[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Psycho Vertical podcast, it's me and I get Patrick.
[SPEAKER_00]: just rushed home to get back to do this podcast because I feel like I have to keep up these pot now than two to this year, I need to keep it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, come back, got back caught my wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this weird thing, I thought it was a bit wrong with that house.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was falling apart because it was like loads of like bits of plaster like missing out of the ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, they're like a hole in the ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how's it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: then today I came back and caught my wife like hovering the ceiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: With your apparently is a good way of getting rid of spiders' webs, but it's also a very good way of smashing your ceiling to bits.
[SPEAKER_00]: So things are what that's what like dusters have like feathers on that are not a big massive bits of plastics.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so it's a bit of a bit of a web.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also wearing a head torch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably head torch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very good way of working out where the things that were the spiders' webs up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've just spent like a week for some reason I've started.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have this like sub stack where like originally sub stack was where then I started sub stack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I used to just write articles and just put them on website.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I started putting them on sub stack for some reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like people would could like pay money like five euros or five euros a month or something like one year or a week or something will call it one year or a week to support the writing and I guess I did it for that reason to begin with but then when I got like a set a number of people who are surveying I've been thinking about five thousand subscribers but then I said once I got over a set a number who were paying for it
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really like it because I felt like then I had to keep doing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I like suspended it suspended the payments and then so it felt like it's podcast really.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started doing it and then I started it again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did like a few articles last year that got like a ton of people reading them.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the guy who died, abceiling on his rope on El Cap.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote something about that because I have done the route and probably nearly died myself in the same way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote something about that and I got like a lot of people reading it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then suddenly I got like a lot more people paying for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I've kind of then I seem to have like gone from, I used to just, I used to, when I started writing more on sub-stack, I just started doing like every Monday, I would write for something for sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I used to, say every week there was something on sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as more people were paying for it, then I started putting more effort into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then,
[SPEAKER_00]: instead of like four days of the week writing a writing box and then doing like three days a week writing sub stack and it's got more it seems to be taking up more and more on time and this so this week I was like this week it's like all this week I've been trying to write something around the moving together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you both tie in any, like, moving together because there was this story of this guy, three people who died in Scotland, 2003, that just came out of the last week, like, the coroner's report.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was thought, like, I was interested in moving together, like, what do you, well, I don't know about moving together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote something about that, like, how to do it safely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, generally, if you're, the best way, if you're moving together, and there's any protection, it's just a one-toy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then it's not like a death pack to where like you know if I go you go if you go I go it's that kind of thing So so I started writing that but end it being quite a it's very very it's not it's like one of these things It should really really simple like if you read freedom of the hills or something They'd be like one little paragraph about it But when you start trying to write about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually really complicated because
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like the terrain is different and you know, sometimes you might have some protection in like a slaying sometimes you have spiky rocks which might stop you is different if the first person falls off compared to the second person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I'm going to be quite complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I think at the end of the day, the conclusion was like, not tied together unless you think, you know, so yeah, it was an interesting thing to write.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, probably a good thing to highlight.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go and read it, it's on my sub-stack, it's like sub-stack and to get a Patrick.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bit about short-ropping, which is other thing a lot of people really understand what it is because, you know, when you go to the Alps, you often see people walking around, holding curls of rope and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, listen, they look like guides, but they're not actually doing short-ropping, they're actually doing something.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is way more dangerous than just being tied to someone without a bealer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, have a look at that, Ray, that's some interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe there's something, if it's quite long, but I think there's probably something in there that's probably a value to anyone who goes scrambling, walking, all that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a few questions, it's Friday nights so I'm like cooking tonight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just bought, I don't wanna be like a total wanker here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't wanna be like, I mean, those things are coffee wanker anymore, like everyone's coffee wanker.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't wanna end up being like a slow cooker wanker, but I bought a slow cooker recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: for some reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone told me, so I think we're all sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone said, what you need is a slow cooker.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like that, anyway, so apparently slow because that's the good way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a way of not getting sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I bought this like the cheapest slow cooker and I didn't have a slow cooker.
[SPEAKER_00]: A long time ago, I got this podcast is getting so shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did have a slow cooker a long time ago and it was horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just put everything in it and then I switched it on and came back and I was lit and it all tasted horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't really like supposed to fry things fast, like the meat or the whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just put like a tin of beans and some sausages in there and come back after eight hours and it was still the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's like a slow cooker.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like 60 euros or something and it has revolutionized my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing, amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, even my son who is not great eating for tea time, he's been loving it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he has to get yourself a slow cooker, put some beef in there, all the vegetables, stick it on for eight hours when it, I always let it all just falls to pieces and it's like, you feel like you're all going to somebody, you're like, oh, I just had this great piece of, what did I call it?
[SPEAKER_00]: They have all these names, they're the Americans
[SPEAKER_00]: Something, you know, I sighed of something, you know, just got a giant of something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, I just got some biscuit, brisket.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, I've got some brisket, broiling in the broiling in the broiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: What the fuck is broiling?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, is that I'm broiling?
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so I'm boiled some brisket and it tastes horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, so then I've boiled it instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, but your brisket in there, whatever that is, it's like me, you put your meat in there and just stick it on slow eight hours, come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it's not using lots of electricity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so yeah, let's get yourself a slow cooker.
[SPEAKER_00]: the highly recommended chili and I didn't make any chili but if it was American I would.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, Thai curry, curry, you name it, as long as it's like stew or curry, that's basically why you're going to be making it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's stew, curry, curry stew, stew with curry, meat with curry, meat with stew, it's like amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so if you're a boulderer, if you had a wanderer, you can do your vegetables, and you can do your veggie food in there, just add meat as well, and it's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But mother, you should never understand vegetarianism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, add a gal friend, and she was like, do you eat meat, and she's like, no, do you like to eat fish?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that no?
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, do you eat tuna fish?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think fishing a can is not the same, is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so I've got, I was thinking of doing, to be less boring, enough room already, to be less boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking of, so when I asked the question about public speaking, so I was thinking about doing like a potted history of my life as a public speaker, the rise and fall, the rise and fall of a public speaker, really, a quick drinker, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, shall I do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What time is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, I'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll start it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see where we get.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, public speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I'd say public speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I began public speaking, like most people did in the 90s, which was like in a pub, just with some slides and telling the story about something you did, some climbing trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the end of it, how when he was lit would that be like the call it,
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 years later, no, 2005, 20 years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: By 20 years later, I was basically making more money in like a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was making like two years, enough money to live for two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: from one touring in theatres.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I basically went from like zero to making more money than like a probably like you'd see like a comedian on the telly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was probably making more money than a comedian on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't making as much a rickage of air, so I wasn't making millions.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I got to the point where I was making like for me like a ton of money, like a year's worth
[SPEAKER_00]: So Alex, I'll explain, and people are saying to me like, oh, you should be a comedian, and I'm like, if I was a comedian, I'd be talking to like 50 people in a little room in like, Glasgow somewhere, where now I'm talking to like 500 people in the theatre.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like to be, so people are always like, oh, you're so funny should be a comedian, but it was, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: for like in terms of like making a living out of talking, you know, and at the same time you're doing like talking to like, I don't know, I don't really like doing like businessy talks because I never really felt like I really fitted in, but I did like, you know, you do all these barkless banks and all those kind of things and they're the masses of the universe, but it also did like talks for like
[SPEAKER_00]: and trouble the round like you know going to Australia to talk New Zealand to talk Canada all that kind of Milwaukee.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah so I ended up I think I got to take
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably is a part of when we're getting to the stratosphere like Alex Honald or Tommy cold, well, or someone like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I got to like the very pinnacle of speaking for someone like me and then I just like gave it a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll tell you why I gave it a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I lost my voice basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was that, it was that, it was that, it was that, it was that whole thing like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: going to prison for all that, you know, all that child porn and more computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, it's always sad that when you see these things where you see like something like, oh, this guy, this, you know, some famous comedian, you know, oh my god, I've not seen that person for age on the telly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always like, oh, he went, he's been in prison or something for something awful.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one, no one mentioned it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so back in the 90s, in the olden days, you used to go where and you were tech you photographs with the camera and you might come away on a trip that might have taken, you might have been away for like a month and you might have like 54
[SPEAKER_00]: It failed them in the olden days, failed them it came on a roll, a roll, came on a roll, and he had 36 photographs and usually the first one was crap in the last one was crap because it would be half in the camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'd have like, you'd have 30 for pictures and probably most of them won't be very good anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll be of your for or something or they'll be overexposed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you might have like one or two photographs, which at the time you thought were amazing, but now we look back at the wishit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Biti had loads of shit for photographs, but wishit thought were okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you would come home and you would,
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh god my children are missing around.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you come back and you'd say like oh I've just been away on a trip Let's let's look at the slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you go around someone's house?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think my daughter's trying to get into this room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like Go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Leave me alone
[SPEAKER_00]: always wax, um, tough love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So uh, so um, yes, you got around someone's house and I remember once went round and there was like pole, pretty child was there, like, you know, pole, pretty child was like a hero, because I, because I remember like I,
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I moved to Sheffield in the 90s, you know, you would be like a slideshow.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd be like Lynn Hill would comb and do a talk at the university, and you'd be like a little theatre room, like a lecture theatre, and they'd be like 150 people, and you'd all cram in there and pay you five quid, and Lynn Hill would talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: And remember when you Lynn Hill is terrible to talk, so boring, and really boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they had like questions and answers at the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, how do you go to the toilet on a big wall?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, God, it's so funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, he read me laughing in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was funny, she showed the little film of her like, free climbing the nose.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a bit in the film where it's like, we arrived at the base of the climb to make our first one day a cent of the nose of El Capitan.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my partner, Realize, he'd lost,
[SPEAKER_00]: Billy played behind and everyone like bass out laughing because it's like British people love people who fuck up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like their favorite thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I've just read like far north by Nanssen which has got to be one of the most amazing books ever written like it's hard to describe how beyond hard Nanssen was
[SPEAKER_00]: like Nans and the Norwegian, like I'll perceive I can condense it down into one minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nans and wants to get to the North Pole, you think they found tree trees from Siberia on the coast of Greenland.
[SPEAKER_00]: He thinks if they get stuck in the ice.
[SPEAKER_00]: This Iberia, the boat will go around in a circle and eventually arrive at the North Pole.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he takes 17 men, especially built-in boat, super strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has like eight years supply of stuff on this eight years supply stuff on this boat.
[SPEAKER_00]: They get stuck in the ice, they start travelling around, they're going up one degree, down one degree, they're going up and down, up and down for two years.
[SPEAKER_00]: two years in the ice, looking in the ice, and they're having a great all-time and they're killing, and every now and again they'll be polo bear, it'll start eating the dogs and they'll kill a polo bear and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: After two years, like two winters in the winter, not light in this boat, I'm nonsense realises that they can't, they're not going to make it, they're going to keep going, open down, open down.
[SPEAKER_00]: and never quite get to the pole.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he sets out with another partner and they know that once they set off for the north pole, they will never be able to get back to the ship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is like a one-way mission and they know the only way to survive is if they get to the pole or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to head for Franz Joseph Land which is like a
[SPEAKER_00]: archipelago, a piece of land, a piece of land in the, in between, small barred and, and, like, folk knows where.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think only one person had been there before, so he basically had an idea where it was, and he was going to have to head across the ice to try and get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he sets off,
[SPEAKER_00]: They go, they go, they go, they've got dogs, it's horrendous conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually they realize they can't get there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They turn around, start heading towards where they think the land is, but they forget one morning to wind up with the watches.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is pre GPS, this is like 1894 or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: They forget to wind their watches so they don't have an accurate time there for they can't tell where they are by taking a
[SPEAKER_00]: reading from the son or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now they don't really know where French Joseph Land is.
[SPEAKER_00]: They start heading where they think it is, you try and guess it's the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're skiing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're on the ice for something like like months and months, like three months, four months, six months, a lot of months.
[SPEAKER_00]: They run out of food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they running out of food?
[SPEAKER_00]: They start killing the dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kill one dog to feed the other dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: enough food for three days, then the kill the other dog three days, three day did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually they just got two dogs left and they're pushing the sledge and they're you know they've got primitive clothing on cotton whatever and amazingly they find the land but the dogs the two dogs can't get
[SPEAKER_00]: across to the land because they were pulling kayaks like homemade kayaks that are going to so they had to knew that across the the leads to get to the land.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the killer dogs all the dogs so far they'd have to slip their throats because they only had like 150 bullets and they needed those as a vibe once they got to the land to kill polar bears or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: the kill they shoot the two dogs out of respect because they've gone that far terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so they get to this land, they start going on their kayaks, going on the ice, on the kayaks, the kill polar bears, the kill sea lions, they're running out of everything, and then they're realizing they have to win to over, and they have nothing, they just have the claws that are wearing, they don't really even have a tent, they've just got this piece of fabric.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they kill some walruses, they dig a hole in the rocks and they make a roof out of the walrus skin and crawl in and then spend like three months or four months in total darkness the whole winter living on
[SPEAKER_00]: polar bear meat and they're sleeping bags kind of rotting away and they're polar bears skins are rotting away because they couldn't dry them properly and eventually the silver comes around they pop out and it's things like the fuck a fox steals their twine.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is like life or death thing because they need the twine to make new cloths because their clothes are just rotted away on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, they start going and then they start hitting south again.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that maybe they could get to like, svalve barred somewhere where they might be seat, where there's a somebody and they could and they could be rescued.
[SPEAKER_00]: They absolutely insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't tell you what, I won't tell you the end, but it's a diary
[SPEAKER_00]: The, when you read it, you're like, this is nuts, like this guy is like super human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is, you see this like SDSL, S thing, SDSL, you're tough enough to like, oh, that's a little bit of this hill with a rucksack on me back and like, oh my god, you saw a tough, you mental health must be amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we meant the whole terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it, everybody's like, handsome, it's like, forget if you want to talk mental health, handsome, you know, it's like, you wouldn't even know what you're talking about, like, amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: but yeah so yeah far this north it's a little bit hard to get into the game with but it's it's like you are so lucky to have a book like that exists in the world and another NASA have like looked into have read you know really studied Nonsense because going to Mars or whatever is it's a very they what what Nonsense was doing was more than more impressive than going to Mars I think because
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, at least going to Mars, you got all the technology and everything else, like, Nansen really was on his own really, so amazing, amazing book.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, interestingly enough, Nansen, when he got back, he's a bit like, Nansen was the same, he was fatta.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was fat than when he left the ship because he was living on Blubber, fat, basically fat, fat, because he was eating protein, like he was eating, he did our protein, because he was eating polar bears and walruses.
[SPEAKER_00]: But apparently the young walruses, walruses are the ones to eat, not the old ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was basically surviving on fat and he was fat when he got back when he set off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're living on a dried field or something, you would have probably
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so anyway, so you're doing all these slideshows for people and then, and then there was like, I remember, I remember I did like it was, it was like a few in a pub and it was, I guess it was, I guess because I was telling the stories enough in the, working in a climbing shop, you kind of got the story down.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then you're repeating the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a chance to practice the story of going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first slide shows I was probably doing to friends was like first trip to the semantics, like climbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pacific Ocean wall and the shield and things like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then they had like an ice climbing festival, and I was asked to do a talk about doing the friend or spare in the winter time, and I did this talk, and it was like really funny, and everyone was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: like really laughing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, you know, it went down really really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember like standing up and talking to all these people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like the most natural thing I'd ever felt like most natural thing I'd ever done like totally
[SPEAKER_00]: not worried at all, not stage fight or anything, which is kind of interesting because at the time and all through my childhood, I always thought I didn't have any confidence, but that wasn't true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I told myself that, but it wasn't actually true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what I lacked something, but it wasn't, it wasn't confidence really.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I think that made me, and I think slowly at the word of mouth gets out and people like, oh, this guy is like really
[SPEAKER_00]: This is really funny guy and he talks about stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess by then, I started writing for magazines.
[SPEAKER_00]: So your name kind of got around.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you started like, clubs, climbing clubs, we started getting in touch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you come and do a talk about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or can you come and talk to our winter?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like winter talks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'd pay you like a bit of money that'd pay you like a hundred quid or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're living on,
[SPEAKER_00]: like I had like I was on like minimum wage so if you wouldn't give a talk some give you a hundred quid you know it was like great so but also like it was never about the money I actually loved talking about climbing I absolutely like I would pay a hundred quid.
[SPEAKER_00]: to go and talk about climbing and now later on in my life actually worked in a sort of professional capacity with people who were talking and that was a difference like some people.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you had to pair them to do it, then we'd generally share it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact you'd pair them not to do
[SPEAKER_00]: and mentioning no names so the people who are really good at which naturally just wanted to you know get on the stage and talk and talk and which is a good thing in a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so I think, so I guess I was like doing that and then like client, they need like universities, university climbing clubs, you start doing talks for them and then I was like actively like contacting clubs and sometimes it was climbing walls and before you knew it, I was probably making, you know, I was probably making like a couple of thousand pounds of
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd usually be driving a long way, you're driving like four or five hours to do a talk and then you'd do your talk and then you probably drive home again so you'd be getting home at like two in the morning or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, but I kind of loved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really, really loved it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember once when I had a talk to do in Scotland, and I think it might be like in the aid of Matt Rescue Team in Inveness, and I was really glad I wanted to live in Inveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was me and Madad and Ian Parnell and we decided to go and do like a winter route before on the more on the Saturday of the slideshow and we ended about getting like, do we get to the top?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I think anyway, we didn't get quite to the top and then it was like we need to go and need to get down because we have to go to the slideshow and I think we left the rope fixed and we upsold down and ran back to the car.
[SPEAKER_00]: literally was like half an hour late and I had to come in to do the first half of the slide show with all my clothes on all my climbing on my winter climbing clothes on and then the second half I kind of went to the toilet and got changed in the other half.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the way I think about that slideshow was, was when in such a rush, I had a box of my best slides in the carousel, and I left them on top of the car and drove off and lost them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all my best shit slides were kind of lost, and that was a weird thing about slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the were kind of cool because they'd been to where you were, you know, like if you lost them, you
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was a weird, you know, often you would send a slide, you're best slide to like a magazine, but you'd never get them back again, so you'd often see an old magazine and you'd see some photographs, so you'd be like, oh my god, like that was a great photograph, like what happened to that and your magazines went in both, so you didn't put your name on them and, you know, I had some amazing photographs at the time, I thought we were measuring at the time, and they just kind of just kind of disappeared really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so, and then, then I started getting some more like semi, semi professional kind of gigs, like I think mountain hardware did a
[SPEAKER_00]: Mountain Hardware did a tour and had all these speakers and they were all like Mountain Hardware kind of sponsored athletes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was me as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think by then, I think what was then, maybe I was sponsored by Patagonia or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just started being, can remember like Mountain Hardware, the guy, Robert Mountain Hardware was, we sat me down in the middle of this tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like five theaters.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really, really well attended
[SPEAKER_00]: massive theatres of people because you had like four or five really good speakers, you're like Simon yet, some people, so that's why I'm around hardware, you know, like you just got like a massive audience, so that was like super exciting to have a massive audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was really, that was really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: But remember him offering me to be like a mountain hardware person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember thinking like, I don't like mountain hardware.
[SPEAKER_00]: Claw and so I had to be in a Patagonie person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have been a mountain hardware person maybe, because it probably was a bit a long, long-term gig.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so that was really, and then I did like, I think I did like a BMC Alpine series.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we had to go around to universities with Libby Peter for like a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we talked to universities about Alpine climbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the idea was to make them safer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I just probably talked a lot of old random crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't really know much about Alpine climbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, so yeah, kind of went, it went on like that for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: the more I really really I really really love doing it and remember like trying to get suddenly it was like I need to be on the corporate speaking thing like you always saw like bear grills and all those people like doing like talks for banks and stuff and I was like I need to do that but what I didn't what I didn't really realise at the time was it's a very
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very like incestuous, not the other word.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the British people know each other, like someone went to school with bad grilles or someone went to school with this person.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's very not so much, like you thought, like if you got on the London speaker, or a list of speakers, then you would get all this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't really, it doesn't really work like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's not, it's not, you know, just because you're on the list of people to get work, you don't really, you know, it's not going to make any difference really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, uh, did like a few talks for schools, like you start doing your kids, your kids school, and then you do like a few other schools.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was like, and again, like, where to wear the mouth people, you can't do schools.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't look at, you don't get like paid a lot of schools, but it's like, oh, is that really good fun?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, go back to a whole, and I do like a lecture in the school there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of something, it was about how, um, when you talk to a class of kids, especially in like a poor school, you can almost like mark out their lives just by looking at them, by their hair and stuff, and like, how calm their hair isn't stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, got a cough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I remember I probably told that I was sort of told this story before but I wanted to talk about going to Greenland and one of the kids, two of the kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the kids was like, did you come back?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is a good question.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other question was like, there's not trees in Greenland, how do you breathe?
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: You always get the one child who'd ask the same question as another child, and everyone would be like, he's already said that, he's already said that, and he could never make kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think a child's attention span is age plus two, so you could always, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: but you could never make them, you could never be too funny or too make them laugh because it was very hard to get them back under control.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like it's like a child if you're like swing a child around by their hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just what leave you alone because they want you to keep doing it over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so you'd have to really keep and keep a control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I used to do a talk about climbing LCAP and they'd have the story about the Russians,
[SPEAKER_00]: on this ledge, on miserable, and they were having a barbecue of me, and they were like, I can hear him crying in the night, and they were playing their ballalike, and the kids who still are like, because I was like singing, the kids used to find it hysterical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So kids have to find things really, really funny that other people don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, so you have to like really keep a kind of, and I had this thing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like an early realization.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always knew I should never use the word retarded in a school, but she'd like a posh school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I always said it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't help myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always said, oh, when I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't read and write and people said I was retarded and not kind of stuff and I thought like my brain was like, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it and I'd always like say it because my brain was telling me not to say it and it said fuck you and so yes, it was an early realization that was something not quite right with me and I never really prepared what I was going to say I'd have this I'd have the slides like all lined up and
[SPEAKER_00]: and then I would basically have a framework what I was going to say because I'd been there and done this trip or climb, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we just go off on like, a bit like this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was go off on like tangents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: other people would be so scripted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember once he went to a slideshow, it was like Tim Emma and Neil Gresham and it was like scripted.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, to me it felt like scripted to the 9th degree like they had practiced this over and over and over again to make it perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was something like missing from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did like, I think when I this what the do lectures are that was sticks out was in in Wales and you had all these like you had like Tim Ferris who wrote the five hour work week or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five hours work and a hundred hours hundred hours on the internet and making more work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy who did the what built the wind at radio.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're all the internet somewhere look up did the do lectures The guy who did the invented the wind at radio is there and remember like he came onto the stage is old guy And he'd been like a I think he'd be like a spit fire pilot in the second world war
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, oh, stinks in here, he was like, what, you also all be hippies or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing he said he was just like, disparaging to the audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like really funny, it was like really refreshing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it wasn't trying to make any friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's that, there is a thing of like, I am just going to do my thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can like it or not, but this is my thing, rather than being really like when I did like the few like businessy things, I'd always just say like, you know, remember only work hard when people are looking and you know, I kind of was like an anti motivational speaker really and like I wanted to talk for some big big big big big like when these companies
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, black rock one of these organizations corporations owns like loads of businesses and after was someone's like we've never had a speaker who's been on the doll before and I thought that was kind of that's kind of interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: But often it was good because it was different.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like wasn't the same so I wasn't trying to be better girls and wasn't trying to be anybody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just being
[SPEAKER_00]: I was incapable of being, I wasn't smart enough, or I wasn't willing to practice enough to be anyone but myself and myself seem to be effective enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm looking back, I probably
[SPEAKER_00]: I would probably lose, you know, probably 30% of the audience, I would lose them because like I had this, you know, I would go up onto the stage and the first slide would be me as a baby and I'd be naked and I'm climbing up a ladder.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like two years old that I'm naked and I'm in Sardinia, like my dad was based in Sardinia in the Air Force and I'm climbing up this ladder in a park and he used to say like, oh, if there's any pedophiles in the audience,
[SPEAKER_00]: like a third of the people or more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're in like, if you're in like the out ahead of degrees probably more than 30% you know, so a lot of people wouldn't wouldn't like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you might like laying out your stall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like my one of my comedy heroes is like idiot ideasad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jerry Sadawitz and it like really controversial character, but the people who loved him really really loved him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So another people who just like fuck off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so yeah, so I think I was just like, I was in my mind, I think I was like channeling Jerry's Jerry Sadawitz to some degree.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I've got it at the time, six o'clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, I'm back again.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a geysus into a podcast, it's like 24 hours later, by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll have to call some of it here again now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a guy in the used to a geysus in his podcast, and he was like, oh, I just need to go to the toilet, I'll let it spit out, and then he would forget to, so that he'd be like 20 minutes, so just like, waiting there and like,
[SPEAKER_00]: and speaking of which.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you do, when you do like a lot of talking, you experience a lot of like mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to repeat some things I probably talked about on other podcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: But three that stand out.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was, I once did like a tour of cinemas and I was showing,
[SPEAKER_00]: the scream of stone by Van Hetzog in the first half and then in the second half or vice versa.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing a slideshow about Patagonia, because scream of stones about Patagonia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like in the pitch, how cinemas, so it was Manchester, it was Manchester Liverpool, there was like three in London or something, so it went around, which is kind of interesting, because the more
[SPEAKER_00]: And the more you start dealing, we're like theatres and things like that, you start realising like how margins work and like so in the in a theatre you might get if you were the putting on like a show you might get like 75% or or last men and how big of the I'll good the theatre was you might you might get 75% of the of the door and then the theatre gets like 25% and then
[SPEAKER_00]: in a cinema it's like 50-50 and sometimes it can be less so like if you have like pirates of the Caribbean the cinema doesn't make any money for the first week and then it makes like 25% for the second week and it goes down and that's why the goes up and that's why they have to make all our money through like drinks and popcorn all that kind of stuff so it's okay
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of interesting when you start getting more and more into it, you start like, how do you make this work?
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the matters hardwear tour, remember there was like three or four of us, but I only got paid like about 150 quid every, every thing, but that let, yet there was like 500 people in the theatre and they're all paying like 15 quid or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're trying to like work, calculate it all out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the more people involved in something, you realise, you're not really getting ripped off.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that a huge amount of money, the reason that's found in people there, is they've spent a ton of money on marketing it, full-page adverts in newspapers and all this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically the last people to get paid, the people everyone's coming to say so, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a really interesting, I remember like once I was on tour and there was Greece, the musical and they were on, they were about to start their tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it sold out every single venue in the UK and then they just cancelled the talk because they realised they were going to make a loss because they have too many people in the cast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the same with Prince when he used to go on tour, he always just stayed like five-star hotels and everybody would be...
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, everyone would be, you know, he had a huge, hot entourage, and loads and loads of performers, and he would, again, like he would just make a loss, because he just spent too much money.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't matter how many millies people see you, like if you're spending more money than you're making, then you're making a loss really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone told me, Ali, oh, you know, the people who make all the money is people who were comedians, and they give the example of, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Care, like Peter K, he could just turn up in his car, and that was it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't have anyone else with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just had some balloons.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would blow these balloons up and put them on the stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he was getting almost like 100% because he was so famous.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't even have to really advertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would just sell out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And quite a lot of this quite a lot of
[SPEAKER_00]: people when you get to later on in life, when I go into the theatre, we hear a darling and I also hear the theatre, but there's like a real ecosystem of people who've never had of, who are just constantly touring, like jester or who's dead now, but you don't speak, you don't speak, you don't stand off and you're like, who the fuck's this guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like every time I'm in a theatre, like he's just been here, but never had of him and the door is sold out and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: and say with Ken Dodd like you know Ken Dodd you know he wasn't on the telly or anything but he would always be selling out and so yeah there's like a different kind of different weld really different welds like the normal the normal weld so yeah so a few one of the one of my
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things to remember the most was the ones I was doing a talk with this in the cinema, and I was up there and I had this really crappy, really crappy computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now I've gone from slides to having a computer and you had some kind of software on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of, didn't use PowerPoint, used something else, but the U.M.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fortos, E.X.E, it was called.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so I was talking and suddenly the computer just went like this scary, closing down, and the computer just switched off, and everyone was like, like everyone felt this like tension, like they don't really care so much that...
[SPEAKER_00]: that you're everything's going to shit, but they just feel this anxiety on your behalf that you're the one on the stage, just when it's gone wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, I don't need, I don't need the computer anywhere, like let's carry on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just started like describing the experience or something that I was talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after about 20 minutes, suddenly the computer came back on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I didn't realize was that someone in the audience who was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: and he'd gone up to the back of the cinema where the thing was and he'd gone in and he'd like reboot the computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like oh you know what that wasn't there wasn't actually anything wrong with the computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just did that so you could feel like the anxiety when something's going wrong and it's how you deal with it and it was like oh god that's so clever and then the press the next slide in the computer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said discarily it closed down again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So so that that that probably went
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time, I think I realized that was I used to see this guy Jim Kurran and he'd always like fuck up his slides, slides, there'd be something would go wrong, like sometimes you've got like two carousels in the olden days and one of them won't work or the slides would all be upside down or someone would drop the slides if he started, there'd all be upside down and back to front and scratch and everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he would always like really take it really badly and people really didn't like it
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh god, I don't wanna, I don't wanna ever be like that, I need to, you know, if anything goes wrong, I'm just gonna like, you know, don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I, um, so like, I wanted to dislodge this place where I went to, um, Shrewsbury, I'm gonna tend up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think I was doing a slideshow, it wasn't like to a huge origin, so like, 150 people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when I turned up and put my hand in my bag to get out my slides, all was in there, it was my gym stuff, my trainers and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had like two bags that were connected to the same and I picked up the wrong one of the wrong one, and I was like So I said to the organizer, I got good news and got bad news I said the bad news is I forgot to bring my slides and the good news is I don't need them And he was like, could you not like drive back and get them?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like well, it took me like an hour and a half to get here and I'm already late So if you want it if anyone's it almost doesn't mind waiting on for three hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could get them, but
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like, well, have you got any slides and it was like, yeah, I'm like, well, you're going to get your slides and I'll do my slideshure and I'll just use your slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy was just like, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: So just trust me, you're going to get your slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he went off, but I needed, I needed to do the first half of the slideshure and he wasn't, he wasn't going to get back in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ran to my car and I had like all these boxes of, um, so when you bought, when you got
[SPEAKER_00]: make it make the little slide mounts and put the photographs in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you always had the end of the film, the tape, the film that winds into the camera.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was always like a piece that wasn't fully exposed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you take your picture and you've like, I've got the print that's going mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You take the print that's come up, come alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: your ticket dig, no that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I meant that's happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: You take a picture and you wind it on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first few things wouldn't really be a picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: You only when you got to number one on the on your camera, you knew that was the beginning of your pictures.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do these bits of thought bits of bits of bits of
[SPEAKER_00]: of slide that just had like a little tiny bit of color or some, some kind of something on it and I was and I had some slide mount so I had about five of those so I like cut up these bits of slide and put them in and I went into it so I went in, put them on the slide, the slide carousel I'd like to
[SPEAKER_00]: five slides and I went in and I was like, hi, everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, I'm late.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've got good news in the bad news.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bad news is I forgot my slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone was like, hey, that's all funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, don't worry, I don't need them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they first lied to clicked on and it was just like a black slide with like a little tiny bit of light on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started telling the story that everyone was sort of like, I've got the early front.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has forgotten his slides.
[SPEAKER_00]: So within about two seconds, I'd gone through all those five slides and just went back and forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then
[SPEAKER_00]: and then the half time and it all seemed to be going well like I was really going into I was really like really good trying really hard to really have the fully acting out what I was talking about and then and then the guy turned up and he said like here's my slides and I was like what are they obviously like bouldering in fonton bler and I was like talking about climbing in Patagonia so
[SPEAKER_00]: and you'll put the slides on and start it like, don't worry guys, I've got some slides now they're not mine, so don't worry about it, so we started doing the slides show and it was like a guy in like short shorts, you know, like on a ball down and it's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: like imagine this but like imagine it's not a boat going a boulder but a guy on an ice pitch and he's not wearing short shorts wearing like full-on clothing and it's like snowing or something and so I did the whole thing got to the end and I was like hey everyone that was great and then I said like next year I'll come back and I'll do the slides you're again but for free and I'll do it and I'll do it with the real slides
[SPEAKER_00]: So I came back the next year, I did the slideshow, and he went really well, and I've basically told the same story, but I had slides this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards this old guy came up, and he was an ex fighter pilot from the First World Wars.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really old guy, he was like a real character here, like a pipe and everything, and he was like, oh, it was much better last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and then the, what was the other kind of, I basically had so many fuckups, I could have things like the, the clicker that clicks your slides on wooden wax or I'd have to like with my shoes off and just do use my tur on the, on the space bar or something and like this would be like an corporate kind of thing on a stage or something, but we just had to like just improvise, but you, you could never, you could
[SPEAKER_00]: you could never like show like any fear that something something had gone wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think at the only time, the only time I ever, I think I felt like two really bad slideshows in my life that I thought was bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one was like the, um, what's the famous like literary festival in, uh,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know the famous literary festival all the right all the right it's got to down in Wales somewhere and I went to that and it was all great it was all great until I decided to start reading something because um because it was a literary festival that I should read something and aside but I'm just not very good at reading
[SPEAKER_00]: So once I started reading, I think he could tell he wasn't really good at reading, also that I knew I wasn't really good at reading, and it was just, it just really went down here, like it was just, it wasn't, it didn't, it didn't end well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I probably, you know, I should have, I didn't prepare, I should have like,
[SPEAKER_00]: read this thing loads and lots of times and being shown it was the right it was the right thing to read and really else I was just completely fucked up basically and then another one was where I had like a German translator in Italy and I was talking and the translator was translating but it was a German woman who was translating into Italy and she was very dry and I don't think any of the
[SPEAKER_00]: any of the jokes or any of the kind of the pacing of what we're saying, kind of made fun, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, the story where the sky is climbing on the troll wall and he was leading and I was like having a little nap when I woke up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told him to like back clean, this was climbing up this crack and like, you know, I'm looking up and I'm like, and look at me's got no gear in at all and it's like, you know, like 20 meters above me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, Alex, Alex, like what you do in, like you're supposed to leave some gear behind, and he's like, ah, that's what I explain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why I'm so scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of these things you told them a million times, and you get really good, kind of like, you know, a paste, paste, you know, like a timing to it really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he went for some reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was so, it went, it was so dead, the atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And but then I went back to Italy, not long afterwards, and there's another slide just somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: an Italian translator who just kind of got the kind of, you know, the humor and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like another one, what's the other one?
[SPEAKER_00]: I had another like terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I once had one right in the middle of the slideshow, this big white line appeared on the, and it was coming from the projector.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was something that was something that went wrong with the projector.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just that this big white pixel right across the middle of this coming down vertical line right in the middle of the screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, that all I could do was I grabbed the care and this is like an theater.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grab the cat and I kind of pull the cat and so the cat and like covered like half the screen but it also like the white you can't just see the white it's shining on like a big cat and and now we just have to keep on going with like half the slide was missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, like people like us, you know, he just, you know, you know, you have overcome that and he didn't sort of, you know, didn't really bother him whatsoever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know, I don't know the really, I don't, I've got, I had three like really good calamities.
[SPEAKER_00]: What were they, what was another, and I'll see if I can remember some talk as I'm going along.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, so it's not ups and downs, the world of slide shows.
[SPEAKER_00]: one time I did this tour and I was like touring around in a winter slideshow kind of series type thing and I'd had like a few really successful things like in the theatre but that was when other like books to an opera house I'd done like things for the matte rescue and it was like loads of people came and it was really great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he kind of got, it maybe he thought you were better than you are or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started doing a load with with with the university clubs and so many of them were just absolutely awful like they'd be like hardly anybody there and like as like did you tell anybody else coming to this slide share and they'd like oh we told our members or whatever and so there was it was just like you know sometimes you either ask for like a fixed amount of money
[SPEAKER_00]: So like Chris Bonnington would, you know, he'd be like, I want a thousand pounds, or I want, like, 75% of the door, whatever's greater, whatever's the greater, you know, so he would, he would know he was getting this money, I wasn't like that was just like, just give me, you know, half the door or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like touring around all of winter in all these like Aberdeen and all over the place like sleeping in my car and stuff and making like no money and driving all this kind of and I remember thinking like this is like so shit and this is so not worth it and I either have to stop or I either have to like completely off my game to make it to make it work
[SPEAKER_00]: So I decided it would like I have this this say in my family motto where my motto is before every grit but before every grit leap comes a hurdle so like so I'm in this point where I'm like I have to stop doing this or just do it better so I decided to do it better and I can't remember how I did it I think
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up getting...
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't...
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn
[SPEAKER_00]: you know the in a theater and it was a great night out and it was funny and it was funny other than a comedian and it was scary and amazing images and you have music and reals and then they would complain that it was like you know it was like five or something you know like and so I realized that yeah I think probably also working from it in a in a climbing shop I realized that climbers were also really unreliable they were just rather got to the climbing wall or something they weren't really that interested
[SPEAKER_00]: for doing slideshars, for anyone, you know, you could have the best climate, if Alex Honoled, Kansas, Sheffielder somewhere, you're Sheffield because there's people just dot 10 up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think it was like the centre of British climbing that everyone would come but they just don't because that's the way they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I realized to make money out of climbing, I needed to get like armchair mountaineers.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, just ordinary people, an idea like build an audience, people who wear climbers at all, but like if you look at how many people are interested in like special forces, you know, but how many people actually are in the special forces, it's like, you know, it's like zero percent, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, but there's like people are interested in other things, you know, have to be a climber to be interested in climbing, or climbers, or mountains, or Everest, or
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was what I decided to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to go to theatres, advertise through the theatre, maybe have some advance in some climbing magazines, some magazine or something, and try and get those kind of people to come.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I did and I just stopped doing talks for universe is I just basically I said I'm never doing a talk ever again where there's a Bunsen burner in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just started doing the theatres and it went really well I had like good audiences nearly all like the theatres is like a weird place like if it was a if it was a private theatre where they were really really had to graft to get people to come in and they had to make
[SPEAKER_00]: They always went really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was like a council on theater where people being paid, no matter how successful it was, often they were like absolutely terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they had the crash in 2008, a lot of those theaters all went bust in NewX, the council just stopped paying them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the ones which were like viable theaters, there's a good lesson in capitalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: they survived and they kept on doing really, really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so yes, that was really, really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, and then I decided, like, what I need to do, I need to set up my own speaking agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I can't get any work for all these agencies, I'll set up my own speaking agency, then I'll get work for my own speaking agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a bit like this, was it Michael Kane used to pretend to be his agent?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was one, anyway, there was not Michael Kane, it was a huge, huge grant.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, you know, you have people ringing up, ringing them up, and he'd be like, allows you to clean the lounge here, you know, and there's a, oh, Mr. Stallone would like to employ, oh, yes, 50 grand is something, you know, so I had my own speaking agency, and the woman I was employing to help me sort out the theatres.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she, she, we end up becoming like business partners in this agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: which probably would stay really.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, because often, often if you have a partnership, one person's got all the ideas and the dynamism, but the reason you employed this other person was the shit, all this other stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after a while, the other person's like, I'm doing all the work and this person doesn't do anything, I don't need to get rid of them out of the business, so that's kind of what happened with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: But to begin with it went really well and then we took what we'd learnt from doing my tour and then we started touring other people and we toured like Simon years and and it also also took people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that that company was called Speakers on the edge and it still is still going, still going strong in the UK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like every every two years I would go on tour and every every tour was better than 20% better than the one before and I always probably upset
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, maybe like 20% percent of the people I would like upset them and they wouldn't come the next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was always this thing I used to call it at the time like the girlfriend factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the climbers would bring their girlfriends.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot of climbers with girlfriends in those days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it would be like the girlfriends not coming and not bringing their boyfriend or their girlfriends.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they'd be like the girlfriends would come and then the girlfriend people like oh my girlfriend that was like really really funny Or I brought my dad and he's not a client, but he thought it was really really funny on my mom or something or a giraffes something So it was so I wasn't really it wasn't climbing specific
[SPEAKER_00]: It was to a general audience and it just kind of worked, kind of while it was funny and that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, so I was doing that and I was doing a few of the like corporate things, but I really didn't like doing that in schools and some days I do like, I don't do like three talks in a day, I do like primary school in the morning and a senior school in the or private school and they have to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I'd be talking in like the city of London to some bank, because of something in the evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, um, but I basically did the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I was never very good at like being anyone but my, put myself and I think once you want to start trying to be someone else, like it was kind of, it was, I was kind of honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, on on it and I didn't, I wasn't scripted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, like I had the IT.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was, I'd been, this was my experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what happened, but
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, we're just kind of talk like an ordinary, an ordinary person and just tell this tell this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the last talk I ever really did.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like the S.A.S.
[SPEAKER_00]: it was like it was like on the terrible zoom days but it was like to a lot of like special forces kind of people in the UK if some reason I had to do a talk about something and there was some kind of like you know Adam Roller where it was general and he was like after it was like I don't know whether fuck this guy is but he was you know like he's a legend or something so it was um
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, sometimes, you know, I do talks and what was it, one was to like, what's it called Manitu Tractors?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like an Alan Partridge kind of all these, you know, Amstrad and afterwards were like, oh, we had this guy last year for our talk, for our, you know, conference and he was, you know, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Olympic rugby player or something and he was, you know, it was great but like this is what you're talking about was a, you know, it was just people didn't have that kind of experience and I think one reason I didn't like dressing up and it like corporate things, I didn't want to wear like, I didn't like dressing up, I like to just dress like myself and then someone told me the story where they had, what's his name, the guy who climbs chimneys and probably told this story a million times already on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fred Dibner who was like a chimney sweet chimney dismantle chimneys and he'd like turned up for this like this gig somewhere really black tie gig and all he had almost like a boiler suit a blue boiler suit and they're like Fred it's like a black tie dinner he was like the easy me clothes you know you know so that's the way
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I actually ended up having finding a way of dressing because I just, um, I went over to Venice and I just, I was in the airport in Venice and everyone looked so amazing Italians, even when they were going on their holidays and they had the holiday clothes on and I was like, and it struck me, I need to dress like an Italian.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I came home, I like googled like dress like an Italian and I found this picture of what you should dress like and I just went to the
[SPEAKER_00]: those claws, exactly the same, I had some like, probably some really naff, I had like a jacket and I had some blue green, some blue, no blue, some brown chinos, I had some like brown shoes or something, and a share or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wasn't trying to dress like a business man, because that's because I'm not a business man, so I didn't feel comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with the dressing like an Italian, a lot's look like a bag of shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it was like it, it was a little bit easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so yeah, so much, so the,
[SPEAKER_00]: The toes got amidst that making, I'm not like bragging about making money, I'm just saying like it was like successful in that made more and more money to the point where I didn't, you know, I would make enough money in in one toll which would be like two or three months like it was like really really really hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: They look, you've got the slides, but sometimes you can't remember if you just said something or you said it the night before, so it's kind of weird, but you do, like, you're doing it so often, you might do it like 34 times, the same slideshow, by the end it's all good.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the beginning it's really good because it's all kind of impromptu and it's like, you just like ad libbing or whatever, you know, it's like you're just coming up with stuff off the top of your head.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's more raw, but by the end, it's so polished that you really, like a lot of comedians they were going to do a tour that was like a secret tour and a really small venues.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were really nail their, you know, nail their stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although, got to the item professor of all, and they were really nail it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they would go off and do the, do the real tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: So I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I was probably the pinnacle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did the tour, what was it called?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I did one called like Psycho Vertical, did one like Cold Mountain and like it really, like you know, even though I'm not bragging.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it was really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was like really, it was like, in terms of like climbing slideshars, I think it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like one of the, one of the better ones because it was like very, had a really good story about going to Antarctica and add all the things up in there and it had it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like funny but it was also poignant and it was all sort of interesting bits to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: So then, so guess the down hill, the down hill it was this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I guess I came to move, I moved to Ireland.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was probably not a great idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, one reason I lived in Ireland came to Ireland was actually love coming to Ireland to go on tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was actually, I was actually invited to come over in 2014 to do a talk to the Irish mountaineering club.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the woman who invited me over, she was basically
[SPEAKER_00]: She invited Bear Grills and she invited me and Bear Grills was like 100,000 pounds plus two-fest plus tickets and I was like 1,000 euros and I got myself there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got the gig and ended like marrying that pair so the baby came over and never came back again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for living in a different country that's not great for doing talks for
[SPEAKER_00]: schools and anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just, I just started turning down all work basically, just because I just couldn't, I basically just couldn't be asked really to, because it's like a three-day trip and it isn't really going to have a pay-you enough to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I turned down some really good, I want, one was like the survival,
[SPEAKER_00]: the place where the teach survival for the British forces like in Dartmoor somewhere, and I turned that down.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like, well, and then I guess I went to live in Kuwait for like a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't a good, that wasn't good, did a few little talks there, but yeah, so I kind of like distance myself from it, and then and then COVID happened and then I basically had a long period.
[SPEAKER_00]: where I wasn't talking, I wasn't standing on a stage, you wasn't doing anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I did this, because of COVID, I speak it from the edge now, I've been sold to somebody else.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy who's doing the marketing, he had his company, he bought the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: He he because it was COVID like he was on the bones of his arse basically his business was like wrecked by COVID Because nobody was going out and he was like can you do a tour and in my head I was like I have I have been climbing for the last like
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just two or three, four years, since it did another tour.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm not really being doing anything that I feel comfortable talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if I was working a climbing shop and I said, being to Denali and Winter, I would have told the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even write up going to Denali and I didn't write up any kind of trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to climbing Kenya and Namibia in all these places.
[SPEAKER_00]: but never wrote anything about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd not written about it, but also not really talked about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hadn't established this kind of like story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like sometimes, I remember when I went to Greenland, I really nothing happened, but by the end of telling that story so many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: It became like a really an hour, you know, I could probably talk for two hours about going to green and all these funny little side stories and everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't really have that about this trip and I was like, okay, I'll do it, I'll go on tour and I'll do a thing about going
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, going on this trip and going to Namibia and all these different places and what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as I agreed to do it, I was like, but what are you going to actually say?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I was like, I was, I didn't have confidence in my material with to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I also didn't really have confidence in myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Liam, like I had, you know, it's very hard to explain, but you start losing, I lost my nerve.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just gone standing on the stage because I didn't have that same confidence but I also didn't have the material just kind of, like some people can be really bad at public speaking, but there's a lot of such an amazing story.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it doesn't really matter, where other people are, you know, a shit story, you know, but they can tell an amazing funny story.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at most comedians, what they're talking about is fuck a heart, there's nothing, I'm going to, I'm going to, go into lidol, they'll make it like hilarious, it's just going to lidol or washing the car or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so, so I was like in between me, I was doing something extraordinary often, but I was, I was making it funny, so I was like in a different way, but this time it didn't really feel like what I was talking about was it was really that interesting to me,
[SPEAKER_00]: and and and also it was like COVID time so it was just like the world had completely changed the world of going in a theater and it was all these rules and regulations and you know some theaters like there was a space between every single person in the theater so straight away you're making half as much money for going on tour and also people had all the masks on and you couldn't go and let you get a
[SPEAKER_00]: go out and sell books because I might get COVID or all those.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was that part of it was terrible, but I could have probably dealt with that, but then it was like a triple whammy basically, but then the world had become so easily offended, but it wasn't just like it wasn't the
[SPEAKER_00]: if you were fending someone else, that tension was in the room, you know, whatever I said, you know, I would say the way I'd Mohammed and I was like, you know, like, oh, someone in here might be called Mohammed or someone, you know, and someone he would down syndrome or something, wherever you were saying, you know, and like, like looking back in the past, I remember went to the
[SPEAKER_00]: Royal geographical society and I met this jerk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you know, this was like in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, this is Gaffer tape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or as I call it rape tape.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is like the National Geographic.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are the, the, the, what's it called?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's anywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The geographical society, Roger, graphical society, and you make in jokes about rape tape.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was like a different, it was a different time.
[SPEAKER_00]: People would find it like, oh, it didn't literally mean raping someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was like, it was said, I could different time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now like the most, the most,
[SPEAKER_00]: mundane joke, would just land you in trouble and I had like if you ever listened back to some old podcasts, you know, I had like, speaks on the edge like ringing me up like, what did you say last night?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like loads of people walked out and they wanted the money back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I didn't say anything and, you know, you almost have to get to the point where you have to record what you're saying or where like a camera and film everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: In order to demonstrate, you didn't say anything, you know, I've sort of you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the context taken out of context of what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think by the end of that tour, I was like, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not doing any more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like...
[SPEAKER_00]: for so many reasons I just really didn't enjoy it and I just I just wanted it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd rather do I'd rather do something else like this just it wasn't where it wasn't where it wasn't where it really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of feel the same about like TV things as well in the one point in my life because when you feel like I want it to be a successful as bad adults but you know just just
[SPEAKER_00]: you know you saw this person and this you want to be on the telly or you want to make documentaries or TV programs and once I started having like a little my mini test of that working doing stuff for the BBC whatever I was like no I don't want to do this like this is not good it's not this is not a good thing to be doing it's not good for you for in any way really you know it's not good so yeah so I kind of I kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in the last five years I've probably done one slide show and that was because it was
[SPEAKER_00]: because it was not very far away from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what's kind of, what's kind of sad about it, like you, you kind of rocked off.
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of like, in a way, like you were, you were rocking up like how he used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And remember, I rocked up and I was like, you know, I had like my trousers, which had like paint on them and stuff and had my crocs on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of a posh kind of do.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just didn't really give a fuck basically.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if it didn't like it, it didn't pay me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't really matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't that far to drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of went up there and I did my spill.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do this like spill of like, this is me growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the progression into climbing and
[SPEAKER_00]: blah blah blah and then at the end it's like you know climbing is like a life is like a creative it's a creative endeavor you know and all this kind of stuff and it finishes and it's exactly an hour like literally finishes
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, six, you know, 59, dude and it's finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was packing up, the guy came over who was the, the techie guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's always like a techie guy at these conferences who's doing all the slides and the, the leads and the microphones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, that was one of the best presentations I've ever seen in one of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh thanks, thanks a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of sad to have, to have spent all those years like sort of mastering the art of going on stage and, and, uh, pretending you don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if not me, it's not a loose, not the word, but it's like, this is me, take it or leave it, this is my story, you know, you don't need to, I don't want anything from you, uh, this is, you know, help you, help you find it funny, and, uh, but then just
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, baby, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I guess you'd guess, people always just said, Jim Coran, who always got everything wrong, he was like, always leave them wanting more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I never really understood that, but I do understand that now, I think I often used to talk too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, because I really enjoyed it, I didn't want to get off the stage, but looking back like that is the kind of ideally you want to slide sure that lasts for an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, and people like, oh my God, that went so quickly, I didn't even realize
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and then it's over and then then you're gone and It's part of me was like the part of me whenever someone mentions like, you know, doing us doing a slideshow or something Or I when you on tour again, there's part of me quite like like say like, I don't do that I don't do that shit anymore, you know, to shit business to shit business But yeah, so but
[SPEAKER_00]: I did ask like Vanessa's I was like why don't you go on tour and like why don't you could like make lots of money or something I'm like hey I'm over the hill like no one even know who I am anymore and what I'm gonna talk about I'm gonna talk about what I'm gonna do and it didn't for like the years so so yeah so it's uh
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's for the thing, but I did, so recently someone contacted me, it was like a motorbike festival somewhere in Essex or somewhere in somewhere in the UK and I was just going to press like about doing a talk and I was just going to press like delete and I was like I'll just send this to Vanessa like Vanessa you pretend to be my manager and see how much money
[SPEAKER_00]: She sent this email back to them and I read it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like Vanessa, when you're someone's manager, you don't say like, oh, Andy's really shit, doing stuff like this and blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, like, threw me under the bus in the, in the message.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's possibly like, oh, Mr.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kept Patrick, he is very busy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talk is, or talking in Dubai, you know, for seven weeks or something, and then he's off to Canberra, something.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was like, oh, he does fuck all his
[SPEAKER_00]: Very pale, nothing, you know, so anyways, but I got the gig somehow, so you obviously that it did work and So yes, it'd be quite it'd be quite interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I want I want to be stressing about it I'll just do I'll just do my own my normal My normal thing really.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll not make do I might do I got an idea if I could have this weird thing when you get to I don't if I can age thing But I've started I've started having dreams where I have
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in the dream, I remember a place or something that happened in a form of dream, a long, long, long time ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like dreams that happened like 20, 30 years ago, that I reckon have forgotten the moment of waking up, and now somehow firing my brain somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm remembering, I'm remembering things.
[SPEAKER_00]: that were dreams and then not sure if they were real or not, you know like it's like was that even today there was something on about someone in whole or a grew up and it was about this where these people like this underground cafe nightclub or something and in the second world wall like whole was the most
[SPEAKER_00]: bond city in the UK, the first bomb and the last bomb of the Second World War, the bombing of England was fell on the fell on a hole and it was like a secret because it was so badly badly damaged and some people died, it was like a secret.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but he was just saying, well, this nightclub that the bomb landed on top of the building above it and loads of people were killed, they were hiding in this nightclub, it was underground.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was watching this, this was like, I want to the dream that I went to an underground nightclub that was just near there, where this guy is standing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, but was it a dream?
[SPEAKER_00]: I did actually go there, because I
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like coming back so vividly, the people who are in this nightclub and everything else was like, what's in the dream?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it real?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was thinking that was a quite a good thing about looking back in your life, of the things you, the climbs you did and all these kind of adventures you went on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, now you're living in like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, they are sort of nowhere and you tend left.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, it was that like the real, actually, I tell another lie, I am actually doing another talk and doing a talk on Tuesday for my son's school about what's to doing what shelters and the kids had built all these shelters out, it glues out of.
[SPEAKER_00]: igloo's out of sugar sugar cubes and I was I was I was I was slept and I was slept in igloo and they're like really and I was like oh yeah I once went to Greenland and I made one and I was in Antarctica because I was maybe in Antarctica and I made one somewhere else and it was like oh yeah would you come and talk to the kids and I was like god then god then so it'd be
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, but kids of the worst, kids of the most, they're the most difficult audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can really talk to a load of little kids, you can really talk to anybody, because they remember like the retention span.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like I used to find a final thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to, every now and again, I've gone to a talk to kids in like secure units, where you'd have like one kid and there'd be two adults, and they were at teachers, which is especially like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know like body body guards but the way of guarding we're guarding a real body not the kid and you know like violent kids who are all every every door had a lock on it and stuff and there'd always be like oh don't worry if the kick off because they're you know the mental basically and don't worry about you know
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, just go to stand over in that cage and lock yourself in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but the kids are always like great, but I think the reason was I used to talk so quickly, I probably just wanted to get out of there, that they had to pay attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably you know, they're all probably got ADHD or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you, you know, people have ADHD, you give them like, bitting them speed, I don't know, in fact, to mean to like speed them up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that somehow comes in there and I don't know how it works.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so I was like, like, speed, basically, are we talking so quickly?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wasn't talking like, you know, using words like retard.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, and, uh, and we're only, we're a kind of people looking.
[SPEAKER_00]: Already stabbed people and no one's looking.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, they, if somebody's not really worked with them, so yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you let you learn all these, um, you learn all these skills.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, but now I'm at the fit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm in the phase of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look back and I'm like, was I like just really, really boring?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was I, when I thought everyone thought I was like being like interesting or talking?
[SPEAKER_00]: Were people just like, I remember to grime her and I'll grime, so just like the
[SPEAKER_00]: jam rag posk podcast at what it's called.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was like I'd have these memories then if like I'd be talking to him and he'd suddenly be like oh need to have a big shit and he would just like go walk away from me and I was like what's he doing that because I was like so boring or um and I was like there's no one you know you're boring is like when you're having this conversation with somebody and so on interrupts you and then the person he were talking to
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, it's like maybe I was like that on standing on the stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I was like just so fucking boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just thought I was sort of interesting and, well, I was a funny or people were laughing, but whether you're laughing at my jokes or just laughing at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, but they were paying and they had come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it was maybe there were some good bits, you know, maybe you maybe have to really like on it and then people listen to what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you start having
[SPEAKER_00]: in you what you're saying or who you are or your identity or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe then people would stop listening because they're like, who's this, who's this loser?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, with a bag of glue, like sniffing it and talking in between.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so maybe I said to Vanessa, like it's gonna, my story is like, the rise and fall of a public speaker, you know, of a performer.
[SPEAKER_00]: but maybe it'll be the rise and rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'll hit a whole new market of like motorbike people and I'm sure there's a lot of them around and so yeah so yeah so hopefully if anybody wants a career in
[SPEAKER_00]: public speaking, motivational speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say a dot bother because, you know, you meet people and they're like trying to escape border across Australia, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are, and the whole reason for doing it is they want to be like motivational speakers, but it really is kind of a, I think it's not really, I think slide shows have kind of died a little bit really.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not, they're not like how they used to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not such a common common thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like all sitting around, studying around the piano while someone plays that, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: My old man's a dashman, he wears a dashman's head, you know, like people don't do that anymore And I think probably go around someone's house to watch a lot of all slides is probably probably the same So it's like everything else, it's basically like the the hollowing out of like a society All the stuff where you get together.
[SPEAKER_00]: You probably now just go to like a self check out slides show where you just like watch your own slides Um, oh, and that's what's called Instagram again, so isn't it you know you don't really care if anybody watches it or not
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah so hopefully that's not depressing but um so yeah so maybe yeah never know maybe I'll still maybe I'll hit it big maybe I'll do something worth talking about again so but until then I'll just keep doing this podcast so if you like this podcast um like subscribe whatever they say on the other podcasts and I have my sub stack is I've just did this thing about moving together again go there and uh
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to support this podcast, I have a Patreon and all I'm asking for is one year or a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I reckon if I get ever like about 5,000 people who subscribe to, whatever it is, and probably the same on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I got like just a few people who paid like what?
[SPEAKER_00]: one euro and with like I'm not being greedy it's actually called like like the tight arse whatever category of a thing of a support on instagram patreon but um yeah just how it just i don't know i'd
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the more people, it's pay for something, the more I'm kind of, I've always started this podcast with the same, the same speed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the more I'm kind of inclined to do it, because I feel like I'll someone's paid for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm probably listening, inclined to talk about stuff that's off the topic really, speaking of which last time I was
[SPEAKER_00]: radicalized.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a few people who who see me as radicalized were disappointing because they thought like oh you no longer radicalize and your telling us that where we shouldn't be radicalized.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like no I'm not saying that I think basically I was saying like don't make it personal basically you know if you're going to be radicalized still be still be kind you know still be kind to everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And don't make it personal wherever
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, don't shoot anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give about that later on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, so what time's it now?
[SPEAKER_00]: 76 o'clock?
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, 64 hours after the other podcast was being recorded, time to go, oh, oh, oh, oh, I've got stew in the slow cooker.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't need to really cook anything to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I've been to go kayak it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So until next night, I've got a lot of questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will answer them next next next Friday.
[SPEAKER_00]: And until then, stay safe.