Hello, and welcome to something to talk about. I'm Sarah La Marquin. I almost forgot my name for a minute, just then welcome to this episode. It has been five years since Kate Lanebrook and her husband and four children packed up to move to Italy, a decision that to this day has people stopping her in the street to
talk about. Now firmly entrenched back into the reality of life back in Australia, we decided it was time to sit down with the always entertaining and always unpredictable Kate to shamelessly pick her brains for an update on the whole work life family.
Ratio in mid twenty twenty four.
Apart from her thoughts on shadow labor and the often thankless work performed by many across the country day in and day out, we also talk about the quote unquote glamour gap that exists between male and female television presenters when it comes to the very large difference in time spent in hair and makeup. So given Kate describes herself as a lazy dresser, as she says even her boots have to have zips if she can't be bothered doing
up laces. Would the glamor gap be a deal breaker if she were to be offered the TV job of her dreams. I also ask her about her apparent witching powers, and she opens up about experiencing anxiety for the first time in her life last year and how her husband's response unexpectedly inspired her latest project. Kate Langbrook, Welcome back to Something to talk About.
Kay, Sarah Serah, whatever will be will be? Quit chatting just you and me? Okay, Sarah Sarah? Does everyone always sing that song to you?
No, you're the first person.
Ah, We've recorded it because you know that's what we do, because it's a podcast. So do I have your permission to use that and new opening credits for Something to Talk About?
You have my permission to use me any way you like? Milady friends.
Oh well, look, Kate, it's already been an absolute pleasure having you back on Something to talk about. You know, I was going to mention I don't always talk about things that go off air. Don't panic here, don't worry. It's nothing controversial. I think we did all of that on air, didn't we And that's tame when we went.
Off air, and you know I'm not a panicer.
No, No, that that is right. I do not think that I could make you panic, but I certainly don't even want to. But at the end of our chat last year, Kate, we had a conversation about catching up. And I know that sounds so flippant, but I'm not somebody that, within reason says that too flippantly. Oh, let's really catch up, let's have a COMPLI let's do lunch. I really mean it, and I honestly feel you all this. Obviously, I think everyone knows what Kate says is pretty straight shooter.
But of course, spoiler alert, we never did did we no?
No? Because we were like Morning side of the Mountain and Twilight side of the hill, Like, we just live in different universes and it's hard to get them together. So I actually look forward to this because it's you know, it's fun. Well that we get to thank you.
And that's exactly what I was going to say, and so our dear listeners, basically what I'm saying to you is it's never a hardship for you to sit down and have virtual coffee and banana bread with Kate Langbrook, and for me selfishly, because she and I never got together to have real coffee and real banana bread. This is our excuse to catch up again.
Kate.
You have recently launched your own podcast, The buck Up with Late Balbo, which is a weekly antidote that promises to provide a joyous reprieve from depressing news cycles, buzzwords to do lists with a whole lot of laughter and levity. Kate, I definitely need laughter and levity in my life. I think a lot of us do right now. So I am proposing that today we do a bit of a podcast, smash up a little bit of something to talk about, and then I thought we could maybe bring a little
bit of the buck up. So what do you think two podcasts for the price perfect.
Perfect fantastics because otherwise the times are heavy. They are, there's no doubt, and there's no doubt that it's important that you take on that stuff. But the way also, because we're so connected and the news is just coming at you constantly, there's only so much the human spirit
can bear. And there's these other aspects to the human spirit which actually help you endure everything and make bad times better, and that is humor and joy and as you said, levity and just an exchange of stories from your life you know how these hopefully everyone has a friend that when they see that friend they feel better after. You know, some people are drainers, some people drainers, and some people are taps. So Nathan Valvo and I are the tap. We're just going to You can turn the
tap on it anytime there's a little half hour. We guarantee you'll feel better at the end of it, just for us sharing our lives, our listeners lives and having a laugh about things, because laughter is the greatest gift.
It absolutely is.
It is as I said, really well, actually I stole it from the press release, so antidote is not my word. It's whoever did the very clever press release for the buck Up. But it really is the antidote to what we're living through.
Glad Yeah, the antidote to the times. And in fact, Sarah Harris, who does the project and who I'm lucky enough to see on Tuesday nights when I do the show, she sent me a message the other day when the other week when at law and she said, oh my goodness, I actually do feel better than I did, And she said, this is the Prozac of podcasts. If I was really clever, I would have put that.
In antidote prozac all the same thing, look Sarah Harris, she could also be writing press releases on the side. And I think also, Kate, as you say, sometimes we need that levity and it has quite a profound, I think effect on the human spirit. And sometimes humor and the lightness and the having a bit of fun and frivolity is something that sometimes people think, oh, I'm not going to be taken seriously, or people are going to say these are very serious times, we don't have time
for something called the buck up. But actually it's it's critical, as you say, and it's so great when people that have that profile like I do not necessarily need to be quote unquote sin because I think.
Any more than you already are and through your work, and you know, we're all exposed to the world, and because of the nature of the world we live in, we're even exposed to parts of the world and happenings in the world that we normally would not be And sometimes when I look at the news in the morning, I'm just like, oh, a terrible like terrible, and you feel a weight inside you that really, if you were to live I guess in a way that in a
more old fashioned way, I guess you would know your neighbors. You would know you know the people at school, or the other people walking their dogs, or the people at the shops. You wouldn't necessarily have that weight on you. You would have a proper community. So I think community has been kind of become a bit of a weezer word in many ways, of like, any time people want to just lump people together, they call it commuit unity. But
real community is linked by knowing each other. And when you're taking on all this stuff from people that you don't know, and it fills you with fear of your children, for the world, for people that you love, it's not helpful to anybody because all it does is atrophy you, I think, and make you incapable of It makes you scared of your fellow humans. And it's just it's just not helpful.
And it's connection too, isn't it. Because as you say, the word community has been a little bit exploited, probably by I think certain sort of corporate jargon over the last few years.
But at its heart, it is about.
That human connection and that's such a critical part of navigating all of these parts of life. None of us can do it without the village as we say.
No, that's right. And you know, if you've because I've been lucky enough to spend most of my professional life in well across many camps really but very soundly rooted in comedy and with comedians. That's always been during the comedy festivals, you know, Melbourne recently, Sydney's got Brisbane's got one. When you sit in a room of people laughing, the energy is so great, it's so powerful, but it's always underestimated. It's like it's a long standing understood truth that a comedy,
a comedy film will never win an Academy Award. You've got to delve into the depths and you know, get a beautiful actress to make yourself look ugly and then everyone's like, oh yay. But comedy is, like you said, a little bit, it's not valued. It's seen as a flippancy and sometimes it can be, but it also is one of the basic tenets of my survival. And as Megan Marker would see, my thrive. It's not enough to survive,
it gotta thrive, and it is. It's just happiness is such a leavening of the breed of your soul that it makes everything else happy.
Wow, that was a beautiful sentence. Kate.
You mentioned Sarah Harris therean that you appear alongside her on the project on Tuesdays, and you also appear instellar today. You've been photographed for Images so beautiful.
That was such a beautiful shoes.
I wanted to ask you about that side of your role in the media. Because of the project, there's big hair and makeup, and then there's wardrobe, and then you come on set for Stella if there's a lot of obviously focus on the styling, what you wear, hair and makeup. Again, do you like that side of what your role sometimes demands of you?
Kate, mm, Well, the wardrobe girls will tell you, and my girlfriend Alice would tell you that I am a lazy dresser. Like even my boots I've gone on have to have zips. I can't be bothering laces. Like sometimes my Girlfriendnaly says to me, are you a toddler? That you that you I would almost have velcrow, but it
is very lucky. It's like it's a beautiful thing. And particularly during lockdown, you really learned that that the things that you once resented or you know you saw as an obstacle were actually things you were lucky to have. So to go in once a week and have someone actually do your makeup or do your hair was incredible,
And so I try to be less lazy. But when I go into the project and the style of Rachel sort of oversees this team of other stylists in there, and they really just these so great and they're doing news, they're doing whatever. And I've got some clothes hanging on the rack. Normally this is what I do. I try on the first one, I put it on over whatever T shirt I'm wearing at the time, and I go, that'll do. They're always like, can you try on the others?
Just so we know. I'm like, oh, man, like really pitiful, and this is my uniform that I wear all the time. I've got overalls on. Do you call them overalls? That yes, bib and brace.
Overalls like yeah, I think other people, yeah, say braces, but absolutely overalls over a T shirt.
Over a T shirt. I have very few shirts in my Wardrobeordan's taking them.
Other buttons, yeah, button I don't love, but dresser.
Yes, you've got it. You've got it. So just things I can pull on and pull off things I can zip and weep off. So I do enjoy like everyone like sometimes you put on a garment, So transformative, isn't it. It really elevates you. You're like, it's great for the spirit. Like laughter. Beauty is also, I think, a high principle, not a low principle. So not like in a not in a self obsessed sort of I'm gonna say, kardash in way just a shorthand for what we know what
that means, but as our noble principle. Entire you know, entire civilizations have been founded on the love of beauty, you know, the Romans and the Italians to this day, et cetera. So it does. It elevates you and it lifts you up. But I am loath to use that as much as I possibly should. Also because I'm busy. I've got four kids, I've got a husband, I work, and I can't be asked.
It's I'm reluctant. It would be a bit cliche of me to say, it's so refreshing to hear a woman in the spotlight that's going on national television or going in a major national magazine saying not going to worry too much about that. So I'll be cliche and say
it is refreshing to hear somebody say that. But I think about this a little bit in terms of women, because I would say, for me, kay, I do agree with you about aesthetic like it's something that actually feel quite strongly with is a form of I think self expression and identity, and it's some it can be misunderstood in our society because I think everyone assumes if a woman's taking those things seriously whatever it is, that oh, she's pandering to the male gaze, or there's some sort
of metric to use, as he said, the Kardashian shorthand for it, and.
Who have taken it, because they have taken it to this extraordinary length.
Exactly, and there is obviously a level of exploitation and more problematic things going on there. But that doesn't mean that leaning into any of that glamour fashion style, whatever it is, it doesn't have a more profound connection to identity and self expression. But I always also love exploring the idea that some people are like, that's just not really something that I can be bothered doing.
The buttons up or what.
Else would constitute address that you might think, well, that would be amazing, but just could not be bothered. I'm assuming zippers are good, are they?
I mean, you know, really good. I don't want to sound like I'm amish. What is it the Armies are they anti zipper? It must be zippers, is it? But they have buttons?
Didn't know that they were anti zipper?
Nice And because I think it's one of those fastenings is new technology, so it must be the zipper.
Because right, yes, yes, that's a I can't imagine then, like you talked about laces before, and so like a corset or something like that. Yes, million different buttons just yes, never never.
You know, when you watch you know something set in you oldie times and they look so beautiful and they're sort of wasp wasted, or you know that show that We're Bridgitton. When I was watching Bridgington, right, I was like those they look so beautiful and it really is like that that it's the epitome of feminine, right, sometimes even to the point of being crippling in many ways, but it was the epitome of femininity. But I'm just like, what would I have done in the olden days? What
would I have done? Oh? There is no way unless I had a lady in waiting, you know, and you did the traditional lean over the table.
Was Scarlet O'Hara and gone with them?
Yes, exactly exactly, But more likely I would have been not upstairs but downstairs and in some steamy kitchen, you know, with all everything hanging out as I juggled pots and pans, you know, for them upstairs. But even so, if I was downstairs, I would be like the downstairs in the Titanic, you know, they would.
Dancing jig and the ones.
Of course, yes, the car, the car.
You would be there with Leo, doesn't matter what part, first class, wherever it's going to be, Kate, Leo steamy hand on the car.
Well, I think I'm dancing a jig wherever I am. I like to think I'm dancing a jig. Yeah, even if it's just internally. I think.
You know, Kate, if you did decide to go back into acting, we talked about your acting career last time, maybe like a period drama, you know, Bridgeton, and it could be what does somebody with Kate Langbrook's fuss free approach to dressing in this time?
I mean, really.
Imagine, imagine that when I come the diamond of the season and then I come in all at jiggle, they would not like it.
What about the makeup? Hair and makeup? We talk about the pay gap? I have talked about the pay gap, Yes we have. I'm sure of course you have heard and observed firsthand multiple times the hair and makeup gap. I'm not sure what it's called. Maybe there's a fancy word for it, the glamor everybody ever talks about that. So let's say you're at the Project on Tuesday night
and yes, you know, you and Sarah. All women on commercial TV, not just in Australia, around the world can be anywhere between you know, forty five minute minimum, often sixty ninety minutes, and people are listening going what do they do in that time? Believe me, they do, They do things. And then you would have Will Lead or any of your male.
Sam Taunton sad they whipping five minutes before the HI.
How does that make you true?
Well, you know this is interesting because it's like anyone listening to this, who any woman who's got ready for an event that she's going to with her partner, husband or whatever, would have noted this. The leader, the prep, the whatever, the shopping, the shoes, the fittings, the la la, and then the husband if he even has a tux or puts it on, brushes his hair, squirt of whatever to hide the funk of him, and he's out the door.
But this is what I kind of think if I was offered the and it is television, right, so it's vision, so that's a very important part. Like today I've come in, I'm not wearing makeup. Probably I should be. For people who for her high death watching this in a high definition, which is, by the way, horrendous. If I was off to go on the show, on that show or any other and offered the opportunity to save sixty to ninety
minutes a day, I would not take it. Really, I wouldn't take it too much time, but I would put I would put this this shiny halloween lantern face on television without any of the niceties that go with television. I actually wouldn't do it, to be honest, even though we dream of it. When we see the guys, we're always like, it's how easy for you? Which it is.
And then let's just say that you were thinking about going back or moving into TV full time you were offered to aim her morning TV show or whatever TV may look like in five years, could be a whole other time slot that I'm not even thinking and it all sounds great, and then they say, and it would be, you know, ninety minutes every day day in hair and makeup Monday to Friday and then wardrobe. Would that then be a deal breaker for you, Kate?
I do think I think of that often when I see, you know, the sisters who do who do Morning Teva, you know, Silvia or nat Bar Gean. Nat Bar is doing some heavy hitting at the moment, by the way, isn't she She's just just like bam bam coming out swinging amazing. Anyway, I think they've got up. It's like that Ginger Rogers Fred Astare thing with their male co hosts everything. They're doing everything he did, but backwards in high heels and in hair and makeup nineteen minutes before.
So they must be getting in at like three thirty in the morning they are. I don't know it comes at You're right, it would be a consideration, But I also don't think, you know, if you're wanting people to wake up with you, I think it's nice that you have made that effort, don't you.
I do. It's what I wanted to ask you about it, because I don't think there's any easy answers to this. As in it's as you said, it's that example, getting ready for an event at home. If you're in a heterosexual relationship and the as the guy comes in and gets ready in two minutes. It's not fair and it's crazy. But then are we outraged about it? And that is some people may be outraged.
I'm not.
I really wanted to know. Yeah, what what your thoughts?
No, but it's just one of those things that you clock.
It is.
It's like at Christmas time, Christmas would not happen without the women generally.
That's right. Well, I do get a bit outraged about it.
Yeah, it's annoying. It's annoying. It's you know, no one in an office would get a present if were it not for the women. This is true, you know what I mean. It's like it's just the stuff that we do. But I think in many ways like that your strength, there is also your weakness. So women make the world beautiful, and we are the ornaments of the world. There is no doubt We're not the birds. We're not the drab,
brown ones. We're the colorful, beautiful ones. Not always don't have to be, but that is something that is open to us, and I love that we have that capacity I have, but it can also consume you.
It's true.
And you know you said for the male gaze earlier, ninety percent of it is not for the male gaze.
That's right, and it's.
It's either for our gaze or for the gays of each other.
And when we come back, I ask Kate about how she's balancing the work family life ratio in twenty twenty four. Her answer is very unexpected and very funny. Kate, I wanted to get your pick your brains on this thing that we call work life family ratio because you always have such really refreshing, wonderful insights into it. You and I obviously have discussed previously, you and your family going
to Italy for two years in Joey nineteen. I know people still stop you on the street and talk about that. You've written a book about it.
But which I love. By the way, my favorite people other than the buck up people now, but my favorite people in the world are the people who stop me to talk about the book because we've just shared so much, like we've shared Italy for starters, and we've shared two years of my life. And you know what I learned, What I learned from it, not that i've you know, that beauty conversation is very Italian.
That's right.
And I think also, as you know, even from the moment that you first announced that you and the family were going over, there is huge response on social media because it's that thing that people talk about and dream about and don't necessarily do. And that's why I wanted to, like I say, sort of shamelessly, just pick your brains and ask you what is your day to day life rhythm looking like.
In twenty twenty four, we talked.
About the buck Up. That's a weekly podcast.
Good Nurse, Yes, that's weekly. Yeah, so we do that. Oh look my week and now because I'm freelancing. So for years I did until I went to Italy. Really I did a long you know, I did twelve years of breakfast radio with Hughes and then I had a year off and then we did National Drive. So that even though particularly doing breakfast radio tired nurses your constant companion, but you still have this structure to your day, and the same doing drive, you're not as tired, but you
have a structure to your day. And now I kind of have structure because I'm freelancing, but my structure is about the family mate. It's brutal. Some days I have done, I have done a day's work by eight thirty am. I have done washing, I have done I've maybe cooked a meal. I've been to the shops when they open at seven o'clock. I've made lunches of whatever. All of those things I don't have to do, and yet I have to do them. I have to do them for the family, but also I have to do them for
myself because it was my idea. It was my idea, And sometimes I'm like, I think about that now, and we talk about it on one of the episodes of The buck Up as well. This concept of shadow labor, which drives me fucking crazy, which is the work that they make you do. They make you do now that
used to be done by other people. Like you go to a car park and it's a there's no person there anymore, and you have to put your license numbering in and you have to data data or you try to book on a plane and you're filling out the things and you go to the through supermarket. Yes, yeah, shadow labor. So that was once someone's job and it's all become our job. Like even if I want to watch something on television, it's like scan this QR code and into your thing and your blah blah and your
email and your It drives me crazy. The labor that I do at home is not shadow labor. It is my labor. It is life's labor. And there is something you know, I don't want to. I don't want to, you know, guild the lily too much. It's not even a lily. I don't want to gild the weed, but there is. I try to find that there's something noble in it that I'm doing it. Sometimes I even have to project myself in the future and imagine that I'm dead, wishfully imagine that I'm dead and imagine how my family
will reflect on what I did, and that helps. I'm the only person that does that. No, do you ever imagine that you're ded and what it would sud.
I don't know that I do it specifically for those shadow labor tasks. So if you're talking about some of those things like food preparation and those things. I don't do it then, but I absolutely do do it because I think it's that thing we're all taught, aren't we about what our priorities would be on our deathbed, but then also the next stage after that, in terms of yes, how you will be remembered and even when your children are looking back ten, twenty, thirty, fifty seventy years, will
it have been worth doing this? So I absolutely do. I don't think I do it though for things in the kitchen, I think I'm just a bit more maybe roll my eyes overtly, maybe I'll start thinking about at that.
Well, I'm not advocating it as a thing. It's just sometimes probably I wish I was dead. It's probably as basic as that. It's just a fleeting moment when you're just like looking at all the mounds and the hordes. But it's also a thing that we're always it seems to be a conceit of the times that we're always going we must have a conversation about whatever, la la la, And some of those conversations are important, but I believe
actions are more important than conversations. One is sometimes lead from the other, but so what I am doing in my family and my husband, Peter Alan Lewis is also doing, is we are showing. So people say all the time, I don't want my daughter to grow up with an eating disorder, so I tell her all the time she's of all how she is or whatever, And yet they watched their mother go kneel by mouth until it's wine
time or whatever. You know what I mean, absolutely so, And I'm always like, it doesn't matter what you say. What matters in every aspect of life is what you do, and so I try to even though it is it is well, I guess it's like a lot of things. It's a once an honor and a burden, but it's one. Particularly since we came back, well since we went to Italy and I had my wish come true to spend more time with the family. I'm also like, why did
I wish that? Because I'm like normal and I'm my inclination is like most people that I would like to be selfish, and I would like to be lazy, and I would like to you know, but you part of the stretch of what you do in life, no matter what it is, if it's having a family or not but if you love and care for another creature, the love and the stretch and the growth comes from going beyond what you would like to do, going outside yourself, And it's kind of powerful. It's a powerful concept, but
also it can leave you just exhausted. So I oscillate between those two. I'm just like and that is. I guess that is just the dance of life, isn't it?
It is? And I suppose the cost or the tax I suppose, isn't it of unconditional love and caring for people is what brings value to this world.
But God, it's hard work.
It's hard work. And we've got all the appliances, that's still hard work.
Imagine that. Imagine the shadow labor when you were trying to, you know, not put on that corset. Well, that's right, you know in the bridges.
Yah, that's right. Well, the shadow labor is actually for the for the poor Chicky was trying to lace me up. She was doing the shadow. That was a lot she was sucked into.
Actually, last year, when you and I spoke Kate talking about family, we spoke about how your son Lewis is dating Gypsy Lee. Kate Sobrano and.
Gypsy was kind of fresh, then, wasn't it. It was?
It was you said, she's just a beauty, she's divine, and they're both really beautiful, two beautiful nepo babies who neither of whom are casual. Do you know what I mean?
So beautiful?
And then Gypsy has since appeared in Stella early this year we released her Beautiful. We asked Gypsy about obviously you being part of the extended Stella family. There you go, that's just more to add to your shadow labor taking care of the Stella family as well. And Gypsy said that you and her mum, Kate used their witching powers to set us up in Away. Kate and Lewis have the same bond that Mum and I have. I love witching powers. That's really beautiful too, isn't it.
It was interesting because Lewis says to me, Mum, do you know someone called Gypsy? And I went, oh, well, I said, no, not not exactly, but I know her mom. And he goes, oh, I've got some really nice messages from her. And I said to him, Lewis the old ladies in the Village of Matt making you, And I said, I'm not, I'm not actually playing an active part in it, but I know that it's going on, like I'm not
being an obstacle. And then Trudy, my girlfriend, went to an op shop and found these really beautiful I love op shoppy stuff and she's a brilliant vintage and op shopper, and she found these beautiful Irish Lynen Place matts right, and she gave them to Kate to give to Gypsy to drop off at our house. So then they got into this really strange sort of they hadn't met, but
they were messaging each other about this thing. And then Peter and I last year went to back to Italy for the first time and went to Paris for Peter's first time. And when we left, so we were gone for three weeks. When we left, Lewis was going on his first walk with Gypsy. And three weeks later he facetimed me. We were in Paris at that point and he was going to the movies with Gypsy the next day, and I knew they'd seen each other in between, and I said to Lewis, have you got a girlfriend, Lewis?
And he said, I think I do, Mum and that. So now they've had like they've passed the year anniversary. It was beautiful, amazing, witching powers.
Indeed, beautiful phrase, beautiful phrase, witching powers.
Indeed, I love it.
But then it's a little bit of you know, your social media there as well, you know, see those do those videos? You're never not it's trying to lead.
But also she was, Kate was spot on in her instincts. I have to say, like spot on. Nothing could have been easier. And it's really only in retrospect that I go, oh, my goodness, when your kid brings someone home, it could go disastrously wrong suddenly, like if you didn't like them or whatever. It is a myriad exactly.
Yeah, And look, I mean I'm sure every parent has to contemplate that and obviously deal with it sometimes. And I've got no doubt personally that you would absolutely handle that really graciously.
Oh do you think so that I would, Sarah? Because you know, you know how it is when you're in love with someone and when you're first in love and when you're young, Yes, like which of us has not made a mistake in our youth?
I did?
And if my pearance, I mean I didn't see my parents then because they I'd left the Jehovah's witnesses, so luckily I was free to make my own mistakes. Or was I lucky there was no one there to say to me. I don't know. I don't know about this, honey, I don't know. But you have to be really careful how you deal with it, because you're dealing with you're trying to talk to someone about you're trying to express I imagine reservations where they see none that's true.
And it's complicated, and I mean people can have that even with good friends, can't they. We've all seen somebody that we care deeply about, and yes, know that it's really not going to be good. But it's very complicated to have those conversations, and you have to high up I love this person, is it in their best interest to speak? Or am I blowing this relationship up?
So it is, and then they break up, and then they get back together, and in the meantime, she's told him or whoever all the things that you've said, and then the relationship is ren to thunder forever. Like it's very tricky to rain. It is, and luckily I have not had to navigate it, but I've still got three other children coming through. Let me touch wood that the course of love runs smooth, and we'll be.
Back in a moment to hear Kate open up about how she first experienced anxiety last year. We've talked a little bit about radio, obviously worked with Hughsey, and now you have the as I said, the weekly podcast, The buck Up.
Yes, but but I don't even know if that's the opening song, but I think it is.
I should really probably return the favor and sing an opening song to you, since oh in the top of our conversation. But that's okay, I'll come up with I'll come up with something a bit later. You clearly are very very very good podcast host and extremely capable feeling, and so I'm just going to hand over at the end of this episode of something to.
Talk about to you as a co host of The buck Up.
Well, Sarah. So we start by, I mean, we say hello, I'm kateline Brook.
You are I am Sarah Lamarquin.
Yes, correct, well done. That's the first out of the way. But so that ethos of the podcast is and it's kind of difficult to articulate, but let me give you an example, so that things in life really get you down. There's no doubt anyone who lives a life. As my mother said, the longer you live, more bad things are going to happen to you, which also makes me laugh. But there's something about sharing bad things that have happened.
And I think I believe this because I spent a long part of my life in a religion where I had to keep a big part of my self secret, like the most essential part of myself, because it would be so disapproved of and everything about me was wrong for that religion. It turned out the religion was wrong for me, but whatever. So now I'm like, I don't really have many, if any secrets. So the buckup is
when stuff happens to you that's kind of terrible. If you just reset yourself a bit, often you'll find that it's got an upside to it. So when we were talking about first doing the podcast, I was telling nath what had happened when I went to America earlier this year and I did these two massive interviews with Zendaia and Florence Pew and Austin Butler and Timothy Chalomay, and I talk about that in the first episode of the podcast.
But what I didn't talk about was when I came back from America, this really weird thing happened and I had anxiety for the first time in my life. I've never had it before. I'm modern, so I know heaps of people who have got it, and kids have got it, and grown ups have got it, and even dogs have got it. Right, it's the malaise of our modern world. And I had it for the first time, and it took me a little while to realize what it was.
I was waking up in the morning with this just this waking up ding, and then terrible things were popping into my mind, real or imagined. And then I went, oh, I've got anxiety. Right, this is terrible. But so I call the number of a guy who I'd been recommended by, strangely, a woman that I go and have colonics with, right, and she had mentioned this guy to me before, and I'd met him in the past and he was really lovely.
So I just seen him a message. At this stage, I was so low that I couldn't even explain to him why I was coming to see him. I just had to say, I really need to see you. I was so low that even the people that I live with who are very often blind to you because they see you every day and you're like a service animal in that life, you know. No, no, yeah, so even they noticed and I said, I said to Lewis, I can't go into the backyard. Peter was doing armor garden
in the backyard. I just I'm like, I can't go in the backyard. It's giving me anxiety. Peter comes to anxiety, said, Louis Seed, you've got anxiety. And I said, yeah, I do. And Peter was like, this is a phrase I have never uttered ever. Right, I'm not an anxious person. I'm not a fearful person. It's just not been a thing anyway. I said, yes I have. And he goes, what are you anxious about? Which is what people always say to
people who have got anxiety. I'm like, it's not a thing, but has been triggered by this trip overseas and the full on stress and the Americans who was wowow and all of that. I said, but I've made an appointment to see someone and on and in between. He said, what do you mean. I said, I've made an appointment to see someone on Monday. Now, this is where the
magic of the buck up comes Sarah. Because he became he became obsessed with the idea that I was going to talk about him and that he was somehow responsible for my anxiety. So he became the greatest person in the world. He just became obsessed. It was all like at one stage we were getting out of the car and he said to me, I hope you're going to tell her that I carry your jacket out of the car for you. And I said to him, for starters, she is a hymn, and also, why do you think
it's about you? And he goes, what else would you talk to him about?
Right?
And I'm like, well, that's an interesting observation. So it just actually became even before I had started that process, what became what started off in such such a I don't know, pain and despair, not really pain, but just that that awful thing of anxiety actually became something of humor and great And so then I was like, I've got to go to bed. I need a cup of tea. It's like bounding up the stairs. It was just it
was just brilliant. It was brilliant. Now, who would think that that that I would get a buck up from when I had anxiety, and yet I did.
And that it would inspire a whole podcast.
Well there you go. And so often in life things terrible things happen, And I guess this is what comedians do, is that they will always put a spin on something so that the the it boomerangs its way back to you. But it's somehow got a little bit of sparkle on it.
Peter, and continue, do you still have this sort of yes, buck up at home.
Well, okay, So seeing the counselor that I saw was fantastic. He's just enough, he's woo woo enough that it was great. So it was some talking and breaking stuff down and then some acupuncture on a table and some it was so it's great, but yes, I'm like, for a few days afterwards, I would say, in a couple of weeks after even I would say to Peter, be careful, you don't want to trigger my anxiety, right, And he was like, snap to it. And he's a beautiful, loving like he's
my person. But in the cut and thrust of life, we've been married a long time, We've got a lot of responsibilities. You're not always treated like the orchid that you believe you are. In the hot house and sometimes you're treated by the weed that's growing on the median strip. Right. It was just nice. It ended up actually being an unexpected benefit of something. You would never think that there'd be a silver lining on that dark cloud, and in
fact it ended up being. It ended up just being part of part of the joy, but also what I did. And because I'm a stoic and that is very much my ideology that I that's how I lead that there might have been an inclination for me to keep this vulnerability secret. That suddenly I was all wobbly and untethered when it was whereas I normally wake up, you know, I just I'm okay, and I wasn't okay, and there is a tendency to keep that. You're like, oh, what's
going on? Or I didn't have that. I was like, I have to step into these and if had I not done that, none of the other benefits would have come.
That's great, and it's so good that you gave you yourself permission to feel it and acknowledge it.
And also that aspect of it was funny, not all of it, but that aspect was funny and contained like some joy.
It's a bit like some of many of the things that we've talked about. Isn't it that there's the beauty of it and then the difficulty of it, and then all of those things.
Can be true at once.
Yes, Yes, thank you so smartly right for sharing that story about the genesis.
Of the buck Up.
It is a fantastic podcast and it is a very welcome antidote or as Sarah Harris would say, prozac if podcast was prozac. Kate, thank you again so much, and you can listen to Kate lame Brook on the buck Up every Tuesday on the free iheartapp.
Or wherever you get your podcasts.
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