Radio's Ash London On Finding Love At The ARIA's

Adrian and I, against all odds kind of you know, found each other and made it work. What could have been really complicated and messy and hard was actually really beautiful and I think, you know, quite redemptive and amazing.

Welcome to the heart of it. We are recording on gaddigal Land High. Sweetheart.

Hello, how are you?

I'm good. I'm good. Hey, we'll get straight into the chat, shall we. Today's guests are not just media legends, They're people who have built deep, meaningful relationships on and off the air.

Hey.

Hey, Ash London and Adrian Bryan are here to talk about love, friendship, connection and what we don't always say out loud.

Right, that's very deep of you, honey.

Hi guys, I wasn't nervous until now we're going.

Adrian straight straight has gone through our text.

I actually pulled the last bit off a media release from you two, so you can blame that one on your publicist. Love that, because I'm curious about that thing.

But what we don't always say out loud?

What's that like?

Have you got it in front of you in some sort of as a producer pulled it from something and just pasted onto a fact sheet.

Via email from our producer who's known we've just found out is known as producer X.

Yeah, there's that from a Tibetan book of relationships or something.

Maybe sounds like maybe from AI, guys, and I don't believe it.

Misquoted.

I think that could be closer to the truth.

Actually, well, I think the best actors are the ones that use very little words and you can just get the vibe off them. So this is radio podcasting, so we do need words.

That's true.

Well, let's just take you back to your beginnings though, because we always love to hear the beginnings of a love story. How did your relationship start?

Let's go, babe.

I've heard this story about eighteen thousand times.

It loves to.

Retell the story, and I love to do it to you guys as you are told the story.

So let's okay, thank you.

So it was the ARIA Awards, and I should know the year twenty sixteen, I think.

So.

I had been working at our radio company doing a night show and I got dumped and I was so heartbroken that I ran away to a desert island and tried to find myself very eat, pray love. Went traveling for a while tried to move to London, couldn't get a v YadA, YadA, YadA. I ran out of money and I got a call from back in Sydney and my manager pretty much said to me, look, ash you're gonna run out of money. If you haven't already, you need to just like wrap this up.

Come home. Someone wants to speak to you about a job.

So I came home with my tail between my leg kind of thinking I screwed my whole life up by you know, I thought I was going to do all this stuff and I'm coming home with Sydney and I'm broke and no one loves me and I didn't find love, and long story short, I get off at a new show, my own show, The Ashlander Live. I start doing that and then about a month and a half in I met the ARIA Awards.

I kind of made a decision that day.

I told my producer, I'm going to hook up with someone tonight because I never do that, and yolo, I'm back.

You know, I'm thirty, I'm a hook up with someone.

Sure And instead of having them yeah, which is so not me, very out of character. But what is very in character? Is it instead of like just randomly hooking up with someone. A man walked in late while the Veronicas were covered in red body glitter and parading around the stage. A man walked in with our big Boss and I said to my friend Angus, who's that And he said, oh, that's that's Abe.

I said, what, like, introduce me. I'm going to marry him. I just like and I legitimately like full on.

And then the whole night I was like trying to get people because it was like, you know, the r is like you're sitting in your seat and you have to watch the you can't be chatting. We shouldn't be chatting. But I was just like, introduced me, introduce me. So we had to wait till intermission and then we got introduced and yeah, I texted my girlfriends like dodgy photos of him from across the thing.

Sad totally and then we shout.

And I was like, and then when went out in the group with the group girlfriends, yea, that was you.

Once it's with the girls, you're not taking that back.

Yeah.

So we found each other at an after party that night at Intercontinental in Sydney and we just kind of found a corner and talked all night and I walked away. Nothing happened, but I just I walked away knowing that I'd met my guy and.

We started dating. Living different cities at the time.

So yeah, I was I was going away on a trip that I had planned, so some wild oats, but you know there wasn't a chance for that.

Was that common denominator here going on? You were looking for wild oats that night as Adrian's planning on grabbing some somewhere. So you're both right for the picking we were.

Yeah, totally timing. Timing is everything.

Yeah, when on our first date that was November, it was the kind of January February first date, and we didn't really even have to have a conversation. It was just like, oh, well, this is it. And I was very easy, a very easy thing. And it always had to be, I think for me because I got the eck really quickly with guys like the smallest little thing.

Different story now though, seven years later, let's get into that.

What do we need to talk about?

So?

What made it? What's made it last seven years? What's what's been the key Well, what are some of the key things that have made it last?

I guess we've always been really good at just like talking, like honest conversations and talking. You know, we're yeah it seven years in This is probably where that kind of falls apart for people, and you sort of drift a little bit, I suppose, if you're not kind of coming back and reconnecting and and that is hard. We have a three and a half year old and he is full on and you know, it can really take over your life unless you kind of really work at it.

But yeah, I think we are pretty good at that. Total life gets pretty hectic. We're both pretty busy.

Work wise and life wise and all the things, so it's very easy to sort of go in other directions. So yeah, I think that's probably been the key, is we were able to come back together.

And we're always better together, like we always say, we're just better together. So if for the you know, the age nineties, we've been together. There's been lots of times where we've been we've been traveling, or one of us has been away or you know, whatever it is, and it's like an hour into whatever work trip it is, no matter what how cool it is and whoever's doing the traveling, it's so obvious as soon as we're apart, like, oh god, we just both functions so much better when

Know that things faster, right, Yeah, and you each know your role so that works.

Yeah, absolutely, like the painfully positive one. And I'm all about like just if something, if something's broken, we fix it. So like, Okay, you're not happy in this area, what can we do to fix that? Was Adrian's a bit slower and more methodical about things, So I think it's a good little balance. I kind of jump into just

We compliment each other like that.

Yeah, I just kind of jump in and he's very much takes fifteen years to make any decision in life.

That's fine, Yeah, it's cool.

Well let's talk about you pick not picking up your stuff.

I'm so foul.

We can talk about that stuff coming, yeah.

We can, But I do love to hear the proposal story was there? Did you do something special? Did you know it was coming? Ash?

Like?

How did that? How did that go for you?

Yeah? Okay, so I think probably Ash did know it was coming. So we found the ring, like the ring like very early like, so we were just out doing normal sort of everyday stuff, shopping.

Still living in separate cities, living in.

Separate cities, and we'd come together and we're just shopping and then oh, there's a jewelry store. Should we have a look in there, just to get a bit of an idea of, you know, if it was ever to happen, And it was just there. The ring was there, this ruby ring, and Ash kind of fell in love with this ring.

Three months after this was not very long, right.

Very soon, mean you know when you know, And so I think very soon after that, i'd gone back to that shop and sort of whatever put it on hold or paid for paid for it I can't really remember, and made them hang on to it. And then because I knew that, yeah, soon enough there would be a time and a place that would be right. And I hadn't sort of planned that yet, but I just knew that,

Maybe I'll do it there.

But then I thought Ash was onto it, so I thought, yeah, yeah, that was a fun trip, so I left it out of that trip. I thought that'd be.

Too traveling with the.

Stressed about taking it, and I was like, nah, I'm not going to do that.

Probably didn't have air tags in those days either.

That's true.

Yeah, I didn't want to be panicked and not knowing where it was. If I'd lost it, I would have gone to water.

So then I booked a weekend.

Away and it was in the Blue Mountains in Sydney, and probably already that wasn't out of character for us, so there wasn't any reason to be suspicious there. But yes, I had organized a collage of like photos of all of us together and I'd had it made into a jigsaw puzzle and down in the bottom right hand corner of the jigsaw put or was you know, will you marry me?

But the way that's sort of like how do you get into that? On the morning of, like, hey, do you want to do a jigsaw? I hadn't thought that far ahead.

I was like, this is so cute, and I was like, how the hell would I get us to do a jigsaw.

Radio?

Exactly right?

You would have thought I would have been better, but I And that's exactly how badly it went.

In fact, I think reading books and were watching to.

Watch a movie, and I was like, yeah, and we start watching the movie, but he's not watching the movie.

He's so distracted. And I was like, what is going on?

And I, at this point I still really didn't know, And I said, what is going on with you? Like he said, I don't know, I don't feel like watch a movie. I made us a jigsaw puzzle. But to be fair, he was so was is but more was so romantic. It did so many cute things like that that it really was normal that he would just make a jigsaw of photos of us. So I still didn't know he was proposing.

No, Because so I put together the jigs, but I left the little corner like hidden under, like on the side, so as we're getting through this jig, so we can blatantly see this is whole corner.

Have you missed somebody?

Did you start with the corners?

That's how you do, Adrian, there's only three corners here. You're setting me after getting really pissed off.

No, maybe I have left some pieces at home or something.

So we get the whole thing done, and of course then the corner is, oh, there was these extra pieces that were under the plate.

Oh, I get there. That's weird.

And then we put it together and then Ash realized and then was overjoyed, calling mom straight away and it's happened, and it was all very exciting and it was lovely.

And but that week that week my mom did call and I was chatting. She lives in Melbourne, and I said, oh, Adrian and I might we might come for dinner on Friday. And said, oh, that's lovely. I'll get to see Adrian twice in the week. What do you mean he's coming over to have a chat with me on Wednesday? Right, And I just said, oh, let's just pretend this conversation never happened show.

Yes, I think that's a good idea because.

Although I am the modern man, I'm a bit old school. And I was like, I'm going to ask for permission or permission of sorts at least have a conversation. And yeah, so yeah, we had a little dinner that night, and she was wildly against the idea, and somehow I convinced yesterdays disgusting.

You paid her off?

What have you? What have you done with the jigsaw puzzle? Is it framed somewhere?

Well, we've moved.

In this little life.

It will be in a bag and it will be with the receipt for the ring and the spification of the somewhere together.

Nice, yeah, exactly, and we'll get.

It out again one day and we'll try and put it together again.

He was very, very good with stuff like that, especially in that first kind of year that we're living in different cities, so we had to find opportunities to special moments in albums.

It was book remember, with all the thing I stayed up like like like scrapbooking this book together that I stayed up, Oh my gosh.

Anyway, it was.

The things you do when you're forore, when you're young and in love.

Yeah, yeah, right, so we were we were we were young too, getting getting together. I think I asked Eli to marry me after three months, so you know.

Yeah, it was very and I did the same thing Ash when I when I saw Cam on Perfect Match and I was sixteen, I said, I'm going to marry that guy one day. Yes, but I think a million other women yeah too, And I just somehow or another I cut through.

Well, my first Ti'm going to marry was Ricky Martin, which was not going to happen.

Maybe never. Yeah, we are a relationship podcast, obviously, it's talk about your relationship. A couple of years ago, there was a book came out about love languages. Are you guys? Is that love language? I roll? Or are your true believers in that?

I grew up in a religious in a Christian family, going to church a lot, so I think I kind of connect that to religion a little bit, which is where the only eye roll would come in. However, I think there is some merit to the idea of having great, open, honest communication about how you feel love.

Absolutely, and for me, it's what do you think of mine? Do you know them? All? It's words aboutimation. That's a service quality time.

Gifts, gifts some.

Isn't it the phys physical touch, physical touch that should be in there.

Well, I know that.

Gifts, but not.

Not even like physical gifts. Giving you like a fancy diamond. That's not like a gift of like I've given you two hours on your own to go and get a massage.

Is that to you is like something?

And you've been really good because because Adrian isn't really one for gifts, early on, he.

Also tight and I don't like to spend on things that are going to end up in a drawer that we're never going to look at again.

But he got on board very early, and there's been a couple of kind of beautiful items that he's as well as the things he's made me over the years, a couple of beautiful things he's bought which meant so much more because I know that you think it's ridiculous.

And I think you know that mine is like acts of service to the one when you're like do around the house doing things. But my favorite bit is like you like to just remind me that you've done those things so that I recognize the acts of service.

Did you say that I clean the kitchen, babe.

Yes, because it does not come remotely naturally to me. I don't even notice the mess.

Yes, okay, okay, so my husband is right here. It's a private joke between me and the kids as well. Maybe it won't be anymore. I think cams onto it every time my husband vacuums and we have this wonderful dice and clean it. And I'm not kidding. Every time he comes and shows me what he's vacuum how much he's filled the vacuum thing up every single time, and it's like I have to go, that's amazing, honey.

Because we need feedback, we need glory in our DNA.

But this is this is where the Dyson, and I'm going to give them their kudos right here, their props where they're due. We've had so many crap vacuums we have, yeah, right, and then our goes and spends all this money on a Dyson.

I was sick and tired of having crap vacuums, and.

She buys us like it was all about the money, really, because it was like, really, is that going to be better than the cog in one? You know? And anyway, so I use the diceon and holy crowd, it absolutely.

Had it for a year. I think we could probably not still show.

But I still want to because we've got a We've got a thin as a chip carpet that's just along along a hallway and it's probably about I don't know, maybe it's twenty feet long. I don't know the amount of ship that comes out of that carpet.

I can't.

It fills up the whole tub, and I'm like.

You get to look at the tub and empty the filter pets. It's even worse, right.

Oh yeah, But I honestly I feel like James Bond emptying a cartridge, because it's like, you know all this stuff, put it away and.

You're here you.

I feel like, because I think I need a dice, as I need a dice in leather holster down my leg.

An ambassador to to dice.

Talking about it, we might get one these things. Ever, honestly, I love them so much.

If my acts of if my love language ever becomes gifts, I would like to be gifted a dyce And because that would do two things for me.

It would it means I get to clean easier.

He just got me the air rat for Christmas, so that we've you know, we've spent.

That's it.

Yeah, I think we might be done for a little bit with the vacuum. Adrian has your has your view on love? Has it evolved over the years. Did you have to unlearn something from once now that you're married and you're you've been together for seven years or is it has it evolved at all since you were like a younger fella.

Well, all I will say is that I guess there, Okay, I have to I might need to just give some context. But my my first wife, Lauren, passed away in twenty fourteen, so I was married and that was sort of the formative part of our life was in the younger years.

But yeah, that's how it's changed for me. It's that that kind of standard.

You know, you meet someone, you stay with that person forever and you love them that didn't happen for me, but I was absolutely grateful to be able to find someone else and open my heart again and make it like sort of go through the process and work on myself so that I was able to then give again

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. That's really beautiful. Thank you so much.

And now you've been candid about your relationship journey over the years. What surprised you most about being married or in this long term love.

I think I never, in a weird way, thought that I would never get married, or at least that my work would be my kind of my love, and that no one got that lucky to have kind of a great career and also a great relationship. So I think I was surprised first of all to meet and fall in love with Adrian so quickly. And I guess I

We're gonna get three days and then we're gonna have two weeks.

Off and we're gonna you know, we had great jobs, We're earning great money. We had no kids, so we had so much disposable cash to take these ridiculous like overseas trips, and we just really lived it up, which I think is really important, especially when you know, you go through what Adrian goes through, like you live your life then and you really enjoy it, and then you know, there comes phases in life where you know, with COVID and then with a baby, and you know, and things

You know, I kind of built my.

Life around well, I can just fix everything and make everything amazing. But you know, we've had some tough times. But like and I always say, as lame as it sounds like, as hard as life has been for us with so much moving and job changes and we YadA YadA, yadda, loving each other has always been extremely easy, so like

It's the first time hearing about that.

But we're in and I feel so safe in our love and so secure, and that I think has been the most surprising thing and also the thing I'm proudest of.

Fantastic, So beautiful, beautiful, little buddy arrived in twenty twenty one, Is that correct?

Yeah?

All right, tell us about him and what has parenthood taught you about yourselves?

Good that I'm extremely impatient patient. I'm so impatient.

I want everything to happen on my time and I want if you know, I've got things that I need to do, then I'm so bad at just being like, Okay, those things can wait and they I need to be here. This is the moment that I'm going to that actually matters, and just being in this moment and whatever.

So yeah, I really struggle with patience.

I didn't know he was this impatient until we had a child.

Yeah, I didn't know either. I really thought I had a bit more under control, and I thought I could.

I don't know.

I just thought i'd be able to manage that better.

Button man, that's what he does for a living. He manages people, so I think, and he's very very.

Good at it.

So maybe that's part of it, is that you've got this little person that you can't I.

Can't manage performance toddler, No, toddler, right, like, just just ready for Kinney on the time schedule that I like you to get ready on, not just I want to play poor Patrol for twenty minutes and I'm up again. Then that's what I feel like I become a bad dad is when I'm just like, why am I forcing this kid to like be on my time when he doesn't know what that means?

Sorry? How old Buddy's three?

He's going to be in a couple of bits and is so big and old, and I'm.

Like, what the heck?

Yeah, and he's he's a really smart kid. And I think everyone says the kids smart, but I kid really is quite smart. So I think we do expect a lot from him because he is been talking, like conversationally talking since before he's two. So you just kind of forget that he's three and a half because I can have a conversation within you and you can understand what I'm saying, but you don't have the emotional capacity and intelligence.

Like I'm really zen with.

Him and I'm working on it, and.

You're a great but you are a wonderful dead. You're a great dead.

I'm so I remember so vividly the times of just we've got three in there, like grown up grown ups, but just remembering those moments each time vividly of like just going for a walk that should take five and it takes you know, an hour and a half, and just like, okay, this is really about the stop and smell the roses moment where they do want to stop and look at the crack and the sidewalk. They do want to see if there's a flower or a beetle or this, or go back a little bit and they've dropped.

When they tell you like twenty minutes after they dropped it, and you're like yeah, and then life will end if they don't have it.

Yeah.

Whenever I see like little shoes or little toys out on a walk, I go, oh, some parents are gonna be like, dang, where's the other shoe we had?

An Adrian can't lose things once. We got a pig from a toilet. Library.

We're living in campbell a whole thorn in Melbourne and we've gone for a walk and we came back and the pig was gone. And in my mind, I'm like, cool, the pig's gone. We pay the four dollars to the toy library for the lost pig.

I looked for the pig for trace those steps. I was like, I'm finding this pig.

Do you guys remember that that ad? It was a car commercial where where the woman the mum, had had the little stuff to We're in the car and the kids thought that they've left it behind, had met that was that was ours in the handbag, wasn't it?

Yeah?

Yeah, she had it in the hand dropped it. But the dad's found it now. The dad's the year they planned it.

So the dad could feel good.

Yeah, yeah, we need that.

Dads need that every night we are.

Yeah, and Buddy does love his daddy so much. Like we had a year we both finished. So I quit my radio show when I was pregnant, and Adrian had.

Also resigned, so we radio company.

So we had this glorious first year when Buddy came where we were at home together and not working and it was absolute heaven.

Like I think as far as maternity leaves go, I don't.

I couldn't imagine it better because it was just like we really were a team. Like there was still the moments or I'd be up breastfeeding at one am, staring at Adrian snoring and seething, wanting to murder him because I you know, he.

Was happily asleep.

But but then I wake up.

Meanwhile the baby, I've re swaddled, the baby's back to sleep, and I was just like, just fucking go back to sleep.

But we were a.

Real team, and I you know, I don't think I was alone with Buddy in that first year, Like they just didn't happen. So we had this wonderful yeah, and you know, like and going.

Back to work.

Adrian was the one to go back to work, and that was a really hard transition for you to like go from seeing and he was so cute and perfect and lovely that first.

Year around them all the time.

When they're three and a half, you're happy to go to work and it's good to have a break.

People at work. They've got it right in those Nordic countries because they give paternity leave for a year.

Yeah, that's amazing.

It's so good.

It was so helpful to have because I got that connection as well, and I was able to do some of those special things in the early days, so that was really cool.

And he did have a natural knack for it, honestly, And like there's still moments in our parenting where Adriane is the one to kind of go okay. Ninety percent of the time, it's me kind of I think, making the decisions around his food and discipline and all those sorts of things, because I'm the one reading all the research, YadA, YadA, YadA.

Hate to admit it.

And often Agent does have a kind of bet not a better sense, but maybe a sense that's more kind of trained to what buddy really does need in that moment, as opposed to me getting sometimes too caught up in woll statistics say and experts say, and boy, we need to do this this, and that was Agent and be like, well, how about we just try this, and I have to

Yeah.

You know, I wonder with this proliferation of Instagram experts and all these different people putting all this info and intel that that some of it's really good. I'm sure, well, I know it is. I know it's good. Yet when we were raising our kids, the Internet wasn't around. It was for the last two but not not for for loaders, and certainly before that, parents had to just go on instinct, like that.

Books you just read books, just res what.

To expect when you're expecting class of stuff.

Yeah, I read that book.

I read obviously.

This wasn't it you. I think small.

I think women are really these days, we're taught to not trust our instincts because there's so much kind of conflicting information out there or really points of view, so that I think if we have another one, I think my approach will be a lot more instinctual rather than like I just beat myself up so much to do everything by the book, like he has to sleep this way and he's got to not do this before that.

I really would, you know.

And I think it was part of maybe a reaction to COVID as well, and the fear that existed back then, where it was just like, Okay, well, I can't control anything, but what I can do is make sure that every single thing I do for this baby is by the book, so that there's no so that I can't say that

And I'm probably the one that just like pushes the next like what's the like the next development, Like like seven months, I was like, let's get buddy out of the bedroom.

Waited till I was so sick that I couldn't lift my head out of the pillow, and said should we move him out of our room? And I grunted and then fell asleep, and by the time I woke up, he had a nursery set up downstairs.

Yeah, that's exactly how that went. But I knew that was the only way that this was going to happen. And then we're going to have to do some sort of a clean break here, And then I was prepared for like what that was going to mean, Like, yeah, we're going to do the control crying and we're going to have to do the like down in one in the room. It was going to be hell, but it

And then whereas his buddy would still be in my room if it was up to me, because I'm just it's you know, and that and the sleep training, which is is very controversial, and I think it took one night for buddy to get it, and if it had taken any more, there's no way I would have pushed through.

But on that one night, and one night only.

That we had to let him cry, or had chosen to let him cry, he was in our room still and I lay in bed, sobbing, absolutely sobbing, and Adrian's a whisper because you have to whispers in Adrian's like can you you need to pull yourself together, And I was like, fuck you, you don't understand.

I burnt him. It is by a lot.

And we have his full on fight whisper under the covers, just.

Like yeah, whisper, yeah, And then he got it was rests of pumping, pumping, He's crying because like the body's responding, and yeah.

Totally totally.

That was the kind of I think that was that that was maybe the one point in that kind of newborn phase that we really did kind of clash. But again, I'm proud that I was able to be like, Okay, you're his father, so I can't. I have to relinquish some control here and do things your way. And thankfully, like it actually changed all of our lives. And he, you know, sodden sleeping through and loved it and you know, so it was it was a good thing.

But yeah, that that whisper fight.

It's a different it's a different life when they start sleeping and you're sleeping, it's just like a different world. It's so exciting to wake up and see the baby again, like you haven't spent all night and feel like a vampire, you know, you know, wake it two, three, four or five in the morning, it's like, oh.

And when it does happen, it felt like it did happen, Like like you go from like it not happening.

So then you're waking up one morning and going do we just get eight hours of sleep? What the heck is?

Like?

As you say ad a game changer, You're just like, well, it's been eight months or tens or whatever it was. I was just get a life back now. And then there's the other fifteen things that come after that.

Something.

Every single time you're like, just when you get on top of it, bang and you back down to the next thing.

Whatever it is.

You guys have moved to New Zealand. How long ago was that?

November last year? November twenty twenty four. I came across for just a little bit by myself to start with.

And then this is for work, Yeah, this is for work.

Yeah.

So we're at Media works over here, so two big sort of media companies and we're at one of those, and yes, I guess again. It sort of just started with a conversation with me about do I want to sort of out of radio, but not very far out doing some other things. And then it was yeah, do you want to do you want to come back, come over here and have a bit of a crack And my immediate response was no, thanks, not really interested in that.

Like, do you like fixing things? That's what people like to do.

I love seeing's broken. So yeah, that happened, and then of course it very quickly became about a conversation of us, Okay, well what does that look like for both of us? And yeah, they were fantastic in talking about They're obviously very exciting.

They're like, oh, we're going to get you in a get ash London as well. How good.

So yeah, we started to really talk about what that looked like and if it made sense for both of us.

Do love it.

We love the lifestyle, and we love the people, and Buddy loves kindie and the little.

Like a lot of today, like the Maori language over here. I feel like those little performances for us. And then the other day he did easy performance and at.

The end of your guest and we're like, and it's so cool, but it's.

So bad as totally like love. Early on he said I think, I like he I don't know. It's something I did something naughty And he said, Mummy, that's not showing Manaki Tangua.

And I'm like, I.

Get out of my phone Google, I respect for your environment. No, you're right, Mummy, wasn't showing manakitanga. I apologize, buddy.

That's great for us.

Yeah, and as you're you're back on air again in New Zealand.

Yes, so I'm doing.

How's that for you?

It's great it's been again.

I didn't think I kind of I would return, but the opportunity came up and they've been wonderful. Let me kind of do it on my own terms and on my own timeline and in a time of day that suits me. I get to kind of go back to doing what I love, which is the interviews and the music stuff, and I do my podcast from out of here as well. So it's given me really nice structure again because I've just kind of written my debut novel, Love on the Air, which just came out.

Yeah, we want to talk about that, we want to touch on that.

Yeah, it took up a lot of time.

So it's good now to have a bit of structure again and to be able to kind of have my day set out as opposed to just this kind of big hundred thousand words. It needs to get written in a year, and you do it kind of when you can.

So we're all very happy here.

Do you share a lot sort of either through the podcast or radio about your life together, or do you have like agreements of like this is private time, this is not going to get shared.

Or you know, we both work in radio. It's all kind of just okay. Yeah, there's one or two things that would make the best on air content of all time, the best phone topics.

It would go viral and Instagram.

Yeah, got it.

There is.

Yeah, there is a couple of ground Yeah, on a few of the bitches. I'm sure there is with lots of people that have, you know, talent, like talent.

On the air, and we're lucky in that we get Yeah, we can.

And we've always really worked when at one point Adrian was running Kiss Melbourne and that was the first time that we'd ever not worked at the same radio company. We'd always kind of work together, and he'd never been my boss. He'd been like across other you know, like I was on a national show and he was, you know, running Fox. So I was like, well, it's not really my boss. And again, you know in New Zealand, we're

And I love.

My PRODUCTIY, so times a day I walk over there looking for him.

So if you had to swatch swap jobs for the day, who would do better? What would happen?

Oh my gosh, I could never ever I do his job, no way.

Adrian oversees three radio brands and has to deal with there's so much you know, task switching that has to exist in his mind. The only bit I'd be good at would be the person knocking on my door to talk about their feelings. Like I'd be like, come on in and sit down. But I would get so emotionally involved in that. Adrian can separate, and he's very good with the emotional stuff, But I would be like, just move in with us for a month so you and I can work through that. You know, I would get

There's lots of benefits to being married to talent or personalities that are on the air, Like, you know, I get to get a first hand view of kind of all the things that I'm going to then face at work with. You know, there's egos and there's there's lots of interesting things that happen there, So I get I get a bit more experience with that, I guess, but yeah, if we were, I mean I would be and I was, so I did.

I don't know.

I did like five years on the air back in the day, guys saf Adelaide, Yeah yeah, guy or something, Yeah, yeah, and I was. I was reasonably terrible at it. And it's certainly in a show environment where you're having to like really draw on experience and like Ashes Superpower is you know, and I say this a lot with just programming people. You know, you've got to have lived a bit of a life to sort of get on the

I just be like, oh.

Yeah, I don't have any good examples of that.

I'm pretty boring generally, So yeah, there's a definite, definite difference there.

Well, speaking of stories. Then your books come out Love on the Air, and you've said that it's definitely not an autobiography, but clearly by.

It we could says.

By true events. Were you ever? Were you ever? Did you ever think, oh, maybe I should write an autobiography or is it just a lot easier just to make it into a novel.

I just feel like I'm I mean, I'm nearly forty, so I've done a lot of living.

I still think I'm twenty, but I'm not.

I just feel like if I did an autobiography, I'd have to revise it in five years, because the one thing I've learned is that whatever you think to be true can change so quickly.

And I just feel like I've got so much more living to do.

But I do feel like, you know, the career I've had in radio so far has been so ridiculous. Like the joys of doing a night show is that you just get to do whatever you want with no real pressure. And I did it in kind of like well, I was at the tail end of the of the commercial radio endless budget glory days where it was just like, oh, there's an interview with Harry Starles. Well, we could do it on the phone. But you know what, it'd be better if you just go to LA for a week

Maybe not?

That's right.

So I had all these kind of ridiculous you know, I had a ridiculous career, and then it wasn't until Matt leave that I kind of got some distance from it. And I was like, when my life was very mundane and ordinary and beautiful, I looked like, kind of look back on it, and I was like, man, that was some crazier stuff I did.

Like, that's amazing.

And also, you know, the idea that Adrian and I, against all odds, kind of you know, found each other and made it work. What could have been really complicated and messy and hard was actually really beautiful and I think, you know, quite redemptive and amazing. So with that in mind, I kind of, you know, I just started writing. And the first scene that I wrote was kind of based and a time that I got dumped and I thought I was gonna marry this person, and I knocked on

So little things like that.

And then yeah, like the love story's based based on kind of like ten percent, but really, like you've heard it.

If if our love story was a.

Rom com novel, it would be one page long. It would be like she went to the party and saw him and they got married and that's the end. Like, so I had to put some drama into it. I had to invent some radio nemesis. I'd never had a radio nemesis, unfortunately, but I invented one of those. And we had to kind of create some drama around it and put some celebrities in there and build a story.

So first book is there's a second one.

You were into it, ha ha ha.

Yeah, so I've started writing another one, yeah, which is a totally different experience because you're not you know, it's very easy to kind of write what you know. I'm the only like research really that I had to do on the first book was really fun stuff like okay, well if someone was going to fly to the mold Eves first class from Sydney, what airline, what aircraft, what would the menu be, and what would the cabin look like and what kind of champagne would they order?

And that was really fun research.

And you know, we'd stayed at the London Edition on a trip to London once, so I'll I'll base it at that hotel because it's a really chic hotel, but.

You know, what would the most expensive room beer?

And then I'd be on the Tell website like getting the virtual tour like that was fun research. The second book I'm working on is something I don't know, so the research has been totally different and the experience has been totally different. And I feel like now I kind of know how to write a book. Where is the first time? I just you know, you just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. But you know, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. But now I know a bit more.

Adrian, have you recovered from having the book dedicated to you?

Yet?

Ah?

Well, not really no, because I cried, I think like a little baby when I saw that.

Who else?

See if it was the other way around, I would look at that and go, well, obviously, duh, where was you were shocked?

I was shocked, But I mean there was a lot of late night work, shopping story boarding.

He's amazing.

Yes, I was pretty good.

He's got a really great sense of story. And that's why he's.

Good at at you know, being in creative in radio and helping his content arts work. And he always had the key when I got stuck, and I would kill me because sometimes I'd wait three or four, five, six days to ask him, and then I've been lying in bed at night.

I'd be like, you're awake, Yeah, what do you need?

And then we'd roll over towards each other and then he'd always what about if she did this? And I go, yep, thank you.

Then I go and write it every time.

That's so good, that's great.

It was. Yeah, it was magic to watch just the ideas come to life. It was so good. Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well the books out.

Love on the Air is out, and we got to get it because I have a feeling I'm going to really enjoy reading.

You'll relate, honey, You're relate stuff in there your mind.

Maybe you'll recognize some of the bad guys.

Guys on this podcast.

You're going to create a radio nemesis right now. Hey, we do a wrap but heartbeat wind up for the potty and so just both answer the question please and just keep your answer.

Sure, ye okay, if you go, what brings you joy?

Time together with family and friends.

Food, it's so good in New Zealand, so cheap.

Okay. What's one habit you each do that the other finds adorable?

About to say?

Sighing, adorable, adorable, adorable, m nice harmony.

Oh I've got one.

He's become obsessed with golf, so he thinks I don't know that he's either looking at golf tutorial videos, clubs or booking in a tea time on his phone, but I can see by the look on his face that it's goal related.

And it's very very cute how much joy it brings in.

I think the.

Ash, as I said, it's a very good storyteller.

And yes, and so when we're out with friends or meeting new people, like, yeah, I hear the same stories like seventeen times over because this is where we're regaling these people with these wonderful stories. And I do often give feedback like oh god, I think, But I actually secretly love it, obviously, and I find it very adorable that we're there and she's got everyone like hanging on the edge of the table and then what happened, and then what happened?

And yes, so I do find that adorable.

I get little air of checks, little air checks.

Of the story a bit shorter, a few details, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Got it, got it? Uh finish this sentence. What the world needs more of.

Is attitude people like Ash who want to get a message out there and are not afraid to talk about things that maybe other people find uncomfortable.

You should don't want to slide some golf references.

More discounted.

All right, last question. One word to describe each other integrism.

I think joyful is the word for ash joyful.

Thanks, We've loved this chat. Thank you so much.

Pleasure, Thank you so much. Guys.

Always a pleasure talking about wonderful things.

Really great to talk to you. Thanks for the time.