More Rosebud - Dreams - a Rosebud Family "Down Memory Lane" exclusive!

If you're a regular Rosebud listener, you'll know that we have a private members' club, called The Rosebud Family. The Rosebud Family gives anyone who loves Rosebud a range of benefits: ad-free listening to all the main Rosebud episodes, and a different, brilliant bonus episode every Sunday. We'd love you to join - it's a chance for you to enjoy even more Rosebud, and to hear some really hilarious and unguarded Gyles and Harriet chat every week. It costs £4.99 per month plus VAT to join the Rosebud Family - and we hope today's episode will showcase some of the brilliant things you'd get if you joined! And that's because, today on More Rosebud, we're giving regular listeners chance to hear the most recent special episode we released to the Rosebud Family last Sunday... The episode you're going to hear today is part of our monthly "Down Memory Lane" strand, in which we chat about a different subject each week and discuss how it has manifested itself in our pasts. The episode we're giving you today is all about dreams and nightmares, and it's a lot of fun: it takes in Gyles's most recent anxiety dreams, Harriet's erstwhile obsession with Jeremy Vine, and a romantic dream she once had about the ex-Radio 2 DJ Simon Mayo. If you'd like to join the Rosebud family, you can do so by visiting www.patreon.com/rosebud, or clicking here www.patreon.com/rosebud. Enjoy this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:51Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to More Rosebud. If you're listening to this live as we drop it, it means you're listening to it on Tuesday, the 18th of August, in the year of our Lord, 2026. I say in the year of our Lord. That's the way my dad always described the years. He always said, "In the year of our Lord," as in B.C., you know, before Christ, and A.D. anno domini, meaning the year of our Lord. All these things have changed. B.C. is now BCE, I think, before the Common Era. But my dad was born in 1910. Why am I talking about my dad? Because this is a special edition of More Rosebud with a family twist for reasons I will explain in a moment.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  And I'm speaking to you from Edinburgh, where I'm appearing, and the Edinburgh Fringe. And I'm not alone. I'm speaking to you from our studio at the W Hotel in Edinburgh. And the Rosebud family has gathered here today for this episode of More Rosebud. I say the Rosebud family, of course, it's me, Gyles Brandreth. I'm the presenter of the show. And my producer and friend, Harriet Jane. How are you, Harriet?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  I'm fine, thank you.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  In good form?

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Good. And you're staying where? Not at the hotel, you're down the road somewhere.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Pleased with your accommodation?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  It's a very nice flat.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Good. Oh, who needs a good flat? What's the best feature of your flat?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  A comfortable bed.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  That's all I need in life. And I hope a comfortable sofa for your guests.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Yes, very comfortable.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Including your children.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Yes, well, they just sleep in the bed.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Ah, very good, cozy.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't just exile my children to the sofa.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Oh, how interesting.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  I don't think my children would want to sleep in the same bed as me. And I don't think I want to sleep in the same bed as them. I imagine my son Bennett thrashes about and is a nightmare to sleep with, but I don't know, to be honest. The reason we're talking about family is going to become clear in a moment. And our Rosebud family is complete because there are two significant women in my life in Edinburgh. One, of course, is Harriet Jane, the producer, who is also the co-star of our show on the Edinburgh Fringe, Up Memory Lane, every day at 4:00 P.M. Come and see it if you can. The other person who's here, who does share my bed here at the W Hotel, and it is a very capacious bed, which she doesn't need because she's so slim

• 4:14Speaker 02

  and she's younger than springtime, even though we have known each other for nearly 60 years, it is Michelle.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Oh, well, am I, Michelle? I'm not quite sure.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  You are, Michelle. And we met on the 6th of June, 1968. We married five years and two days later.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  Yes, we couldn't find, we couldn't find the stuff we needed to make it, make it happen. So it took quite a long time. Just thought I'd remind you of that.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took us five years to get around to it, but we did get around to it. And then we had three children. We now have seven grandchildren. Harriet, how many children do you have?

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Two.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  You have two children. So, uh, no grandchildren yet.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  So far as you know. In fact, I think we can be pretty certain of that because I've met your delightful daughters. I say this is a family episode, and we're going to talk about the Rosebud family. I mentioned my dad was born in 1910. My father, Charles Brandreth, born in Hoylake on the Wirral, really, near Liverpool, in 1910. My mother was called Alice, Alice Addison. She was born in Rawalpindi, which was then part of British India, but is now a major city in Pakistan, in 1914. So it's a long, long time ago, more than a century ago. But they were good people and I loved them very much and I owe everything to them.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Michelle's parents lived to the, well, into their 80s. Your father was called Alec?

• 5:44Speaker 03

  He was called Alec, yes, Alec Brown.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Alec Brown.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Yes, gave you the opportunity to have something quite simple.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right, because you always found Brandreth a bit of a mouthful.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Yes, it was particularly once I met you.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  And her mother, your mother was called what?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Kathleen, Kathleen Kendall. And she was partly from Ireland, which is where my grandfather came from.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Kathleen Kendall O'Donovan.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  That is correct.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And one of her claims to fame is that she was the first cousin of a very well-known Irish writer called Frank O'Connor.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Yes, he was very famous and a wonderful performer and writer.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think he's regarded maybe as Ireland's greatest short story writer.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  I think, I think the others might be a bit cross to hear you say that.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  You're right. No disrespect to any other Irish writers.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Exactly, just be careful because they're all very good.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  When you and I went to, um, Molly, the Museum of Literature in Dublin, uh, he was, there was a big display all about him.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  So from Irish heritage.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  I used to say that your granny was a nun. I think it was your granny's sister who was a nun.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  You didn't say my grandfather was a nun, did you?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  No, no, actually, it's a very straightforward family and they were lovely people. Uh, Harriet has parents as well. And you, you were born in Devon?

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Yes, I was born in Torbay Hospital.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Ah, and your dad was doing what at the time you were born?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Uh, running a restaurant in Dartmouth.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  He is called Tom Jane. And we, Michelle and I, first came across him, his name, before I met you because he was for some years the editor of The Good Food Guide.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  He was, yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Which was a brilliant publication that we bought every year, a new edition of it, published by the Consumers Association, the witch people. And what made it unique was that it was a guide to good restaurants where the, well, it was the people who went to the restaurants who wrote reports. And then we sent them in to people like your dad, for the years he was the editor. And he then, you know, on the basis of what he learnt, and I know he visited a lot of the restaurants himself and wrote the reports. But he then, so if you took this book, you could rely on it because other people had actually.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yes, given their feedback.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And your mother, what was her name?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Patience.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Patience, lovely. And as regular listeners to Rosebud will know, uh, Harriet lost her mum when Harriet was 12, 13?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  13.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and your mum took her own life. We've, we've talked about this a number of times on Rosebud. And I mention it now because it's, it's relevant to the episode we're going to share with everybody today. Because I think it comes up, you touch upon it in that episode.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, I talk about a dream I had about her. Yeah, that's right. Uh, yeah, and funnily enough, when my mum's parents were naming her, they were choosing between Prudence and Patience. And they said to each other, "She's bound to be the opposite of whatever we call her. And we'd rather have a daughter that was impatient than imprudent." So they called my mum Patience. But given the fact, I've always thought that it's ironic that my mum did take her own life when she was only 42, which is a very impatient thing to do.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  But she was actually known as Paish.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Paish.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  P-A-I-S-H-E was how she spelt it.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I rather love that.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, Paish.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Well, maybe in the show today, Harriet, because I mentioned your mother in the show. Well, you, we talk about her because our show is about memories, particularly about childhood memories. And I often, well, I always mention her name. I might say Patience, known as Paish, or you might remind people of that. It's rather lovely to have a kind of diminutive affectionate term.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Well, the reason we've talked about family is this. Family is, I think, fundamental. Many of the hundreds of guests we've now had on Rosebud over the last three years have talked about the importance of family. And we feel that the Rosebud family is important. We have had literally many millions of downloads around the world, hundreds of thousands of regular listeners. But some of them actually belong to something we call the Rosebud family. The Rosebud family is our kind of in-house club.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, you don't have to be actually biologically related to us to join, do you, Giles?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  The early members were.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Oh, were they? Oh, what, me, Michelle, Giles's son?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Also, my sister.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  And the cat.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  My sister Ginny.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Very important, the cat, Giles, you must remember that always.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  We must remember this. Of course, you don't need to be related to us. The Rosebud family is simply the Rosebud Club. It's an opportunity for people who enjoy Rosebud to get something extra. And the extras include, well, for a start, it's ad-free listening. And then we drop an extra special episode on a Sunday afternoon. Rosebud itself comes out on a Friday in the middle of the night. You can listen to it at two or three in the morning. And on a Tuesday, two or three in the morning. But this was Harriet's idea. She, as a girl, and maybe even as a grown up, used to love that Sunday, early evening,

• 11:12Speaker 02

  late afternoon, Sunday viewing, where you felt you were getting something cosy and warm, but intelligent, you know, those wonderful classic dramas that the BBC used to put out, something reassuring. And she said, if we do a Sunday episode for the Rosebud family, let's do something that people might like to listen to after Sunday lunch. Maybe they're going for a walk, a Sunday afternoon walk with a dog or the cat or the lobster. There wasn't, poet, wasn't it called, Nerval, he used to take his lobster, had a lead, was to walk his lobster through the streets of Paris.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Very sorry for the, for the poor thing, though, to be carried along like that or pushed along.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Anyway, the point is, on a Sunday afternoon, we drop this extra episode. And what is the extra episode? Well, it varies. And we're really enhancing what people in the club can get from the first of September. Because Rosebud now has been running for three years, we're embarking in September on our fourth year. And we've decided we must give more value, more Rosebud, more fun, more insights, more reflections, to people who enjoy Rosebud. So if you join the Rosebud family now, become a club member, it costs, I suppose, the price of a cup of coffee a month, you will get this extra episode every Sunday afternoon.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Next Sunday, I'm going to be reading, well, a, a, a short story that I've written in the style of P G Wodehouse. So I thought for a bit of fun, it's the, it's August, it's coming to the end of August, a bit of summer holiday reading. But next year, we're going to have every Sunday a different episode. Some will be Harriet and me going on a trip down memory lane. Some will be episodes where we reveal family secrets, and we've revealed quite a few so far. Some will be something that I've been calling the Rosebud Archive. Because I've discovered in the basement of our home in London, boxes full of conversations

• 13:23Speaker 02

  I've had with all sorts of extraordinary people who are no longer here. Funny people like Ronnie Corbett, Leonard Rosseto, the great actor. Extraordinary people like Quentin Crisp, the author of Diary of a Naked Civil Servant, remarkable man, a, a, a male model, but also such a wit and raconteur. And I thought, oh, maybe I can share some of these with Harriet on a Sunday afternoon, and we can talk about those people. And then others will be just us, really, going behind the scenes at Rosebud, and telling you what's going on. Is that the idea behind the scenes at Rosebud?

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. What, what did John Major have in his coffee?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Sugar or artificial sweetener? You'll find out on Behind the Scenes at Rosebud. I mean, I'm sure you can't wait to find that out.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  No, but actually, he did have a little nip of something, to be honest.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  He had a cocktail afterwards.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  He had a cocktail. And what was interesting?

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Was he drunk?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  No, he was not drunk. He was not drunk. He was not even, it was a lunchtime, I think.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness. John Major was drunk during Rosebud.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  He was not. It was a very special episode, actually.

• 14:30Speaker 04

  It was, sorry, I shouldn't say that.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  But what was lovely was that after it, he invited, we thought he'd just go, get into his car and disappear. But I think he, I hope he'd enjoyed it, and he knows me and he loves Michelle.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  And he said, let's have a drink, let's unwind over a drink. Because it was, as if people have listened to the episode, you'll know, it's, it's, it's emotional.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's such a lovely episode.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  It was a lovely episode. And we usually record for about ninety minutes. And we were at Grosvenor House Hotel in London. And what was interesting is this, he went up to the barman and told the barman what the cocktail he wanted was, described the ingredients. And the barman said, oh, I know, Sir John, this is your cocktail, I know the recipe. And he had this cocktail served. And I'll put on, actually, I might put it online today, or yes, today, this afternoon, Tuesday, the photograph of you, Michelle, and Harriet with John Major that day. Because it was a very special day for us. So, yes, we'll be giving you the goss of what goes on behind the scenes.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  So that's the kind of offering that we are going to be giving you with the Rosebud family, which is, as Harriet says, it's our special club for people who want that little bit extra. More than more, they want a little twist of Rosebud on a Sunday afternoon. So that's every Sunday, plus ad-free listening, plus opportunities to meet us, and you'll be the first to hear about them. We've had quite a few members of the Rosebud family turning up here in Edinburgh, haven't we?

• 16:02Speaker 04

  We have, yeah, it's been fantastic. Yeah, we've had people coming all the way from Australia, and people coming from Crob and Hastings, via Stansted, but yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  They came up for the day, didn't they? They flew up.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  They did.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Just to see up memory lane.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  In Assembly George Square with you and me at four o'clock, and then they had to fly back.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  But being members of the Rosebud family, we met them afterwards at the meet and greet, and it was such fun to meet them. I mean, they were really lovely people.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  They were.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  But do you also remember the Danish family?

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  A Danish family had come over from Denmark, members of the club, and they looked very smart. So the point is, it's a happy family.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  And it's a family united by an interest in what we do on Rosebud, who want that little bit extra.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  I want us today on More Rosebud to give people a flavour of what it's like to belong to the Rosebud family.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  I did mention that it costs the price of a cup of coffee a month. That does rather depend where you're having your cup of coffee. Because I think it's four ninety-nine a month plus VAT, that's right?

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  So that's a cheap cup of coffee in some of the coffee bars I've been to here in Edinburgh, but quite expensive depending on where you are. But that is all it is. It's four ninety-nine per month plus VAT.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And to join, you go to Patreon, P, online, via the internet.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  You go to Patreon, P A T R E O N dot com, Patreon, P A T R E O N dot com forward slash Rosebud.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  And there, it tells you all about it, how you join, what happens.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  And you can then communicate with us.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  You send us messages.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a chat room.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  There's a chat room, and I reply, you reply.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  It really is a community. And we, I think the reason we're excited about this is twofold. One, we're embarking on our fourth year, and we want to go up a gear, give everybody more of what we like to think of as the Rosebud magic. And two, now having met so many Rosebud family members here in Edinburgh personally, I think we really do feel it is family.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, we do.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  So why don't we give people a flavour of what we gave the Rosebud family this Sunday? Because what was it this Sunday? Was it a trip down memory lane?

• 18:26Speaker 04

  It was, yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  And it began because I, last week, had a couple of nightmares. So I thought I would invite Harriet to join me on a trip down memory lane to recall some of our nightmares, some of our dreams. Some of our dreams when we're asleep are a phenomenon that you described, which is very interesting, which is a kind of being awake dream.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Hmm, yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  That's intriguing.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, listen to the episode to find out.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  But before we do, I want to give people a treat, a piece of music.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  This is a treat that I was given last week. I went to Virgin Radio in Edinburgh, and they wanted to introduce me to their listeners, and it's a music station. And the presenter said to me, well, Giles, I've written a short song in your honour, describing you to people who don't know you. And I thought it might be fun to let you two and everybody who joins us on More Rosebud listen to this little song, which is called Giles and Tribulations. Courtesy of Virgin Radio, here's a little jolly jingle all about Giles. Cue this music.

• 19:36Speaker 05

  Giles and Tribulation, it's Giles and Tribulation. If you're feeling at the mercy of force majeure, call upon a humorist and raconteur. When the weight of your worries is too much to bear, seek wisdom from a man famed for colourful knitwear. Take some inspiration for some ways to keep your chin up, from the favourite biographer of the late Prince Philip. Please don't allow your fears and worries to fester, consult the former MP for the city of Chester. You don't need to stand alone when you've got someone to stand with. So come on down and stand alongside Mr Brandt, he's everything you need for solace and salvation.

• 20:21Speaker 05

  It's Giles and Tribulation.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Wow, I love it. What did you make of that, Michelle?

• 20:33Speaker 03

  I thought, what on earth am I doing, being married to this man?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Well, thank you very much, Michelle. And what's your response, Harriet?

• 20:44Speaker 04

  It's very funny. I love some of the rhymes in it.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  It's clever. Good.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Are we going to cue the rosebud music now?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yes, that was just a little bit of fun for more rosebud. But what this episode is about, really, is introducing people who don't yet belong to the rosebud family to what our club is all about. And it's all about getting together, really, on a Sunday afternoon, for permanent ad-free listening, but getting together on a Sunday afternoon for that extra episode. And this last Sunday, well, we went on a trip down memory lane, reflecting on dreams and nightmares. Just the two of us, Harriet and me, in conversation.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is the sort of thing you can get if you join the Rosebud family and listen on Sunday afternoons. It's just Giles and me usually chatting about nonsense, but it usually ends up being quite funny and quite interesting and surprising, doesn't it?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  We like to think so.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  And apologies if you're listening to this and you are either Simon Mayo.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  Jeremy Vine.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Prince.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Oh, Lord.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Luckily, R.I.P., so he can't listen.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that Prince. Good.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  No, Prince Rogers Nelson, the brilliant rock star, or anyone else I've mentioned in this episode in an inappropriate dream situation. Can I say this is all just stuff that happened in my dreams, not in real life? So, Simon Mayo, you're spared any genuine romantic advances from Harriet Jane.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Can I say?

• 22:22Speaker 04

  It was just in my imagination.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Can I say, Simon Mayo, dream on?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  This, I think, is a fun one, and it's typical of what we do on a Sunday afternoon. We just get together and we talk. Sometimes we're going down memory lane, sometimes we're revealing family secrets, sometimes we're going to be dipping into the archive, sometimes we're going to be giving you behind-the-scenes hot gossip of what goes on in the world of rosebud. This is Giles and Harriet on Dreams and Nightmares. It's all part of the Rosebud family.

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• 24:59Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Gyles Brandreth, and I'm not alone. I'm in a hotel in Edinburgh. It's the W Hotel. It's new. It's an interesting hotel. And I'm with my friend and the producer of Rosebud, Harriet Jane. How are you today, Harriet?

• 25:14Speaker 04

  I'm fine, thanks, Giles.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I always love these episodes because they're special episodes for people who belong to the Rosebud family. And somehow, I feel they are more intimate, because it's just for family members. Though I have to say, the number of family members is growing and growing, so it's quite a large family. But I feel sort of, well, quite familiar with them, quite personally engaged. If you're new to Rosebud, for those that don't yet know, until the 30th of August, Harriet and I are appearing in a show called Up Memory Lane in the fringe of the Edinburgh Festival. Festival's been going since 1947, so is the

• 25:58Speaker 02

  fringe. And we're part of it this year, one of 3,000 different shows.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Giles, I think everyone knows we're doing the Edinburgh Fringe. Every family member knows we're doing it. Most of them have been.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Oh, most of them have been? No.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  And they certainly know. If they don't, they've been either asleep

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Well.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  on a holiday that's lasted about three months, or dead.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Being asleep is very much part and parcel of what I want to talk to you about today. But you're right, it's been a treat for us.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  We have mentioned it quite a lot, Giles.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  At the show, which we do at four o'clock every day here on the Edinburgh Fringe.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  If you don't know, we are in Edinburgh doing a show, guys.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  We're sold out most shows, but people are booking in advance. We're still here until the 30th do come. The point is, after each show, we meet by poster.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Tickets available from our website.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Well, via our website.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  You have to press several buttons, which I hate. But after the show...

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Well, just email me. I'll get you a ticket.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Good. We meet people, don't we?

• 26:57Speaker 04

  We do. We do a meet and greet. Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  And it's quite difficult corralling Harriet, because...

• 27:04Speaker 04

  What?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. I stand, as instructed by the poster, waiting for people to come forward to have their selfies. But Harriet, who is marvelous, I have to say, at meeting and greeting, is all over the place, greeting, getting into deep conversations. Who was it you were talking with yesterday?

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Oh, Johnny Merrick. I mean, he's a member of the Rosebud family.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  And he turned up looking so smart, if I may say so.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Can I tell you what he was wearing? Because it is one of my top favorite fabrics. I mean, I can't believe I've got a top favorite fabrics, but I have seersucker.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Please, that sounds vulgar. What is seersucker?

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Seersucker.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  It's American, isn't it? It feels American.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  I think it must be American. It is striped, and it has a kind of text. Anyway, people wear jackets made of it. You'll have to Google it if you don't know what it is. Not you, I mean, family members, if you are listening to this and you're going...

• 27:57Speaker 02

  I'll have to Google it as well.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  What's seersucker? Because I'm not going to describe it very well. Johnny Merrick, who is a family member, hello, Johnny, and his wife Rebecca is also a family member. She'd come to the show the day before but hadn't been able to find us for the meet and greet. But Johnny did. He was wearing a seersucker jacket, and I said to him, this is one of my top favorite fabrics, and a sort of straw boater, a straw hat, and a pair of, a pink shirt and a tie and a lovely pair of trousers. I mean, he looked fabulous.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Well, as he said to both of us, his mother would not have approved him going to the theatre not wearing a tie. And did you notice the tie he was wearing? It was salmon pink and cucumber green.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  It was lovely.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  It was the striped tie of the Garrick Club.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  Oh, he invited me to lunch.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  I bet he did.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  It's a lovely club. My father was a member, and my son is a member. And for many years, it only had men as members, though now I'm happy to say it has women. I think Julie Dench and Joanna Lumley were the first two female members. Or maybe Julie Dench and Sean Phillips.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Yes, I think it was Sean Phillips.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, two graduates of the School of Rosebud. It's a wonderful club, very theatrical, of course, named after David Garrick. It has lots of members who are actors or in the theatre business, and lots of lawyers, like my father and son were lawyers, journalists. It's pleasantly raffish, and it is the beneficiary of a quarter of the estate of A.A. Milne.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  So it's received a lot of money in recent years, thanks to Willie the Pooh, and they've had that fabulous collection of paintings restored. It's the best collection of theatre paintings anywhere in the world.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Hundreds of paintings of great and interesting actors going back two or 300 years. So when you go for the lunch with Johnny Merrick, make sure he takes you around to see all the pictures.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Takes you upstairs. I mean, it is fabulous.

• 29:58Speaker 04

  I mean, you might be at this lunch as well, Giles.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Oh, that would be... I love going there. I mean, I feel guilty because I'm not a member. I wouldn't... My father was keen for me to become a member, and I, perhaps rather pompously, because I was hurtful to him, I said I wouldn't join any club that my wife couldn't be a member of. And those are the days when it was just men only, so I didn't join it. And then my son joined it, and he was part of the brigade of younger people who voted to make it a more inclusive club. And so it has women members as well as men members now. But it's beautiful. It's in Covent Garden in London, so go there. But I... So, welcome.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  This is a bit of a segue.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  This is a bit of a segue, because I said I wanted to talk about sleep.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  We are in Edinburgh, and for the first time this week, Harriet, this is a trip down memory lane. Up memory lane is the show, down memory lane is this episode. And I thought, if you agree, we might go down memory lane into the world of our dreams and nightmares.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Oh, our subconscious.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Is that what it is?

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Is it our subconscious?

• 31:07Speaker 04

  That's where dreams come from.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Really?

• 31:10Speaker 04

  What?

• 31:10Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. I know they come from somewhere in the brain. I don't know how they work. I do not know how dreams...

• 31:16Speaker 04

  You know about the subconscious?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Well, no. In a nutshell, what is the subconscious?

• 31:20Speaker 04

  I mean, God, I'm not a scientist, but I think Freud was the person that really... I mean, Freud was into dreams, or anything. And I think he was the person that kind of identified that there is this level of awareness in your brain that is going on at all times, which you may not really know is happening, and it expresses itself when you're asleep through these incredible dreams that you have. And when you wake up, you go, oh, my subconscious is processing the death of my cat, or whatever you happen to have been dreaming about.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  So it simply means something that is sub beneath the conscious?

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  According to A.I., who I did consult on this...

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Who's A.I.? Is he related to Freud?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, a lot of Freud, I thought, had been dismissed and ditched. But I know he wrote a big book on, or was that Jung, who wrote a big book on dreams?

• 32:11Speaker 04

  Oh, they, I mean, they were.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  They're all writing about it.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  They were friends.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Well, A I tells me, and you'll agree with this, dreams are vivid, mental, emotional and sensory stories created by the brain during sleep. While they can happen at any time, the most intense and memorable dreams occur during rapid eye movement stage of sleep.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  R E M.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  You know all about this.

• 32:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  When brain activity lights up and closely resembles wakefulness. So you cycle through different stages of sleep all night, from light sleep to deep sleep, and finally to R E M sleep. R E M sleep usually starts about ninety minutes after you fall asleep, and each R E M block gets longer as the night goes on. I didn't know any of this. Um, do you, did you know this?

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Your eyes dart quickly behind closed lids during R E M, which is why it's called rapid eye movement. I never knew any of this. And indeed, this sort of is all making things happen in the brain. Electrical signals going up to the cortex, brain chemicals are doing all sorts of stuff, emotions are being turned on.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Logic is being shut down.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is why I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff now, isn't there, about the importance of sleep and sleep hygiene, so making sure you get a proper deep sleep. Because it's in that part of your sleep, you know, you have to have been asleep for, as they say, ninety minutes or more, and ideally continue asleep all night. And that, they now say this is kind of washing your brain, you need it.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  This may explain my problem and may explain the nightmares I'm going to talk to you about. Because I am now waking up exactly after ninety minutes.

• 33:49Speaker 04

  So you're probably never getting into that.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Occasionally, I can do three hours. It's always, I mean, I could tell you the time when I wake up. Uh, I go to the loo, or I lie there brooding, and then I try to get to sleep again, and it's another ninety minutes, and then I wake up.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  Oh, Giles, this is difficult.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  And this week, I'll share this with you, and then I want to hear about, because it was supposed to be going down memory lane.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  I want to hear about your early dreams. I had two nightmares this week on the same night.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Oh, so you did get into your R E M sleep.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Were they in quick succession, or were they after two ninety minute sessions? I don't know. But I know what a nightmare is. I know the origin of the word nightmare. Do you know what it is?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  No.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  The night part is indeed night, you know, when we are asleep, and the mare part is not a horse, a female horse, uh, though it could be a female horse. It's an old word derived from an old word of a, meaning a monster.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  So it's a monster that in the tradition of the origin sits on your chest.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  So the nightmare is a kind of horrific beast sitting on your chest. And we call a nightmare, a nightmare, I suppose, is just a version of a dream that's not very nice.

• 35:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Is that correct?

• 35:06Speaker 04

  Hmm, I think so, yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  But take me back. So in my time, I suppose I've had sweet dreams. I'm not very conscious of remembering my dreams ever. But I was slightly distressed to get these two nightmares. But before I share those with you, we are on a trip down memory lane. Can you remember the first dreams you had? Can you remember early, early dreams? What's your dream story, Harriet?

• 35:30Speaker 04

  Oh, uh, well, I do remember an early nightmare that I had.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  What sort of age were you?

• 35:39Speaker 04

  Oh, pretty young. I think, you know, four or five or something. And I think it was a, a dream that preceded me wetting the bed. So I do remember that the few times I wet the bed, I remember just before you did it, you would have a dream in which you were basically going, you were going to the loo.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  And you'd wake going to the loo, and it was a horrible feeling, you know, it's awful when you wet the bed. You wake up usually, I, I think after a few seconds, and you wake up with that awful feeling of, oh, no.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, what have I done?

• 36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, and the, but the, I do remember dreaming about a, a ghost who was wearing spotty underpants and doing a wee. And I was dreaming about this ghost, who was actually kind of a fun ghost, a sort of cartoon ghost that was quite funny, but for some reason, it frightened me. I woke up and I was going to the loo, and I, it really stuck in my head, and I remember talking about it to people.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Like, like Casper the ghost?

• 36:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, a bit like that. I think I invented Casper the ghost, because this was before Casper the ghost existed.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Goodness, wearing sort of spotted.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Underpants.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  And weeing.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  It was kind of cartoon sequence.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I woke up and I was doing a pee. I mean, luckily, it was in the days when I still had a, um, plastic sheet under my, you remember your mum used to put?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  A plastic sheet, maybe with a terry toweling top on it, but it was plasticized underneath to stop it going through to the mattress. And that would be under your sheet, so your mum would sort of prepared for the fact you might wet the bed. But, um, I think I only wet the bed three times or something in my childhood.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  But did you, do I remember any sweet dreams from your early childhood?

• 37:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  No, I don't think you remember those.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  What about when your mum died, when you were twelve, thirteen? Do you, do you have, did that lead to having dreams of any kind?

• 37:40Speaker 04

  I think I've only ever had one or two dreams about my mum, I'm afraid to say.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Well, not afraid.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Also, things that you remember, because.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Doing my little bit of research on A I.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  No, no, you forget it. You forget a lot.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  It's clear that you could forget it moments after it happens.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  You can, but if I do dream about my mum, I try to remember it, you know.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And can you remember any of those, when they were?

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, I did have one, and it wasn't very nice. Um, it was that she came to my door and she was completely wrapped in plastic, as if she were a dead body. And she said, I'm not dead, I've been alive this whole time. Um, I just haven't, I've been in another place. And I can't then remember what the conversation was.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  That's.

• 38:34Speaker 04

  But it was pretty disturbing.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  I know it's disturbing, but it sort of relates to one of the things that I know I've said to you about my, uh, dad saying that nobody dies when you're still talking about them, when their name is still alive, they are still alive. In a sense, she was still alive to you in that dream, because she was saying, I'm still here.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  But you found it disturbing, not in any sense comforting.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  It was disturbing.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  And how old were you when that?

• 39:01Speaker 04

  Oh, that was in my adult life. Yeah, that, maybe that was fifteen years ago or something. But no, I haven't had a lot of dreams about my mum. Um, but I can tell you, because I just want to talk about my dreams in general. So I think I have three types of dreams. Um, which is interesting, given the fact this is your subconscious talking. So I think my subconscious is largely telling me three things. I have one type of dream that is essentially really mundane and organizational, and it'll be something like doing the shopping, doing a to-do list for what I need to do tomorrow. You know, it'll be incredibly, um, sort of quotidian and, and awful, awfully sort of, yeah, mundane.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Uh, so I have those, which are probably useful, because you're sort of doing organization in your head. You wake up thinking, oh, I must remember to.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  And are they, are you in color in this dream?

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, sometimes I'm.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Do you see yourself, or are you doing things?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Going around the shops with a trolley and stuff.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Wonderful. And you see yourself, you just see the trolley that you're pushing?

• 40:00Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't know. I think I see the shelves and, yeah. Then I have, um, anxiety dreams. I have a few different types of those.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Give me an example.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Well, a common one that I have, I haven't had it for a while, but is I'm driving, but I can't see out of the windscreen. I'm down by the pedals, driving the car from the floor of the car, and I don't know where the car's going. So I have that sometimes. I love driving, funnily enough. So, yeah, I do have driving dreams where I'm not in control.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  And then the third type of dream I have, and oddly, these are the most vivid to me, and I've had some really funny ones, are erotic dreams. Not graphic, but dreams in which I'm in love with someone usually, and possibly something a bit physical is happening, like cuddling or something. I think I've talked about this before on the podcast, I think I have. And I've had a few which I've woken up and just thought, oh God, how weird. I mean, I had one about being on the back of a motorbike, being driven by the Radio Two DJ, Simon Mayo.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  I vaguely remember this, but it's worth saying it again because.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  I mean, he's not on Radio Two anymore, is he on?

• 41:22Speaker 02

  This is rather the memory.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Classic FM or greatest hits or something. And I woke up and I was in love with Simon Mayo for about half an hour. Because I was on the back of this motorbike with this man I've never thought about in this way. I mean, I've barely given any thought to Simon Mayo, I'm sorry to say. I mean, I've listened to him on the radio and he's fine. But I woke up and I was, I mean, I'd been in this like deeply romantic situation with him, where he was riding around on a bike, which is quite a masterful thing to be doing. And I was on the back and I was holding round his waist. And it was just this wonderful feeling of like being taken charge of by this man.

• 42:06Speaker 04

  And yeah, woke up, I was, for half an hour, I was, oh my God, I've got a huge crush on the Radio Two disc jockey, Simon Mayo, what am I gonna do about this? Anyway, then it fades out, but I've never forgotten it. I had another one in which I was in a bath with an old friend of mine, who I haven't actually seen for years, I was at university with this man, someone that I had never any sexual feelings for. In fact, I would say he was relatively unsexual as a person, as far as I was concerned. I had a dream in which I was in a bath with him, a bubble bath, deep. And he was sitting behind me and covering me in bubbles.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  And I woke up like, oh my God, I'm in love with X. And that was so fun. And I was in love with him for about a day after that.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Well, did you send him a text?

• 43:04Speaker 04

  No, I never got in touch. In fact, I don't think I've seen him since, no, I've seen him once since. And it was, it was kind of, I had the thought went through my head of, I've been in a bath with you.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  You didn't tell him though?

• 43:14Speaker 04

  No, well, I might, I might have done actually, because that's the sort of thing I would do. But so that was one. And then I quite often have dreams about Prince, who's someone that I've had a crush on for a long, long time and who's very important to me and is sort of deep in my subconscious. And then I.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Just explain that, why is he deep in your subconscious? Why is he important to you?

• 43:35Speaker 04

  Because I got into him at a formative time, which is when I was 13. And I think that's a very formative time, obviously. It's a very formative time for music. So I think the music or the films you're into at that age, in fact, there's research into this. They remain the things that you think of as the best things. And you will then say to people, oh, the best time in music was the eighties. And you'll say that forever, because that was when for you, the music was speaking and say, being the most significant. And whatever you Giles were into at that age will remain the thing that you think that's the best literature or the best plays or.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Doing my AI work, I discovered that erotic dreams can begin about the age of 13, 14.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  Well, I think younger for some point.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Well, maybe, for boys, for boys, wet dreams apparently begin sort of around that time.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  Puberty.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Puberty and there's emissions of semen and all that. But what interested me in AIs, I had no idea of this, girls also have exact equivalent at the equivalent age, they have mini orgasms in their teens.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Crumbs.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Which I didn't, I hadn't realised that.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  No, nor did I, no.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Well, except there you are.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  Well, I wasn't, I mean, I was just having like romantic dreams.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Well, I think sharing a bath and having bubbles.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  Oh no, that was when I was an adult. Oh no, that was, that's 10 years ago or something.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I see, only the other day.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, I mean, that was with someone I met at university, it was long before, long after puberty. Oh no, I have them a lot, romantic dreams, yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  So the balance of your dreams is what, what would you say? I mean.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Eighty percent erotic, ten percent no, I'm joking. Um, oh, who knows? Because you also, as you've said, you have loads of dreams that.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently having dreams all the time.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  And it's only a handful that you will recollect.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you have, I think you obviously have lots of dreams you completely forget. You have other dreams that you remember very clearly at the moment of waking. And I often have this where I think, gosh, that was amazing. And you think, I must remember that. And if you were Freud, you'd immediately write it down in your book.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, some people do keep a dream diary.

• 45:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I don't, and then I forget it.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I mean, do you think these dream dowries are helpful? Is interpreting dreams, in your view, I mean, we are totally laypeople, we know nothing about this. Well, I sadly know absolutely nothing, you clearly know a little bit more. Is it useful to keep a record of your dreams? Is it helpful to analyse them or they're just sort of things that happen? I mean, everybody, I assume, everybody I know has both erotic dreams that you've mentioned and anxiety dreams.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  I'm not sure that I've met other people who have keeping things in order dreams, though in a sense that's almost related to anxiety. It's sort of anxiety about daily life, getting things done, making your list, ticking your box. So is there value, do you think, in recording those and interpreting them?

• 46:32Speaker 04

  I mean, I think it would definitely be of interest to look back at your dreams. Do you need to interpret them? I mean, it's definitely telling you something about what's going on in your brain. And that is, you know, your subconscious is interesting because it must be informing your thoughts and your, your actions and your feelings.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Do you have a recurring nightmare?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  No, I used to have quite a lot of bad dreams about losing my teeth. Which I had looked up, I did look up the meaning of that.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 47:06Speaker 04

  Well, it's apparently a fear of death. But then it also said, it could be just a fear of losing your teeth. And oddly, it was happening at a time where my teeth were not in a great place. And so I realised, oh, it was.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  They were no longer in your mouth, that's always a problem.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was literally just a dream about being worried about dentistry. And as soon as I sorted them out, I stopped having those dreams. So I think it was literally just related to dental anxiety, yeah. What about you?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Well, my recurring nightmare, I'm in a kind of aeroplane, though I'm not conscious of the aeroplane, I'm simply flying. And we are flying quite high through very narrow spaces. So there are, we're just getting through holes, we're just missing other aeroplanes, we're just going between skyscrapers, we're sweeping, swooping down, swooping up. It's terrifying, but we survive. I mean, I'm not good on aeroplanes, as you know, because we've been on an aeroplane together. And I get frightened, I mean, I'm, I'm better than I used to be. So I suppose it's partly to do that.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  But it's, when it begins, I know in my head, I've just got to go through with this and it will come to an end. But it's essentially flying in a machine through other narrow spaces. And they're all objects, the other spaces.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Metallic objects, or they are mountains, or they are, and, and on we go. On we keep going and more of them come, more barriers, and yet on we go. So that's my recurring.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  You don't watch Top Gun Maverick with Tom Cruise?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  I certainly would.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  It would terrify you.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  So that sort of thing is it?

• 48:58Speaker 04

  That's the final sequence, yeah, they have to fly through some, you know, canyon or whatever.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's that sort of thing.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, you take it.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  So that's that. I think I did after university or at university, I had nightmares about exams.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Oh, classic, I have those.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Did you have those?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  I still have those.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  You still have those?

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, either missing an exam or turning up realising you've done no revision at all. Yeah, a lot of people still have that exam dreams, yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  The two dreams I had this week, I mean, they're very easy to interpret. The nightmares I had this week that prompted this conversation are both obvious ones. The first one, I'm assuming, well, let me tell you what it is and you can tell me what it is. But I think it's very obvious. I am with a doctor and we, and he's an old doctor, he's got a beard. I mean, he even looked a bit like Freud.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  Oh, brilliant.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  He's an old gnarled doctor and he is an oncologist.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  We're talking cancer.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  So, and of course.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  That's not nice.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  It's not nice, my, my, my father died of cancer, my two sisters died of cancer, a lot of cancer in my family, as there is in many families. So that's an obvious fear at my age. Anyway, I'm with this old gnarled doctor and we then go through a door and he's taking me out into the street, just chatting to me and taking me out. You know, I've just been for a test. Ah, and I'm walking through a ward and in the ward are cots. And in these cots, as he is chatting to me, I glanced down and I pass, I think, three or four cots in which there are other old men looking like the doctor. They are fully clothed, they are in the fetal position.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  And they clearly have got terminal cancer. They're all lying there looking like death. And then I emerge with the doctor at the other end and wake up. And I think, oh, I'm going to share this with Harriet. Then the same night, either in the next bout of ninety minutes sleep, uh, I had a lighter dream, but an anxiety dream. You know, my friend Fanola. I've been thinking.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  You're physio, this is.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  My physiotherapist.

• 51:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Uh, Fanola Burrell is a very, a noted physiotherapist and she and I are writing a book together, which is coming out later in the year, called The Seven Secrets of the Hundred Year Life. And she's based in Switzerland with her husband and her baby Oscar, to whom we've dedicated the book.

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Oh, how lovely.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Oscar's, actually, it was my idea because Oscar is naught years old.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  And I thought, if he lives to be a hundred, he can thank his mum for this.

• 51:44Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  And maybe even me.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  That's nice.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  So we've dedicated the book to Oscar, aged zero, and it's about living to be a hundred. And Fanola and I are very good friends and we talk regularly when I'm doing my exercise class on Zoom with her. She's in Switzerland, I'm here doing my, you know, stretches, trying to get to grips with my bad back, uh, which is brought upon entirely by stress. Anyway, this is the dream. Fanola is organising a party and I'm helping organise the party. And everything goes wrong. The food doesn't arrive, the drink isn't very nice. The flowers we'd planned look ridiculous on the table. Not all the guests who were invited come. In fact, most of them don't come.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  The ones that do come are the wrong guests. Essentially, I'm doing something for Fanola and I'm letting her down.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  And her party is not a success.

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Oh dear.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  So I then wake up. So there are my two dreams. One is obvious, it's about death, fear of cancer, and of course, listeners, uh, dear members of, don't worry. I, I, I'm a regular person, I have every checkup that is going, et cetera. I'm really on the ball with that. I'm on this morning, I'm the ambassador for all these things, you name it. Uh, my prostate is probably the most overtested prostate in the world. Everything that could be tested is tested, so it's not that. But it is obviously fear of death, awareness of cancer, all, it's quite obvious stuff. And the anxiety dream involving Fanola, well, that's just an anxiety dream, but it's quite intriguing.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  And I haven't been conscious of having nightmares for a while.

• 53:25Speaker 04

  Hmm, and do you remember any childhood dreams or nightmares?

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Eee, now, my childhood nightmare, I did remember one the other day. And yes, I think I did have a childhood dream based on The Wizard of Oz.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  And the, the wicked witch who was on the bicycle.

• 53:50Speaker 04

  Oh, she's terrifying.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Uh, and basically the dream is you, lucky you, on a motorbike with Simon Mayo.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Uh, exactly, absolutely. And you're, you're, you're holding on to him, not clinging on to him.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  No.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  I'm on the bicycle with the wicked witch of the West.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  Oh dear.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And we are going along and I'm holding on for dear life.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  Well, you would be.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  You would be.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  She cycles like a maniac.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  She cycles like a psycho.

• 54:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Uh, and so, uh, because of course, uh, I saw the film several times as a child. I loved the film, you know, like everybody of my generation, I've had another Judy Garland. I mean, it was just, just magic. Um, also, for me, it's a great film.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  It's such a great film.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Because it reveals what life is all about. At the end of that film, when she goes to see the mighty Oz and the curtain is pulled back and you see it's just a fat, late mid-aged man turning a handle.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  There is nothing behind the curtain.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  That tells you all you need to know about life for the rest of your life. So that was my childhood nightmare, I think.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  So what happened, you're just cycling along with her?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  That's it, that, that's the whole dream.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  That does sound frightening.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Until, until you wake up. Well, there may have been more to it, but that's all I remember is, is the cycling with that terrifying, with her cackling and me screaming on the back.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  She really is frightening in that film, isn't she?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  She's so frightening.

• 55:21Speaker 04

  When she's dispatching the flying monkeys, is it that same, that same witch?

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's, there's only, I think there's only one wicked witch in it.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  I think there is, isn't there?

• 55:30Speaker 02

  That's why I've never really been able to buy into the spin-off, Wicked. I know people love all the Wicked's, um, but I, I go for the great original.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  I saw the musical of Wicked and it didn't do much for me.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Fun enough, it didn't do much for Michelle either.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  And I haven't seen the film.

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• 57:55Speaker 02

  Is it possible to induce dreams?

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Well, there are people that, um, do this thing called lucid dreaming.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Tell me about this.

• 58:04Speaker 04

  Well, I think it's where you, you, yes, you sort of are able somehow to control your dreams. For example, you could wake up in a dream and then make yourself go back to sleep and go into it some more. I think there are people that maybe can do that. I mean, I can't do that. Yeah, so I don't know, you've got to have some sort of real control over your subconscious, I guess. I, I mean, the only thing I've done, which I think is, was a strange experience and was a bit like wakeful dreaming, was, I think, so when I had that therapy about five years ago,

• 58:45Speaker 04

  where I was with this brilliant woman, Dr Maya Jankowska, my therapist.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  She did this thing with me called brain spotting, where she would, and my eyes were involved. She'd get me to look at a certain point on this special quilt she had behind her. And she'd get me to visualise, or she would just say, what are you thinking? What are you thinking? And weirdly, I was having sort of visions. And a lot of them were about my mum, because I'd gone to her saying I wanted to try and, um, just deal with some of the sadness I was feeling about my mum at that point.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Looking for closure.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  No, I was just, I was just really missing my mum, you know.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Understandable.

• 59:27Speaker 04

  And I'd never had therapy before.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  And I was brooding a lot about my mum at that point, thinking about her a lot, crying a lot, missing her a lot, feeling angry a lot with various people. And it was bothering me, it was getting in the way of my life, you know. So I went to her to try to deal with some of this and she was very helpful. And one of the things she did, obviously she did lots of just letting me talk. But then she quite quickly, after about two sessions, said, we're going to start doing this thing called brain spotting, where she'd get me to look on this cloth and tell me what I was thinking, tell her what I was thinking. And I was having these visions, which seemed to just happen involuntarily. And they got more and more elaborate.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  And they became like waking dreams of my mum. And, you know, no, I, you know, I said to you, I'd rarely dreamt of my mum.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 04

  Sleeping. But I had these vivid visions of her during these therapy sessions, which were so wonderful and healing. Um, in which I was with my mum, uh, in sometimes imaginary places, like what I would describe as heaven, you know, we would be in a sort of spiritual plane, in this amazing meadow, lit by beautiful sunlight, holding hands. She was washing me in one of them, peeling these layers off my chest with a bucket of water and a sponge, really gently washing me. That was so lovely.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  There was another in which I invited her into my home, my home as it was then, sat her at my kitchen table and showed her hundreds of photographs of my children. And she sat and looked at these photographs. It was so lovely and I sat with her and showed her pictures of my children, which was the most lovely experience because she never, obviously my mum never met my children or saw me even as an adult.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  And how much of this was prompted by the therapist?

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  None. She would just say, tell me what you're, you know, now she'd say, she'd direct my eyes. She ident, basically we identified at the beginning of these sessions, a part of the cloth, the direction that my eyes would move when I felt sad and a direction my eyes would move when I was thinking more positively. Sad was on the left, positive was on the right, it's weird. And but in the end, we were able to just go into these visualisations really easily. She was not saying anything, I mean, she'd just say, what are you thinking? And, and she does, she did something similar to me recently when I was having this thing called EMDR, which is similar, it's eye movement thing.

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  But it's similar to what you're doing when you're asleep, I guess, trying to simulate that. And again, I'd be having vision, waking visions. And it surprises me how easy it is to have these things.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And it's stream of consciousness, as you, yes, because you're speaking out loud so she can hear you.

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  But you're focusing on the image she's asked you to focus on, so you're not looking at her.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  No, no, but and then all these things.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Are your eyes closed?

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  Sometimes you close your eyes and all these things start coming to you.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  The words come tumbling out and you're not, as it were, painting the picture in the sense of thinking through, I'm going to say this, you're just saying what's in your head.

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  No, no, it's just I'm thinking these things.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  How wonderful.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  I mean, recently she was saying to me, where are you? And I'd be like, I'm crouching down in the corner of my parents' sitting room and I'm listening to them arguing on the front door, you know, I'd feel it really vividly. Yeah. Um, anyway, this, these waking visions I had of my mum were so amazing and really helped me to feel much better about my mum. I haven't felt in that way that I was sad, missing, longing since. I felt totally comforted by them, to the point where I started to feel my mum was around me all the time. I'd be driving my car and I'd feel she was in the passenger seat.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  Or I'd be able to just sort of turn to her and say, oh, hi mum. Yeah, I felt her presence. I, it's, Maya said to me, you've allowed your mum back into your life. She was there, she was waiting and you've allowed her to come back. Yeah, so it was so brilliant. So I recommend to anyone who's grieving to try something like either brain spotting or EMDR with a really good person like Maya. Um, because it is very powerful and for me was incredibly helpful.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  We might invite family members, uh, or indeed anyone who hears this, um, if they've had similar experience.

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  As good as yours, or maybe even not good.

• 1:04:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  To share by, by writing, would, would that be a good idea?

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Um, and it's hello at rosebudpodcast.com.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Similar to that, hello at rosebud.com.

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  And I think that is really similar to dreaming. I mean, you're awake, but you're accessing, somehow you're going into your subconscious or, yeah, it's, it's very, very cool.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  It's often said, because you have real people, both in this, obviously this living dream, because you're awake, but also in your sleeping dreams, real people have appeared to you.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Um, I don't think many real people appear to me in my dreams.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  I mean, it used to be said that everyone dreamt of the Queen, the late Queen, Elizabeth the second.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Oh, I'd love that.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  There used to be, there was in fact a book done of, called Dreaming About the Queen.

• 1:05:07Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  With hundreds of accounts of people from all over the world, not just the British Isles, but all over the world, the Commonwealth, people vividly dreaming about either meeting the Queen or being with Elizabeth the second.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  And interestingly, the same phenomenon has not occurred apparently, uh, in the reign of King Charles. So, uh.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  I bet a lot of people have dreamt of Diana, though.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  That'd be interesting.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  I'm sure.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  I mean, you remember what happened after she died, you know, the connection people apparently felt with her.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Huge, huge connection.

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  So I'm sure people dream about her.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  No, I, it doesn't surprise me, lots of people haven't been dreaming about King Charles, but maybe we will now, Giles.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  No, no, now put the idea to people's head.

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  I might have an erotic dream about King Charles.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Well, why not?

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can imagine being in a bubble bath with him.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Well, why not?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  I, well, now you mentioned it, uh, what is interesting to me is that in all my dreams.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  I don't think any of my family appears, I don't think people.

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  I don't think, and if I have had, uh, erotic dreams as a child or even more recently, I think it will have, if, if I've identified the other people, they will have been fantasy characters or characters from my sort of, my sort of library of, uh, of fantasy.

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Um, rather than real people.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  Fascinating world this of dreams, isn't it?

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  Absolutely fascinating, yeah. But I think it is true, I mean, I have to say, I've got the odd person in my life who likes to tell me their dreams in quite a lot of detail.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Um, there's one person in particular who has quite vivid dreams, quite a lot.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Who is this, man, woman?

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  They shall remain nameless. Um, and they tell me their dreams. And I do often think, you know, it's, it's a truism, isn't it? There's nothing more boring than someone else's dream. I mean, I know we've spent 40 minutes talking about our dreams, so maybe, sorry if people have found that boring.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  No, because.

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  It can be a bit boring.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  It's not boring because it's triggering, I hope, in people, recollections of their own dreams.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  I hope so.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  And we have been going down memory lane.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it can be a bit boring listening to other people's dreams. Yeah, I think people think they're interesting because they're interesting to you. You, the person that's had it, it's fascinating. Um, but to other people, a sort of blow by blow account of your dream, I don't, I think, once in a while, if it's Simon Mayo on a motorbike, that's fun.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  I mean, I thought that was fun. Um, but yeah, the blow by blow account of your dream, keep it to yourself. Write it in your dream diary. Don't either talk about it on the Rosebud Podcast or tell your friend about it in detail because they're probably bored.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  I don't agree with that. I think do write about it to the Rosebud Podcast.

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, no, you can.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  We do want to hear from you, we want your erotic dreams, your anxiety dreams.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  Especially if you had an erotic dream about Giles.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Well, you do know that Jeremy Vine, the Radio Two host.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  Oh, we've got to talk about this, Giles.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Had a dream about us.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  I bumped into him by chance, I hadn't seen him for a while. Jeremy Vine, if you're one of our international listeners, is a very well-known British, uh, radio and TV presenter, he's got his own show on Channel Five, his own show on Radio Two on the BBC.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, he probably knows Simon Mayo, doesn't he?

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  Uh, they may be having dreams about each other, who knows?

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  They may.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Anyway, uh, I was at a lunch the other day and hadn't seen Jeremy for a while, we are friends. Um, we sat down, there was somebody, oh, in fact, sitting next to, between us, was Patricia Hodge, who's soon going to be a guest on Rosebud, that's by the by.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  Oh, Rose, leads back to Rosebud.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Um, anyway, he leant forward and said, oh, I had a dream about you Giles and Harriet. And you, uh, he said, I had to rescue you from the building in the dream. And I thought, oh my God, was it a dream, was the building on fire? What was happening? I don't, no, no, no. He said, you were on the balcony and I had to bring you to safety. As though we were about to jump off the balcony.

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Anyway, we were saved by Jeremy Vine. Unfortunately, it was a lunch and there were lots of other people there, so I couldn't say to him, why do you think this happened? Why are we occurring in your dreams?

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  What's going on?

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  Fascinating.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  And uh, somebody else thinking they have got to save us.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, fair enough. I mean, anyone listening would be thinking that.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  From ourselves, sure, from the bl- well, not from a blazing building, from a balcony.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  They can hear the stress coming over the airwaves.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Well, I'm the fellow who's waking up. I mean, doing Rosebud, doing a show with you, and I'm waking up in Edinburgh having nightmares.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  Well, Jeremy Vine can clearly tell that we're in some emotional and psychological distress.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  We are. We're in turmoil.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  I mean, I have to say, just to, to go back to my clearly, my obsession, I'm sorry, anyone listening can think Harriet James got a one-track mind. It's the romance track because Jeremy Vine could easily have been a subject of one of my dreams, my romantic dreams. I'm going to call them romantic dreams, not erotic dreams. Romantic dreams, that's what they are.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Because they're different. I mean, there is a phenomenon of the erotic dream, and this is not that.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  These are not dreams, as you say, that would lead to, no, they are dreams in which I'm in love. And there might be some physical contact, but it's, it's very light, you know, it's intimacy rather than...

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  But that, if I may say so, is also what you love and seek.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  Yeah. So what, what I was going to say is, it amazes me, I haven't had one of these about Jeremy Vine.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Because in the past, I have had months in which I've been obsessed with Jeremy Vine, because I used to listen to him on Radio Two every lunchtime when my children were small. And I became incredibly invested in his lunchtime show.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  Do, do you know him now?

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  No, but I met him once at an awards ceremony and slightly embarrassed myself by bowing down in front of him. You know, like you would do in front of a um...

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  Oh, salam.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  A salam, yeah. I bowed down three times and kissed his feet. Because I said, Jeremy Vine, you are one of my all-time heroes. And the people I was with afterwards said, Harriet, that was so embarrassing. Why did you do that? I just got overtaken by excitement. I prostrated myself in front of Jeremy Vine. He took it like a man and was gracious, probably thought, who is this absolute lunatic? And little did he know, 10 years later, he'd be having a dream about me throwing myself off a building. I mean, it's extraordinary.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  It wasn't just about you.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  It was about us.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  No, but you weren't bowing down in front. I'm just saying, you know.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  But the good news is, I do know him. He's genuinely a friend of mine. I have his mobile number and I shall be texting him.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  I don't know if he's a member of the Rosebud family.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Well, he must be, otherwise...

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  I don't think he is.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  And he may not be a member of the family, but he knows about us, otherwise why was he dreaming about us?

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  He won't have heard this.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  No, he won't have heard this. Um, but I will be texting him, not to tell him about this, but to invite him. Would you like him to be a guest on Rosebud?

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  OMG, yeah, I'd love it.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Um, what does the MG mean?

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  OMG.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, OMG.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  I will arrange for us to have Jeremy Vine as a guest on Rosebud.

• 1:12:37Speaker 04

  Oh dear, I don't know if I could cope with that.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  And we will both, as he arrives in the room, prostrate ourselves, see if it prompts any memories.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  See if he can recall.

• 1:12:46Speaker 04

  No, he won't remember that.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  Well, I might say to him in the course of the interview, obviously, you attract fans and over the years, because you're, you're tall, you're handsome, you're a nice guy, you come over as a nice guy.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  And a wise person who doesn't flaunt it. He's a sensible, serious-minded, interested, curious individual.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  He's got a fun sense of humour, that's what I like about him.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  He's got a brother who is a very successful comedian.

• 1:13:11Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, Tim. Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  You know, the, the man who originated the line, Velcro, it's a rip-off, that's Tim Vine. So, Tim Vine and Jeremy Vine are two remarkable, maybe she had them as brothers, maybe having the better of them coming together.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  They seem quite different.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  They are. They're physically different as well. One is shorter and a little rounder of face. And the other is, well, the other is Jeremy, Jeremy Vine.

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  The other is devastatingly handsome.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  Good. I will, I will get him for you. I will bring, this is how we're going to bring this family episode to a close. I'm going to bring Harriet Jane's dreams to life.

• 1:13:45Speaker 04

  Dear. I'm pleased to tell you that my passion for Jeremy Vine has waned over the years. So it'll be fine. If you invite him on, I'll be able to, I'll cope.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  I, but it may be reviving.

• 1:13:55Speaker 04

  No, I think it's gone. It's been and gone.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  And we'll maybe do it here, where if, is there a bath we could get the buggers going in? There's certainly a shower. I will, I will get that to happen. So I'm going to bring your dreams to life. Please do not bring my nightmares to life. I don't want any more anxiety dreams. I don't want any more depressing dreams about death.

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  Oh no, that was a horrible one.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  I don't think I can recall a sweet dream for, oh, half a century. My trip down memory lane has not included sweet dreams. I have sweet dreams that I conjure up in my head as I'm going to sleep, and maybe I'm having them and I don't remember them.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  But I've really enjoyed our conversation, Harriet. It's wonderful. Thank you for being a member of the family. We love you. We're, we're actually very excited about the family and we're, we're growing it. So do please, um, spread the word. Join us on, uh, Rosebud Reflections if you do Facebook.

• 1:14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh yeah, it's really good. You know, we've got 4,000 members of Rosebud Reflections.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Well, that is fantastic.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  And we have a hundred and plus thousand members of us on Instagram, don't we?

• 1:15:08Speaker 04

  Well, any old person can follow you on Instagram, but I feel the Facebook Rosebud Reflections people are true lovers of the Rosebud podcast.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  If you are following us on Instagram, we do not regard you as any old person.

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  No, but there's a hundred thousand of you.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but there are millions of people who hear the podcast around the world.

• 1:15:23Speaker 04

  That's true. But, um, yeah, thanks for following us anywhere. I mean, other than through the streets of Edinburgh in the dark, that's a bit menacing. Don't do that.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  But we have had people following us in the streets. Yeah, I have.

• 1:15:34Speaker 04

  Speak for yourself.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do speak for myself. They've been following me, chasing me, asking me. Yes.

• 1:15:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't get that, thank you.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  And, and, no, no, well, we've had a few people actually asking for autographs, old-school people, but mostly asking for selfies.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't get much of it. You do.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Can I say?

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  Giles can't walk along the street without someone coming up to him.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  They are, but they also, they want you as well. They say, oh, is that Harriet?

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  No, by the poster they want me because they recognise me there, but they don't, when I'm just walking down the road, they don't.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Are beginning to recognise you, aren't they? People do, they do, they are.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  If you're listening to this, no, he's exaggerating.

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  They love your voice. I love your voice. I love your presence. Uh, I think you're brilliant. There'll be, oh, next week on, uh, our lovely time with you here, we're going to be having me and Harriet, I'm going to be reading some of my PG Woodhouse spoof. As a bit of summer fun.

• 1:16:25Speaker 04

  That's fun.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Because we've finished The Candlelight Murders and we're going to have a week just in August of me doing a bit of PG Woodhouse. And then come September, we're going to be doing something new for Rosebud family members. So stay tuned. It'll just be the two of us, but we hope you will enjoy it.

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  I've enjoyed this very much. We enjoy having you there. Thank you for enjoying Rosebud. You're the best. Cue the music.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

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