Matt Preston - Only 14 Summers Left

According to Matt Preston, he only has 14 more summers. And he’s determined to make the most of them. 💌Join 5,500+ people getting our takeaways and favourite moments from this episode in our weekly newsletter - http://bit.ly/45NyQDy Known predominantly for his role on the inaugural (and incredibly successful) seasons of MasterChef Australia, alongside his excellent choice of cravats, Matt Preston is a recognisable face in most Australian households. Joining Hugh, Ryan and Josh in the studio (in yet another incredible outfit), Matt delicately talks through the importance of having a conversation with your parents about end-of-life care. In a decision that requires both deep emotion and administrative focus, Matt draws from his experience with his grandmother, and then his mother, about how to ensure the people you love are nurtured, cared for, and celebrated in the way they would have wanted. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. 0:00 – The typo to end all typos 9:13 – Every family has a scandal 24:34 – The unknowables of epilepsy 30:45 – Grieving what could have been 40:44 – Mission of mortality: make it count 44:47 – Parenting not like your parents 53:40 – Conversations about end-of-life care 1:07:35 – The secret ingredient to marriage 1:13:46 – Logistics of death and dying If you want to watch the full episode (and see Matt’s outfit), follow this link - https://youtu.be/sEN8Mfapi6Y 🫖Other episodes of The Imperfects mentioned in this episode Kate Reid (Pt 1) - The Impossibility of Perfection - https://bit.ly/476XBfg Kate Reid (Pt 2) - The Life-Saving Croissant - https://bit.ly/4aM7bqd Christie Whelan Browne - Unbreakable - https://bit.ly/4ukPhTk 📺Things to watch The Hospital - In The Deep End - https://bit.ly/4rYN6mw Croquenbouche Masterchef Episode - https://bit.ly/3OILYVG 📖Things to read Big Mouth, by Matt Preston - https://bit.ly/4cUigXG 🩵SUDEP Support Services SUDEP Action - https://sudep.org Epilepsy Foundation - https://bit.ly/4r9W27I *The average life expectancy for Australian males is calculated at birth, and does not take into account their personal circumstances. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Australian males will, on average, die at 81. That's 14 summers left. We don't have probably enough conversations about last phase of life. Have you sat with your parents and had that conversation? Rather than when they're lying in the hospital bed, unable to communicate. And you and Hugh have a different attitude to what they said they wanted.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  The thought of having that discussion is an acceptance of that next stage of life that, yeah, I'm not ready and I just don't know how I'll cope when they are gone.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Have any of you had parents, grandparents with dementia? With my step-grandmother, I was sitting with her at the table and she pours milk all over the toast and then she just looked at me and says, "I have no idea what I'm doing, but it really doesn't matter." And then proceeds to answer.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Matt Preston is one of the most well-known faces on Australian television. In 2009, he was appointed as a judge of MasterChef Australia.

• 0:53Speaker 00

  One of my friends on the TV said, "If you take the MasterChef job, your marriage will not survive it."

• 1:00Speaker 01

  It is an exciting day. Look, it's always an exciting day when we're here together. Matt Preston's on the show. We'll speak to him very, very shortly. And, and he was great. Like, we've already chatted to him, obviously, but we'll play that soon. And there's so much exciting stuff and really moving stuff that Matt talks about.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  What a gloriously presented man he is.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  When he walked into the studio wearing what can only be described as a magnificent suit.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  You know, when, you know, when Kate Reid from Loon, croissant queen, came on the show and she, and she unfortunately didn't arrive with croissants and we were all a little bit quietly disappointed.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  A bit disappointed that Matt Preston didn't walk in with a Crocker Bush tower.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I just think that's sort of expected at this point, you know? Like, you make that. Weled in. Yeah. You make that big of a deal about Crocker Bush on your MasterChef show and not bring in a free Crocker Bush?

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I think just think twice about that. Anyway, he does, he talks, you know, it's amazing stuff and most people know him from MasterChef, obviously, but his life is, it's just the stuff he's gone through, like losing his brother to epilepsy when they were very young. And his mother, like sadly passed away recently from dementia. And, and yeah, he also talks like, it's a really interesting chat about, you know, what to talk to your parents about in terms of like, I guess like what their wishes are, once they.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Preparing for end of life.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Preparing for end of life, something that's like a really tough conversation. So we talk a bit about that as well.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was so moved by that bit. In fact, that's what I want to talk about after the episode because I felt like there should be a bit more of like a, like a playbook of what to do for all of us because it's coming for, if it hasn't already arrived on your doorstep, it's coming for all of us, that, that moment where our parents are in a position where, yeah, anyway, so I want to talk about that afterwards. Probably worth mentioning also, Matt has been on incredible shows, season two is out now. At SBS, yeah, the hospital. He follows various medical staff, nurses and doctors around the hospital to, to different conditions or people are different, suffering from different illnesses and conditions. And they're ones that relate to his life, which will become obvious.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Croc and Bush surgery.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Like how, like if a croc and Bush ball falls, like how to safely get it.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't see that episode, but that would be interesting.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  That would be amazing.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, not as moving as other ones I saw where it was on the dementia ward and all that kind of stuff, but that does sound good.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I think we can make the assumption that most people saw the croc and Bush episode of MasterChef from like 15 years ago.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  The most I actually don't know. I don't know what a croc and Bush is, but I assume it's a glorious meal.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a big tower of, you know, those towers.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yes. What is the, is it croc and Bush? No, I think it's, I think it's a, well, Bridge, who actually worked on MasterChef for years can probably tell us.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Can you yell it out, Bridge? What is it?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Is it croc and Bush?

• 4:01Speaker 03

  I didn't work on that thing.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Okay, she didn't work on that season. That's okay. Um, but no, I'm pretty sure it's a French word. That's all one word. I think I've seen it written. I think it's a croc and Bush.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I was picturing Crocs and Bush.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Not that, but yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Mate, mate, it's not, it's not, it's croc and Bush.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  We. Okay, continue.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  That is a strange French accent you've rolled into at the end.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  We, we, we, merci, merci.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Can I share with you guys very quickly before we get it, I'm very excited to, to listen to Matt's interview. Just before we do that, I just, I must share something with you quite urgently.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  One of the things with my ADHD medication.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Which is?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Dexanetamines.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  I've noticed one of the really big side effects is the amount of typos in my text messages has gone through the roof.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  I'm just in such a hurry to do things and like, I can't, I just need to.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  Anyway, so I, I am going to share something with you guys, heard the story, but there's actually, I actually have a better. This happened to me yesterday.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  What?

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So. Because there's one that you told on stage when we were doing the live show.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'll tell this very quickly because I haven't heard it, but in Newcastle doing a live show. Our son Benji had just joined, joined a cricket team, which we're so excited about. We're halfway through the season. We were doing our tech rehearsal before the show started. And I got invited into the, into the parents WhatsApp group for cricket. And they were writing the loveliest messages. And as you guys know.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Like what sort of messages? Like, you know, excited, this is going to be great.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  This is going to be great. So good to have someone else come into the team. There will need someone to score. We'll need this. We could help with that. And, and I hadn't really messaged him yet, but I, I just very quickly wanted to acknowledge that I'd seen the messages before we went did our show. And I thought I'll message them later tonight when I have time. And I went to write very quickly as we were on stage rehearsing, I just quickly wrote, I'm very, very keen.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yes, which is good. Put the phone back in my pocket and then.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  You're in a hurry. There's a lot going on. Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Turns out I actually wrote to all those parents I've never met before.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  And just, just for context, how long after you sent it, did you notice what you've actually sent?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Two and a half hours.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  So it's been two and a half hours of this message that you actually sent.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  On a very active WhatsApp group.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I wrote, I'm very wet.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  And, and, and when you saw that, because this is a bit.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Nearly signed it. I nearly.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. This is horrifying thing to say.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Had anyone written anything underneath?

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Not, not a word.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Not a word, but did you swipe across to see how many people had read it?

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Everyone had, everyone had seen it. Everyone had seen it.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  And just.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  And I panicked and I deleted it, which I think was worse.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  I mean, ironically, crickets.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Anyway, so I think I have a worse one. Well, you can be the judge. Christie Willen Brown. Friend of the show.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Superstar actress comedian.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, been on the show. We love her.

• 6:52Speaker 03

  That's hard to embarrass yourself in front of.

• 6:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's probably good. I sent it to her.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Still not great. So she came to our live show and she was very inspired. She related to the difficulties and I've had with kids and no sleep. And we will occasionally message just checking in, how are you going? How bad is life without sleep?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  And she messaged the other day and said, how's your day out of 10? And I said, it was a couple of days ago. I said, it's actually a nine. And she said, what, what on earth? How did you do that? And I wrote this one back to her. Or she said, I had a shocking day. And I said, I really hope you have a much better day today. I do have a new morning routine that has been really helpful in setting up a good day. My alarm goes off at 5:45 AM and I do two simple things. I do 15 minutes of breath work and then I wank the dog.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I mean, thank God Matt Preston's wearing a cravat because the level of intellectualism needs to go up from here. That is.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Horrendous, horrendous.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  I can't remember anything you've said before I wank the dog.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  So I didn't.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  All I can think of from this whole episode up until now is I wank the dog.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  It's definitely the title.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Matt Preston, I wank the dog.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  So again, sent it very quickly and then just put my phone down, came back to it a while later and messaged Christie. I'm really sorry, but I'm calling RSPCA immediately. And I said, oh, no, no, no. I obviously meant walk the dog. She said, you said what you said. This is concerning. Then she sent me a gif of a dog humping, but anyway.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And you were like, no, no, no, no, no, no. To be clear, I don't let the dog hump. I'm the one who does all the work. That's giving too much credit to the dog and not enough credit to me.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  That is good stuff.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  That's top shelf.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's, it is a direct correlation to my DEXA pheromones where I am just so keen to get stuff out there, do stuff. I need to, I don't have time to go back and check the messages. I just get to get stuff done. So anyway.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  You've got to get the jobs done.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd hate to think how fast you're walking the dog. But.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Anywho.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  But.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Um, Matt Preston, um, that is stunning work here. Stunning.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  We segue into this every time.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think we can.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  I didn't think about that.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  I don't think we can, but, um, this is, look, this is, look, you've got that as a little bonus bit, um, but let's now move into the bit that you've actually came for, come for. No. No. Okay, this is horrific. Um, Matt Preston, everyone. Master chef, legend, um, wonderful man, the nicest man. Uh, here is Matt Preston.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Well, safe to say, when you looked at the name on the episode for today's guest, you were pretty impressed, then.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Oh dear.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  How many years has it been, Ryan? It's been like 20 years and your humour has not improved.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Never done that joke before. That's the first time I've been waiting a long time to do that one. How did it feel? Average. Worse than I imagined it, to be honest. Did not, um, the house still is up? Thought it would be down by now, but that's okay.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  I guess I know I'll have a go at trying to impress Matt.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Great. Leave an edit point. No, you start here.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Thank you, Hugh. Just some, just trying to build some rapport around food. So this morning I had breakfast at Chibi. No, did he? Oh, I love those guys.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go. Good. That's how you do it, right?

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Really good.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Great local reference.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Thought I might have dinner at Marion later.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Oh, very nice.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  We've definitely, we've definitely kept everyone in the inner north of Melbourne, that's for sure.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  I reckon, I reckon both of those, I reckon both those are places worth, worth travelling for. And again, you know, we have to understand that Melbourne isn't nice, but it's what people do come down from Sydney, Brisbane.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Australian Open.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Australian Open, football. I mean, I drove in, I drove in this morning and I love that thing about being in Melbourne at this time of year. It's a beautiful day, but you've got, the Melbourne Footballers training on that paddock. In the background, you can see Melbourne Victory. Further in the background, you can see some Storm players running some lines. Then you go past the Punt Road Oval, then the Richmond. It's like, it's that kind of, everything is right with the world. Sports still trundling on, everything's right with the world.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  It's so true.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Did I hear you correctly then? Did you just say running some lines? That is great.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  I'm not, I'm not going to comment one way or the other.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  That's wonderful, like terminology. That's very impressive.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Really? Running some lines? I mean.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  No, don't go there, because I know where you're gonna go.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't gonna go there.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  I know where you're gonna go and we're just.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Because I actually haven't been to the Logies in a long time, so.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  I was more thinking of like running lines as an actor.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  We, we once, we once at the, when we were a chef, we came with this great idea that we'd, we'd do the Logies red carpet with Sniffer Dogs. It was really funny, just to turn up with three stations and walk down the line. We thought that might, that might be quite amusing.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  I think it would be hilarious, but it would also, people would, there would be. Genuine pain. Genuine pain.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  You'd need more than a few of them.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. It would be as sparse as when I first walked the red carpet and it's all the, I haven't told you the story, Matt, but um, it's a very sad Logie's story where I was once, it's like, at some point in my illustrious television career, and I was walking the red carpet, but I didn't want to. I would usually try and avoid it, usually try and walk round the back.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great place to do it.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  And I got there with Hames and Andy. They were doing the opening monologue. So they arrived, very start. Started, you know, greeting people, like taking photographs and stuff. And I was trying to sneak around to get through, get off the red carpet, because it just brings me so much anxiety. But the woman who was producing the red carpet, she saw me and I knew her from when I used to work at Rove and she said, oh, Ryan, Ryan, can you do me a favor? Can you come do some photos and stuff on the red carpet? And I was like, oh, I was like, please, I, I really prefer not to. I don't really like doing it. She's like, oh, you'd be doing me a huge favor. They haven't got anyone to take photos of. And there's like a hundred photographers there waiting with their cameras up, waiting for the big people to get there.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Excited at the prospect.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Excited, yeah. So I was like, oh, I was like, okay, fine. I'll, I'll do it. And so she's like, thank you so much. And so then I walk over towards this huge, empty red carpet. Think about that massive space.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Yes, true.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  And surrounded with this fence, like line of like hundreds of photographers. And she says, announces me, she's like, all right, everyone, we've got Ryan Shelton from Hamish and Andy in Rove, and in unison, a hundred digital cameras lowered.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Oh, it's brutal. It's brutal. No, and I can believe that because it is, it is, I mean, we've been in the depth of very deep conversation on the legs of a carpet and, and literally got pushed out of the way by the journalists who'd just seen One Direction arrive. And you go, okay, all right, you know, we, we have, we have our place. If you arrive early, that's where it goes. I think that, that kind of, that's all right.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I, I would accept being pushed out of the way for One Direction, but being pushed away for nothing.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend the card space on a picture of you. I'm sorry. Not even, not even putting it up and pretending.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  You're not worth five megabytes, mate.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  That's, that's hard.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  There, there's a lot to discuss today, so I'm keen to get into Matt's bio.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Point is random ramble.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I'm keen to get into Matt's bio because there is so much to Matt Preston that, that some people might not be aware of, but Matt Preston is one of the most well-known faces on Australian television. Born in England, Matt followed his girlfriend to Australia in 1993. Was promptly broken up with, but found himself as the world's number one correspondent and expert on neighbours and home and away, which we will get into today. And I can't wait to discuss that. It won't be the focal point of today's chat, but I am looking forward to it immensely. Matt began writing food reviews in the late 90s and his profile as a highly regarded food critic was established in 2000 with his appointment at the age. Working as a senior editor for Vogue Entertainment and Travel as well as Delicious, he was also

• 15:24Speaker 02

  creative director of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. In 2009, Matt's world changed completely when he was appointed as a judge of MasterChef Australia. Matt remained as a judge on MasterChef for 11 seasons. In his downtime, Matt published eight bestselling cookbooks, hosted breakfast on Saturday morning, ABC Radio, competed on Dancing with the Stars, published his memoir, and as of recently appeared on SBS's show, The Hospital in the Deep End, which is one of those rare shows that breaks your heart and then quietly restores your faith in people, sometimes in the very same scene. And if I could add one more thing to Matt's bio, having chatted to him yesterday this morning, he's a really lovely man.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, contrary to what you might have thought. Amazing. I fooled you. You fooled you.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  I should have said, as this will surprise no one, Matt is a really lovely man.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  It will surprise no one.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  No one apart from his mother.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  So I would, so in doing the research for the show, I've seen down with the producers. We were going through your memoir, which is brilliant. We actually, I'm going to show you this. We actually had to draw up a family tree because we were trying to understand your unique upbringing and childhood and the people in your lives.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  And I saw, so this is, this is a producer, Belle, who you met before.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  She drew this up for me. Does that work for you? And we will share this for those who are watching, we'll be able to share.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yes. Although you need to put the step grandmother in there. So Larry's second wife. I mean, yeah, it was a very complex, it was very complex. And then also you have, you got, you know, you haven't got the, the child that my maternal.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Grandmother adopted out when she was nineteen.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Have a serious word to.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  I mean, I mean, yeah, it is. It is one of the more. It is one of the more complex family trees. Um. I think one of the interesting thing about about talking about those things, because we tend not to discuss the the what would be seen in the past as as family scandals. But actually, you realize that almost not every family, but an awful lot of families have something in the dark. You know, something that, oh, I didn't know we was married, didn't know he had a second child, didn't know this happened, didn't know he had a second wife. And that that whole idea of shining light into dark corners and making people feel less alone and it's less of a a shame, I think is a good thing to do. It's remarkably positive, whether it's you know, mom will talk about my brother dying. My brother died of epilepsy when he was twenty two.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Um. The number of people when I was doing publicity and talking about that, because um, that's obviously one of the major strands in the book. The number of people that had a similar experience or new people was shockingly, shockingly common.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I'm really, I'm really keen to talk about your brother in a minute. I I think before we do that, just to establish. I guess your childhood, who were the really influential?

• 18:20Speaker 00

  My my mother, my mother hadn't have had an affair um with a man she really liked. She got pregnant. Um. Uh, she didn't end up marrying him because she was a Catholic and she knew it would be a shallow marriage, so she walked away from that because she you know, as a Catholic, she couldn't get divorced, so it would have been a marriage in name only. So therefore she was left for that that the responsibility of do you adopt, abort, keep, they're the three questions.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  In terms of my family, um, my grandparents have gone down, one had gone down the abort route and one had gone down the the adopt, um, and none of neither of them were going down the the keep and the conversation. Strangely, that idea basically driven by the women, by the kind of the maternal, the matriarchs in the situation was we all keep him and and so I I ended up being supported by not just my mother's family, but also by my natural father's family as well. So I had a really good relationship with um my grandfather and grandmother on that side and he basically became. He basically became a kind of father figure to me.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  The grandfather.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  The grandfather, probably more than, his name was, his name was, um, his name was Boy or Mac. And I think, again, sadly, in terms of that complexity, looking back on it now, I think probably he had the relationship with me that he should have had with his son, but he didn't have with his son. So you live in this kind of complex, convoluted world. When you set it down in a book and you start to actually look at it from from outside, you start to to see all those different influences. So my my, um, so when my mother married my stepfather, um, who's a person I basically call my father, um, when she married him, and I didn't know

• 20:08Speaker 00

  this, not yet this time, but he'd been, he'd been fostered out. He was one of the 200,000 children from foster homes and orphanages in the UK that were sent out to to, it was a terrible period in in English history. Um, as we're taking, as we're taking Aboriginal kids away from their parents, we're also taking, um, kids out of orphanages and foster homes in the UK and we're sending them out to work as free labour on on farms in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa. Um, it's a horrible, horrible situation. Um, and he was one of those kids. So so he had that, he had that kind of, he'd had that experience as well. Um, so I think that that undoubtedly influences his kind of willingness to take on a five-year-old rat bag.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Wow. So I have to be honest, I didn't even really, I hadn't even really heard about that group of kids who were sent away to to. So where was your stepfather?

• 20:59Speaker 00

  He was, he was, he was, um, he was sent over to South Africa. Um, and he was sent to a pretty brutal, uh, couple who ran a farm out there. And he was there until, until he was kind of post-university and he moved back, he moved back to the UK. So he had a pretty, pretty horrible upbringing. I mean, to the degree where they'd, um, his mother had continued to try to write to him through the department. He'd never received any of the letters. He'd been told by his foster parents, his mother was dead. And he's, and he's sitting in a, he's sitting in a, he's sitting in a restaurant and this bloke comes up and says, oh, my gosh, you are the spitting image of my friend, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, well, actually, I'm his son. And then he goes, oh, have you seen your mother? And he goes, my mother's dead.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  No, your mother's alive and lives five minutes walk from here. So I mean, that, I mean, so

• 21:48Speaker 02

  How old was he?

• 21:48Speaker 00

  He would have been, he would have been probably twenty three, twenty four. I mean, so in terms of, you know.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  And how old is he when he was sent there?

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Um, he was, so he was sent there at four, five, three, four, three.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  What?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  So brutal. Yeah. I mean, brutal. I mean, it was a, we live in a far better, more sensitive time now.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  So your mum was very present in your life as well, but was it, do you feel like you were brought up by your biological father who wasn't really in your life, but you were brought up by his parents?

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Um, no, I look, I, I would go there at the weekend. I would go there for the odd weekend. I'd go there at holidays. We'd have, we'd have a cake on Christmas. No, I was, I was with my mother, um, and then with my mother and her husband. So my, my stepfather for all that period, they then had, they had three kids. So the weird thing about writing the book was, you know, writing this down, having to explain to my, my daughter. So she's like, well, they, are they there for your half sisters, half brother, half sister? And he answers, well, yes, but not really. Because I was part of their life and it doesn't feel the same. So, I mean, so much of this is language. And again, so much of this has changed, you know, in terms of that we live, I think, generally in a kind of society, you know, the idea of, of illegitimacy, which would have been very much the word used in

• 22:59Speaker 00

  the sixties when I was born. That, I mean, how many, the concept of being born at a wedlock kind of doesn't really exist anymore.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't carry this, well, you know, in my, in the circles that I run in at least, that it doesn't carry the same sort of shame that I probably used to. Yeah. Absolutely. Did, did you, did you feel that at all as a kid or as a teenager? That, that sort of hangover, the shame of the, the old way of thinking about it?

• 23:24Speaker 00

  No, not, no, not really. The only time, the only time I would feel that is in the, is at the school sports day when it was the, the mother and father race. And then you, and then you'd have your mum and then it'd be, well, who's the random that's gonna come in and play, and play this different male other role? Um, so that, that was, there was probably little moments like that, but you know, at no point was that kind of, that negative judgment being imposed by, by anyone within my family group, which is amazing. So. That's undoubtedly, you know, I I look back at that and I think, oh my gosh, how lucky I am. And then that that moment when my grandmother said to me, I'm coming up to London, can you make sure you're here?

• 24:04Speaker 00

  And when we get the knock on the door, I'm there with my grandmother and we open the door and there is this woman that looks like my grandmother, but twenty years younger. And it's the that she got pregnant um to a white Russian aristocrat in Paris when she was eighteen and adopted out. And then she'd made the effort to get back in touch. And so she's standing there. So I'm from there with my with my maternal grandmother when she meets her. You know, her first child, which is just a mind a mind boggling thing, you know, married married someone, had a naval background like my father. It was that weird thing. But again, it would look, you know, she looked so much like my grandmother with that kind of freaky moment when it's kind of you knew exactly what was happening. Yeah. It's like a time machine moment.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, I mean, you know, that we all make these decisions that

• 24:55Speaker 00

  echo through us in the afterlife, don't they? To misquote Russell Crowe.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  We don't quote him enough. Maximus. That's right.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Maximus Decimus Moritus.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Um, so you mentioned your brother before. I I remember, and we chatted about this yesterday on the phone, but I remember soon. When I was twenty years old, I was living in in the UK and I was playing cricket over there. And I remember after a game standing at the pub with a guy I had been playing with for three months. His name was Nick Hillman, lovely guy. And we were just standing there and he had a beer in his hand and his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed on the floor and started having, which I I didn't know at the time, was an aplectic fear. And I it was terrifying and so confronting and so shocking. And I did notice that everyone around me was totally, I mean, they'd grown up with Nick.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Everyone around it was totally fine. They knew what to do. They were very calm. I remember feeling very panicked. That was my first. Encounter with epilepsy and I, and I realised at that point, I really knew nothing about it. Um, and I, I know it's been a huge part of your life through your brother. Um, and I think it'd be great to talk about that because I feel like it's something that affects so many people.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I think, I think, I think that's the thing, but it's something that, that doesn't get talked about. And his story has been pushed, um, kind of beneath the covers because it's, it's scary, it's confronting. It's kind of, it's kind of, we have a medieval attitude towards it, but it's seen as being something that, you know, there'd be demons, kind of territory.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Do you remember, do you have a memory of?

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Well, my, my, my brother was weird because he had late onset epilepsy, which is, which is, you know, quite common.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Which is where you don't have it as a.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  You don't have it as a child. He had a, quite a serious fit when he was 18 at university, was in, in hospital. And then his second fit was the fit that killed him.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  So, so that was a, but I think at that point, the idea that, that, that you might die from epilepsy was not something that was discussed, this, this, this idea of SUDAP, which is now quite well known, um, and discussed.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  What does SUDAP stand for?

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Um, sudden unexplained death and epilepsy, which is basically a, we don't really know what it is, but you probably die because of, because of having a seizure. So our way of dealing with it now is just if we can, if we can remove your seizures, then you're not going to die. So it's a, it's that kind of, often the way medicine works, we work out a way to cure the problem without understanding why, where the problem comes from. But that, when my brother died, SUDAP wasn't acknowledged, um, yet. Yet my mother, when she talked, asked around, she found this whole network of, of bereaved mothers out there that, that hadn't, that had lost a child through epilepsy and had just been like, it hadn't even been put on the death certificate.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  So that, that's where this, they came up with this idea of doing a kind of a bereavement support service for people who've, children, children who die from epilepsy. And from that, they kind of, they, they became a. Campaigning group to get people to talk about SEDAP, to go to conferences, go to epilepsy conferences, talk about the real, real world, get academics involved, get research involved, try and find ways of, of bringing it to a broader, which I think is interesting because that was my mother's way of dealing with the, um, dealing with, with the trauma of losing, um, her son was, and there's a, and one of the things that I found, because my mother was still alive at that point, so she gave me all her papers,

• 28:24Speaker 00

  was a letter that she'd written to the paper the day after, um, he died because she'd had a really bad experience, um, at the hospital of going in, going in with the ambulance and then kind of sitting in this, in this waiting room with no windows, waiting for anything for like an hour. Um, and, and so she wrote this very evocative thing and then tells this terrible story that when the nurses came in, she knew he was dead because the word refrigerate was written on the back of the, the file. Um, so, I mean, I mean horrible, brutal, barbaric stuff that we now think of being maybe back in the eighties, nineties was still happening. And so that was, and so the idea is, well, what can we do to make this better? And how can we, have we knowledge that this is not the way we can do it? And

• 29:09Speaker 00

  there must be better ways of doing it. And how do we start that dialogue with other people that so they can support each other?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I'm just sort of imagining it would be, there'd be quite an anxiety for someone who has epilepsy and who's worried about having a seizure, that you're always, are you always kind of a bit worried that it could happen?

• 29:26Speaker 00

  It, it tends to happen when, when people sleep. It's, it's a factor in the thousands rather than in the tens. So it's something that I think people live with because most epilepsy seizures are treated by, um, medication. The main thing is you need to be serious about your application of, you know, take the drugs at the same time, the same thing, but you've got to be grown up about it. One of the things I've discovered also, my, my brother died as, um, as a young adult. So that, that's a specific group. There's also, there's also a kind of an area of SEDAP for, for children. And that's far more terrifying, that idea that you can put your child to bed with a, with a seizure, they may well, then there's a danger that they can, they could pass in the night. And that, that idea,

• 30:10Speaker 00

  anyone who's got a child, the idea of putting your child to bed and not knowing and the stress then of wanting to sleep with a child and, you know.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I was, I was just gonna ask too, um, when you first

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Learned of your brother, say, having that first seizure. Can you remember what that was like?

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I can remember just being, oh, okay.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 30:29Speaker 00

  But yeah, because he was in hospital and, you know, we all end up in hospital when we're, when we're teenagers and I didn't, I certainly didn't see it as something that was life threatening.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  It wasn't something you take seriously and then you get the situation where he's dead from epilepsy and you go, well, well, why didn't we know and how kind of wasn't discussed and, you know, that, and I think that's, I think that kind of, um, that lack of human communication could have had a much more damaging effect on, on my mother and, and, and Anthony. Um, so William's, William's dad, because of the fact that it's like you despair and go, but why didn't you, why didn't we know about this? Why couldn't we have done something? And we always, you know, that was the old cliche that, that the parents want to do something, what could I have done better?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  And the answer is, you know, well, there isn't. I mean, one of the challenges is we're still in that situation where, where we don't know enough.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  You mentioned what your mom did to cope in that time. Do you have a memory of what you did to cope or did you cope?

• 31:28Speaker 00

  Oh, no, no, I stepped away. I stepped away. Yeah, I was, I was kind of, I was, would have been 27, at home, living my own life. Um, I don't think I was, probably wasn't as supportive as I should have been. It was one of the things, one of the things I had to confront in the book was that realisation of what could I have done? Um, having said that, there was, that was never a, that was never a matter of discussion and I don't, you know, and I don't know how much,

• 31:58Speaker 00

  I'll go back. So before, one of, one of my best friends, her brother was killed in Turkey. Um, and it, and it had a terrible effect on the parents. Um, so he was, he was, he was murdered in Turkey. They had to go down and tell about the body. It was horrible. Uh, huge pressure on the family, family didn't discuss it. And I recently talked to the, the sister who I was friends with at the time and it was, it was you were so amazingly supportive during that period. And I don't remember being supportive in any shape or form. But I think sometimes the, we can be supportive in very small ways without really knowing or feeling we're being supportive, but just saying the right things. It's really.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  That's interesting, isn't it? Cause it's like, I think we, it's like we have like a abstract idea of what good support looks like.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  And then if you don't meet that.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Then you think you've sort of fallen short, but actually the impact was bigger than you.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, and, and I think, I mean, again, it's that idea of it can be really small and actually have an impact. And I think that, that, that kind of, I love it. There's a Margaret Fulton used to have this great saying when, she said, whenever you're confronted with a really big problem and you feel like you, there's nothing you can do and you can't be supportive and you can't help and you can't advise, you can't change things. She said, just remember what it's like to be in a dark bedroom with a mosquito. And that tiny mosquito can deal the most incredible amount of, of change in you during that time. So I think the idea of being that mosquito is not a, not a bad thing to be.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Do you mind? I, I'd love to know what your, I, I don't know what your relationship was like with your brother, but what was he like? What was his?

• 33:39Speaker 00

  What was he like? Um, he was a nerd. Um, he was, he was super smart. He was super smart, went to Oxford. He, um, he would do, he loved war games. Um, he would, we would play Kingmaker, which is a fantastic game about the wars of the roses. Incredibly complex. In Stranger Things, he would be one of the Dungeons and Dragons geeks. You know what I mean? And he's in absolutely that, that territory. Um.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Did you guys get along?

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we, we go, well, because again, we've found those territories. We, we got along. And, and again, I went through this system. Well, one of the things, when you do a show like the hospital, you do what's a pre-interview, right? They set the cameras up and they they try and find where the the soft spots are. We talked about my mother and that was who died within the year before. We then talked about where I'd grown up and we recently, we sold that house when my mother died. She'd been there for sixty years. And and I found myself getting very emotional talking about the house and talking about severing that that link. I think lots of people move around, you do lots of hazards. Because you've been there such a long time, you know, the bedroom where my my brother and I shared when we were kids is the bedroom that he died in, is the bedroom I would stay in when

• 34:50Speaker 00

  I would go back. Um, you know, the the stairs where we'd race and we'd do kind of bobslang and terribly dangerous bobslang in um, in in sleeping bags, which is good, you get a really long run, you can get quite a lot of speed up.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  You know, the the watching the doctor in the front, all those little minutias of that define your relationship with someone. And those constant reminders that are, for me, are often prompted by space, that that losing that seemed really, really like kind of erasing some of those memories. I've realised now that that isn't the case because it's still there. Um, that that's there still inside my head, but but that kind of that visceral nature.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Of being on those stairs.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so it's so special to be able to like go back and literally, like it's one thing to remember to look at photos, but to actually stand in the spaces where those memories happened is, you know.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  I found that, I found that in terms of, I realised that my relationship with my brother was was as much about the small things and those little things, Doctor Who being a prime example, and him being fascinated, um, his obsession with tube trains, um, the all that stuff, which meant we had to, I had to take him on journeys to the end of all the train lines, which then, which then my nephew, when he was six, developed the same kind of obsession. So again, that that weird way where where you get these echoes of past people in the next generations, I find is, you know, fascinating, like the way, the way my daughter, my daughter says what in exactly the same way as my sister does and

• 36:23Speaker 00

  my mother, what? And my mother does that kind of questioning, um, questioning thing. I think that those echoes are really interesting.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  So how did you find out? That it was a phone call?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was staying, I was staying with my, with my paternal grandmother and we got the phone call and I was expecting it to be my, my maternal grandmother. Yeah, the sixty day smoker, surely it's gonna be, you know, with my grandmother, my other grandmother. Another forty day smoker came down and said, oh, phone call. And you can see it was a bad phone call. And it was actually my grandmother on the phone saying that he was dead. Um, my, that grandmother, not the most sensitive woman, took me to see, said, it's fine, we're not gonna waste the tickets to go and see the ballet. So she dragged me. She dragged me off to the ballet to see Les Silfy, which is, has a large, a large scene in a, um, in a cemetery.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Oh, straight, straight afterwards.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, on, on the day of discovery.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that, that, that was, that was one of the, I suppose, maybe it was good, maybe, maybe it helped me vent emotionally. That, that was an interesting moment.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to picture what grief might look like for you. Do, do you remember feeling like you were grieving or was it a?

• 37:29Speaker 00

  No, I'd know it was, it was more those, those shocks of seeing people and seeing them, seeing them in the street. You know, that thing where you see people and you just see the back of someone's head and you, you, you, your brain.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you thought you were seeing your brother.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then realising that, that obviously that wasn't the case. Um, that, that was a kind of a powerful nature of it.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  With, with, without, without, um, getting, you know, too personal and this might be something I don't feel comfortable talking about, but whether, you know, often it's common, like when someone dies is that like you sort of think about the things that you missed out on, or the things that you maybe wish that you said or?

• 38:02Speaker 00

  No, no, I've been really, I didn't feel that with him because I, because I'd, I'd spent time with him. I didn't feel that when my mother, when she passed recently. I knew it was coming, so I would spend time with that. I've been really lucky like that. Um, it's actually more now. It's more now, it's more those things like this Christmas. It was like, well, you know, there's that, there's that space at the table where it wouldn't just have been him, but it would have been his partner and possibly their children and, and, and then your children not having that relationship with, with that. Now, I think that's the, you know, that's, that's the big job. Just come back from, um, being in the UK and staying with my, with my sister and, and, and her kids and that, that, that's really valuable and, and.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  Rich and exciting and kind of reignites those those family connections and you build bonds. And he's obsessed with fine dining restaurants and wants to know more about wine. And he's like, he's like my little acolyte and I love it. In a in a house where my kids like to cook, but they don't have the same kind of, they don't have that same. Tell me, tell me more about Portuguese wine.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  I go, yes, son, step this way. He is, I'll taste that he is of drinking age now.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  So not, I think, I think that that gap element is strangely, that's the more, that's the more painful thing. Now of the time, you just deal with it. What can you do? What, there's nothing really you can do. It has happened. There is no way you can.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  I guess that's the thing. It's like, it's completely different for every person and every experience is probably different. Is there like a want to like teach your kids or family about like?

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Isn't that interesting? I've just been, I've just been going, just been going through the, um, my, my mother's estate. You know, the last bits and bobs of, and there was a boxing medal of his. And it was like, well, do we give it to my sons called William? Do we give it that as a link or does it stay with my sister because she knew him and has a relationship in it? And it was, one sister was like, I should go to William and, and my wife, well, he didn't know him. So how do you, how do you maintain that connection without, without it being, being kind of morbid?

• 40:13Speaker 00

  I think the, I think that whole idea about letting your family know that where they come from.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Has a value, but you've got to be careful.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  How do you mean?

• 40:27Speaker 00

  I just think you don't, you don't want to, you don't want to be, well, if you, if you're given the same name as your dad brother, you don't want to feel that somehow that's unlucky. For example, you know what I mean?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  You know, you don't want to be, be defined as, oh yeah, I've got the dead brother's name.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Having said that, one of my best friends named his son William and he was born on exactly, he was born on October 7th, like my William was. That was a, that was a moment. So I, I think, I think, you know, grieving. Grieving is exactly that. You don't want it is removing regrets before they happen. And I think that's important. That's an important process of how I want to live my life. And how you want, I want my children to live their lives is not have, not be in that situation of regrets.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Not have their regrets.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Not, not because you never know, you know, never know when people can be taken for you. So, you know, they all don't get to bed angry. It's not a bad motto to have.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I mean, it must just like going through, like what you went through with William and him dying at such a young age. I'm sure, I assume it would if it were me. I assume it would completely change how you approach relationships or like knowing that that's possible.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  I, I think, I think it's one of the reasons why I came here because I, because I'd always been, I was always, I always lived in, um, lived and grown up in London. And suddenly it was that, well, you know, I should try other things. Life's too short, you know? I think that was definitely, that was definitely a message that came through from that. I mean, I would have moved to Australia. Came to Australia the first time, two years after he died, two months after he died. I went for a trip around the world. Um, and then I moved to Australia three years after that. So undoubtedly, I think that has an impact.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Um, and I think that, that's still, that still plays on, on my attitude to how I live my life. We were, Hugh and I were talking about this, you know, he, he was a bit younger than me, but, um, but you know, the Australian males will, will on average die at eighty one. So if you say the last three years are probably a bit pants, a bit, a bit not, you know? You're going to be sick. You got this, you got that. As, as my, my father always used to say, old age is not for sissies. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, so if you take those three years out, we probably can't do the stuff you want. You know, I'm about to turn sixty five. That's fourteen, fourteen summers left.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  You know, I think sometimes we, you know, it's very, it can be very maudlin to, to focus on, but actually that attitude of let's not leave anything in the tank. What are we going to do? What do you really want to do? What's important to you? Not what you should do, what you think you should do, but what do you want to do?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  It's a, it's like a pragmatic way of looking at it, really.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Well, I, I, I had a massive car crash. Um, we went into trees and car collapsed and came to with the roof of the car on my face.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Geez.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  When was this? Oh, this was, it was the, when, when Sheffield Wednesday played in the League Cup final, because that's where I was going to. Um, I can't, I can't remember.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  That was.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Thank you, Rod. That's why you're here. Sadly, most things like the first time I dated my wife is based on Friday night, North Melbourne game, Melbourne. It's kind of tragic. But, but so when we went off on an adverse wet day, adverse canva on the road, went off into trees, smashed it, literally got out and the car was, looked like it had been in one of those compressors. Luckily, I was wearing a really, one of those wax cotton jackets, which looked like a porcupine. It was just studded with glass everywhere. So that had protected me. Although I came out with a broken arm, but there was, I'd been convinced that I was gonna die at, before I was 28, in a, in a car crash, in a, in a white car. And suddenly there was this white car.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  Why, you thought of that before it happened?

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was convinced of that.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Why did you think that?

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know, because I had a, I had a premonition about it. And then, I mean, I got past 28, and then I think it was probably, it must have been like 29 when it happened.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Hang on, is this your car that you were driving?

• 44:18Speaker 00

  No, no, someone else's.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I was gonna say, jeez, don't buy a white car then.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  No, no, it's, that, that's such a random Netflix diversion. Yeah, no, I had a premonition about this. No, but that, that's certainly, that's certainly, at that moment, when you have a, when you have a, in inverted commas, near-death experience, when you feel everything going in slow motion, you're heading towards trees at 70 miles an hour, you know, you kind of, it focuses your, your attention on, on what, what matters and what you should be doing, I think. And the risks you can, you should take. I mean, having said that, the dangers, you end up being gung ho, and I think actually risk-taking and, and how you live your life should also be about listening as well. I mean, we'll talk about MasterChef, but, but it's, it's, I love this, I love this line that was told to me that, listen

• 45:06Speaker 00

  because opportunity knocks quietly. That's such a great, it's such a great line, that you need to, you know, if you're talking about yourself in a loud voice, you often miss those opportunities. If you're listening, you can hear often what people are saying without them really saying what they're saying.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Overtly saying it, yeah. You sort of briefly mentioned before that after, when we were asking about how did you sort of handle your brother's death, that you felt like you stepped away from it, or moved away from it. I imagine that it would be easy for some people to carry.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Regret or shame or guilt about that decision?

• 45:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, I just, you know, I, I, I asked myself that question when I was writing the book, absolutely. Because, you know, so much of this stuff, I mean, there's so much, all this stuff, you know, the, the convoluted family history, the, the random children spread everywhere, all those things, um, I kind of had never really discussed. So there was, when I got to that point, it was just another one of those things. Um, I, I don't know what I, what I could have, I mean, I think, I think one of the things that I realized that was the challenge was, um, that, that's probably the point when I realized that I was in that family, but not in that family. Because what had happened is that my, my stepfather had lost his son.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  And, and I'd lost a half brother. So it's a different, it's a different dynamic. So how do I address, how do I address that dynamic? I think that, and how do I get involved in that? Um, that was something that, that I realized probably I, I struggled with.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  And I, and I shouldn't have struggled with it, just should have addressed it. Um, but I didn't. So, and I, so I think undoubtedly that's me bearing some of that, that challenge about addressing my relationship with him through that period.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and also it's like, I mean, like, as we all know, like hindsight's so 2020 and in not, not many people, if you're lucky, have the kind of playbook to deal with what to do in that situation. Like how do you, especially in your twenties, like how do you, what do you, how do you know what to do? What's the right thing to do?

• 47:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. But then, but then you say I had my, I had my friend who'd lost a brother and probably could have talked to, talked to her about it. So I think, you know, in retrospect, you go that there are, there are things you can do that, that I didn't do, but I don't, I kind of. I think in those situations, when you realise it, which is now, now it approaches those situations very differently. But I don't think I really kind of analysed it at that time, because I I'm dealing with my own, I'm dealing with my own grief. And and it's and I think probably my way of dealing with was to compartmentalise myself.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Um. But again, you know, the I think that looking at my relationship with my children, and actually, all my peer groups' relationship with their children, all that thing that we, all that stuff, all those hours parents put into now, you know, going to leaping lizards, or taking to the football, or being the taxi driver, all those things, right? All those things that we do, which my mother and father never did. I think they came to one, they came to one of my rugby matches across five seasons or something, that I would have, you know, how that how that represents now is that the kids come back every week, we see them and my relationship is undoubtedly far better with my children because of, you know,

• 48:30Speaker 00

  because I kind of went, I don't want to have a relationship like having my my stepfather. I don't want to have one of those distant relationships where I still find myself drifting in to those things and have to reconnect. He was a he was someone who wrote about what he loved. He wrote about naval history and he would be obsessed by it to a point of of being in a kind of his own little bubble. And I can do that with I can do that with food. So I need to, I have to remind myself that, okay, let's put, you know,

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  let's stop obsessing about the quality of fish sauce and actually do that. But I think I think definitely the relationship with parent between parents and kids now is, and this is only in my small window, much, much closer. And that's my friends here and in the UK, that the kids are far more engaged and they're far more engaged in each other. They tell people, there's a lot more dialogue, conversation.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  I think that's a that's a very positive thing. Um.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. What you alluded to there, I find really hard as a parent, as someone who can get really. Uh obsessed with something, whether it's like trying to write music or doing it like woodworking or like having.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Tell them what you cooked the other day.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Or or cooking, I love cooking.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  What was it you cooked?

• 49:46Speaker 03

  Uh a peach tart.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Yes, oh, very nice.

• 49:48Speaker 03

  It was really nice.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, very nice.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Potentially over a little bit too much spice going on in it, but anyway, dial that down next time.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  Dial it down, white chocolate melted over the top, that'll be good. And a little bit of almond flour. Very nice.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  That's really good. I'll be doing that this weekend. Thank you.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I mean, I think that, but that whole thing, that whole thing about how much, how much you, the old male cliche, oh, I've got to earn the money for the family and, and how much, how much life your work takes over. And that's certainly the, the, the case in, um, in the MasterChef thing, you know, for five years, you know, and we had, but we had the conversation, my wife and I had the conversation. If one of my friends was on TV said, if you take the MasterChef job, your relationship, your marriage will not survive it. Because, because you will be, i- if it's successful, you'll be in Sydney for eight months of the year, you know, four days, five days a week. Um, your, your wife will be down in Melbourne with three children under five. It's incredible.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  So we'd had this conversation about that. Um, and I was very conscious when I took MasterChef that weekends were sacrificed. I wouldn't film at the weekends. I wouldn't do any other events weekend. I would, I would always go home. But even still, at the end of five years, I was kind of, um, the idea of staying in Sydney to film was, was kind of, I was gonna step away from the show. Because basically, because I came back and I found my, my daughter sitting in the back room going, playing a fantasy game about daddy taking her to the zoo. And it was like, okay, all right, okay. Waiting for the moment where she's, oh, daddy hasn't turned up. Daddy's too busy.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Daddy's too busy. So, so I think that, I think those are, sometimes you get those, those signs and you go, I mean, wonderfully, they moved MasterChef down to, to Melbourne. So it was fantastic. Yeah. But that whole, that whole thing, and I, I also, and this conversation kind of prompts this, but this thing when you've got, do you have kids, Ryan? Do you have kids?

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, two.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  So that moment when you take your first child and you put them in the car, you take them out of the safety of the hospital and the midwives. And you then think, what if a car crash happens? That first time that your partner and that first child go away and suddenly.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Suddenly you've really got something to lose. You realise that actually previously you didn't really have anything to lose, but now you've really got something to lose. I think, I think that kind of, that preciousness, that preciousness of having a child

• 52:17Speaker 00

  makes me realise now how awful and debilitating it is when children die before their parents or grandparents. That's the great tragedy for me.

• 52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  I mean, how do you feel like that? How do you, how do you deal with the guilt that undoubtedly probably comes with it? You know, it, it also then, um, it impacts on how do you parent them? At what point, I mean, you've talked about this recently, Hugh, but at what point do you let go? At what point do you stop trying to control things? At what point do you just go, you know, they're gonna go, they're gonna go to, oh my gosh, they're gonna go to Colombia and it's next door to Venezuela and Trump's invaded and, and we're watching a show about climbing mountain drug cartels and people are kidnapped and it's like,

• 53:06Speaker 00

  and you just go, and you go, no, well, it'll be, it'll probably be fine, but letting go of that is really, it, every, every nerve is screaming about the, the risk factor, you know? And you want your kids to experiment, um, but you want them to experiment in a, in a safe way. So how do you do that? How do you provide that environment? I think those are, those are such big questions. How old are your kids?

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Uh, six and three.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  I guess you're, you're, you're, you're kind of, it's that thing when they get to, when they start doing things secretly.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Josh's eldest, Charlie is, uh, being sent to a boarding school in Colombia next year. No, I think he's second guessing.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I haven't spoken to him in years, but, um, uh, yeah, I have, my, my wife went and lived in Bangladesh for a year when we were young. And the moment, yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  What a crazy place that is.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. And unlike anything I've ever experienced and loved it, but also struggled a lot. But, um, the moment I had kids, I had this sudden empathy for mum and dad of like, God, that must have been tough. When I was just like, no, it'll be fine. I'm going.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  It'll be good.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  And that's, and that's, and that's the kid's attitude. And you just think, oh my gosh, the poor parents.

• 54:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  And now I'm in that moment where, oh my gosh, I'm one of those poor parents.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Did, having kids.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Expand your empathy in relation to your mum losing your brother.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, definitely. I think so. I think undoubtedly.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Undoubtedly. I mean, having said that, my, my, I was, I was, I've always been, was always really close to my mother. So, um, and she would come out, she would come out every year when I was here. So we saw her a lot. Um, but she wasn't, she was very, she was very English in that kind of not discussing the emotional damage. You kind of knew that. So that's why finding that letter was such a shock because it was so emotional.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Um, that she was very, she was very matter of fact and kind of sanguine about stuff. Um, but again, I think, you know, that she had a, she had a very strong Catholic faith. And so I think she relied on, on that a lot.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  Um, and it allowed her not to kind of agonize too much about it. Um, I don't know. Again, didn't, didn't discuss that with her.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  But would certainly, certainly spent a fair amount of time with her. And as she got older, probably saying, I was working out that when I was here, I probably saw her more than when I was living in London because she would be, you know, out for a month. And so you'd see her every day. So that, that, that, that was nice to do.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  So, so she passed away a few years ago now. What were the last, I have an image in my head of, of what a really close relationship would look like for you both. I'm just curious about the last few years. She was going through a lot, wasn't she?

• 55:47Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, look, she had, she had the, you know, and as we talked about the last three years being, being the kind of, she had the, she had the full English she had. Um, she was diagnosed, she was diagnosed with myeloma. Um, and then, I mean, she had a great sense of humor. So she was diagnosed with myeloma, which is like a, which is like a blood cancer. And, and she said, oh, yeah. And the doctor just said, look, honestly, something else will kill you before that does. So don't worry about it. Which I, which I thought was kind of, which I thought was kind of good. The Parkinson's will get you, the dementia will get you. Um, she hated hospitals. So we were.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  So it was Parkinson's dementia and.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  And myeloma. But it was a, it was a combination getting old. And you know, that thing where you, I think that the hard thing is that, I mean, she was pretty good. So you've got to remember that Covid sits in here, right? So I go back with my daughter to spend time with my sister and my mother during, when I was wear gaps, like, quick, turn around, let's go, you know, Christmas. And then I then, and then I wasn't doing mask shifts, so I was able to to go back three times a year. So I spent a bit of time with her then, just sitting in the front room. We, we managed to keep them on my sisters, did an amazing job in, in finding the right support from the local health organisation to keep her at home with carers, which was

• 57:00Speaker 00

  amazing because of that whole thing of, I, with my paternal grandmother, I'd been her, her kind of next of kin, so I'd had to look after her care and we'd, we'd put her out from the, the, her house into, we'd moved her into a beautiful kind of residential care unit, but she went catatonic within three months, stopped talking. And then we moved to, and it was like, we can't do this, we'll find carers and moved it back and that the care within the home was so, you know, the impact, the positive impact that they have, and that's something that I learned, you know, with this, working on the geriatric wards as part of the hospital, with this idea that your parent is more at risk in a hospital than they are at home in terms of things like fall risks and stuff like that and confusion.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  And so, you know, the whole idea, how can we keep people at home is such a, such a key discussion in a safe way.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Um, so, so that, so that was great. And she was pretty good up until, she was pretty good up until the end. Um, maybe the last six months, she started to get to the point where, where she wasn't, she wasn't present in the dementia. Um, she was pretty good. I mean, dementias are weird. Have any of you had parents, grandparents with dementia? So there are all these weird things, like, um, the whole, for some of them, their sense of touch changes. So just the act of drying you feels like I'm trying to rip your skin off. So they so they behave really badly. They get aggressive and they behave badly and because they feel like they're being attacked. It's a really it's a really horrid.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  It's confronting for you.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  I think confronting, because you don't you don't know about that. That doesn't that doesn't get discussed.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, way more confronting for for the people caring for them. And then how do you, you know, you go, but my grand, my mother was actually quite nice. Back in the day, she was quite nice. And now she now there's this screaming going on as she gets up in the morning. I'm surprised we don't have more conversations about that. I think dementia is a hard area. We're starting to now, but it's a hard area. I think we have. We don't have probably enough conversations about last phase of life that, you know, with all three of you. If you've got parents in life, have you sat with your parents and had that conversation about what happens if they do get to the point where what point is is there is there no reassess policy in place? Do all the siblings agree on it? I mean, one of the hardest things for for nurses who, you know, in geriatric wards who are

• 59:25Speaker 00

  who are dealing with, I think it's the toughest job I've ever watched people being involved with. You know, I helped out a bit as an orderly, but it was like, oh, my gosh, this is next level, physically hard, emotionally hard. Um, it goes from mundane, backbaking, grinding, wiping bums, changing dressings into saving lives in like that bag. It's just, you know, it makes all of our lives seem incredibly, incredibly easy.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it isn't. It isn't. It's an astonishing thing that people do every single day.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  And and we all talk about heroes, they are, and then we don't we don't reward them. This is my that's what I came. I came out. My I came out from that experience of working on that geriatric ward at St. Vincent's Public and going. Um, why do we even debate how much we pay these people?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  How many jobs are there where you're expected to go into work knowing that you could be abused, battered, hit, scratched? Um, by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, obviously, but that's like, you know, where's where's the where's the safe workspace? Where's the due care? Where's the environment? These are often, often young people. Um, it's a.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  You know, surely there must be a better way. How can we not pay these, this nursing staff universally better? How can we not support them better? We know that everyone, everyone acknowledges what they do is an amazing job. It's not one of those things where people sit around and say, oh, yeah, they're slack arses. They're corrupt, corrupt, too much holiday. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't happen. So, so why, why, why do they find it so hard to get rewarded for the importance of the work? And, you know, because all of us are going to have to deal with those people, all those, you know, they are the people who are caring for you, you know, caring for your parents. You know, at some point, it's like, surely we should be.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  I've always felt they should be treated like elite sports people. This is, I feel like they should be sat in a room beforehand, having had a motivational talk from one of the, one of their doctors. And then afterwards, they've got recovery, they've got physios working, they've got psychologists working with them.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Out of their sponsorship.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they're paid a shitload of money.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  And, and I've sat there, I've sat there after one of them, one of, one of the staff had had a, had had an issue with a, with a patient. And there was none of that, there was just the, the support of their fellow workers.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Hmm. I, um, to answer a rhetorical question you asked earlier, I think, um, about the conversations you have with your parents about planning for the end. We've, I haven't done it. Um, and I think there's part of me that it's just too, I think I'm still too much of a child maybe, and too, I love them so much, that the thought of having that discussion is just a bit, it's just a bit too, I don't know, I, I.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  I'm going to move you to the next stage of life, but you're not ready to do it.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an acceptance of that next stage of life that, yeah, I'm not ready. And I, I just don't know how I'll cope when they are gone.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  And I think that's, and I think confronting that and that is something we have to do is that else more importantly, we have to confront that now.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  While they can be involved in the conversation with them rather than when they're lying in the hospital bed, unable to communicate and you and Hugh have a different attitude to, to what they said they wanted. Because at the end of the day, both people want to do what your, your mum or dad or dad or mum want to do. You want to be supportive, but if you haven't had those conversations and, and discussed that, then, then, then what are the, then you end up with the poor old nurses. It's another thing to add to the list of, you know, one, one, one family member thinks this, the other one thinks that it's like.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, interestingly, our parents, I think, did have a little bit of this discussion with our sister who lives in LA and has for 20 years. And I think what Georgia, our sister was saying to me, um, she said, but when, when that happens, oh, when, if you guys pass away, I'll come out to Australia and help. Like Hugh and Josh won't have to deal with that on their own. Mum's like, well, you could come out here earlier and we'll talk about all this stuff. And she's like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I will come out for an extended thing. And it was, I think I was really sort of proud of mum and dad for being more proactive on this.

• 1:03:34Speaker 00

  That's amazing. That's amazing.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  That's amazing. And, and it's certainly going to be, you know, I mean, we've had, um, Emma's mother is still alive and we've, we've had really good conversations.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  This is your wife, so.

• 1:03:45Speaker 00

  My wife's, this is my wife's, my wife's mother. Um, we've had really good conversations about that, but she's pretty adamant, you know, she doesn't wanna, you know, there, there's a question of what point, I think there's a question of what point someone dies. Like, is it, is it, is it the, is it the body function or is it the, um, is it the, the absence of the person? You know, and there was a really good piece, short piece I read recently about discussing, someone talking about their mother with dementia and saying it's another person now. It doesn't, you know, it's another person to get to know, but it's a different person. It's not the person that was my mother for 68 years. So, so the question then is to what degree, you know, to what degree does.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  How does that change your relationship with them? How that, does that change how you, you change them?

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Also, your relationship with grief and loss must be so complicated there because we think about the moment or just generally, we'd think about the date that your mother passed away as the day that you lost her, but that must not be exactly how.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  No, absolutely right. No, it's, it's absolutely not the case. I think, I think the, I think for lots of people now, they, they talk about that point when, you know, they were no longer recognised and they could no longer have that common conversation that the person they knew and love, the body is still there, but the actual person is, is, is kind of there. I mean, the cruel thing about these things is you have these moments of, I mean, I remember with my, with my grandmother, she'd have that, that awful realisation of, of where she was and the state she was in. And it'd be fleeting and it would be there for five minutes and it would go again. And so that, I think that's, that's pretty, that's pretty confronting to see. Having said that, with my step grandmother, I was sitting with her at the,

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  the table and she was eating toast and she's sitting with a bit of toast in her left hand and she picks up the, um, the milk jug and she pours milk all over the toast. And then, and then she just looked at me and says, I have no idea what I'm doing, but it really doesn't matter. And then proceeds to eat it.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  There's an element where there is a certain amount of release about it.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  I want to start doing that now.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  But it's a, you know, and also it's a hard conversation because also it's not just you sitting with your folks. It's you've got to get your sister involved. You've got to get your brother involved. You've got to ideally be face to face. You've got to confront how they're doing. I mean, especially in, in Georgia's case, if she's living in LA, then, then she's in the situation that I was. I mean, my role with my two sisters was whatever you think, how can I support you? I think one of the terrible thing is that, you know, I'm sitting over here, is this really the best home? You know, that terrible kind of, I've got a point of view, but I'm.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I'm not there doing it.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  I'm not there, I'm not there to do it. I think you've kind of got to acknowledge that, um, and, and that, that's, that for some people can be hard, but I think having that conversation is, having that conversation.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  Very soon. Get George on the phone. Get her out.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, I just have so much, like, we get on really well as a family and we're very close. I have so much empathy for families out there who have to navigate this with eighty years of complex sort of baggage and drama and

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  And you have to ask, you have to ask, yeah, that's right. You also have to ask the question yourself. What do you want? You know, if, if the image is of you lying in a hospital bed for five years,

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  unable to, unable to wipe your own bum, literally waiting for the occasional visit, or maybe popping down to the end of the pier, you know, having a little, having a little cocktail and drifting off into drifting off with the sunset. Maybe one is better than the other. You know, I think the, I'm not sure that, I'm not sure that, that the length we live should be the value we put on our lives. It should be the quality of, of the quality time we have.

• 1:07:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the choice.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Every old person, every grandparent has been different. You know, my, my grandfather, my, my maternal grandfather was fantastic. He had a new suit made in ninety-two, which was just a kind of, I felt an incredibly positive, he said, I need a new suit. I've got the money. I'm gonna get a new suit. Thank you very much indeed.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  I can see you doing that.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  And I, I, I kind of, I kind of, I kind of liked it because there is no doubt, there is no doubt that, that when you get, the, the thing I think we should all be writing in our, you know, in our aide memoir, when we get old is be positive, be enthusiastic and be positive because gee, those people seem to have a better, those old people seem to have a much better end to life than the ones who are complaining about everything the whole time.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I have a question I want to ask, but it's pretty non sequitur. So if someone's got this on. How much almond flour?

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  And at what stage?

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  No, the question was that when I, it's actually the twentieth anniversary of this, but when I was a lot younger, I've spoken about this on the show before, one of my best friends was assaulted in the city, one of the one punch victim. He's, he's still alive, but he's in permanent care.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  And in the aftermath of that, we as a group of mates, found ourselves doing things so like, starting a sort of behavioural change, not for profit. And there's, which that doesn't really exist anymore, but there's another charity that a lot of the parents started. And I've always questioned, why did we just sort of, and I think it's a good thing, but where did this urge to do something come from?

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  Impotence.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  Impotence, you had no, you had no ability to control what happened. So maybe you can control it for someone else. And, and the pain that you're feeling, I would have thought.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  This is huge territory, but I would have thought the pain that you're feeling can, can be lessened by knowing that maybe you're removing that, that potential pain for someone else.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Well, your mother seemed to do the same thing.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Exactly what my mother did, yeah.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then I was sort of interested by the fact that it wasn't until, and I, this could be wrong, but the way I've understood it is it wasn't till your mother's passing that you got involved.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I've kind of felt like, like I'm, I'd been, I'd started, I'd started to get involved, but it was definitely the sense that with my mother going, it should be something that I, that I, that I take up, that it's something that, you know, she's gone, so I'll just take that up and, try and progress it. I suppose, again, it's a way, it's memorizing your mother, my mother on that basis.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  But I, I think, I think this thing, the Alana Madeline Foundation, there's loads of examples of, and there's something wonderfully human about the ability of taking something terrible in your life, but also in, in their lives and trying to find a way of turning into a positive.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  I think it's a, I think it's a brilliant human thing to do rather than, you know, shutting the blinds and locking the doors and kind of, you know, sitting in a dark space.

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  To reaching out there and finding other people and finding ways to make things better is a, you, you think is not just a, it's not just a positive for, for them and for other people. It's also a very big positive for yourself to feel that you have some agency.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I think there's certainly that feeling about trying to grab some agency when you feel like you've got nothing at all.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  But, um, yeah, I just, I've always sort of fascinated where that, that urge comes from. And it's such a wonderful human condition that seems to be almost, almost universal.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and I think it's, and it's brilliant. I mean, it's a long, long may it be the case.

• 1:11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  Um, just one last question from AI.

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  Tell us about this show MasterChef.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Food, food on the television. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. Five nights a week. Madness.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Uh, so your friend said to you, if you do masters shift, your marriage won't last. You did eleven seasons. You speak very fondly of Emma. And what is the secret? What has the secret been for you guys?

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  Um, low expectations on her path. Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Low expectations and just just managing to exceed them.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  Would be how I would see it. I think that's, I think that that side is a, is more a question of a her. I think undoubtedly one of the things is, is acknowledging that, that, um, that your partner will change. Especially if you're a bloke, because we tend to be quite linear. How do blokes change? They start playing golf, maybe.

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  Get out of my head, man.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  I think, I think it is acknowledging, is acknowledging that you have to, you have to change alongside them. And acknowledging the stuff. So, for example, I quite like to just go on holiday and eat at a nice restaurant every day. But I understand now that we need to go to gardens. We have, we have, we just look at art and I need to embrace that. And it needs not to be a, something we're just doing for you. It's something. Can you embrace? Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I know, I do love it. I do love it. I do love it. The garden, the garden, you know. I come from a long line of, of gardeners that go back to, you know, the, the seventeen hundreds where, where I'm, one of my ancestors was the man who got him to around with a very famous, super successful gardener called Capability Brown. He said, it's all wrong. What capability does is all wrong.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  I can tell you, it's all about the picturesque capability around the, it's, it's all just trammelled and part hairs and fences and it should be natural. And everyone just went, he's Capability Brown.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  So, so, so I come from, I come from a long, long, long line of, of unprofessional idiots who are happy to take on. So, so, no, I know, I know, garden is beautiful, bit of mindfulness, you know. No, but I think, I mean, I think that that's probably the, that, that's, that's probably the best of my side was given is undoubtedly. You know, you need, you need to evolve and you need to embrace what, those areas where, where you've got stuff to do together. Otherwise you'll grow apart. Because again, the kids, the kids are such a, a great glue, you know, the running, running of the family is such a great glue. That you need to make sure that when that, that glue disappears, there's actually some real glue there as well. It hasn't just been papering over the cracks.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  I feel like you've just. Really shone light on really important topics that we haven't spoken about too much before. And I feel like the example of epilepsy, I think that will help a lot of people to feel less alone in what must be a very lonely condition, not just for the person, but the people who love people with epilepsy, but also all you've learnt through doing the hospital, which congratulations, it's an incredible show, it must have been amazing to be a part of. Amazing experience. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Thanks, Matt.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  What a wonderful man to spend time with, isn't he?

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, he is. And I felt like, I really felt like I needed to hear, and maybe Josh, you felt the same, but I really needed to hear, especially the bit about like preparing your parents and preparing for what's coming. I feel like.

• 1:14:39Speaker 03

  Preparing yourself as well.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, preparing yourself. And I feel like it's led me to do some very important research, which I think is going to be very helpful to us and we need to in our life right now.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  But so many people do as well.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Well, interestingly for me, I, so after recording between, we recorded that episode last week and we're recording this bit this week. So there's been a weekend in between. And my family went to our parents' house over the weekend and spent the whole weekend there. And mum and dad actually did bring up some sort of, of this stuff, sort of like, planning for the end and things like that.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Hmm. God, that's a hard, that's such a hard thing to bring. Is that awkward in your family to say that or was that?

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, they're not really saying that. They're more saying like, practical stuff.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 03

  Um, housing and, and little things like that. Not really exactly wills, but the door was, there was a moment where mum and dad said something about this area and the door was open. It was there for me to start having this conversation, especially after Matt. Had just spoken about it and I found myself just pulling back and changing the subject straight away. I thought it was really strange that this is like, I'm primed for this. I'm ready to go. Well, maybe I'm not primed because I just had the have the feeling of wanting to do it, but I really, I just don't want to imagine them gone and I don't want to imagine that process. So I put it in a place where I don't talk about it, which I know is the wrong thing to do.

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  Well, completely by chance. And I didn't even organise this for today. I just, it fell this way. But yesterday I had a meeting with, we're redoing our wills, Penny and I. And I had to chat to someone about that, getting the process done for that. And then I thought, oh my gosh, this is exactly what we're talking about. So I actually said to him, what are the things that we should be, what's the conversations we should be having with our mum and dad right now?

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  Do you redo your wills every time you and Penny change who your favourite kid is? Is that all? Because I guess that would be changing all the time. So you're just constantly changing. Maybe it doesn't change. Oh, true.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Sure. Anyway, I, so I literally just took notes while he was talking and I'm going to read the notes to you because I, I feel like it is, it was just so helpful. And, and I think we should arrange to catch up with mum and dad or to chat to them, catch up, to chat to them and literally go through this list of things with them and just tick them off. Because I feel like when it's a list of things to tick off and to do list, it's a bit more pragmatic. And it can hopefully take the emotion out of a bit, which is what I think can make it really hard.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, correct.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  So one of the, the first thing he said to me is he said, you want to ensure you're in a state of grief, not chaos when they pass, which I thought was a really cool thing to just think about.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Well, when your parents do pass, you want to make sure you're able to grieve and you're not in a state of chaos, trying to get everything sorted and trying to find signatures and trying to.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  Allow yourself the time to grieve.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you want to be doing that as opposed to just stressed trying to do admin stuff. So, and then he said, there was sort of, I put them into five categories of things that you should do. So the number one, make sure the legal basics are sorted. That includes an up to date will, enduring power of eternity and a clear medical decision maker.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  Power of attorney?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  Not eternity.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  I'm shocked.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Power of eternity is, that's a position I want to hold.

• 1:18:00Speaker 03

  I didn't know that was an option. That kind of makes the whole thing void, doesn't it? The whole discussion.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Oh no, I think power of eternity is, uh.

• 1:18:09Speaker 03

  That's something I wanna, I wanna.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  No, we're not giving that in.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  I'm moved to keep it in.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Enduring power of eternity.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  And a clear medical decision maker. Uh, and there can be no assumptions in any of these areas. Like you can't go, we'll work that out afterwards. Like you need to have that sorted first. Number two, create one master document, which is a simple list of bank accounts, super, insurance, debts, key contacts, and a place where important documents and passwords are stored. Because when someone dies, not knowing where anything is, adds a great deal of unnecessary stress.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Number three, have the funeral conversation, um, which it feels really awkward, but it kind of removes the guesswork. And when you're at the funeral, apparently you kind of feel like this is what they wanted. And that's a really nice feeling. So the conversation to have there and around the funeral is burial or cremation, religious or not, um, what music, what tone, all those kinds of things. Like have that conversation. Because a lot of the time, parents will say, you can just, you go for it. But apparently the feeling can be when you're there, I wish I'd asked because I am guessing a bit here.

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  And the pressure to get it right.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  Would be so hard if you've got no idea exactly what they want. And then also the decision between siblings of like, oh, there's no way they'd want that song. And you know, they would want that.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  The fourth one is to sort out, this is, I feel like this would be a really hard one. And this, I think there's no way to escape the emotion behind this. But the fourth one is to sort sentimental items early. So like label photos, I think what he was saying there was like. Um. You can go through parents' albums, photo albums at some point and go, oh, where was that taken? I don't know what that was. Or that was, and it's a nice thing to do because they can tell stories as well. So if it's pictures of dad back in Colombo as a kid, it's like, um, finding out where is it school or whatever it was. If it was taken, it's a nice thing to know.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Even like, like, objects around the house.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's what, yeah, that's one of the things you went on to say.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 02

  Um. So be really clear with who gets what.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I actually meant more like, almost like the stories behind the objects.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Oh, great. Yeah.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Because, because like, I've got a few things from my grandparents when they passed away. And, and there's like, there's a few like, there's like, old kind of like bowl, like wooden bowls and little statue things. And I was like, God, I would love to know.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  Like the history of it.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Um. He said, these families don't fracture because they're bad people. They fracture because things weren't clear. Um. So I think, again, clarity over who gets what is just so important.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Uh. The fifth thing was, he said, to talk about care preferences. So this, again, this is a hard one to do, but it's, it's just when you think about what not doing it would be like, it's much harder. What does quality of life mean to them? What treatment would they want or not want? And at what point do they not want treatment anymore? Um. And at what point do you not want aggressive treatment? Um. And at what point do you want to be home? Uh. And he said, at the end of that bit, he just said, these conversations protect you from doubt when decisions really, really matter. Um. Which I thought was really good as well. So they're the five things. And he did, he said this sort of at the top of the conversation, but I, I just wrote it down. I actually liked it. So he said, the greatest gift our parents can give us isn't money or possessions, it's clarity.

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Because when it time, when the time comes, we don't want to be managing paperwork. We want to be focusing on how we can be there for each other.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Hmm. That's really good.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Which is a really nice thing. So.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Two things that have come out for me for that is one, that we should definitely make that into like a PDF that we put on the newsletter that people can.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Download from the newsletter to like.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  We can create it like a checklist.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  People can like, print it out and, and, yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Theimperfects.com.au to sign up to the newsletter. That's obviously.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Hate to have to say it all the time, but feels fun.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is fun.

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Just a reminder.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Fun and free.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, fun and free. Um. But it reminds me of, you've spoken about this a bit before, but like.

• 1:22:12Speaker 03

  Um, Stoics and Marcus Aurelius and his thing of imagining what it would be like to, to die.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  Um, for me, if you do this.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  He does that a way of being resilient.

• 1:22:23Speaker 03

  As a way.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Anti fragile, says to be anti fragile, you need to imagine.

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but to me, the way that it's listed there, this feels like a, it's almost like, and I wonder if we could title it something like this on the PDF of like, um, a celebration process, like it's a celebration of life process in which you can really honor this person and go through the process of really learning more about them, um, working out all this stuff. And there's some really beautiful moments in there, as you said, about going through sentimental items and that kind of stuff on top of some of the topics that might feel a bit more dark. But I reckon if we, if you go through that perfectly, what an amazing opportunity to celebrate this person. And then it kind of would, to me, it would feel like every day on from here feels like a bonus that I get with that person.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  That's awesome. I love that.

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it could be 15 years of bonus or 20 years of bonus, but from this moment on, everything feels like I've gained days that I didn't think I would get with them.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 03

  Rather than doing it at the end, when you don't get any of those days as a bonus.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  That's really nice.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Beautiful. Well, I'm, I'm genuinely have, cause mum and dad brought up with me a couple of times and I just sort of, same as you, I kind of look for a way to exit the conversation as soon as possible.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Um, but, um, I did most be kind of look forward to it in a, if it's a celebration of them.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. The one thing I do want to add though, actually, is that I think this is all presume, on the presumption that the relationship is good.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Yes, of course.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  And just to like, I think to acknowledge for people who have a really bad relationship with their parents or difficult relationship with siblings, that there is an added layer of difficulty here that I don't know if I have advice for, but just to acknowledge that, geez, that's, it's hard and, but it's only going to get harder after they're gone, I think. And that any way you can muster it.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  The capacity in your own relationships to be able to tackle this now. I think I can only imagine it will delaying it and hoping it will get better. I can't see how that is a solution.

• 1:24:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Very good. Well, Matt was wonderful and such an important episode for us to have. And I think for so many people sort of who are at that stage of life where they're trying to care for their own kids, but then also on the horizon is caring for their parents. So, um, thank you, Matt.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Just before we do wrap up, um, a few people might've heard Hugh you saying during the episode with Matt that we were very excited to get to a talk about home and away and neighbours. And people probably kept waiting and we never actually got to it. But then when we realised that at the end, uh, Bridge pointed it out and said like, oh, maybe we can talk about neighbours and home and away. So we did talk about it and record a little chat and we'll, we'll put it on Patreon, uh, which is, uh, the home, one of the homes of A Little More Imperfects. That's, that'll just be a separate video. We'll put it on there as a little bit of bonus content. So, yeah, go check it out. But that's it. So, um, thank you, guys. Good to see you again.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  Likewise.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Love you both. Love you both. And, and I'm sure at one point I will love, love Matt Preston like I love you guys. But for now, Matt Preston, I really, really like him. Yeah. But I don't, I don't want to put him on the same plane as you guys.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, I don't not love him.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  You had strong feelings towards him.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  I had strong feelings towards him. Maybe it will develop into a love, um, but he's going to need to put some work in, like you guys did.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Fingers crossed. Good luck, Matt.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  If you enjoyed this episode and want a little more, you might enjoy our subscriber only apps, available on Patreon and Apple Podcasts. If you want a little more but don't want to pay anymore, then you can join our newsletter at theimperfects.com.au. And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who help make this show. A show made on the lands of the Wurundjeri, where we're our own people, and we pay our respects to elders past and present. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is general in nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline on 13 11 14.