S2 EP20: Matthew Crosby

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Podcasts, there are millions of them.

Some might say too many.

I have one already.

I don't have any, because there are enough.

Politics, business, sport, you name it.

There's a podcast about it.

And they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.

But nobody is covering the most important topic of all.

Why is that?

Are they scared?

Too afraid of being censored by the man?

Possibly, but not us.

We're here to ask the only question that matters.

We'll try and say it at the same time, Max.

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

What did you do yesterday?

That's it.

All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday, nothing more.

Day before yesterday, Max?

Nope.

The greatest and most interesting day of your life?

Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it.

I'm Max Rushton.

And I'm David O'Doherty.

Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of What Did You Do Yesterday?

David O'Doherty is sitting in front of me.

Welcome, David.

I am very happy to have Matthew Crosby on the podcast today.

So I met him originally from Pappies, which was like they swept the boards at the Edinburgh Fringe and in sort of live sketch comedy around the 2010s, something like that.

And he's still doing the Pappies Flat Chair podcast, which is one of my favorite podcasts.

And then he does the radio show with Ed Gamble on XFM on a Sunday morning.

That's also a podcast.

So I am well, Max, and I'm also excited to have Gott Crosby on the podcast.

Yeah, I mean, I call him Crosbox because we go back.

We go back so so long.

But I met him in an hour and a half ago for the tape we have just recorded.

But yes, he does a radio show on Radio X, which goes from 8 until 11.

And the way to remember it is just before me and Barry Glindening do a talk sport show at 11 till 1.

I think at 1.30, sometimes 1.30.

It's annoying.

They gave us an extra half hour.

I didn't really want that.

Do you think it's like Oppenheimer and Barbie?

people who just go through the full Crosby gamble right through to you and Barry then morning to lunch.

I think there's a lot of people just switching going click at that exact moment.

But look, we'll be back for the debrief.

But like, it's a good day.

There's a lot in it.

It's a patch day.

And here it is.

Here's what Matthew Crosby did yesterday.

Matthew Crosby, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday?

Hello.

Thank you so much.

What a delight.

It's a delight to meet you, Max.

It's a delight to see you, David.

Thanks for having me on.

It's a pleasure.

Thanks for coming on the podcast, Crosbox.

Now, I will be calling you Crosbox throughout this.

Oh, is it one of those?

No, it's a nickname that I gave him when I first met him in about 2007, 2008, and it's never caught on.

I just thought if I just kept doing it,

not a single person has ever called you Crosbox.

My brother gave himself a nickname to the point where he has a tattoo of it.

Yeah, he's called himself the Duke.

And he's got a tattoo that says Duke on.

And I don't know what Duke Ellington feels about.

He's like a 90s footballer.

That's really good.

Well, that's his era, you know.

And he's got a tattoo of it, but I've literally never heard anybody say, hey, Duke, what's going on later on?

Where is it?

I mean, is it...

It's not like that person had sort of like twats written on their forehead.

It's not on his forehead, is it?

No, he hasn't gotten for the bold move of forehead tattoo.

He's soft-launched, if anything.

He doesn't got it the upper arm.

I think at least one other person has to be calling you the Duke if you're you're going to go for the stamp on the forehead.

All you need, though, is a gravestone, you know, with the Duke written on it.

And then at least future generations, when they walk past that.

I'm sorry to go so bleak with your brother.

No, no, that's fine.

But I think the gravestone is the last opportunity to assert this nickname.

You're forgetting about the great work of Gunter von Hagen.

That's what he should really do.

Do you remember Gunter von Hagen, the bodyworks guy?

No, what's up?

He was the dead bodies guy.

And he was big, I would say, in about sort of 2002.

He was absolutely massive.

And he would take your body and basically turn it into a big sort of plastic model of your body.

Oh, yeah.

It was kind of half arty, half educational.

He was someone who wanted to flay people and it found a loophole to do it.

But every now and then, you'd walk past somebody and you'd see they have a tattoo.

And you're like, oh, that makes you seem more like a real person than it does just looking at like a skeleton or whatever.

It's never, it was Edna's dying wish to be a cross-section at the Science Museum.

That's never.

She loved Damien Hearst.

She was such a big fan of that shark in the tank.

Of course, your brother could dedicate himself a bench in a nice park and say, you know, Billy Crosby to his friends, the Duke.

I mean, he could do it now, couldn't he?

Oh, that's cool.

I mean, we're painting him to be a bigger sadder than he is.

He does have friends.

When he passes, he's got a partner, he's got kids.

They'll probably commemorate him in some way, but I don't know if anybody's going to be using Duke.

But yeah, get ahead of it.

In Britain, can you become a Duke?

Can you have Dukeness bestowed upon you by the government or the royals or whoever, you know, MBEs and OBEs.

If he married a duchess.

Oh, yeah.

He could really get in with Prince Andrew and then...

Yeah.

Very rare, that's the piece of advice.

Do you know who's gravy train you want to hop aboard?

What time did you wake up yesterday?

Oh, you're getting straight into it.

Okay.

I'm the one who's caused this problem.

I've mentioned Prince Andrew.

I'll get back to the format as quick as possible.

Nice work, Max.

You're a pro.

You're an absolute pro.

Listen, nobody noticed the gear change.

I just thought I'd subtly just get it in.

You know, we all know the exact point the episode is going to start.

No, no, no.

It's going to be

none of the preamble.

I insist that remains.

I insist that remains.

If this is the start of the episode, Matthew's just been listing nonsense for the last 10 minutes.

It's a strange radio.

You're never going to know what side of the fence I fall on.

I'm never going to tell tell you.

I refuse to be drawn on the topic.

Answer the question, Crosbox.

What time did you wake up?

Okay, so yesterday morning, I got up several times yesterday morning because I've got two little kids.

I've got a three-year-old and a five-year-old, Cleo and Sylvie.

Sylvie is the youngest.

She's the three-year-old.

She gets into the bed and apparently this stops at a certain age, but when you are three, you rotate in the bed.

That's what you do.

So you start in one position and you rotate.

I guess maybe they're telling the time.

I've never looked to see if at three o'clock she's at three o'clock and it's like a sundial.

The rotation is top to toe as opposed to just tossing over a lot.

It's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little yeah, it's not your conventional rolling over onto your side.

No, it's you would start with your head on the pillow and you could wake up with your feet on the pillow.

You basically do this sort of a big, like a big fidget spinner.

You know, the kids love those.

Yeah, they do.

Right.

What time does she come in?

When's that?

The dream is that she will come in around around sort of three or four,

but some evenings it's really.

But crucially, she'll come in and then she'll fall asleep.

She'll just rotate.

So she'll kick you in the back, you know, every 45 minutes or so.

On the hour, every hour, like Trevor McDonald's.

She's got cookie clock feet, yeah.

Yesterday is all we care about.

I'm not looking for an average here.

I want to know when she came in yesterday morning.

That's normally a conversation my wife and I have, and we estimated it was about 2 a.m.

So it was about 2 a.m.

A 2 a.m.

start for Sylvie.

And then Cleo comes in a little bit later.

Now, she's not getting into bed with us.

She just comes in to say, hello, it's time to start the day.

And she was ill two days ago.

So I was hoping that was going to result in a nice long line-in, but it didn't.

She came in and said, okay, it's time to wake up.

I need my breakfast.

And I said, okay, I'll get up.

And then I got up and it was 6.03.

And I was like, no,

we're not having 6.03.

We've got up at 6.45 in this house.

So your breakfast time is 6.45, 7 o'clock.

It's like running like a hotel.

Yeah, you can arrive early for breakfast, but you ain't getting any courage.

It's a couple of interesting things here.

One is, so my three-year-old,

what happens is he will wake up, but he won't come into our bed.

One of us will get into his bed.

And you'll rotate.

Yeah, I will.

And I'm six foot, just over six foot.

It's very annoying to him.

No, but like his bed is not, I can get into it.

I can sort of click myself into it.

Yeah.

And then he'll fall asleep.

And then eventually you might drift off.

And then you'll wake up and think, right, I've now got to sort of unfurl myself and silently maneuver myself out of the bed.

And then I realize my knees are fucked because they've been bent at such an angle to squeeze myself into the bed.

But then, hopefully, he will stay in there, and then he won't come out until we've told him six o'clock is when the day can start because he was a five o'clock guy.

We should have said seven,

and now he's got six in his mind.

It's called peak performance, and I think you should be encouraging him to get up earlier, to splash ice in his face, face, do whatever he does.

I mean, in the case of Crosbox, it does seem like the five-year-old is the CEO of this sort of Duncan Bannatine that's being sent to try and get this, like, let's get some breakfast going here.

Let's do this thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's team leader.

She's definitely got an agenda.

She wants that, you know, she would probably sleep as much as like Thatcher did in the 80s in her dream.

You know,

she would just

be getting a cool three hours.

She'd be the last one to bed.

But it wouldn't be because she was a high achievement.

It's because she'd want to watch people playing with Paul Patrol toys on YouTube.

Okay, I must admit, at 6.03, I gave her her tablet.

I'm talking about like a little kindle fire, not a tablet.

Not asleep.

I dosed her up.

I roofied her at 6.03.

We didn't see her again till 6 p.m.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Because the thing you say about when your kid is ill, you're obviously sad, but there is a chance they might do a 14-hour night.

And you're like, on balance, it was worth it.

RSV for a couple of days, they could barely breathe, but you get one night where they're they're like, woof, 9 a.m.

and you're like, this is what it used to be like.

My kids, illness gives them power.

I don't know why.

They thrive on being ill.

So if they have been up all night puking, then that day they're going to be absolutely full of energy.

They're going to be really running around the place.

And this was the problem.

She was kind of full of energy, but she was still ill.

She had a temperature.

My wife and I obviously work.

So we had to give her to my...

my parents, who would have taken Sylvie anyway, but Cleo had to go with her, to miss a day of school and go off with her.

But I think she sensed that in the air.

That's why she got up so early.

She was like, Today's going to be a good day.

I'm not going to have to go to school.

I'm going to have to go off with Granny and Daddo and have a nice time.

Sidebar, what's the relationship between the five-year-old and the three-year-old?

Is five-year-old very much the boss?

And because even though Max's are only three and whatever, 16 weeks, it does seem there's a sort of like

Chicago mobster and henchman relationship with the two of them, where one is very much the boss of the other

one is saying welcome to the family and making the other kiss the ring and all that kind of stuff exactly yeah i think that the 16 week year old is is committing all the murders and the three-year-old is sitting at home telling him to do it basically and he's too thick at this stage to realize he shouldn't be doing it can you not say too thick i just just from a teacher point of view you don't on day one of first class be like now you are all thick as mints at the moment but I'm going to try and just shake you out a little bit over the next 12 years.

I mean, I think it's fair to say that the 16-month-old is underdeveloped.

16-week.

Oh, my God.

In which case, there's not a lot going on at this stage.

Nothing going on.

But, I mean, smart enough to already know that, to understand the language of violence, because that's the thing that

our three-year-old is probably when she's a bit tired or when she's not quite getting her way, she's not averse to getting a wooden toy and clocking her sister over the head with it.

Because crucially, she hasn't got...

Cleo's been talking since she was just over one.

She's been jabbering away.

Sylvie is later to the game.

She hasn't quite got the gift of the gab.

It'll come.

You know, she comes from a house of talkers.

I mean, she can chat away.

She can certainly do that.

But she knows that the most expedient journey to getting your way is often just to take something that someone is playing with and fuck it against the wall.

What you don't realize is that we did this podcast with her yesterday.

So she's pretending that she's not further along the thing but uh yeah she's doing a lot of she's three times a week at the moment with the podcast and i think that's too many no it's true yeah on the only patreon listeners get those those episodes and we don't give her any money which is probably rude isn't it we should oh yeah don't worry there's going to be a period when she turns 18 where she'll sue you like macaulay kulkin did she'll go hang on a sec hang on a sec i've done all this work in the entertainment world i should be living in a mansion.

That's the thing, Crosbox.

It's not even in the entertainment world.

They're pure factual.

You know, it'll be like the history of volcanoes and it's just an hour straight through of just monologue.

And it all has to be fact-checked.

She's doing great work.

Okay.

So it's 6.45.

Well, how about 6.03?

Have you just gone back to bed?

Have you?

Yeah, I've just gone back to being kicked in the back by Sylvie.

Yeah.

Cleo's got the tablet, and I make a plan to go back at 6.30.

6.45, I action that plan.

Great.

So yeah, I'm not the CEO really.

I've woken up.

I'm already behind on my day.

I'm already 15 minutes behind.

Okay.

Okay.

So you've got some heavy parenting now for you know until certainly you've shipped off the elder one to your parents.

Yes, that's right.

Heavy parenting.

So the jobs that have to be done, the immediate jobs are you've got to feed the cat, you've got to empty and put away everything that's in the dishwasher.

You've got to make you try and make one thing for the kids.

Yes, go on.

Is there anything sadder than opening the dishwasher and it being full and clean

what do you mean i mean

you open the dishwasher in the hope that it's not finished because if it's finished you have to action that thing and you can't just close it and walk away from it you can go I can't just face this right now.

If it's halfway through and it's dirty, then it's not your problem.

You can just...

No, the sadder thing is, because we put it on just before we go to bed, so we know it's going to be, we don't have it on time or anything.

We just put it on before we go to bed, so we know it's going to be ready for the morning.

The saddest thing is opening it up, and one of us has forgotten to put it on.

That's the sad thing.

The little disc is still in there.

You can see all the kind of crud all over the plates.

And you think, well, now I'm going to have to not only put the dishwasher on and then, you know, do it in 90 minutes' time or whatever.

I'm also going to now take out all the things I need immediately and wash those up manually.

No, thank you very much.

Not at 6:45 a.m.

But luckily, this was not one of those days.

My algorithm is absolutely wrecked, and it's serving up a lot of videos at the moment of people who, you know, you put chicken in a Ziploc bag and leave it in the dishwasher and it's cooked.

So I'm just saying that's another option.

You could be happy if you opened it and then it's batch cooked a week.

A waitrose chicken is there.

Really good.

Full Christmas dinner and you just individually put the carrots into where the cutlery goes just every single day.

I'm just coming up with ideas here, guys.

I'm trying to make it easier.

It's a strong idea.

And, you know, my kids struggle with cereal and porridge.

If I said to them, by the way, kids, I've got a real treaty this morning for the Christmas dinner.

How would you feel about turkey with all the trimmings?

Considering that you balk at the idea of eating a blueberry.

And it's coming out of the dishwasher as well.

I mean, you'd have to...

Turkey's got to be in the middle bottom shelf, hasn't it?

And probably the spuds are around it.

Yeah.

You know, some of them have like the cutlery drawer at the top.

Yeah.

Like a posh dishwasher.

You could put the chipolatas

in that or the little pigs in blankets.

They could go in the top drawer.

I would say everything's going to be a bit wet.

You want your turkey to be moist, but you don't necessarily want your chipolatas to be dripping, do you?

And would you use a finished quantum?

Which or a lemon?

You'd have to use a lemon.

Oh, you've got to use the lemon.

You've got to use the lemon.

Of course.

You know, until they bring out a cranberry sauce quantum, then it's going to be the lemon.

My father revealed, I'd say 20 years into doing it, he was putting washing powder into the dishwasher.

Back in the powder era.

He's very much, it's all the same.

Like, we're just being scammed.

And occasionally he'd just say something about, Procter and Gamble are taking you for a ride, you know, and that was kind of his way of kicking back against the system.

And your teacups all...

just tasted of Lenore, but that was fine.

They're really soft.

They're soft to the touch.

In my 20s, I lived with a couple.

Always good when you're like the single guy, but you're living with two sort of functioning adults.

It's basically like, I live with couples all the way through university as well, and after university.

It's basically like, I can't leave mum and dad.

I need to find proxy mum and dad.

So they were very, very together.

They were very, very switched on.

But we're talking about in our 20s, they were getting the Abel and Cole vegetable boxes and

all of their prods were e-cover.

You know, the sort of the good for the environment.

Yeah, but it doesn't wash anything.

It doesn't wash anything.

It was only when

Helen spotted me doing my washing that she said, you know what you're washing your clothes in and i presumably have been forever it was floor cleaner so a bad for the washing machine bad for their washing machine that they paid for but b i was walking around stinking like a linonium floor

you and jim should hang out it's all the same he's in the so he's in the shower just like squishing gif all over himself it's all the same

yeah the fact that as i walk down the street and start to sweat soap bubbles pop out my armpits doesn't it just fall part of the...

If anything, the jumper is now self-cleaning.

I have to clean it once and that's it.

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Rules and restrictions apply.

I interrupted you, Matthew, for the dishwasher conversation.

I felt it was important, but you had a list of the jobs that you had to do.

So the jobs are

the order you do it in is you feed the cat, first of all, Cosmo, our lovely cat, our sort of practice child that we got a few months before we had our first kid.

And we're like, yeah, we could do this.

We can keep a thing alive.

Great.

Let's have some kids.

Where's that cat shitting?

That that cat is shitting in a litter tray in the utility room okay fine we have had a robotic litter tray yeah nadia shereen children's author had this robotic litter tray whereby you go in and like

remember the pod in the star wars film where i think darth vader sleeps that the cat goes in and this door shuts behind the cat because the cat seems to enjoy the privacy anyway nadia at once got stuck or almost stuck in it.

You are just.

I don't think she did get stuck in it.

I think we just said that would be a bad way to die.

I was going to say, because how big's her cat?

Unless she's got a Bengal tiger.

And in which case, I wouldn't make it shit in a cage.

But otherwise, I don't think there's anyone's getting caught in her.

I don't think she ever went into the litter tray.

I think we were speculating on the worst way you could die.

Are you telling me I mix up reality and flights of fancy that we've beat up?

It's possible.

It's possible, but let's say for the record, she did once get stuck in it.

Is yours just a basic litter tray, Matty Crosby?

Is the question?

It's just a basic litter tray, yeah.

When I say it's a basic litter tray, it's two-tiered.

There's a little sort of you and the idea is you're supposed to be able to sort of shake the litter tray a little bit.

Well, no, no, no, no, not like, not like, do you want to shit on the upper floor and the lower floor today, Cosmo?

No, it's got two trays in it, and one tray you can lift out and shake it so that all the litter goes down into the next tray, and you can just take out the turds.

But I don't bother with that.

I just grab the turds out with a bit of toilet paper.

In fact, actually, if they're like a day and a half old, two days old, I'll just put them out of my hand.

I'm not going to put them in.

The idea, and this is mixing Crossbox's current system with what we were talking about before.

Could you train the cat to shit in an empty dishwasher and then just run the dishwasher off?

You know what I mean?

I would say it would probably

melt the turd and send it away.

I mean, that is not a bad system.

Well, you can train a cat to use a human-style toilet.

You're a jazz man, aren't you, David?

You know, Charles Mingus did that with his cat, and it's in his autobiography.

One of the bits of his autobiography is him explaining how he toilet-trained his cat.

And the way you do it is you swap their litter box with a cardboard litter box.

That's the first thing you do.

Same litter, but a cardboard litter box.

And then you slowly move it closer and closer to...

the room where your toilet is until eventually you start placing it on top of the toilet.

So it's on top of the toilet seat with the seat

And then you cut a little hole in it, and then you make the hole bigger and bigger.

This is happening over months: make the hole bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually you take the entire litter tray away, and the cat just gets onto the toilet, goes in the toilet.

And the next thing you've got to do is teach it to use the flush.

But I think that's sort of quite intuitive anyway.

Cats like a little toy, you can leap up, splash, makes a nice noise.

It takes so long that your cat shits once in the toilet just before it dies.

Before it dies of embarrassment.

I would also like to raise a possible mix-up here because Charles Mingus, I do love jazz.

I am a jazz man.

And Charles Mingus called everyone a cat, because that's what you do in jazz.

Yeah.

So when he taught the cat how to shit, is it possible he was just referring to his son?

He was his saxophonist, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I was a member of his band.

Now I think about it.

Yeah.

Who had been going in a litter tray?

And we're like, why don't all saxophonists go in the litter tray my dad Matthew was a doctor two things he would always talk to us about one was if we ever touched cat poo to wash our hands a lot because we could get toxoplasmosis and go blind obsessed with that and the other thing is we weren't allowed to eat beef burgers out because of mad cow disease for a few years because he wasn't the research hadn't been done to see sort of where that would lead and he thought maybe in 20 years everyone will have it and he didn't want us to have it so my dad would say if you are picking up the dried cat poot do give your hands a wash with floor cleaner or whatever you like afterwards max is your advice to me can i just check this right is your advice to me that if i handle cat i should wash my hands and not just you the listeners as well i'm you know it's important well i'm going to blow your mind here i'm one step ahead of you i've been doing that already stop it stop it

could i now be a doctor I think you could.

Have you been sticking your hands a load of shit?

Wash your hands, mate.

Anyway, where's my PhD?

I I don't think you can go straight into being a consultant physician, but you now are a senior house officer at the John Ratcliffe.

That's all I wanted.

Look, this podcast doesn't need more shitting tales, but

I was out last night with my friend Martin, and Martin related this very briefly.

He did, in an awful pub toilet, he had to go and he did a big old deuce, an awful one.

And as he left the cubicle there were two fellas standing there so he's like oh god because you know they've heard through the part all of that but the two of them go in together and as he is washing his hands he hears the unmistakable sound of two men taking cocaine and then following it with like oh god because they have also breathed in the terrible shit smells i'm so sorry i honestly think that could be the lowest point we've ever had on this podcast.

That's bad news.

I should also say the next thing I do is I grind up two lines of cat litter and I snort that just to set me up for the day.

Get out a couple of credit cards on a mirror.

There we go.

Is that you'll have to ask your dad about this.

Is that a problem?

I'd just like to go back to that.

I just think you should maybe stick with the toilet paper.

Yes, you're right.

Listen, I don't always have the luxury of time.

So

sometimes it needs to be done.

But yes, my preference is to do it with toilet paper.

God, please say it.

I'm pleased to do it.

But I would say on balance, you were right to call me out on that.

That's slightly obvious.

No, I'm washing.

By the way, I wash my hands constantly because we've got little kids.

We're a household.

We're just getting over thread worms in the house.

Listen, I know about washing my hands constantly.

So stop the podcast.

We've got two fellow little wormy guys here.

Wow.

Oh, God.

So Max has been on the chocolate, the worm-killing chocolate?

I'm popping the Ovex.

I'm eating the Ovex.

No, the Ovex are orange-flavoured and the kids love them, which is a good thing because they've got to eat them quite a lot.

I really, because this is just a two-week, in fact, we need to eat our second square, David, because we got rid of the worms in Ian Rushton's bottom.

But the family, we all had a square of chocolate each, but we need to go in for batch two.

We'd probably delay because we haven't, we kill the worms, but not the eggs the way we like to.

Yeah.

Get rid of these worms.

We've got it in the diary as well.

Tony was right to get rid of the Tony's Choco Lonely or whatever it's called slogan was kills all known worms.

I just feel that's when they really moved the company to the next level.

They played down the worm killing aspect of it.

Okay, so we've done the with your shitty cat shitty hands you now empty the dishwasher rubbing

on to everything.

I'm not clearing out the literature.

That's not one of the jobs in my three jobs this morning.

Clearing out the literature is an evening job.

We're leaping way ahead to that.

Listen, we'll talk more about cat litter.

This was very much a teaser for around 9.30, 10 p.m.

later on tonight.

Listen, I work in radio.

I know the throw forwards.

I know how to clickbait people.

Guys, listen to the end.

He really is.

Doctors do not want you to know what happens at 9.30 tonight.

Yeah, doctors say here's one thing you should be doing after you handle cat shit.

The answer will surprise you.

I'm assuming it's licking your fingers.

It's got to be licking your fingers, right, isn't it?

Click.

Oh, it's wash your hands.

This is not connected.

This is not connected, but we were listening to some really gentle commercial radio in the afternoon, you know, where they can't say anything apart from, oh, the breakfast show is going to be good tomorrow.

It's not me.

Yeah.

I'm not allowed to do that.

And he was just saying, oh, it's a lovely day tomorrow.

I might go down to the beach.

That got me thinking, what do you like to bring to the beach?

I like to bring a towel.

Let me know.

What are you going to get?

It's all about engagement, though.

Here's the thing about that.

On our radio show, I do a radio show with Ed Gamble, Procter ⁇ Gamble, it's called.

Your dad hates it.

I do a radio show with Ed Gamble.

And

ours are always so insanely specific that no one gets in touch.

And our producer had to say, look, yes, you may have seen Richard and Judy on holiday in 1997, but doing a texture as to whether anyone else saw them on holiday in 1997 is not going to get the engagement we need.

Whereas if you say, can you name things from the beach, you're going to get loads of people sending in messages going, beach ball, sun cream, my nice big hat.

I'm with you.

Like, I think it's either got to be everyone can get involved.

Like, what are you looking at right now?

Or

literally as niche as one person has to have done this, you know, and then I think you're absolutely right.

I would carry on listening to see if one person had also been on holiday with Richard and Judy.

I'd want to know.

Totally.

And you know what?

Somebody eventually, after about seven seven or eight weeks, got in touch, and it was an amazing moment

because I had seen them on holiday in Las Vegas and they'd spotted them on holiday like somewhere else.

So we found out they're actually doing a road trip.

We were trying to piece together the entirety of Richard and Judy's holiday based on listeners, but we've only managed to find me and another one other person.

But when it happens, it's magical.

Max did manage to stretch out to four months.

Our listeners are trying to guess the five cheeses that the O'Doherty family had at Christmas.

And it took finally four months for someone to get the last one.

Breberoose d'Argental.

So I think that's coming

under they're just oil cheeses under the very specific rubric.

That's my kind of podcasting.

I love it.

Breakfast.

Is that what we've got now?

Do we have to make breakfast for the ladies?

The dream is that you make one thing and everybody eats it.

That's always the dream in a household.

You make one thing.

Everybody eats it.

The reality is nothing like that because you make porridge and they can see you making porridge.

By the way, they've said, yes, I'd like to eat porridge.

But as soon as the porridge is getting ladled into the bowl, they go, oh, what I actually meant was I want to have the classics are cereal.

We're talking about Cheerios, dry,

basically just sweeties, basically.

I want to eat something sweet.

They'll sit there watching CBBs eating dry Cheerios.

We've got these sort of slightly off-brand Cheerios that are meant to be better for you, healthier for you.

They'll just about eat those.

I mean, they still taste insanely sweet.

I'm sure they're still pretty bad for you.

So they're eating those.

Greek yogurt yogurt and honey is very, very popular.

That's something that my daughter eats a lot.

But you're always trying to sort of get stuff into the, like, the porridge is good because you can hide stuff in it.

You can hide fruit in it.

You can hide flaxseed in it.

You know, you can, it's basically just like a delivery service for healthy things.

But there isn't a fruit salad or something like that that would furnish all needs.

Right.

Here's that.

You could serve a fruit salad to the kids, but the kids don't like the same fruits.

So you'd be making basically two different fruit salads.

Sylvie insists that strawberries are not only disgusting to taste, but disgusting to smell.

She won't sit at the same table as Cleo if Cleo is, I can't sit at the table, she's eating a strawberry.

What?

The nicest thing of all time?

Oh, she's eating a strawberry.

It's disgusting.

I can't, oh, I've got to sit at a different table.

Well, we've only got one table, all right?

Crossbox, I have heard that.

Tally works in radio.

Crossbox, I have heard that people who work in jam factories something of a gas that comes off the strawberries.

You never like strawberries again.

So did you have have her working at any point in a jam factory?

You've got to start them young, David.

You know that.

Listen, there used to be a time you could live in London on a two-income household.

No, that's not the case anymore.

We're not monsters.

We're not sending them down the mines or up the chimneys.

Yes, the jam factory.

What kid doesn't love a jam sandwich?

I've sent my kids out to be contract killers.

So in many ways, a jam factory is

not as bad.

Okay, so what happened yesterday?

What panned out?

Yesterday it was porridge, but there was also when I went up to go and have a shower and Charlie came down.

Well, I brought Charlie up a coffee because she was still in bed.

She had her coffee.

She came down.

She took over.

I went up to have a shower.

And then by the time she came down, four of the breakfasts were also going on.

So I sort of let, I made a breakfast and I served a breakfast.

And also you've got up first.

So really, you've, you know, when you go upstairs, that handover, what a moment that is, right?

I don't know how long you've got because when I'm in the shower, I'm never in the shower without Jamie saying, you know, are you finished?

Or like, generally, I'm never in the bathroom without Jamie saying, are you finished?

I'm never doing anything.

I'm never like in the living room or just in my bedroom picking out some pants because I might just get on my phone for one minute because, you know, it's some free time.

So like, are you left upstairs?

Have you got no time limit?

What's the

well, I've got the time limit of having to leave the house and sort of get out to work.

So I've got that time limit.

And also, so has Charlie.

So you're sort of like basically, I'm allotted, I would say, about 20 minutes to get myself ready.

Charlie is a little bit longer, but that's fine.

Look at me.

I mean, what do you you need to do?

No, 20 minutes is amazing.

Yeah, so I've got that.

But the thing is, we have slightly glossed over a crucial detail, which is the who gets the lie in is predicated on who was up with the kids in the night.

Right.

But if you're up with the kids in the night, the reason you're up is because you're the one who's woken up.

So the other person doesn't know.

It's a real game of trust here that if Charlie says, I was up four times in the night, I have to go, well, I must have slept very heavily because I didn't hear any of that.

I mean, not to say say that I'm not a very heavy sleeper I am right but equally when I say it to Charlie oh yeah I was up once with Sylvie twice with Cleo there's always a moment of her kind of looking in my eyes going oh really what sort of time we're talking about what did Cleo want did she have a nightmare or she want some water what was going on there yeah I definitely have the I was in bed with the inn for it must have been hours and Jamie's like 21 minutes I'm like okay

damn it it's why you guys have installed all those uh ring doorbells with little cameras everywhere that are watching everything.

Get AI to compile exactly who moved where.

Can we get a synopsis of these conversations?

This is where AI will be useful going forward.

Yeah, solving internal disputes.

Proving my innocence.

So you've got your 20 minutes.

Talk us through everything you do upstairs.

How dare you?

How dare you?

The usual ablutions.

I'm hopping in the shower.

We've got ourselves a little speaker so I can listen to,

it's all going to be podcasts of two old men talking about Steeley Dan.

You know, it's that kind of stuff.

It's the stuff that I can't be playing in the kitchen because it's going to bore my family to death.

It's going to bore them off their porridge.

That goes on.

Get myself washed, get myself dressed.

I've started trying to apply SPF every day.

That's crucial because I've got to an age where things have started appearing all over my skin.

Yeah, right.

I've been to the doctors and got, is this a problem?

They're like, no, but keep an eye on it.

Every bit of my body isn't a problem yet, but keep an eye on it.

I went there recently with a thing dangling off the side of my neck.

And they were like, no, that's fine.

You could just pull that off.

And I literally, in front of a doctor, pulled the thing off my neck and went, oh yeah, so I can.

And walked out to the doctor's.

So that's the stage I'm at.

My body is kind of constantly threatening to be awful, but not quite awful yet.

You are falling to bits, the pair of you.

You've got worms living inside you.

You've got growths falling off you.

Just be like my dad.

Smear fairy liquid all all over yourself.

Yet another use.

And then just head out and carpe that DM.

Do you know what?

It all started when I stopped washing my clothes in floor cleaner.

That's it.

Around sort of 27, 28.

It all went downhill after that.

It's funny how healthy you are when you're little.

So I used to eat raw chicken nuggets out of the fridge.

Like if mum would have them.

Yeah, there'd be ones there.

And I was probably doing it for 18 months till it was explained to me that that is an incredibly dangerous thing.

But I think because my body was so sensationally good at dealing with germs, you know, now if I sniffed one, I'd be on the chitter for a month.

But yeah, this was all just no problem.

I think I ate 20 full plums once, stones and all.

You know, I just had one and I didn't really have like a bad time on the toilet.

They just all went through.

Now, can you imagine passing 20 plum stones?

Like, that's a devastation when they came through.

God,

yeah, I've got kidney stones, you know, like gallstones and that kind of stuff.

I've heard of those, right?

But like, imagine someone is going to the doctor with, like, oh, I've got plum stones.

You feel like if that

feels like it's in a worse part of the body, stones in your plums, that's real trouble.

It feels like you should have noticed some change in the discoloration of your skin.

It should have gone a little bit woolly-wonkers chocolate factory, where your face should have started to turn a kind of bluish hue, or even better, a plum tree should have grown out of some part of your body.

that's we're thinking nostril we're thinking belly button we're thinking arsehole that's what we're thinking that's a plum tree coming out of max's body don't go to the doctor get titch marsh in and you're just spooning compost into your face the whole time and suddenly plums start to he's encouraging you to rotate the soil yeah

I could be an installation at the Chelsea Flower Show, just that lovely, you know, gentle morning TV with, I don't know, Gethin Jones and Charlie Dimook just strolling through.

And there on his side is Max, the plum tree.

42 years ago, he ate 20 plums and now he comes back every year just there, growing and growing.

Beautiful.

This is Gunther von Hagen's next project.

He wants to team up with Monty Don and rather than like donating your body to be sort of, you could donate your body to become an exhibition, like a big old hanging basket.

Yeah.

I mean, that would be amazing if every if every year when the summer months came around, you could get Nan out of the attic with a load of glads sprouting out of her ears.

I think that'd be great.

I think we're on to something here.

Right, so we're downstairs.

There are four breakfasts on the table.

Yes.

What's your next move?

Oh, I'll tell you the other thing as well that happened.

Sylvia came up to see me just as I was getting my clothes on.

She said,

ask me what my name is.

And I said, what's your name, Syl?

Now, see if you can work out the mistake I made in that sentence.

It's using her name in the question.

Yes.

Right?

I just automatically did it.

I said, what's your name, Syl?

And she burst into floods of tears because I'd ruined the game.

Her rules for games are unspoken and so specific.

And you only know about them when you've broken them, which is always...

And then grief sets in.

Do you think she wanted a new name for the day?

Because I do know that kids will sometimes do that.

Call me, you know, Emma or something like that.

Yes, she's always, but the names are always not quite named, but they sound a bit like, she'll always be like, I am Queen Kalenstra.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, oh, it sort of feels like it could be a kind of name, but it's like a name that she's kind of assembled herself.

So she doesn't have the rights, she hasn't paid for the rights for the actual name, and she has to come up with it.

She can't afford Elsa or Arnold.

Yeah, yeah, so she's got

Queen Calenstra is what you get bought by your auntie who doesn't have kids, isn't it?

Oh, I've got your Queen Calenstra dollar.

That's the thing you're like, oh, what the hell is this?

Where'd you get this from?

The pound shop?

Let it sleep.

Let it sleep.

So.

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Are you both going to work now?

Is that what we're building towards?

This time, very rarely, we're both leaving the house on the same train.

That's the plan.

You're just going to leave the kids there with their many breakfasts?

We've got to get the house cleared, got to get all that put away because we've got the cleaner coming around.

So obviously, if the cleaner comes around,

the first thing you've got to do is clean, get the house really really clean so the cleaner can come around and not think we're awful then my parents show up now my parents take sylvie ordinarily on a wednesday my parents take sylvie and this time they're taking cleo as well because cleo is too sick to be at school but just the right level of sickness to be with two older people you know you don't think that cleo's playing the system here you know what i mean the idea of just like

i don't feel well enough to go in today we're We're not at that point, are we?

Well, again, leaping ahead, when she got home, I said to her at the end of the day, I said, How do you feel?

And she went, I feel better than ever.

And I went, Oh, great, you can go back to school tomorrow then.

And she went, Oh, oh, oh, oh, no, oh, no.

She lay on the stairs, just lay herself on the stairs and went, Oh, the headaches come back, and it's actually its worst.

It's a teenager up the stairs.

No, you've got to have your story straight.

You can't say, I feel better than ever, and then immediately backpillow because the headaches hit just as soon as you've got into the front door.

No, she's aware of that game, but she doesn't yet know how to play it, Ferris Bueller style.

Question.

How thankful are you to your parents for doing this incredible job?

Because we don't, my parents are a long way away.

Jamie's dad lives quite a long way away, sort of an hour away, too far away to do like a full day or doesn't do a full day.

And so when I see grandparents in like the park, I try and say, look, you could come in and do our family and I'd, you're probably not getting paid.

You're probably not getting paid.

So I will really sort you out here.

Like, like are you like bowing with thanks are you just slightly annoyed about how they parent your kids because generationally they don't do everything how you'd want them to to do it the answer is obviously the second yeah of course you should be grateful to you i mean we're we are incredibly fortunate we've got both sets of parents who both live 15 minutes away so wednesday is uh my parents thursdays are charlie's parents my partner's parents so we're incredibly incredibly lucky we say thank you of course we do the second the door closes oh my god Do you see what they were eating?

Well, they were doing, yeah, okay.

What?

Sorry, they had a nap at what time?

Not even supposed to have a nap at all.

No, they haven't had much sugar, just a cake, a brownie.

You know, we ate pancakes for lunch.

What was on the pancakes?

Golden syrup, of course, sugar.

So they're erring on the side of too much decadence, as opposed to making the children watch episodes of The World at War and just eat.

That's what we do at home.

Also, you know what it's like.

if you're looking after the kids every single week anything for an easy life if they want to watch 27 episodes of bluey back to back you just let them watch 27 episodes of bluey back to back

what's the alternative exactly yeah by the time they're all hopped up and crazy you're handing them back amazing i mean amazing the only experience of this i've ever had in babysitting where you know i've babysitted for nephews and nieces and if they happen to wake up at 10 o'clock or refuse to go to bed i'll just be like i'll take the worst possible angle on this which is, I don't think you should have gone to bed either.

Like, if I was in charge of this, let's just party.

Let's have a couple of cans of Heineken Zero.

You can drink that.

It's not alcoholic.

That's fine.

Let's just party.

Yeah.

Let's handle some cat turds.

Let's go.

Have a menthol cigarette.

Why not?

That was great.

Okay, but you leave the hat.

They arrive, shut the door.

Freedom.

Well, my dad does the pickup normally.

So my dad, Daddo, as he's known to the kids, didn't go with granddad.

He was daddoed with my brother's first kids, Duke.

Talk about 16, 17 years ago.

Duke Daddo.

Different brother, but yeah, yeah.

Sorry, sorry for getting it.

The Viscount, as he's also not known.

Viscount Crosby, yeah.

So, yeah, so he's Daddo.

He takes the kids.

I don't know what he's doing in the car because 10 minutes later, when we leave the house to walk down to the train station, the car's still there.

So, there's every chance he's sitting in the car for eight hours.

He's pretty good, LBC on.

He's just there sitting.

Waits till we get back and then hands him back.

He's just ringing Nick Ferrari to say, you're right, there are too many coming in.

Like, lift up the drawbridge, don't you think, kids?

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, no.

He's making them right wing.

Oh, God.

Yeah, he believes you should give Kiss Darmer a chance.

Yeah.

So the two of you are on the train together.

This is an adorable scene.

Little matching outfits, probably.

Little lunch boxes on your laps.

Weirdly, the kids were wearing matching outfits.

I'll say that.

Charlie and I didn't dress dress identically, but the kids wanted to dress identically, which when I was a little kid, I hated.

I hated being dressed the same as my brother, the Viscount.

I hated the ceremonial dress.

You just didn't like all the medals and the Ermin doesn't suit me.

That's the problem.

But yeah, they go off dressed together.

Charlie and I, we skip off down the road.

It's lovely.

When we get on the train, the first thing you've got to do at the train station is you've got to scan the horizon.

It's the first train after school pickup time, or school drop-off time, even.

So you've got to scan the horizon to make sure there are no other parents who might want to chat with you for the entire journey.

God, yeah.

Because you sort of like you know these people, but you don't know they're not your friends.

The only thing you have in common is you've got a kid in the same class.

So, you keep your head down.

The fact that we're together is good because we can talk to each other heads down, heads down.

But then when we get on the train, she reads her book.

I've got to upload a reel to Instagram because I also have a podcast, and that's how podcasting works now.

So, uploading reels to Instagram.

We don't go in for any of that, we do not publicize this.

No, no way.

We haven't released any episodes yet.

We are thinking about it, but we're not sure if that's the direction we want to go in.

This is going to be like Bruce Springsteen when he said, oh, by the way, in 1994, I made 15 albums.

Here they all are.

That's what it's going to be.

In years to come, you're going to go, oh, by the way, back in 2025, we recorded some podcasts.

Here they all are.

If you want to.

That would be amazing if the Beatles, in addition to releasing the making of the Let It Be album, they'll be like, Also, we recorded 400 podcasts during the making of all of our albums.

True crime.

They did a true crime podcast with bastards.

They were so ahead of the curve.

They knew true crime was going to be the thing.

They knew it's going to be absolutely massive.

Chatting away.

I'm trying to think of what the true crime would be because all the good true crime happened in the 70s, didn't it?

Possible.

You know, my immediate thought goes to like Zodiac Killer, Manson family, and those are all the good ones.

The Beatles Breaking Up ended all of that kind of

era, didn't it?

Beatles Breaking Up and the Manson murders.

That was the end of the summer of love.

Okay, so we're on the train.

Don Your Reel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is an adorable scene.

What book is she reading, just as a matter of interest?

One of mine?

Was it one of my children's books?

Yeah, it was one of your children's books.

Yeah, yeah.

I knew it.

She was listening to Giggle Me Timbers.

Yep, my first album.

AKA Jokes before your first album.

And then reading one of your shark books.

And she's wearing a t-shirt that says, I love David.

And then in brackets, but I married Matthew.

Some coincidence, all of those happening yesterday.

So how long's the journey?

Because my reels are not good on Instagram, but they don't take me the duration of a train journey.

For some reason, I've given myself the job of uploading these things to Instagram and I just don't know how to do it.

And I'm doing it on the train Wi-Fi and it takes ages.

It's about a 25-minute journey.

She's getting off at London Bridge.

I'm getting off at Charing Cross.

Once she's hopped off, I'm on to my little brain gym games because, you know, my body may be falling apart, but my brain is strong as ever.

So I'm doing my little elevate games and I'm listening to,

I felt compelled to listen to this album.

I've not listened to it in ages, but it was How I'm Feeling Now by Charlie XEX.

I was like, I haven't listened to that in ages.

And then later on, when I was looking at Instagram to check how the reels were doing, a thousand views, that'll do.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think it's supposed to get like 50,000 views, but we got a thousand views.

But anyway, it was the fifth birthday of that album.

So it was weird that I was like, oh, I've not listened to that in ages.

And then Charlie XEX is posting about it being the fifth birthday of that album.

But yeah, so that's what I was listening to.

As you'll know, David, my musical references mean that you say it was ages since that was released, and I clearly, it's too modern a song for me to have ever heard because it was after 1997.

When you said this album I hadn't listened to for ages, I was going, different class pulp, maybe that would fit into my era.

Oh, no, I listen to that every day.

What you talking about.

Okay, good, good, good, good.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's an album that's kind of has been in my rotation that I haven't listened to for a while.

But, you know, I'm, when it comes to listening to albums that I've been listening to for ages, I'm all the way back to the 50s 60s 70s i'm i listen to that kind of stuff of course i wasn't alive in the 50s 60s and 70s but all my references are okay yeah i do sometimes listen to one of those discover channels and i hear a cool contemporary person that will remind me this sounds a bit like the carpenters but then i just go back and listen to the carpenters then is the problem you know rather than staying with it was definitely a period crossbox i would say between the age of 15 and 25 when i was just new things please more new things and then you didn't have any of those references so you wouldn't have been if you're 15 you're not going you know I would always listen to a band and go oh yeah they sound a bit like this band from three years ago yeah that's true totally but like when you're first discovering music it's like all those bands like Nirvana were like oh if you like us here are all the bands that inspire you know like I you hear Nirvana then they say listen to the pixies because they were doing it first and yeah that kind of stuff and that kind of it goes back like that but I still try as much as I can to yeah you're in that game you're on Radio X right you there's you know by the way radio x you know we play oasis and yeah yeah yeah yeah i thought it was just nickelback or is virgin just nickelback no we never play a nickelback no we are we are the cortinas the coots yeah who else would we play on radio x the phonics

bit of chelsea dagger yeah absolutely the uh the old dunceli kasabians surely cassabians come in all the time isn't it a lot of kasabian yeah yeah we play a lot of kasabian it's all of that kind of stuff so actually a lot of that stuff is from when i was about well a teenager into my 20s occasionally we play something new occasionally they'll say this song is blowing up on TikTok, and we'll play it for a couple of weeks, and we won't play it again.

When I was at Radio Cambridgeshire, they would set up the music, and I'd, it would be like Melanie brand new key.

And I was like, I can't, I would only play, they only had like the Scissor Sisters, was the only song that had been like released like in the last 10 years.

So I just have to keep playing.

I love Melanie, though.

I think, I've got a brand new key.

You got a brand new key.

Yeah, I almost went into Combine Arviska because obviously that's one of the rare instances where the parody is almost more famous than the original song, isn't it?

No one remembers Melanie anymore, but of course you remember the words.

That is true.

I did a syndicated radio show that was by that makes it sound fancier than it was in about 2005,

where it was an hour a week and it was mostly new music, but occasionally other odd things.

And we got in trouble, however, because Coolio had a CD where he answered questions, and the idea was you could then ask the questions and call it an exclusive interview with Coolio.

But there was a tremendous opportunity just to compose

new questions and ask Coolio about, for example, the influence of Steely Dan on his work.

And then Coolio just like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly.

That's exactly what I was listening to while I was recording this or whatever it was got in trouble guys Matthew you've got to Charing Cross where are we heading we're heading to the National Gallery because I'm going to have a meeting there a work-related meeting but I thought the thing I do way too often is I say oh let's just meet in the cafe we always meet in or let's meet in a branch of Leon or something because I know where it is and you can find it for this meeting I was meeting with someone helping them with their current tour which is something I'll occasionally do I'll meet with comedians and I'll listen to their tour shows and I'll give them some notes and stuff like that but I thought let's meet in the National Gallery because why not?

It's a spies meet there, don't you?

It's exactly.

It's a spy type location.

But also, it's just, you know, if you're creating art, why not be surrounded by beautiful art?

Why not be, you know, why not be sat underneath whistle jacket by George Stubbs while you're, you know, writing your dick jokes?

I don't know.

Particularly if I was listening to the show I will be doing in Edinburgh in a few months right now and comparing it to a Caravaggio, I'd be like, it ain't, we're not there yet.

No way.

It's It's got a long, a long way to go.

This show needs to be re-hung.

That's the problem.

We need to get someone in and completely move this all around.

You'd have to take a step back, David, and say, look, Caravaggio had his flaws.

As a human, you're probably in a better space than Caravaggio ever was, I would say.

I know, but what's that going to influence the show?

The show is going to be me in a metallic helmet.

You know what I mean?

Looking really calm.

Holding a cherubim.

Yes, you're right.

Why are there some eight naked boys in the background?

This is a weird show that you've got happening here.

All right, okay, so who do you meet?

Are we allowed to know?

I won't say who I met.

It's another comedian, but I'll leave it there.

Jimmy Carr.

It was Jimmy Carr.

Was it Tom Rosenthal who was Rhys James and Pierre Novelli met him for his...

I just wonder if he's just getting tips from everybody, Tom, before he goes off on his.

No, it was not.

I can tell you now.

If you want to do it by process of elimination, you can, but it wasn't Tom Rosenthal.

Roy Chubby Brown.

It's got got to be

oh my god

in two

i said these jokes aren't going hard enough mate

they say you can't say anything anymore you prove them wrong let's go and sit at the rothko's and i'll talk you through gentle casual racism here roy this isn't working

I tell you what, he's got some opinions on art.

I'll tell you that right now.

Do you sit underneath the painting to talk through the show?

This is quite interesting.

Actually, we sat in the, the cafe is kind of open plan, the little espresso bar is open plan.

You can still see the paintings, but you're not overwhelmed or, in David's case, sort of cowed by their beauty, challenged and threatened

by their artistic beauty.

And did you think his show is, or her show, of course, good or bad?

Oh, yes, it's 2025, Max.

It's 2025, that's right.

Ladies are allowed on the stage now.

I know.

I'm disappointed.

I thought just Roy.

Well, no, you had mentioned him, but but I was trying to add to the mystique so people didn't find out which comedian it was.

I try and keep my despair at female comedians to myself.

With respect, Max.

Yeah.

There's a good chance that the person who it is may listen to this podcast to find out what Crosby...

really thought about it.

And if he was now to go off on it, like, Max, when I say this was bullshit, this is like stuff that I pull out of the cat litter tray.

And he thinks he's going to be doing it in Edinburgh in two months' time.

Do you know what I do after I watch that show?

I wash my hands really well, honestly.

I want to wash my brain out as well after that.

My God.

Okay, I'll rephrase the question.

I take your point.

See, the thing is, if somebody asked me, if David seems unlikely, says, Max, I really want some notes from you on my show, right?

He definitely wouldn't do.

I would just say it's all great.

I'm no use.

I'd be no use.

It's like I couldn't manage anybody, right?

I'd just like if I managed a factory, everyone would get whatever job they wanted.

I'd just people please in the moment.

So I wouldn't be able to give any genuine feedback.

So that is a skill that you have and presumably a trust with whoever you are talking to underneath a constable.

The hardest thing is to say this bit isn't working, obviously, because...

But you never say this bit isn't working because you're rubbish and you should give up.

You say this bit isn't working.

How do we make it work?

And then that's the fun challenge, isn't it?

The most difficult bit of getting a show together is the blank page and not having the show.

By the time I come in, most people are doing 30, 40, possibly even an hour of material.

And I go, well, this bit's the best bit.

We're sticking this at the start.

This bit could be bigger, you know, or this bit sort of walks around a load of funny ideas, but there's really one crucial bit.

Let's get it down to that bit.

You'll never ever go in.

Firstly, no point in saying this is all good because every single comedian I've ever met has got a voice in their head that's way louder than mine saying, everything you've done is shit.

It's like two fronts.

They'll just, they'll sort of meet and there'll be a rainstorm.

It's not what you actually want is you want to be able to say, I know you're not confident about this bit.

How do we make it better?

I can see from the way you're performing it, you don't trust this bit.

Or let's step away from it.

Sometimes you'll do a bit for a bit and it goes away.

You must have had this, David, where you'll do a joke.

The first time you do it, you're like, great, this is a new 10 minutes.

And then slowly but surely, it'll just drift off.

And you have to go, what was the thing that made us laugh about it in May?

Completely, yeah.

Without the panic of it being July and knowing that we're going to be on stage in front of 300 people in two weeks' time.

My colleague says he's a people pleaser and would just say all of this is great.

But I would imagine if you and I were to host Matthew a sports talkback radio show, then my colleague would not be slow in giving us tips as to how to lighten it up.

And the fact that you have so much experience, Crosbox, of doing a million shows, this is an incredibly useful and important thing you're doing here.

No, I would just tell other people that you were shit.

I would tell you that you were good.

And then I'd be like, oh my God, you heard that.

That is bullshit.

And I think I've asked this before when we were talking to, I think, Rhys James about it.

But like, I would be annoyed if they took a gag that you'd done.

I'd be like, that's my gag.

And similarly, if people, if I'm doing a show where people have written for it, I have to rewrite everything.

If somebody's written a good line or if I've done a good line in rehearsal, then it's gone.

It's like, that is it.

It's finished forever.

No, No, you've got to lose that purity.

You're a performer, Max.

The thing is, you're a performer.

That seems mad.

You know, if you write something in a, if you write a good line in a first draft, right?

Like say, you know, say you're Charles Dickens and you're writing the first draft, you know, of a Christmas carol and you think, oh, that's, that's a great opening line.

You can't go, yeah, but it's from the first draft.

You've got to just, all of it is finessing and improving.

And I'm like, my job, my day-to-day job is a writer.

I mean, we probably won't get onto it because we're still at like 10 a.m.

But, you know, I write for other other people a lot of the time you know and i write for comedians and non-comedians alike and there are some people who are like oh i like that line can i have it and i was like that is my job yeah yeah my job is writing jokes for you and it has to be yeah i totally get that i just can't and obviously what i'm doing is not is never like comedy in inverted because it might just be like it's meant to be funny but that's the kind of byproduct of whatever the show might be but if it's not my thing i just don't feel i feel

i don't know if it makes sense but there's just something like if it's gone in rehearsal that's why i don't don't want to rehearse anything ever.

It's like, no, because.

I know what you mean.

Sometimes you'll improvise something and you'll go, oh, that was just a real sort of lightning in a bottle.

And if we tried to recreate it, it happens sometime on the radio show with Ed and I, where we'll have a funny chat just about our lives while we're playing, you know, a bit of Sam Fender or something.

When that ends, the producer will often go, oh, could you just do the same chat again?

And we try and it feels a little bit like you're...

Because you lose that spontaneity.

So I do get that.

But as a performer, as a stand-up performer, what you're trying to do is give the appearance of walking out on stage and going oh here's a bunch of things i just thought about and off you go but do it in such a way that you know it so well you can do it basically the same every single night so have we had a successful time in the gallery Yeah, it's been okay.

Yeah, no, it's it's always tricky when the tour hasn't yet started and the show is anything you kind of want it to be.

That's when it's tricky.

But yeah, I think it's going well.

It's going really well.

And again, part of the job is saying, this is going well.

It's not always going, that doesn't work, that that doesn't work.

It's also going, this bit's great.

More of this.

For the listeners who may not be aware of English artists, at the start when Max said this was taking place underneath a constable, it wasn't a policeman who was watching over the whole thing.

That's an English painter.

So just to be, just to be comedy police just waiting there for you to make a nav pun or do a half past one.

Happy enemy these days.

That's like, you can't say this these days.

No.

You can't say that.

Okay, so is it lunchtime?

What are we doing?

Yeah, it's lunchtime, but I'm heading back home as well.

Okay.

So I'm going back home.

I have a meal deal shocker in that I know I've got five minutes before my train arrives.

And I grab a bunch of things that I think are in the meal deal.

As I put them through the till, they're not in the meal deal.

So I'm getting a sandwich, a chocolate bar, some crisps, and a fizzy water.

And it costs me like £8.75.

And it's like, oh, no.

But I don't have the time to go back because I know I'm going to miss the train otherwise.

And if I don't get home, I don't get to pick up my kids.

So hang on, interruption.

A meal deal should be a fiver, shouldn't it?

Yeah, about a fiver or, yeah.

And where was the failure?

Because it feels like a meal deal.

Crisps and chocolate.

It's got to go crisps or chocolate.

Yeah, but I don't, none of it recalibrated.

There should be a bit where, like, you know, plus whatever the thing wasn't that isn't a snack.

But I think I picked up the wrong bag of crisps.

Maybe the bag of crisps was too big, or it was just one of those little moments of failure.

And the other thing, as well, is I didn't realize this until I got the receipt back.

I don't want to be the kind of guy who complains about things being expensive these days.

Yeah.

The chocolate bar was a date bar covered in dark chocolate, £2.80.

Worming chocolate.

Worming chocolate, of course, worming chocolate.

That's what it is.

£2.80.

Do you know what it was?

They put it right next to the grenade bars.

So it was like healthy, but not that grenade bars are healthy, but you know, they're the protein-loading, the ones that you go, oh, I must be a bodybuilder because I've just eaten a bar that tastes like a birthday cake.

I must be on a sports nerve on Muscle Beach in 1987.

Do you know what?

I pointedly refused to buy a punnet of blueberries yesterday because they were $12.

That's like six pounds.

And I looked at it.

I thought, that is like 50p a blueberry.

It's not on.

No blueberries for the kids.

I was like, that's not good enough.

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I hate being an old man who complains about the cost of things because that's all old men.

Like the other day I was in, and I know we're not in a place to talk about the other day, but the other day I was in, I was at Godstone Farm and I was ordering lunch at the, there's like a little soft play where you can have your lunch and the food's rotten, but you've got to eat, it's the only thing that's there.

I found myself saying to the girl behind the counter, who by the way is 16 and just doesn't care.

No interest in the cost of anything.

She doesn't give a shit.

I found myself saying, and this is a real have you cake and eat it too.

I said, do a lot of people complain about the prices here?

Not I'm complaining about the prices.

And I thought, that's even worse.

Have the courage of your convictions, Crosby.

Say this seems too expensive, but don't pretend like you're doing a survey.

Oh, I just want to check for my project.

Do lots of people complaining about the fact that it's 27 quid for three paninis?

No, okay, right.

No, just want to check.

I was in one of those organic delis.

I think it's on Farringdon Road.

Was this before COVID?

I've told this story on the radio so many times, Charlie Baker takes the piss out of me for it.

And I'd never complain about anything.

I just can't do it.

But we went and bought like a peach.

And for some reason, she gave me a receipt.

And I'd never asked for a receipt for a peach.

And it said six pounds.

Right?

So I was like, this can't be.

I was walking for ages with Jay going, you cannot be right.

It cannot be six pounds for a peach.

It's like fucking disgraceful.

And I was like, I'm going to go back.

She was like, don't go back.

It's like, you know, like, let's just carry on that.

I was like, no, I've got to do it.

I've got to go back.

And I walked back and I went, it says six pounds here for this peach.

And they went, oh, yeah.

And then I was like, okay i had to just leave again and go yeah it was it was a six pound peach they didn't up they were just like oh yeah that's that's what peaches go for in this deli

six pounds that's too much for a bit we're talking a single peach just a peach was it a potentially big peach not really and i think it was all right i don't really remember thinking this peach was like the zenith of peaches it was a giant peach it had a boy and some huge insects inside it we know max likes to consume fruit in volumes of 20 as well so it's bankrupted

I spent six quid on this peach.

19 more, please.

And I felt it on the way out.

All right, so we are home, unless anything remarkable happens on the train journey.

We get home.

The cleaner is leaving.

She tells me that the toilet is broken.

We knew about this already.

This is not the cleaner.

It's not broken our toilet.

We knew about this already.

She says that the toilet, the upstairs toilet, is not flushing.

So having a sort of can-do spirit, I'm straight in there.

I'm lifting up the cistern.

I'm taking the stuff out.

I'm looking at looking at the ball cock i'm looking at what's going on i can work out what's going wrong which already is exciting to me because i'm not a very sort of practical person i can tell what's going wrong but i can't quite work out how to fix it i'm just doing all these kind of like tiny adjustments yeah i'm tinkering you know like when you see somebody djing in a club and you're like he's not doing anything there you know he's got a bit of cd playing and he's just pretending to you're david geta but

your ideal standard david getter I beefed a closing party he's not doing it he's got a single on of course he is

doing that kind of vibe you know do you get on YouTube yeah get on YouTube this is for today I think when I get home today I'm gonna get the YouTube videos out and but I tinkered away on it and I managed to refill the system so it does now flush it's a usable toilet but not a it's not a high functioning toilet it's a one flush only How long do you leave everything in before you do the one flush that you've managed to get it back to that stimulus?

Oh, you're saying that are we on one flush a day, like

a sort of family during the blitz or something?

You can't be flushing the toilet in case it's only one flush per street, isn't it?

And they go, you know, there was only one flush a street, and number 36 had done it, and we all had to wait.

It was great times.

The answer is so simple.

You piss in the cistern, and when the cistern is full of piss, you use that to flush the turds away.

Thank you, case closed.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I've taught my cat to piss in the system as well.

So everybody's contributing.

What next?

I get a text from Charlie saying, don't forget.

Charlie XCX.

Charlie XCX, of course.

Thanks for listening to my album from five years ago.

I did feel like that when I saw her Instagram.

I was like, oh, I was listening to that album today.

But yeah, I get a message from Charlie, my wife Charlie, and she says, don't forget, we've got an appointment with the mortgage advisor.

And I had forgotten.

wow i didn't send back a message that suggested i had forgotten

which does mean that we don't know if you're telling the truth about how many times you're up in the night you know what we're seeing is exactly

i'm already an unreliable narrator here now you know that this is you can't trust me max you know a guy who's doing all right because the toilet breaks and the house immediately is on let's get a new house let's just get a new um let's get out of here and leave it

it's really sad when it you know if you have two toilet breaks in the the same month and you have to move the kids, move straight and then do it again.

That's what they say, isn't it?

It's like the most stressful things are divorce, bereavement, and having to use the toilet in your own house.

That's the three most stressful things.

Okay, so are the kids, do you get the kids before the mortgage advisor?

What's the order of play here?

Mortgage advisor, we meet with our mortgage advisor.

We're coming to the end of a five-year fixed, which actually

was great for us.

You know, it turned out that was good advice from him.

And he's like, I don't know what to tell you now.

Another five-year fixed work to write last time.

So it's that kind of, it always feels like when you're meeting with people who actually have a real job that requires real knowledge and thought that you're just doing basically, it's like doing the sort of, you know, when you do a fucking friend oral exam.

If you can show you've got even the tiniest bit of understanding of what they're saying to you and you can say something back that's kind of in their language, we're going to give you a pass.

That's what it is.

The trick at the moment is you just have to mention bond markets.

Because something to do with Trump has had an effect on bond markets.

So if you just go, we just don't know what way the bond markets are going to go immediately.

You've put yourself in there at a very high level.

And this person is going to be able to do it.

This is nothing to do with Barbara Broccoli selling it to Amazon, is it?

It's nothing to do with that.

That's a different bond market.

Different bond.

That is a different.

Okay, that's the bond market I care about.

I think I'm too trusting with all, you know, anything financial by basically saying, you could tell me anything because I'm not really listening, but you know, I can't be fucked to speak to another one.

So whatever you say is fine.

Yeah.

He also looks after lots of people like in the entertainment business.

So in so he is absolutely onto a right.

I've found a load of people who've got whatever side of the brain is, left side brains.

I've just found a load of people who anything I say to them.

What you really need to do is all that money in your account, if you transfer it to my account,

that's the best thing for the market at the moment.

If it stays with me rather, because if it's with you, then it's just going to get taxed.

Or have you heard about these tariffs?

All of that kind of stuff.

Move it over to my, yeah, it's a Cayman Islands account that I've got.

Just move it over to me.

And we're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not that we're at this level, but you know, anytime someone in show business gets in trouble for money, it's always because their accountant saw them come in, isn't it?

Yeah, it's always because the accountant said, Hey, this is all right to do.

Do this thing.

It's like it's one of those.

It's one of those situations.

So, anyway, yeah, so he owns our house now.

He leaves in his golden car with his golden hat.

I didn't tell him about the toilet.

So

it's one-all.

Let's call it one-all, shall we?

Then I have just about enough time to make a tuna pasta bake, hang up some washing.

My jeans absolutely stink.

The last thing that happened to them was my daughter threw up on them on a car journey.

So I put them in the wash.

They don't seem like they come out better.

They seem that they've come out worse.

You know what I'm going to say there?

Pop them in the dishwasher, love.

Just throw them in with the cat shits and whatever else is knocking around.

That's what I've started doing now is I just put on that outfit for the day and get in the dishwasher and put myself with a conno.

Yes, I've gone from 20 minutes to 60 minutes getting ready time.

I have to drip dry on the walk to the station, but apart from that, it's a winning system.

But if you are in the dishwasher, you can get, if you catch it right, you'll get a couple of sprouts as they're flinging around the

tourni thing.

Look, Crossbox, if those kids couldn't decide as to whether they wanted porridge or Cheerios, there's no way everyone's going to eat a tuna pasta bake, for goodness sake.

Yeah, you know what?

For some reason, I think, and this has got to be our fault, I think we gave them too much leeway at breakfast time.

The phrase, what do you want for breakfast, gets used quite a lot, whereas we never say, what do you want for dinner?

We say, this is dinner.

Right, yeah, yeah.

Kids need consistency.

And as parents, we've not provided that.

Because we've said, breakfast is a buffet.

Breakfast is carte blanche.

Anything you want for breakfast.

If you want a yoghurt, go for it.

If you want grapes, go for it.

If you want, you know, all of this kind of stuff.

It's completely on us, this, because we should have said from day one, breakfast is porridge.

In fact, you know what?

It's porridge for every meal.

It's like prison.

This is what you're getting.

You go up to the big pot with your little wooden bowl.

You can't say, please, Sarah, I want some more.

You have your gruel and you sit down and you watch your CBBs and that's it.

And then it's bedtime.

And then the mortgage advisor has asked that we all stitch these wallets for export together.

So we do that all day.

And then we have sad pasta in the evening.

It's perfect.

That's right.

You've come home from a hard day at the jam factory.

So your kids are soon to be back.

Do you find this that you like when Ian is at childcare, I really miss him?

And I'm like, oh, let's go and get him a bit early.

Why not be nice?

And then within five minutes of me in the house, I'm like, oh, why?

This is incredible noise.

So you're saying you love the idea of him more than the actual him?

No.

Yes.

It turns out I fell in love with the thought of you to quote Chapel Roan.

No, he's so unbelievably adorable, but at the same time, but quite often he sort of says, I don't want you, Dadda.

Go away.

And then I'm like, I was doing squared in the other room.

And Mum was like, oh, fuck, I've got to go in again you know no max i love my kids no

no i'm only kidding i know exactly what you mean especially if they come back from uh the grandparents all hopped up on sugar i'm saying to sylvie i'm going to serve you dinner sylvie and she's like no no no no i want you to sit in my cauldron she's like i've got a cauldron i need you to sit in it and i'm like yeah okay we can do cauldron after i've served you dinner you've got to eat your dinner because it's half past five no cauldron and then she's on the verge of tears unless i pretend to sit in a cauldron and then she sort of walks walks around me me, and she's got a little wand with a star on the top of it, like a witch's wand.

It's made of wood.

And if you try and get out of the cauldron, you're getting that straight to the scalp.

You're getting the corner of a wooden star straight on the head.

You know, immediately the hierarchy is in place.

I've managed to this tuna pasta make.

I don't want tuna pastamake crack.

When Daddo made us have our third monster energy drink earlier on, he let us do cauldron violence.

how long are you in the cauldron for I mean it felt like forever yeah it felt like a long time I'm in the cauldron I'm constantly trying to either suggest that Cleo takes my place in the cauldron and she spends some time in the cauldron and Sylvie you know whacks her over the head or that we go look let's put a pin in cauldron time and let's go and have some food.

You need a kind of fourth official, don't you, to like put up the subs board.

He goes number six.

Matthew is being replaced by number twenty-four.

Well this is what two parents are doing though.

This is, you know, you're tapping out.

You're going, I'm going to go off and do something else.

You go and do a bit of cauldron while I try, you know, get this dinner.

See how Max has football solutions to every problem there with this var, with this fourth official.

How do we start to slow down these kids with a view to bedtime then, Crossbucks?

Again, it's all about the sort of ritual.

So

once dinner is over, and actually the kids were pretty good.

They ate the tune of pasta bake, although Sylvie did say during dinner say i'm hungry

and i said yeah

you've not cracked this system here you're eating food and i said look there's your dinner and she was like no i don't want food i was like well what you hungry for then okay power So then it becomes the ritual and the ritual is squashies.

They're very into their squashies.

And this is a loophole here in that they're basically big haribo, but they're multivitamins.

So the kids know the treat is they get a multivitamin.

To them, it's like a sweet.

To us, it's giving them a multivitamin.

So it's milk and squashies.

Sylvie will have her milk.

Clear will have a little cup of milk.

They'll eat the squashies.

They'll watch a bit of whatever the final couple of shows on CBeebies are.

I think it was they're watching in the night garden yesterday.

Question time.

Question, of course.

Yeah.

Yes, we really want to see the next episode of World at War.

Come on, Dad.

Daddo shows the first half.

I want to see if our brave boys pull it off.

The Battle of Jutland.

So that becomes the winding down time.

And it was good because prior to to that, Sylvie had found a rubber cricket ball and was playing a game where she was trying to hit a bulb in the ceiling.

She was like, I'm going to try and hit this.

I was like, no, you're not.

That's not happening.

Telly goes on.

Milk comes out.

Squashies go out.

I go upstairs and I run the bath.

And then it's bath time.

So it was very perfunctory today.

Normally there's a bit of sort of playing about it, but I was doing bath time and bedtime on my own.

So I try and make it as

unfun as possible because you don't want to

get them too hyped up.

You don't want to make it so much like that they're

Melvin Bragg on the podcast you've got the lights on

our time exactly

the games we would ordinarily play are either troll or soldier or policeman and the troll is a guy who comes in it's me with my jumper like up over my up over my head like butthead and beavers or beavers and beavers and butthead yeah like that and pretending to eat them and then he'll do a poo in the bath and then the soldier plays the soldier plays a version of simon says Says, which is Soldier Says, and that'll be like a right, you're horrible lock kind of thing.

That's the soldier.

Yeah, and then I wrap up in the same towel and I stick them on the bed, and we play burrito, which is where I wrap them up like a burrito.

We play the song tequila by the champs, and I move their legs along to that.

Great load of cheese over them, cover them in sour green, sit at the edge.

It's a quid and it's brown.

And I'm going to scrape out the absolute tiniest corner of a steel dish.

It's going to be disgusting.

Great.

So do they go to sleep?

They do, they do.

Cleo has just started really getting into independent reading so she can sit in her bed and read independently and I will sit there next to Sylvie.

And unfortunately, we're at the stage now where they want...

someone to hold their hand while they fall asleep.

It's a bit like you, Max, getting into the cot.

Now, this is lovely and beautiful and a wonderful moment, but it does mean that if you're doing it on your own, it prolongs bedtime because you've got to do do one and then the other the other thing they want is i've got to go spotify private browsing for this because they always want kids' songs to fall asleep to and it ruins my spotify rapt otherwise

oh really do you actually because my spotify rapt is utterly ridiculous now yeah it's just cigar ross because we talk about it on this podcast a lot and blippy and that's it yeah absolutely last year i got a special message from the wiggles to say thank you for being such a good listener

And it's like, I'm actually, I've listened to Charlie XTX, but I don't get a special message from Charlie, do I?

I get a special message from the people at, you know, Rockaby Lullabies.

Honestly, genuinely, if I didn't go on private Spotify browsing, I would have the first five songs of the Lion King lullaby album.

That would be my entire record.

Not a bad.

Not a bad.

There'd be no like, oh, in June, you turned into a real surf punk dude or whatever they tell me.

It would always be be like, in January, you're trying to get the kids to sleep.

In February, kids to sleep.

March,

December, it was Christmas songs trying to get the kids to sleep.

They've gone to sleep now.

Do you have a little downtime or are you straight to bed?

I mean, this has been a pretty busy day.

This must be half seven.

It's half seven.

Yeah, it's only half seven now.

So Charlie's getting back.

I'm offering her some of the tuna pasta bake.

She's turning her nose at it.

up at it in the same way the kids do.

So she's back and the first thing she clocks is the smelly jeans.

She's like, right, what's the matter about the house?

Have you put them on?

I've hung them up.

I've hung them up in one of the, in the kids' playroom, basically, because that's where we were hanging out the washing.

And she's like, oh, they stink.

And so she investigates this further and she goes, ah, right, I think actually everything on this clothes rack stinks.

And I think the washing machine stinks.

And so we go, okay, fine, right.

We have a little bit of food together.

We watch an episode of the studio.

But in the back of my mind, I know that I'm getting back in the car, Which, let me tell you now, what does the car stink of?

Vomit.

Why?

Because my daughter puked on me, so it's all tied back in.

I'm getting back in the car at 10 a.m.

to drive to the 24-hour Tesco to go and buy a bunch of different products that will hopefully make our washing machine clean.

So the washing machine essentially similar to Lenore.

Yeah.

You know, you've got puke and puke is now throughout the whole system.

Yeah.

I take out the filter.

You know, again, I know how to fix the washing machine basically.

I, you know, drain it and take out the filter and just this this horrifying eggy water just pours out of it it's just grim so when i go home after this i'm gonna see because i this morning i put on a wash i know we're not supposed to do what he do today but this morning i put on a wash based on the washing machine being cleaned overnight so hopefully my advice would have been to put the jeans on remember that levi's ad from the 80s of the guy who gets into the bath with the jeans on the idea that they sort of shrink to fit well that would have been you you last night, but with your two children in the bath in a twist to Soldier Soldier.

It's called Soldier, Puky Trousers, Soldier.

It's like, move up there, kids.

I'm getting in here.

This is the only way I can get rid of this terrible smell.

Yeah, either that or just pop them on and run through a field of something that smells gorgeous, like lavender.

Yeah.

You know, if I sort of frolic my way through a lavender field, then it'll sort of give a kind of air-freshener-type vibe to it.

But anyway, I bought a box of stuff.

The name of the guy who sold it was a doctor.

It's not Dr.

Beacham.

Dr.

Pepper.

You put Dr.

Pepper.

Dr.

Pepper in there.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Dr.

Box had a line in these things as well, bizarrely.

You know, he would promote sort of tinny pop music, but as well, he would help you clean your washing machine.

So this 10 p.m.

Tesco trip, you come back with all this and then you're back in the washing machine to set that up before you go to sleep.

Do you know what?

To be honest, I didn't mind it.

I love a 10pm Tesco trip.

Yeah, okay.

I love living near a big 24-hour Tesco.

I think you get a real sense of the area you're living in when you see who's shopping late at night.

You know, a lot of pensioners who are there for the bargains.

It's either going in the bins around the back or they're sticking it out for a, for a penny, you know.

There's all the pensioners buying their discount offal.

There's entire families as well, just like entire families who have decided to do their big shop at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night.

I love it.

It's like kids in their school uniforms just still cutting about.

I love it.

And they, you know, it's like zombie land.

They get to run around these are kind of basically deserted.

It's, I really enjoy it.

So I'm, I'm back.

I'm, I feel re-energized.

I'm trying to clean the washing machine.

And then, then it's bedtime.

Then I put on my little, um, got a little headband with speakers in.

No.

Like, you look like Ed Moses, the 400-metre hurdler.

That's a very obscure reference, Servak.

That's your most obscure ever reference.

Glasses on, too.

Did he have speakers in his as well?

Yeah, he did, not for the hurdling fans who love this podcast.

It's a very on-point reference for the 80s hurdling fans.

They're waiting for a a Tony Jarrett and a Huey Teap and they will have collected all of them.

No, I remember Ed Moses because what he used to do is he would part the hurdles, wouldn't he?

That was what he used to do.

He would just throw his arms wide and the hurdles would fly off to either side and he'd run unencumbered all the way to the end of the world.

He was the chosen hurdler.

He would lead the other hurdlers out of hurdling.

He was banned for actually

by the IOC.

Sebco was furious with him.

Okay, so what are we listening to to go to sleep?

What I'm basically looking for to fall asleep to is anything that says

like NPR at the start of it.

Any podcast that tells you that you're listening to NPR or that it's from a, you know, WNYC or whatever, you know, like any of those kind of things.

It's got to be a softly spoken Chicagoan with a load of letters before the name of their radio station talking about something.

Is it like the history of Gladioli or something like that?

Who brought the daffodil to America?

That sort of thing?

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's that kind of thing.

You know what?

Actually, this is about a sort of snake eating its own tail.

I found a new podcast about somebody who was making a podcast about getting fired from another podcast.

So it's like,

I started that last night and I was like, yep.

I think we can all comfortably type our initials into the end of podcasting.

We've achieved peak podcasting.

This is a three-part series about getting fired from a big famous podcast, which I think is this American Life.

But I love it.

I love it.

I was like, yes, absolutely.

A podcast about podcasting.

Where do I sign?

What time do you do as a?

So a little bit later than it normally would be because of the extra trip.

But the dream is to be in bed by about 10 o'clock, asleep by about 11 after a little bit of reading.

Or possibly Charlie's very good.

She'll read in bed, whereas I'll probably watch a bit of, I'll watch a bit of Telly on my phone.

A show that I'm watching that she isn't watching.

I'm going to start reading again in, I think, five years, but for now, it's try and get in bed at nine.

You know, we're not in that period, are we?

You certainly are not.

If you've got a 17-week old kid, forget about reading.

Yeah.

You'll start reading incredibly simple books and you'll be really delighted to read those.

Well, that's what Max finished Richard Osmond's book by reading one line a day for three years.

You can have too much Osmond, can't you?

I think that's the way to do it.

Weirdly, I'm so busy, that's how I finish his audiobook.

I listen to Richard reading one line of it each day.

Hey, Matthew, thanks so much for doing this.

Did you feel that was a good day?

Yeah, I feel so rude, though.

I didn't ask you guys what you did yesterday.

Oh, well, let me start.

Listen, I could do five more minutes.

Let's rattle through it.

No, I thought that was a pretty typical, typical day of mine.

Yeah.

I was impressed by your practical fixing skills, to be honest.

Even, you know, I'm used to Max here, who if the loo stopped working, yeah, would just.

I fixed the toilet sheet and the shower.

I have done both those.

And I didn't try and sell the house.

And then the fact that you tried to fix the washing machine as well, getting into the filters, all of that.

This is a new side of you that I didn't know there was.

So, hey, I've got a can-do spirit.

Yeah, I know from past experience that I can't do, but that's never robbed me of my can-do spirit.

Thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks, Grasman.

Oh, it's been a total pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

So there we are.

That was Matthews yesterday.

I'm with you, David.

As you said to him, very impressed with his sort of DIY attempts fixing bathroom appliances.

I think that was impressive.

Very much enjoyed how you misremembered Nadia actually getting stuck in a robotic litter train.

I know.

I'm so excited.

Said with such conviction.

Said with such conviction.

I was like, I was sitting there going, maybe she did.

I'm sure she didn't actually.

No.

Why would anyone actually get stuck in a body?

I mixed up dreams and reality again.

I did enjoy just this, a very in-demand guy as a writer,

but also more importantly, just sitting in a cauldron as well, which I'm imagining a big plastic cauldron, but I'd say he's just sitting on the carpet in the sitting room as his daughter hits him with a wand.

David, do I need to sort of officially state for the tape that I love my children?

Or is it

implied?

Just, do you know what it is?

There's just certain times when you're like, oh, don't you love it?

When they come back 20 minutes late and you're just on your own and you're just sitting on the toilet and you're crying with joy because your stupid children aren't there.

They're the only times when I think it might need a tiny clarification.

Will you just like keep me on the straight and narrow here, David?

If I ever start veering towards mentioning any kind of time when they're a little bit tiring, because I do want to come across as a decent guy, ultimately, in all of this.

Okay.

Well, you're not quite doing that yet, but we're in this for life and we're still early in the process.

We can all change as people.

Yeah, we can change.

There'll come a time when I'm delighted with whatever my kids are doing and whatever coffee I get, I'm happy with it.

We just haven't, this is a process of rebreaking me down and rebuilding me.

That's what essentially.

I don't know, though.

It'll just be like Ian Rushton goes off to collect his Nobel Prize for Physics, and you're like, it's just so nice when he leaves the house.

All these books about physics that are everywhere.

Oh, I love those moments when I'm alone and happy.

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Hey, thank you, David.

In it for life.

Thanks for agreeing to do this and appearing to still enjoy doing it.

Everything is normal, Jesus.

Hello, Max Rushton.

Here, you might remember me from Series 9, Episode 2 of Parenting Hell.

I'm here to tell you about Dog by the Bakery Door, the debut children's book by author Jamie Bruce.

Dog by the Bakery Door is a charming story of the magical things a little boy sees on a normal trip to get a coffee with his mum.

Perfect for newborns, three-year-olds, six-year-olds, all children.

Just Google Dog by the Bakery Door.

Here's a review from my three-year-old son.

Dog by the Bakery Door.

I have this book.

Full disclosure: the author might be his mother and my wife, but even more reason to buy it.

She has to live with us and a baby 24/7 and has sacrificed her career for mine while also being an amazing mum to two boys.

Thank you, goodbye.