Hi guys, thanks for watching this episode of New Getting in Time. We have an awesome guest on this podcast. We have Esme Todd. Esme is from Bristol UK. Esme is a T we presenter, voice presenter, Esme presenting contact for children, entertainment, education, and much more. Welcome, Esme. Thanks for coming on my podcast.
Hi, thank you.
Hi, I'm good, thanks Arsen. What about yourself?
Yeah, good, thank you.
That's great. How's it all going over there?
Uh s it's been tough because obviously with us and COVID it's been so much worse in the UK, I feel, and you guys avoided it quite well. Handled the situation so much better than we have. So it's been um lockdown after lockdown, and you know, you get you come out of the lockdown, then we have like a few weeks we're fine, then we're straight back into it again. So it's been it's been intense this time.
Um how have you personally handled the pandemic since up again? Like how have you adapted and yeah, what's been happening since I've started?
I think generally I've been okay. Last year, for about five months of last year, I moved in with some friends in Bristol, so which is my nearest city, and um so I had a bit of normality in that period of time. But I've I've been lucky that I've been sort of living with um my boyfriend's mum's.
We've been like not having to worry about rents and stuff at the moment, because it's just been it's just a really horrible time trying to, you know, book jobs, and with my industry, it's it's not it's been really affected because you can't no one's prioritizing filming things. Uh like you obviously it's not a high priority job, so yeah, it's been tough trying to keep myself going. I know there's been a lot, there's been lots of changes to the industry, I'd say.
Okay, thanks for share. Um alright, let's just jump straight into it.
Uh well, I am in the UK. I'm a presenter of lots of different things, mainly online content and children's content and education. I've presented um education stuff for different um brands teaching English as a foreign language, and um for BBC Bite Size, which is uh a kids learning platform over here in the UK. And for a toy shop, I do lots of regular stuff for them as well. Um so yeah, I'm I'm get I'm getting to I'm I'm I'm still reasonably new to it in the grand scheme of things.
So I'm making my way through. I've worked for lot big clients, but I've I've not quite made the grasp on the sort of TV world yet, which is where the aim is. That's where I'm trying to get to, basically.
Well, I'm sorry it's not far off. I'm doing the world now.
Thank you.
Um tell me about growing up in your family.
So I have a younger brother and two older brothers who are like my half-brothers. So they were quite a lot older than me when I was born. They were like in their late teens when I was born. Um I grew up in North Somerset, so I'm guessing most of your listeners are in Australia, but um South West England, where that's where there's a city called Bristol, which is a quite it's a smallish city, but it's well-known city, and I live in the countryside just down from there.
So very like cider drinking, farmyards, that kind of vibe, uh down where I live. Um so yeah, I've had I feel like my my life growing up was pretty uneventful, nothing too crazy happened to me, I wouldn't say. But um like a like an easygoing life I would say.
Yeah, awesome. Um have you done much travelling around the world or domestically?
Yes, actually last year I went I went with my boyfriend. The idea was we were gonna go travelling for like eight months. We left in January and obviously had no idea that COVID was gonna hit like a couple of months later. So we went to India for two weeks, and then from there we went to Australia. So I actually travelled Australia for about four months last year.
Um so we went to uh we flew into Perth, we were there for a bit, and then we went to Adelaide, and then we did a sort of great ocean road in a camper van down to Melbourne, um flew to Sydney, and then we went up the East Coast from Sydney all the way up to Cairns, um, and that took about four weeks. I did a skydive, did all the sort of touristy things, you know, Great Barrier Reef.
And then we were meant to go to New Zealand, and then actually the so I think about three days before our flights, they closed the borders to New Zealand. So we were we were planning on just quickly hopping across New Zealand, quarantining there for the two weeks, and then thinking, right, we can probably survive this, but they shut the borders just before our flight, so we uh loitered in Australia for a bit and then had to come home, which was sad.
Yeah, okay. That sounds great. And where was your favourite place to travel to in Australia?
Um we really liked Perth because I think we when we were there it was late January and it was really hot and sunny, the weather was quite good, and then when we got down to more like Adelaide and Melbourne, the we just had quite a lot of bad weather, sort of like quite grey, quite cloudy, quite rainy, and it affected like you it wasn't very uh like beachy compared to when we had been in Perth weather. Um so I think I quite like Perth and I think it's a nice city.
I thought Sydney was cool, I wish we had we'd spent more time there. Um and then yeah, just a lot of the East Coast was nice. It was quite nice going to the smaller places like Noosa and Byron Bay. Um, but yeah, there's those it's it's nice. I feel like a lot of the cities are quite similar, I suppose because they're all much newer compared to maybe the UK, where a lot of cities are a lot older. Um so a lot of the cities you kind of go and you feel like they're quite similar.
But I do really I do like the way the cities are. It feels a bit like American, a bit English, it's it's different. I don't know how to describe it.
Well, that's amazing. Um tell me about your professional career. So how that began, how it transpired, how you got into what you do.
Um, I started off because I I liked the idea of TV and presenting, and I I don't know how different it is in in Australia, but I know that i in the UK TV's like a really big deal to us. I feel like because we're a small country, we have like the same few channel, everyone watches the same thing.
I suppose in Australia you've got different time zones, so you probably have different news depending on where you are, whereas we're a small country, so we've got one time zone, obviously, and we all watch the same stuff. So TV is just a massive deal in the UK, and uh I just always love I always liked watching it, obviously, so I just loved the idea of it.
And I think I was working in a hospital for a bit as a nursing assistant and just decided that I hated that, and then I thought, right, what can I do that I really want to do? And as I was young, I thought, you know what, if I don't try it now, I never will. So I gave it a go. We've got a local every most cities in the UK have a local TV channel, which is sort of low fund, low budget. Uh it was it was part of a government-backed scheme years ago to try and get local TV to be a thing.
It's not really a thing here in the UK as much as it is in other countries. Um, so I worked for them and did weather presenting and other studio shows and stuff like that. And yeah, it just kind of took off from there. I I left there and decided I have well, I got thrown into freelancing and yeah, just kind of picked jobs, tried to get get my way. It's tough, it's tough. You get a lot of rejection in this job, but um I do enjoy it.
Awesome. What's your favourite work you've done so far?
I would say it's between two, because one would be so I've touched on it before, but the um obviously you know BBC, um there's uh an online thing from BBC called BBC Bite Size, and kids in the UK grow up using it.
It's basically like an online learning platform, so you can go to like uh your your year group, science, and then it has the different exam boards, and you can read up and do like quizzes and tests, and it's like a it's like a learning resource, and um it's just very well respected in the UK, everyone uses it as children in schools, and I presented like a series of videos for them as yeah, so that was probably a big one because it's just presenting for the BBC is quite a fun thing to say you've
done. Um and my other one probably would be we've got a uh load of toy shops in the UK called The Entertainer. Um I think they might be in some other countries, they're definitely in there's some places in Asia which has the entertainer, and um it's basically like Did you have Toys R Us in Australia or did you? Yes, yes, we do. We did, yeah, so obviously Toys R Us shut down in the UK, I'm assuming it's shut down everywhere.
And I suppose the Entertainer in the UK is now the big main one of the main toy shops we have in the UK, it's one of the biggest. So yeah, it we do I'm part of a squad of four presenters. We're called the Entertainer Squad, and we we have fake names to try and like I don't know, that's our character names, and we like unbox the new toys, like brands will send us toys to unbox in the studio when we play with them and we test them out and we see what they're like.
So that's a really, really fun job because you get to play with toys for the day.
Fantastic. Um, do you get staged right or do you get nervous getting in front of the camera?
Well, I supp some n not so much. I think sometimes when it's been a while, and I haven't been in a big studio in a while, you get that kind of first, you know, you but if as you step in front of the camera and you don't know if how you deliver something's gonna be what the client or the producers want.
So sometimes there can be a bit of a moment where you sit there and you're like you deliver it once, and you're kind of like looking at their faces to make sure they're okay with it, you know, and then they kind of go, Oh, can we have a little bit more like this, or no, that's great, we love that. So sometimes I think the more you do it, the more you talk in front of the camera, the more it becomes like second nature and you don't think about it as much.
I mean, definitely if I got called up by one of the big TV companies and was told I was going to present a show, absolutely I'd be nervous. But I think with the nature of the sort of stuff I'm doing at the moment, a lot of it's it's big brands, but it's like online stuff and it's a bit smaller deal at the moment, so I think yeah, it's not not too bad, not too bad.
Amazing. What's the best compliment you've ever received?
Um, in my presenting or just generally?
Uh both. Or I can do one or the other.
I'll do c w work-wise, I suppose. Any time that okay, I I've got one. I think one was when I was finding a s a shoot I did a bit stressful.
We were doing some English language videos and I was just finding it a bit overwhelming, um, just because it was quite a lot to get done in the day, and I was told, um, and one of the cameraman was trying to be really nice to me and trying to reassure me, and he was like, he was like, I work with loads of, you know, the biggest names, and he named people British, you know, presenters in the UK, and said, I've worked with this person, I've worked with this person.
He was like, I'd have no worries suggesting you and putting you forward to work with any of those, you know, alongside any of those people. He was like, I'm really, you know, impressed with you. So I suppose that would be my favourite, because I think my compliments, I I take work ones the most seriously. That's the ones I find the most that's the ones I want to hear the most, because I care about how my job's going a lot.
Yeah, definitely, that'll be the most rewarding. Um what's the most important lesson you've learned in life today?
Probably to not worry too much about small comments you may hear people make. I think when I was younger, i if if it ever got back to you, you know, some friend had said this about you, or someone had said this about you, I think in my head that was like game over, really big deal, you know, really insulting.
And I think as I've got older, I've just learnt that sometimes people say things and they don't really mean it, or you know, the amount of times I've probably said things about people and I don't really mean it, or I don't mean it as intensely as it comes across, and then you think if it got back to that person it might have u upset them. But you didn't mean it to.
I think that's my one thing is maybe not trying to not care so much about small things that you hear, or small just not bothering about small things. That's a really wordy way of explaining that, but just trying to not worry about things as much.
Yeah, definitely, I get it. It's just water for talks about.
Yeah.
Um what's what's interesting hobbies aside from obviously presenting your professional career? What do you like to do in downtown?
Um, to tell you what one thing I've always loved, which I don't do enough of because it's just genuinely just because it's a bit expensive, is horse riding. I was always horse riding when I was younger. I suppose in I think in England in the countryside, a load of people have like riding lessons growing up just because it's well, I say a load of people. It's quite it was popular where I live in the area. I'm in quite a horsey area. And um I've always, always loved that.
And I had a horse, a couple of years ago there's a horse I had access to sort of a friend, family friend sort of thing, and I used to ride him all the time, and I used to love it, but it's just it it now that I don't have access to that horse, it's just an expensive hobby. So you go to book a riding lesson and it costs about £50, so like $100, you know, per lesson. It is it is pricey. Um so that would be what I'd be doing more of if it wasn't so ridiculously expensive.
Um to be honest, uh lockdown obviously it's changed everything, because what can we do? I spend a lot of my free time, I've got a Nintendo Switch, and do you want that's what I do? Because I'm a big child, clearly.
Um, if you were 18 again, you could change anything, what would you change?
Um, I think maybe I'd consider having gone to university because I didn't. So I think I would have considered going to university, because I think at the time I did consider it for a bit. I wanted to be a midwife for a bit, and I was thick looking at uni's, but I think I had a bit too much of an attachment to home and being in the local area, and I was a bit too n I was I kind of grew up a bit later than everyone else. I think I think like I matured a bit later.
So I think I was a bit too nervous to go off to different cities, and even though the UK is so small compared to Australia, it's not a big deal, but it still felt very daunting and I just put it off and put it off and didn't end up going. And now I think I'd try and be more confident if I could tell myself you should probably go just because you'll enjoy the experience. I don't think I care about the degree side, just the experience of moving away, and you know, that side of it. I think perhaps.
But generally I try not to be regretful of things because you know that could I could not be doing what I do now if I'd gone to uni. I might be doing a completely different job. So yeah, I think m maybe that would be my only one I can think of.
Yeah, awesome. Uh what inspires you daily?
I would say my thing, not to sound like I'm too career obsessed, but I probably am, uh, things that inspire me are seeing people, um, whether I know them personally or not, in my industry, like achieving things. So when I see other female or male presenters that I know of, and I see them announce, you know, they're gonna be the next presenter on this show or this radio channel, or they've got this new online thing.
That's kind of what inspires me because I live off other people doing it, and then I'm like, right, that's this is you know, I just get excited for them, and then I get excited for me, and I'm like, this could be me next, you know. Um, so maybe that. I think that work stuff really inspires me. Seeing new TV and seeing TV shows, they really inspire me as well.
What are you working on for the future and what does the future look like for you?
Um who knows, to be quite honest with you. We're at such a weird point with COVID because like I said, we're in our we're still in lockdown now, and this well, technically it's kind of over a bit. Um schools went back um a week ago today. Um, so it's our third lockdown, national lockdown, so it's been really, really difficult for us. I think the UK handled it so badly, and it's just really hard to plan because everything's so different.
Like all the shows that used to be on are so different now, they've got no audiences, they've got less guests, or the guests that are on Zoom, or whatever. And it's really hard to see where my career will go now because the route I was trying to go down, you know, the the sh you know, things like the the shows I was aiming for, or the companies I was trying to get towards have just either stopped or they don't exist or they, you know.
So I I'm kind of playing it by ear and massively at the moment, trying to work out what's going to happen next and where we're gonna be, and just hoping that things start to normalise. Supposedly June the 21st, if you've heard this date thrown around, but supposedly June the 21st is the day where the UK will be back to normal. To what extent we don't really know, but that's that's the date that the government have set to be the the idea where even clubs can reopen.
Because obviously clubs haven't been open in over a year, and pubs are currently shut, all so shops are still shut here. All you can do is go to the supermarket or go for a walk. So that's all we can do.
Crazy. Um are you with a vaccine roller? Are you happy to get that?
Yeah, I am. I mean we're we're down to um I think it's the over 40s can claim claim now. So everyone who's above that age has been offered to have it if they want it. And I think that the I d especially in the older ages, they've really have been taking it up, I think. A lot of people are really going for it. There'll always be people who are anti-vaccines and don't want to get them, but I just that's not me. I would definitely get it, yeah.
And I'm sure we will eventually be offered it, hopefully.
Yeah, fantastic. Uh thanks for coming to my podcast. I do appreciate it. I can see the trajectory you're going on in life. Um I wish you nothing but the best and all the success.
Thank you. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.