They were in a war fighting for independence against the Turks at the time. And he decided to go and like kind of do something with his life. And he joined up to fight for Greek

independence. He'd always been quite political and he'd always been a real champion of underdog causes. He dies tragically in 1824 in Greece and it's not a sort of sexy battlefield injury. No it's such a shame it would be great if he died in battle but actually before he even got on the field he contracted a fever and the doctors at the time decided to leech him where they put leeches to drain the blood because there was sort of this belief that the virus was in the blood. So he looked more like a vampire right um i mean it's sort of awful that he either died of the fever or the blood loss that's like the leeches are going you think you're a vampire mate yeah proper vampires look like there's a painting there's a great painting of byron dead and he's

like the kind of beautiful byron that we imagine and it's like you know what i think after all that leeching he wouldn't have looked that good. The nuance window! This is where our expert gets to just talk for two minutes uninterrupted. I'm assuming you're talking about Byron the poet? That is exactly right. So if you're wanting to read some Byron, you might think you should start with Childe Harold, which is the poem that made him famous. Don't do that. It's really long. It's really quite dense. There's a lot of description of European countryside that you do not need. Go instead to a really short poem that he wrote in that same summer of 1816, which birthed Frankenstein and the vampire myth. It's called Darkness. It is a terrifying, apocalyptic vision

of how the world would be if we faced total environmental disaster. I feel like Greta Thunberg could have written it. It's absolutely brilliant, horrifying, terrifying, not uplifting. After that, go and read The Prisoner of Chillon. It's slightly longer, but still manageable. It's like a sort of quintessential romantic poem about a prisoner who is in terrible circumstances, but imagines the lakes of Switzerland and the Alps outside of the prison cell where he sits and thus elevates himself out of his situation. It's beautiful. And finally, if you have liked those two and want a total change of tack, you've got to read Don Dewan. It's hilarious. You don't need to read the whole thing. It's long. It's like novel length. But if you just read the first three cantos, it will make you laugh. There is some cannibalism,

but it's all played for laughs. And really, it really, really holds up. That's my homework for you. Go and read those three poems. Thank you so much, Corinne. A great recommendation. But I'm afraid, much like the romantic poets, we are out of time much too soon. A huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We've had the wonderful Dr. Corinne Throsby and in Comedy Corner, the fantastic Ed Gamble. And to you, fair listener, join me next time when we'll have another chat about something completely different. But for now, I'm off to pen some emotive poetry about Napoleon and Wellington. Not the historical figures, my pet rabbits from when I was a kid.

Bye! Hello, Greg again. Sorry, I just forgot to mention that actually, if you enjoyed that episode and you'd like to know more about the romantics, well, there's lots of lovely content available on the BBC Sounds app. We have two other episodes of You're Dead to Me, which are on similar themes. One is on Mary Shelley and the other is on Gothic vampire literature, which is very Byronic. Both of those are available in the You're Dead to Me feed.

Just scroll down past the most recent episodes to find them. And of course, if you want to hop across to the In Our Time feed, you'll find some really fascinating in-depth episodes about Frankenstein, find some really fascinating in-depth episodes about Frankenstein, about Ada Lovelace, about The Year Without Summer, and also about the later romantics, which is what we call Byron, Shelley, and Keats. So if that sounds like fun, you know where to find them on BBC Sounds. Thanks very much. Bye. Charlie, I have been so excited to speak to you. Hello, Myrna. Hello. How are you, Joe? I'm Joe Wicks, and I'm back for the second series of my podcast that's all about sharing ways to help you live a happier and healthier life doing a bit of research and apparently you're into something called inversion therapy where you hang upside down

what's that like a bat exactly i i do it every day you know it all just sort of clears your head a little bit yeah i get to speak to some heroes of mine from the legend that is sir tom jones who i'm literally obsessed with to one of our most successful UK athletes Sir Mo Farah you have to be smart and control the race in the way that you want to

it just settles me it organises my brain meditation I think is the cultivation of a space within you that if you don't turn to it life will get in the way

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